Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

(Green Day version)
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes
But it’s home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I’m the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a…

My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I’m walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What’s fucked up and everything’s alright
Check my vital signs
To know I’m still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a…

My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a…

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I’m the only one and I walk a…

My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
‘Til then I walk alone…

This is no game. You might think this is game, but, trust me, this is no game.

This is not something where rock beats scissors or paper covers rock or rock wraps itself up in paper and gives itself as a present to scissors. This isn’t anything like that. Or where paper types something on itself and sues scissors…

…and that’s just the beginning of a glorious Jack Handey rant, in this week’s New Yorker. Read all the way to the end, and just one more thing.

When you send Jack his $500, send me some too!

$3,000 per year in political donations–that was all James Tobin and his wife Ellen gave in 2002, and again in 2003, according to official FEC records.

So $2,000 in a single day is a large donation. But that’s how much Tobin gave to Texas Congressman Tom DeLay on June 30, 2004.

June 30, 2004 was also the day that Allen Raymond turned state’s evidence in the NH phone-jamming scandal.

June 30, 2004 was also the day that Federal Prosecutor Todd Hinnen first gave public details of the role played by an unnamed “official in a national political organization.” That unnamed official was, we now know, James Tobin.

Tom DeLay was not the only person to profit from a huge surge in Tobin’s donations* during 2004. Aside from $3,000 to Maine Republican candidates and that $2,000 to DeLay, Tobin made some quite interesting donations:

• $1,000* to Nevada Senator John Eric Ensign (who also got money both from Tom Delay’s ARMPAC and from Abramoff associate David Safavian)
• $500 to Senator Bob Beauprez (who got another $30,000 from DeLay’s ARMPAC.)
• $500 to Missouri Senator Kit Bond (who also got $12,500 from Abramoff)
• $500 to Texas Congressman Ted Poe (who also got $5,000 from Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC).
• $500 to Sandhills PAC, the PAC of Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel (who ran into ethics problems over undisclosed ties to the voting machines that gave him a landslide victory.)
• $1,000 to Iowa Priorities, the PAC of Iowa Senator Jim Nussle (Nussle himself got $15,020 fromTom Delay’s ARMPAC)

So, if you were wondering why the RNC shoulders the public embarrassment of paying Tobin’s legal bills, maybe his ties to the dark side of the party have the potential to embarrass them even more.

* * Tobin gave Ensign two $500 donations, the first giving his Maine address and describing him as self-employed, the other 20 days later giving a DC address and calling him an employee of DCI Group, LLC.

A Flickred and geeky time was had by all.

Here, just getting started, I’m sitting with H20Town and OPML-fan-in-chief Lisa Williams, a bunch more people and of course Dave Winer. Drupal ubergeek Moshe Weitzman is helping Lisa tune up H20Town to a fine high pitch.

Dan Bricklin is podcasting with awesome tools (“Show us your tools, Dan!”) and will later demo something new called WikiCalc. Phil Greenspun wants to teach you how to fly a helicopter.

• Dave Winer (The blogfather)
• Dan Bricklin (WikiCalc and podcasting)
• Lisa Williams (OPML Fan)
• Betsy Devine (“Making trouble today for a better tomorrow”)
• Bela Labovitch (OPMLWorkstation/OPMLSearch)
• Coleman Jolley (geekster)
• Philip Greenspun (helicopter instructor)
• Tim Post
• Rahul Dave (xml-rpc is fun)
• Moshe Weitzman (drupal developer)
• Aldo Castañeda (Identity is Central)
• Jesse Baer
• Jim Moore (Arriving the last of us, but by no means the least of us!)
• David Berlind (Organizer of Mashup Camp)

And some more of us…

• Fernando Belmonte (Very curious developer)
• Larry Bouchie (RSS Rocks!)
• Mark Doerschlag

Badabing! The lowdown (and I do mean low) on Allen Raymond’s other 2002 telemarketing scandal–in New Jersey.

During the NH Phone-jamming trial of James Tobin, US attorneys tried to grill Raymond about those 2002 Superbowl phone antics. Defense attorneys blocked that testimony–I’ve backpaged the official court transcript that shows it happening.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that postcards beginning “Dear customer” bode no good. And yet….

Dear customer,

I will be arriving in New Hampshire soon. I am in a freight train car in New Jersey and will be leaving soon. I am tired of being in a box and look forward to sitting on your desk.

Yours truly,
John Stark

I wasn’t expecting the postcard I got today from Revolutionary War hero General John Stark. Or maybe I should say a postcard from the John Stark bobblehead doll I ordered last month from the Museum of NH History.

If you had grown up, as I did, in Manchester, NH, near the lovely green hillside called Stark Park, then you too would have grown up admiring John Stark.

• The Hero of Bennington!
• The originator of NH’s state motto, “Live Free or Die”! Not to mention,
• “Tonight our flag floats over yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow.” (Too long for a license plate, but eloquent.)
• And now this postcard…

Bravo for the good-humored outreach of somebody at the Museum of NH History! I look forward to doing business there again.

But then, I’m not the one who was tapping my toe, keeping an ear out for the mailman’s arrival. No, that would be my Jane Austen action figure…

Dave Winer is in Cambridge, starting the New Year off right.

Thanks for treating me to breakfast, Dave, and for posting your photo of me (mouth open, of course!)

Who else is local to Boston? Come to this Thursday’s blogdinner (Jan 5) at Cambridgeside Galleria food court…