Short Stack

I've got a few short takes on a couple of topics this morning:

The next time spring is cancelled, can someone send out a memo?  Some of us have a lot of stuff planned.  That thumping sound you hear this morning is Athletic Directors at area high schools and colleges beating their heads against their desks.  It's a bit difficult to play baseball and softball or to run track meets with a foot of snow on the ground.  I've already had five softball umpiring assignments postponed this season due to rain, wet grounds, cold temperatures along with high winds and now snow.  Not looking good for our first golf tournament coming up in about two weeks either.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic this big snowstorm comes during Earth Week?  I know, I know--global warming is to blame for non-seasonal blizzards (huh?).  I got a kick out of the pictures yesterday showing UW Oshkosh students putting out rain barrels on campus--while snow is swirling around them.

Why is it that in closely contested elections, Democrats always don't know how to cast ballots and Republicans always don't know how to count them?  In the infamous 2000 Presidential Election in Florida, every hanging chad, dimpled chad and about two-thirds of the votes for Pat Buchanan were "supposed to be" votes for Al Gore.  Here in Oshkosh, former Winnebago County Democratic Party Chairman Jef Hall has picked up a net 14-votes in his recount to tie Tom Pech, Jr in the race for the final Common Council seat--with one district yet to be counted.  I'm guessing that if there is a statewide recount in the Supreme Court race, all of the "missed" votes will go to Joanne Kloppenburg.  Is there a setting on the ballot scanner for "Skip a few Democratic/Liberal votes"?

Then on the other side of these recounts are the Republican County Clerks who can't run an election.  In Florida it was Katherine Harris who intentionally kept butterfly ballot machines to "confuse" Democratic voters and didn't want to "count all the ballots".  In Waukesha County it's Kathy Nickolaus who can't seem to make all of the vote count numbers add up properly. 

Finally, I need someone to show me how to set up a webcam in my Jeep.  Given the popularity of websites showing birds in nests and sturgeon spawning in the Wolf River--I think there would be strong demand to keep an eye on the outrageously bad driving that I see in Oshkosh every day.  Granted, most of the time you would only see the radio station parking lot or the inside of my garage--but the actual road footage would be worth the time investment.  The roundabouts at Witzel and Koeller or Washburn would be a highlight reel in itself.  People going in the wrong direction, making left-hand turns from the right hand lane or gunning it in front of people trying to go "straight" through the roundabout would keep everyone on the edge of their seats.  So would the footage of not one, but two drivers deciding to stomp on it to make a left hand turn inches in front of me at the Koeller/20th intersection a couple of Saturday mornings ago.  I'd need to pan around the intersection to capture the look of terror not just on my face--but on the faces of other drivers who had stopped along Koeller and thought they were about to witness an ugly three car crash.  I've even got a cool website domain picked out: Oshkoshdoesntknowhowtodrive.com