I’m on vacation now, near the Grand Canyon and nowhere near the Internet, so I can’t read Part II of Patterico’s excellent summary of the Dog Trainer’s faux pas of the year, but you can. Guaranteed to be a good read, or your money back.

See you next year.

Pseudo-journalist extraordinaire Patterico has Part 1 of the Dog Trainer year in review. As usual, it does not disappoint. Today’s piece focused on the election, tomorrow’s will focus on everything else. Yesterday’s chronicles the few things the paper actually did right. Good reads, all.

I just filled up for $1.93 per gallon. What is gasoline going for in your state right now (roughly)? Don’t forget to identify the state.

Can it?

1. We didn’t fight a war in Thailand, Sri Lanka or Indonesia.
2. The U.S. very little strategic interest there, if any.
3. Neither does Halliburton.
4. In fact, there’s no oil there at all, to speak of.
5. Nor, for that matter, large numbers of terrorists likely to attack us if we don’t help.
6. On a per capita basis, we’re already giving a lot more than Jan Egeland’s native Norway.
7. Self-righteous Euroweenies don’t care about that, though. Donate all you want, and they’ll still go on convincing themselves they are better global citizens than us ‘Mercuns.
8. Contributing to the relief effort won’t do a damned thing to make the world safe for democracy, or for any other political agenda we Americans may find desirable.
9. It also won’t benefit you personally. Not a penny will go to your Social Security benefits, your 401(k), or benefit you in any other way, shape or form. You may build up a little treasure in heaven, but then again, you may not.
10. Do it anyway.

The Washington Post carries the same Ass. Press article as everyone else about the Ohio recount, in which the Democrat, Green and Libertarian Parties wasted taxpayer dollars to conduct a pointless recount that narrowed President Bush’s re-election margin from 118,775 all the way down to 118,457, a netting John L. Kerry a whoppping gain of 318 votes statewide, 285 of which can be attributed to the recount itself. Based on that precipitious drop, which accounted for almost 0.24% of the 2% margin by which Bush carried the state, the Post came up with this brilliant headline:

Recount in Ohio Narrows Bush’s Victory Margin

Um, yeah, I suppose. By the same logic, here are a few headlines they may want to consider in the future:

Recount in Ohio Confirms Kerry Beat Nader, Baradnik

Study Confirms Congo and Cuba Closer to Each Other Than Either is to Jupiter

Experts Agree: Virginia Closer to North Pole Than North, South Carolina Are

Study: Pole Vaulting Brings You Closer to the Sun

If this piece doesn’t qualify as a self-fisker, I don’t know what does.

Q: What’s big and orange, and sleeps 7?

A: A CalTrans truck.

OK, maybe that was a cheap shot, but something bad had to be said about the geniuses whose solution to the permanent congestion along I-405 is to expand the carpool lanes rather than the ones anyone can use.

West L.A. is one of the most densely populated areas in the country, so it prety much goes without saying that the expansion has resulted in a number of houses being condemned. I’ll leave it to Uncle to decide whether a carpool lane, which only a small fraction of the public can use, constitutes a permissible “public” use for purposes of the takings clause, but for what it’s worth, Caltrans does appear to have been pretty good to those whose properties were condemned in their entirety:

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Spoons thinks the Corner sucks, and I heartily agree. In fact, I’m inclined to extend the suckage to the rest of National Review’s site, as well. Today I received a Google Alert indicating I had been referenced in this article by Cathy Seipp, which I quickly recognized from reading an older version on her blog last week. My first thought was “cool, I’m going to get even more visitors today than I got last week from her personal blog, which informed hundreds of readers of Joseph Mailander’s secret ties to the CIA. As it turned out, however, the NRO version only mentions me and the post in question by name; it doesn’t link to either, even though Seipp did submit the link to NR along with the essay.

Anyway, to any ultra-resourceful NRO readers who somehow managed to find my site despite NRO’s best efforts, welcome, and please consider bookmarking my site or subscribing to its RSS feed. Meanwhile, here’s a link to the entry you were looking for.