A friend of mine (John Bloom) shared a “letter to the editor” that his brother (William S Bloom) wrote to the Quad City Times. For those of you that are outside Iowa and Illinois, the Quad Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois.

Anyhow, the piece, as edited by the newspaper, can be found on their web site at this link. The text of the original letter is below. Although I understand the concept of editing letters to conserve space, and a few of the edits made sense in that regard, there are still some key parts that were cut out. You be the judge… starting with the second paragraph (the first one was rewritten by the editors) I have used strike-out to highlight the text below where it was cut.

Are Americans Once Again In The Wilderness?

Last Sunday, I was listening to “Father Joe” (Father Joe Scalisi, Trinity Church, Rock Island), as he gave his Sermon for the first Sunday of Lent. Father Joe was talking about the role of “the Wilderness” in the Bible. How sometimes people hid there, how Jesus [...]

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Tags: Letter To The Editor, Quad City Times, William S Bloom

… for the most boring interview in history. Last night felt more like 3600 seconds. For those of you that missed it (lucky you), it was the big “first interview of the 44th President Elect of the United Stated”. Steve Kroft, one-on-one with Obama for half the show, Michelle included in the second half (with a little time for Rooney).

Softball questions by Kroft… oh, wait a minute, he did press Obama mightily to reveal yet unannounced cabinet position appointments. Darn, Barack refused to slip up on that!

Why oh why do we care about Obama’s position on college football playoffs?

Very little of what was discussed from a policy standpoint was any different than what we’ve heard on the campaign OR Obama just didn’t provide a real answer. Auto industry? Let’s see what happens. Gitmo? Shut it down… and as a commenter at James Hibberd’s The Live Feed said, no follow-up from Kroft on an obvious question: what to do with the prisoners?

Economy: do [...]

NBC is calling Illinois before the polls are closed there… CNN is waiting. Different comments from the analysts, but personally I hate to see projections before polls are closed.

Granted the projections are coming from exit polls, but as we’ve seen in past elections, early projections can impact late voter turnout, which can impact other races.

The projections themselves are identical, which should be the case.

We’re watching CNN right now and monitoring[...]

Journalists from three major newspapers that endorsed John McCain — the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas Morning News — have been booted from Barack Obama’s campaign plane for the final leg of the presidential race.

The Washington Times reported Friday that it was notified of the Obama campaign’s decision Thursday evening — even though the paper has covered Obama from the start.

That from Fox, today. However you look at this, and the WFTV and KYW incidents and a half dozen others we’ve mentioned on BitsBlog, it’s clear Obama cannot deal with any opposition.

It’s as the executive editor of[...]

It’s time questions like this get asked.

[Click the "Read the Complete Article" link below to view the video]

Obama’s response? WFTV has been banned from further contact with the Obama campaign for asking these questions.

Given the number of bald faced lies Biden passes off, here, (As noted in the youtube clip) you can imagine why.

There’s blood[...]

The biggest fraud in this election appears to be the use of polling numbers to disorient and discourage (mostly) Republican voters.

How many times have you heard three or four different sets of polling results in for the same state in the same time period? Keep an eye on the organizations providing the information. I doubt that any partisan organization is going to avoid showing numbers favorable to their candidate, but the largely liberal media is clearly having a heyday pushing numbers that just don’t add up. Even this week here in Iowa, polling supposedly puts Obama 12 to 13 points ahead of McCain.

So why was Obama planning to come to Iowa this week? (that[...]

Sarah Palin had her first big interview (6 parts) this week since being selected as John McCain’s running mate.  Paul F. Villareal made the video’s available at YouTube.
Of course, ABC played it for as much air time as they could… including repeating sections of the interview on 20/20 last night.
Let’s see, Thursday “World News”, Thursday [...]

I’m probably not the first or last person to announce this.
In order to ensure full disclosure, reduce the clutter of blogosphere speculation, and give people something more important to focus on, I have decided to release critical information that is guaranteed to put everyone’s mind at rest.
I am officially NOT going to be a candidate [...]

…the price of oil that is.  Down another few dollars to $117.22.  In the last few weeks, the price has dropped $30/bbl, or 20%.  I’m convinced it’s because Republicans and the nation’s PEOPLE are up in arms and pressing the majority party to do the right thing… just pressing the case for domestic drilling, in [...]

“Everyone knows…” are words I’m getting tired of hearing.  It is a subtle form of manipulation by forcing one to either immediately agree or disagree and by disagreeing become an outsider.  Katie Couric this evening says “The world’s oil problems all come down to the laws of supply and demand”.  Careful here.   On the [...]