My dog test.

This is just a test post. I am writing this on my iPhone.

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I heard the above radio story this morning while listening to NPR’s Morning Edition on KUOW. During one of the breaks, the station filled the time with this story from Sean Cole of Marketplace.

The story delves into the issues folks are having with stress and anxiety over the current economic debacle. 

After highlighting a few case studies from therapists, I figured the journalist would steer the story toward ways people can reduce stress and get their anxiety under control.

The solution? DENIAL!

From the transcript:

COLE: Turned out the guy had been checking his retirement balance every day. Hollis’s advice?

HOLLIS: He could choose to not only stop tracking his financial balance sheet on a daily basis, but he could also choose to not open his monthly 401k statement, for example.

COLE: So the guy stopped. And it helped. And that might sound like denial, but Arnis Berger says denial can be healthy.

That’s right, everything is going to be fine. No belt-tightening required. Go back to sleep, America. Nothing to see here.*

* Sarcastic comments

King County GOP chairman Lori Sotelo has a new blog for her county chair re-election campaign. She is giving updates of all the district meetings she is attending around King County ahead of the Dec. 6 party reorganization meeting where we will meet to elect the party’s new platform and leadership.

She wrote the following in one of her most recent posts:

If Republicans don’t stand by our nominated candidates for office WHO WILL? I was very disappointed to hear that the other candidates for Chairman did not support or vote for our nominee. I wonder why they are running for Chairman of the King County REPUBLICAN Party . . . .

If Republicans don’t stand by our nominated candidates for office, maybe they’re not good candidates who deserve to be supported.

Support and votes for our presidential nominee should be earned, not given away. If our candidate expects our votes, he should follow our party platform and stand for something we believe in.

The candidates running against Sotelo see what she obviously doesn’t — blind support for a bad party doesn’t make the party any better.

Think of it in terms of the auto bailout. If we continue to prop up mismanaged companies, we will fall into a slow and agonizing depression. The best thing to do is let those companies go bankrupt so they can quickly be rebuilt to perform in a 21st century marketplace.

Now we need to stop propping up this mismanaged county party. It’s time to elect new leadership and rebuild the party for a 21st century political landscape.

It seems like everyone wants to make the county party better, except for Lori Sotelo. She seems willing to let the party die a slow, agonizing death into irrelevancy.

I originally wrote most of this post as a comment to on her blog, but I have a feeling it will somehow get deleted by the “moderator.” Go check and see if my comment is there.

The sharp-witted Mike Longaecker, a reporter at the Red Wing (Minn.) Republican Eagle has launched a blog called Cinema Logic.

The site’s tag line declares, “The Hollywood machine drops hundreds of flaming bags on America’s porch each year. I’ll let you know which ones really are the poo.”

I was first introduced to Longaecker’s movie review talents while we were both students at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and working at the campus newspaper The Student Voice.

Though I can’t pick even one memorable review out of my mind, I do remember them being far too good for the college paper.

When I was editor of the Voice, I pushed to make the content more campus-centric. My aim was to showcase local entertainment for local students. I also wanted to report on arts and entertainment happening on our campus, because nobody else would report those stories.

In the same vein, I figured that it wouldn’t do much good to the campus community to have space in the paper dedicated to a movie review that they could get in the Minneapolis Star Tribune or the New York Times. My thought was, “why try to compete with so many others on this when we have stuff happening on campus that nobody else is in a position to cover.” So, music and movie reviews were pushed out of the paper.

In hindsight, I think I may have missed the point of the college newspaper. While it is good to serve the campus community, that is not the only mission. I should also have been helping to teach and develop aspiring journalists and offer a forum for well-developed work to be published.

Perhaps if I had taken another approach, folks like Mike Longaecker could have emerged as top-notch film reviewers.

Hopefully somebody stumbles upon this new site, recognizes Longaecker’s film-reviewing talents and offers him a prestigious job with lots of free movie tickets.

The Campaign For Liberty Web site posted this video and I just had to post it here with my comments.

This video shows clips from a bunch of Wall Street pundit shows from 2006 and 2007. In each one, talking heads spout off about how great the economy is, how the housing bubble isn’t a big problem, and how people should buy stock in investment banks.

OOPS!

They were wrong.

What makes me even more angry is that when Peter Schiff states his forecast, he is told he is crazy while the other talking heads laugh him off.

Who’s laughing now, bitches?

It’s pretty amazing that these folks don’t have a clue about how the markets work and they are on TV giving really bad advice to millions of people.

If you have any money left to invest in this shitty economy, I suggest you listen to Peter Schiff.

Gavino has left me.

He’s no longer working at Waggener Edstrom and he moved to the Houston area to be closer to his family. This makes me sad.

He moved to Seattle about the same time I did (March 2008) and he’s been one of my few close friends here. We hung out a lot and confided in each other. We were the “pick you up at the airport” guy for each other. Most of all, we were the “I just need to vent” guy for each other.

I’m sure he’ll be fine in the Houston area where he grew up. He’s sure to have a lot of family and friends to hang out with and keep his spirits up.

I had a lot of good times with Gavino over the years. Here’s a recap of 10 of our best times in Seattle:

• Taking Reese for a walk and swim at the off-leash dog area
• Talking on the phone while following each other home from the airport
• Watching a Mariners-Red Sox game at Safeco Field where there were more Sox fans than M’s fans
• Watching a Seahawks-Packers game at Qwest Field where things got a little rowdy
• Enjoying a Proclaimers concert at The Tractor in Ballard
• Discovering the “Wisconsin Bar” in Ballard
• Driving through the Viaduct tunnel race car-style in Gavino’s jeep
• Going to lunch at various places in Bellevue during particularly shitty days at work
• Playing “Rock Band” and “Rock Band 2″ in my apartment in Fremont
• Engaging in political discussions which often ended in over-passionate rants by me

I already miss you, Dude. E-mail me, call me or just leave a comment once you’ve got your feet on the ground in Texas.

On the other hand, my friend Chrissy is moving to Seattle from Charlotte.

I knew her in high school through my sophomore year at New Richmond High. Then I moved away to Cumberland and hadn’t seen her since this year.

We found each other through Facebook (or maybe MySpace) and we began talking on the phone. We had the pleasure of seeing each other in person in September when she was in Seattle for an Alaskan cruise.

Luckily (or not so luckily), I was sick that day and didn’t go to work and dragged myself out of bed long enough to take her to the airport. I took an unfamiliar route and it ended up taking a little longer than usual.

All I really wanted to do was take some Advil, eat some cough drops and go to sleep, it was nice to sit next to an old friend for a half hour our so.

I must have made an impression (and a somewhat positive one) on her, because she applied for a Washington state nursing license and got a travel nursing job at a Seattle hospital.

Now I’ll be working on a top-10 list of Chrissy Seattle moments before her 13-week travel nursing tour is up.