Sometimes it’s nice to reflect on the past; four years ago on Okiedoke:

The Okie Round-up was only a few months old.

Acorns from an Okie sees Dems and Repubs a lot alike.
Backpedal by Design has his head in the clouds.
Batesline fears losers in charge.
Bitweever gathers April Fool’s pranks.
BizOfun loves his new Taco slot.
Bloggins..Schiesty blog – Crash different.
Camedwards waves goodbye to free speech.
Dustbury shares his blogging secret.
E-Scout used to dislike Wal-Mart.
Jewdez concludes some kids are just brats.
JMBzine is not happy with Green politics.
Library Stories is hunting for Okie library cats.
Life and Deatherage and Republican rules.
OkiePundit asks why Okies sent Carroll Fisher to China.
Oklahoma Wine News has a legal wine list.
Program Witch Pages tries something new at Blog Oklahoma.
Reflections in d minor is otherwise known as the “Persnickety Old Schoolmarm.”
Snellfrocky takes the L out of BLS.
So Blog Me! goes random.
This is class warfare won’t be listening to any talk radio.
Tropiary has the inside scoop on the Simpson’s negotiations. (Apr 1)
What’s Your Damage? posts a Tornado special.

About half of those blogs are no more.

I did polls back then.

Okiedoke poll results
Grade Oklahoma’s legislature

37.3% – D
34.9% – C
18.1% – F
9.6% – B
0.0% – A

How many blogs by Okies do you visit?

36.0% _ 5 -10
29.1% _ 1 – 5
20.9% _ 10 – 20
7.0% _ 20 – 30
5.8% _ All I can find
1.2% _ 30 – 40

I also gave out health tips.

Cutting cancer
Reducing your chance of getting cancer is worth the effort. The largest study to date shows how you can do your part to minimize your cancer risk.

Men who ejaculate 13 times a month or more, are much less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life than men who only do it four to seven times a month.

Men who reported ejaculating between 13 and 20 times a month had a 14 percent lower lifetime risk of getting the cancer than the four to seven times a month group.

The most-sexually active group surveyed for the study – men who said they ejaculated upwards of 21 times a month on average for most of their adult lives – had a 33 percent lower lifetime risk than the baseline group.

Another thing this blog stopped offering was praise.

Okie activist honored
Leaving more than you take was what Fern Holland was about.

Fern Holland became the first person today to receive the Heroic Oklahoman Award after death.
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She volunteered in a Russian orphanage, lived in a mud hut in Southwest Africa as a Peace Corps member and investigated the sexual abuse of women in Guinea.

On March ninth, she and two associates were killed by several gunmen posing as Iraqi police officers.

Okie journalist makes good
Kudos to Anthony Shadid for his solid work.

An Oklahoma native who reported on the war in Iraq won one of the top awards in journalism Monday.

Anthony Shadid, a reporter for The Washington Post, received a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
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Shadid was born and raised in Oklahoma City and attended the University of Oklahoma for a year before transferring to Wisconsin.

I had a lot of good ideas back then too.

Let’s get serious about weather
If you think Oklahoma has committed weather forecasters, think again. (via Fark)

Russian weathermen who get their predictions wrong could face stiff fines if one government minister has his way.

And repeat offenders could even be sent to jail, if Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu’s plan is approved.
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Weathermen in Irkutsk have said the risk of flooding should subside soon. But according to Interfax, Shoigu “promised to squeeze compensation out of the weather forecasters if their forecasts proved wrong”.

This is a great idea! If Oklahoma meteorology is to garner the respect it so strongly desires, we should enact penalties for sloppy forecasting by weathermen. I suggest the following:

* 1 noogie (given by news anchor) for predicted high or low temps off by more than 5 deg.

* 1 wet-willie for telling folks to take cover, and no roofs are blown off buildings.

* 1 kick-in-the-ass for predicting a 10 – 20% chance of rain every day of summer.

* 1 public flogging for predicting no rain during the State Fair

Some Okie bloggers were even radicals.

Big canoes only
Those of you fed up with OKC’s canoe laws will appreciate Dwayne’s, (AKA Mike Horshead) attempt at fighting City Hall.

I had been trying to get the law about canoes changed so there was no minimum length requirement. The radio host was flabbergasted that there is law covering this and he suggested that I put my canoe in the water anyway, what would happen? Would I get busted?

I told him I had gotten busted last Sept and have been working since then to get the law changed.He and the weatherman had a field day with this. They were saying things like, “good thing the cops are protecting us from tiny canoes” “No canoes is good canoes” “What about the children that can’t afford a big canoe?”

Some news stories haven’t changed much.

Capitalism with heart
The economy must be worse than I thought.

A group of American business leaders took an uncommon lesson in spiritual wisdom from an expert in the field: The Dalai Lama.

They asked the 69-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader about trade, technology and social investing and got some honest answers.

“If I end up in business, I’ll probably end up creating more debts for the company,” he said.

More than a hundred executives paid $100 apiece to hear this sage advice. Probably tax deductible too!

There was a Senate race.

Humphrey Dumpty takes a fall
A poll of registered Oklahoma voters has former congressman Tom Coburn and Rep. Brad Carson neck and neck in the race for Sen. Don Nickles’ seat. As far as Republican candidates are concerned:

Coburn, a late entry into the race, finished first, at 34 percent, in the survey conducted by Consumer Logic of Tulsa. Former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys, who has backing of Nickles and U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., was second at 22 percent while state Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony, at 12 percent, was third. One third of the 825 registered voters surveyed said they were still undecided.

It will be interesting to watch how the GOP machine takes on Coburn. How do they tear him down in order to boost Humphreys without tarnishing Coburn for a post primary battle against Carson? If polling continues to show results like this one, look for state GOP leaders to let Humphreys wither on the vine.

Illegal immigration wasn’t a concern back then.

They’re too busy
Homeland security my ass. The U.S. Justice Dept. can’t even handle illegal aliens when given to them on a silver platter. But they want us to believe they can protect us from organized terrorists?

Oklahoma Highway Patrol released six immigrants this week after the federal immigration officials failed to pick them up for deportation proceedings.
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“INS doesn’t have enough resources to handle things like this,” said Trooper Gary Smith.

It won’t be long before terrorists figure out all they have to do is learn Spanish to be ignored by the Justice Department and have free reign in the U.S.

And Sen. Inhofe was still carving out a reputation.

An Earth Day story
I can’t verify this Earth Day story about Sen. Inhofe and Pres. Bush, but it seems like it could be accurate.

A smiling Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) stood alongside Bush as the president announced the “Do Whatever You Want Energy Independence Act”.

This revamped version of the currently stalled energy plan would allow coal, oil and gas companies to, in Bush’s words, “do whatever they want. Our vital energy sector must never be hampered by lack of opportunity – or by lack of subsidies. This new plan will provide courageous energy entrepreneurs the level of subsidies they need to keep dividend checks flowing as they drive marginal wells into played-out fields, and secure America’s energy future in the process.”

Senator Inhofe said that he was “delighted” with the $135 billion five-year subsidy plan. “It’s great news for our energy sector and for America. And if the sushi-sucking Chicken Littles of the greenie-weenie environmental left don’t like it, fuck ‘em!”

Yep! That sounds like Inhofe alright. Although I think he has a little more class than to say “greenie-weenie” in public.

I’d say political blogs were more creative in general.

More hell-raisin’ Okies
Stumbled on a new site, OklahomaRealPolitics.com, which proposes to be “your non-partisan, hypocrite-hatin’ Okie site. Brand new, and raisin’ more hell!”

Who’s behind this site?

You’ll never know. We use false names, false email addresses, and never identify ourselves. If someone says they write for us, they’re lying. We’re never going to tell you.

Anonymous political gossip; I’ll be stopping by regularly! They protect tipsters and already have their first hypocrite of the week.

And I blogged while on the road for the first time.

Okiedoke road trip
Okiedoke will be originating somewhere between Little Axe and NW Illinois later this week as I take a road trip to my birthplace along the Rock River. I still have family in the area but no memories since we lived there only a short while. I’m thinking I’ll be better off not having the baggage of memories that become distorted over the years anyway.

I’m headed through KS, MO, and IA on the way up, but haven’t decided on the return route. Any suggestions?

Ya know, I used to be a pretty good blogger.

All April 2004 blog posts on Okiedoke.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.