For some reason, the idea of a Texas flag flying in France gives me a fit of the giggles. I saw a newsreel somewhere that had some nut running alongside the peloton with a Lone Star flag the size of a house. Silly vache-garçon…

YEEHAW UPDATE: Thanks to a kind emailer, here’s a picture of the big-flag guy. He’s also wearing what appears to be a football helmet…with steer horns attached. That’s my state!

This Krugman column is going to be the talk of the blogosphere all week long.

The freepers and the warbloggers (and the line between them is becoming as narrow as Dick Cheney’s arteries) are going to be frothing at the mouth over this one.

It’s an absolute must read.

-tbogg

Well, that’s doubtful. This is the first I’d heard of it. It’s basically some lame Leftoid projection fiction about Bush being The Arabian Candidate, playing off the upcoming release of re-do of The Manchurian Candidate (and who decided we needed that? Are we completely out of story ideas? Is this another manifestation of the Sardine Theory?)

Anyhoo…what caught my eye was the big bold blinking red ad for www.stopthenra.com that came up when I clicked. Tee hee — that’s a great ad-buy. I’m sure Krugman is a regular stop for GFWs.

StopTheNRA is a pretty hilarious site. Right now, they’ve got a husky-voiced lady screaming doom-n-gloom if the Assault Weapon Ban expires, complete with some ride ‘em-rope ‘em-brand ‘em music that sounds like it came straight out of The Virginian.

Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys

Everywhere, Americans are called “cowboys.” On foreign tongues, the reference to America’s Western rural laborers is an insult. Cowboys, we are told, plundered the earth, arrogantly rode roughshod over neighbors, and were addicted to mindless violence. So some of us hang our heads in shame. We shouldn’t. The cowboy is in fact our Homeric hero, an archetype that sticks because there’s truth in it.

Cowboys were of course plainsmen–Midwesterners operating from Texas to Kansas to the Dakotas. But their ideas and ideals spread across the continent to our Mountain West as well, even as far as the Alaskan West.

Well plowed ground around here, of course, but still worth your time to read and soak up. Good stuff about Westerners (American West), frontiers, governments, people and what they want out of life, the ways of the nutty Americans:

Even Hyderites recognize their limits–in an earlier year’s self-staged July 4 fireworks display, they had accidentally burned down their fire hall with the fire engine inside. So this year Hyder hired Canadian experts to stage the pyrotechnics. The show started around midnight, during the late evening barbecue. Stewart residents courteously joined in the fun, bringing new government trucks and a poodle.

Lots of stuff to talk about in the article, which is really a light-hearted look at a somewhat serious subject. Brings to mind some of the conversations between Gus and Call, too. Maybe I’ll get back to it. But the new comp plans came out last week, and I probably shouldn’t even be reading, much less typing.

Found it at Jessica’s Well, a bunch of durn West Texas cowpokes if ever they was any…