American Politics in One Easy Lesson.

The only part I think they left out is the wealthy Republicans are far more likely to give voluntarily from their own pockets to the needy than the Democrats who want to give with other people’s money.

Here’s to better health and fitness in 2012.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 53 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The funniest part?

Some visitors came searching, mostly for chasing the wind, dale earnhardt jr girlfriend courtney, ufo, principle engineer, and workout slippers.

So for all of you who came here looking for the Dale Earnhardt Jr.s alien girlfriend named courtney to see what kind of workout slippers she wears, I thank you.

But before I do that, I want to put in a plug for Bill and Susie of Compass.org who organized a flawless Mediterranean cruise to the Holy Land sites. Transportation, food, and stimulating bible studies were all provided so all we had to do is show up, eat and pray.

Before we booked this trip, I searched the web for reviews of Compass. I didn’t find many, which is a shame since they’re approaching 50 trips to Israel. So here’s a plug for this fine organization.

1 – iOS iPhone. Great phone. I’m not enamored with Apple’s stranglehold on their iTunes store. I watched Google Voice be denied from entry at Apple’s seeming whim.
2 – Android. It looked chaotic to me. Anything goes. Worse, each carrier manipulated the operating system to their benefit, leading to bloatware that could not be uninstallaed. I hate bloatware.
3 – Blackberry. Hahaha.
4 – Windows Phone. Design looked great. It has the benefit of a single marketplace like Apple, but Microsoft was bound to be more flexible due to past antimonopoly suits. No bloatware, either. Carriers can add their own programs, but they’re easily uninstalled.

And since the Mango update, I’m even more happy I went to Windows Phone.

Dwight over at the Houston Chronicle has come to the same conclusion, though he’s still an Apple fan. That’s fine, but I can tell you I enjoy my Windows Phone more than my wife enjoys her iPhone. I have last year’s Samsung Focus, and it’s lightweight with a great screen. When I finally upgrade next year, the only thing I’d like to add isn’t available yet. I expect Skype to be added by Microsoft as an integral feature (no app needed), so I’ll need a front facing camera then.

And beside, it makes my buddy Sean envious. That’s always fun.

Here’s what I’m anticipating, some good, some not good -

- Huntsman is not appearing. He doesn’t have a chance in the Republican primary anyway, he’s far to liberal or moderate in this Year of the Tea Party. All he did was crack jokes in the last debate anyway.

- That leaves 7 contenders. It’s time to start winnowing down the contestants so we can rally behind somebody. Trouble is, all of them have their good points. Cain for his bold economic plan, Paul for his distrust of the Fed, Romney because he’s well-spoken (though I’m not enamored with his social engineering and China trade background), Bachmann for her unwavering Tea Party principles, Santorum for his practicality, Gingrich for his knowledge and political experience. And I’m sure Perry has some sort of good points if I look for them hard enough.

- But moderated by Anderson Cooper? He hates the Tea Party. I expect unfairly worded questions (would you rather starve old people or let them resort to cannibalism?) and unabashed liberal antagonism. Not that it’s all bad – it’ll prepare the candidates for next year’s debates with Obama who has far friendlier press to deal with.

- Note that social issues aren’t really on the table at the moment. Seek ye first fiscal responsibility and all these things shall be given unto thee.

What are you looking forward to seeing?

And when I started traveling, I stepped down from teaching bible study at my church. They have this weird rule that if you’re not there, you’re not allowed to teach.

But last night I had a dream. You know that dream almost everybody has that they’re just arrived in their university class and they didn’t study for the test? I had that dream, except I showed up to teach but I hadn’t studied. The topic was on ‘Trust’ and I was going to have to wing it.

I think that means it’s time to volunteer again.

I had been using Blogs-About.com since April 2004.  I setup the original Chasingthewind.net webpage as a place to share my faith in Christ and let me learn HTML.  Well, while the faith in Christ has grown (though my service to Him has not, alas, due to all the travel the last couple of years, my enthusiasm to learn HTML has diminished.  I no longer want to spend time tweaking code.

I’d been happy enough at Blogs-about, even though my WordPress setup has hiccuped once or twice (not their fault!) during an upgrade and I had to ask them for help to fix my blog installation.  Well, several weeks ago I upgrade WordPress again, it hiccupped, and I left a trouble ticket.

It went unanaswered.  I sent a followup, also unanswered, and then an email bounced.

So I spent some time researching where I want my blog hosted, and I’ve moved over to WordPress.com.  I may lose a little flexibility, but the options here do everything I want.  And the reliability will be higher since the upgrades are automatic and I won’t munge them up on my own.

Lisa from Blogs-about : thanks for 7 great years of hosting Chasing the Wind.  If you ever stumble across this blog entry, say hi.

Houston May Day rally for illegal immigration