Some Well-Deserved Love for a Couple of my Friends!!!

On the Opinion page of todays Kansas City Star, not one but two of the fine bloggers I proudly link to under “These are my friends - Show them some love!” were recognized in the Blog Bits feature! (Blog bits excerpts two blogs per day, so thats as good as it can get!)

Dan from Gone Mild was recognized for weighing in humorously on the latest local tempest in a teapot - this one over the mayor-mobile outgoing Mayor Kay Barnes selected for the Funk:

Things might have gone differently if she had chosen a cooler car. Maybe a Crossfire like Glazer drives. Or maybe she could have used her big business contacts to hook him up with one of those new Camaros GM has planned. Sweet. A Mustang Convertible would have been a fine sled for the Funk, especially if she tricked it out with a fine sound system and thumping bass. Personally, I would have picked out a mini-van with tinted windows for the Mayor, driven it down to the Crossroads, and told the artists down there to make that vehicle into a statement. Yeah, that's how I'd make Mark roll.

And Diane Silver of In This Moment (and Watching Those We Chose!!!) does it again! She was one of the first people to blogroll me, and her site was one of the first I blogrolled. She kept me informed about the goings on in Topeka for years when I lived in Wichita and she was the statehouse correspondent for the Wichita Eagle. When I came up with the idea for Watching Those We Chose, she was quite literally one of the first people I asked to join me (sure, part of me wanted to swing off her honest to god journalistic cred…but isn’t that a compliment too?) Anyway, she graciously accepted my invitation and I am proud to be associated with her. She does some mighty fine work.

I didn't used to believe that Kansas would ever support our families. Oddly enough, my opinion changed in 2004 when the far right started pushing for a ban on same-sex marriage. They eventually succeeded in winning a constitutional ban on marriage and civil unions, but even with that failure, we won.

Oh yes, our families were hurt horribly. I don't deny the suffering the ban has caused. But what truly shocked me was how much support we have. Because of the religious right's push for the marriage ban, we found each other. Because of that, the political landscape of this state looks far different today than it did just a few years ago.

Congratulations guys! Keep up the good work!