Just saw the news story that Rep. Jack Murtha has died.

A spokesman says Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps officer who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 77.

He had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery.

In addition to his opposition to the Iraq war, Murtha is known for his involvement in Abscam and the volume of pork brought to his little corner of PA.

I can’t think of any political area where I would agree with him. Still, I pray for comfort for his family and friends.

Today is going to be an adventure.

If you are a regular reader you know that I don’t talk a lot about my day job. While I do mention work occasionally, I seldom, if ever, mention the company I work for directly. I want to modify that a bit this morning.

For most of the past eight years I have worked for a call center here in Central Florida, most of that time in the Workforce Management department. And although I will be going in to the same building, the same office, and sitting at the same desk, I will begin working for a new company today.

My old company was purchased by another company. After four months of legal and regulatory hoop jumping the deal closed last night and our new, joint operation begins today.

As far as I know now, my work life won’t be much different going forward than it has been in the past. Of course with a new company there’s no way to know what changes could be coming down the road. And while I am excited about the possibilities, there is still a certain amount of nervousness surrounding what could be.

Our center’s location could make us the beneficiary of some very good things due to our proximity (we’re less than 50 miles away) to the new company’s headquarters. As the center closest to corporate HQ, it is easy to imagine us being a showcase when presenting the business to potential clients. That could mean top of the line facilities, equipment, and infrastructure. (Hey, maybe they’ll upgrade our browsers from Microsoft’s bastard step-child — IE 6. That, in it’s self, would be a great change.)

At the very least we’re getting a party. Now that the legalities have been wrapped up, today is the day for the official public announcement. There will be site walk throughs, information sharing (the amount of information that can be shared before all the legalities are out of the way is minuscule), media coverage, the announcement, and the unveiling of our new sign. And food. Good food. Lunch always tastes better when the company is picking up the tab.

I don’t know what will happen after today. No idea how things will change. I’m fairly confident that any changes will be better for me personally. But then, I’m an optimist. Because of the flexible nature of what I do, I will be assisting with festivities.

I’ll let you know how things turn out.

There’s a malady sweeping the country that is quickly going from sporadic to epidemic. That disease is OIT, otherwise known as Obama Induced Tourettes.

We saw the first public outbreak of OIT last October when Congressman Joe Wilson popped a rupture disk and famously intoned “You Lie.”

The condition is triggered by the inability of The Won to utter more than a paragraph without serving up more whoppers than a Burger King near a MorOn MoveOn convention.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is the latest to display OIT.

Please don’t condemn those with OIT, there’s really nothing they can do. In fact there is growing evidence that those who had originally been diagnosed with HCDB (Hope-n-Change Debilitating Blindness) have been cured of that dread disease only to find OIT left in it’s wake.

Rather than pitying those with OIT, we should embrace them. As it spreads the prospects for the removal of the root cause by 2012 increase exponentially. In fact, some signs are pointing to the eradication of some of the subordinate causes as early as this fall.

To recycle a MLB ad campaign from several years ago: OIT — Catch it!

(h/t for the video TMH at Moonbattery)

I guess I’m just a big kid, but I am so excited about Legoland coming to Florida.

A front-loading tractor was positioned Thursday morning outside the Magnolia Mansion at Cypress Gardens. It wasn’t there to move any dirt.

Instead, a driver tilted down the scoop and dumped 100,000 Lego bricks onto a stage. That was a mere down payment, with 39.9 million more to follow when Legoland Florida opens by the end of next year.

Cypress Gardens is nearly in my front yard, less than a 15 minute drive. If pushed, I could practically walk there. It was a destination for travelers long before the mouse moved in.

The possibility of 1000 local jobs is great news for the area, but I am excited about being so close to 40 million Legos.

[Merlin Entertainments Group CEO Nick] Varney said Legoland Florida will be larger than any of the company’s four existing Legoland parks – one in California and three in Europe. He said the park will eventually become Legoland Florida Resort and will contain at least one hotel.

Legoland Florida will follow the same model with a central “Miniland” exhibiting elaborate Lego models depicting scenes from the area. He said the company’s designers are already at work designing Lego constructions for the Winter Haven attraction.

The Legoland parks are geared toward children 2 to 12 years old – and, of course, their parents. Varney, calling Lego one of the world’s best-known brands, said the parks are unique among tourist attractions in presenting children the opportunity for “playful learning,” as opposed to passive entertainment at other theme parks.

The projected opening is October, 2011. I’ll be there.

Photo Credit: SCOTT WHEELER | The Ledger

After my out of touch week, I am about through playing catch up. I’ve waded through pages of email, spam, and a very full feed reader, performed maintenance on my various blogs (including all the spam registrations at The Regiment), watched some football, hockey, and three out of the first four hours of 24.

I have to watch the fourth hour before hour five tonight. And speaking of hour five, be sure that you join the crew at the best 24 site anywhere — Blogs.4Bauer.com. Make sure that you remember to join us for the Season 8: 8 pm to 9 pm liveblogging event.

One of the other things I missed were two episodes of bRight@Night. I’ll take care of that immediately following Jack. More on that later.

Now, on with the show.

I know, most of you probably didn’t realize I wasn’t around. After all, when you’re just looking for pictures of Cote de Pablo, Liv Tyler, and Gabriel Anwar you may just miss the fact that I haven’t posted anything in a week. Well to keep you folks happy:

For the rest of you, a brief explanation. I will freely admit that it started with a mistake on my part. A mix-up with due dates and payments made and I didn’t pay Brighthouse on time. I really didn’t realize we were behind. Beyond that, we missed, or didn’t get, any notice that the bill was due. That’s where I stop taking the blame.

I was given the impression that I needed to go into their office. The problem was I was at work on Friday and couldn’t get off in time to get in there before they closed, besides which they decided to shut everything off mid morning. No Phone, no television, no internet. Still thinking, erroneously it turns out, that I needed to go into the office I went the weekend without being able to get online, missing my bRight@Night show, and missing the weekends playoff games. The cruelest cut was not seeing the premier of 24 season 8.

Of course it doesn’t end there. Monday was Martin Luther King day — another day for their office to be closed. And another two hours missed of the latest Jack. As you can imagine I was there first thing Tuesday morning. That’s where it get really good.

I was told two things that really got my blood pressure elevated. One, I never needed to go into the office (despite what we were first told). I could have taken care of things online or over the phone. Of course the facts that I couldn’t get online or use the home phone were just cruel irony. The second thing I learned was that the earliest they could get out to cut the service back on was Wednesday. Now understand that cutting service back on involved the complicated process of opening a box on the side of the house and reattaching a coaxial cable. When they finally did that (the good part is coming next) the procedure took a hot minute. So now you can add to the list of things missed the Massachusettes Massachusetts election returns. I didn’t find out about Brown’s great win until Wednesday morning when I got to work.

I was told that they were going to make sure that someone would hook things back up by 8pm. Around seven, with nothing going yet, I got on my cell and gave them a call. After listening to the same 60 bars of hold music over and over I was told that the note to come out on Wednesday never made it to dispatch and that there was no way anyone would be out that night.

I made it very clear that that was unacceptable. They made it very clear that there was nothing I could do about it. Turns out they were right.

Well, yesterday morning before noon they fixed things. In less than 60 seconds.

So, I’m back. I spend last night catching up on, well, everything. I watched the first three out of four episodes of 24 (I still have to catch up with the Blogs4Bauer liveblogging), read (and deleted) a ton of email, and tried to catch up on the items in my feed reader.

Thanks for listening to my rant. And for the Rule 5 rest of you:

11 county Republican straw polls — 11 wins for Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist.

But this one was different.

The fact that Crist lost in Pinellas County, which he represented in the state Senate and where he’s lived nearly all his life, can’t be a good sign for Crist.

This is another in a string of positive events for Marco Rubio. Nearly unknown and trailing significantly in the polls just a year ago, Rubio’s conservative message has energized party faithful and impressed those less politically aware.

One common, if anecdotal, theme is that Rubio stands out because of his beliefs, but also because of how genuine he appears to be.

I’ve added a few new things at The Regiment to improve the site and make it more “social”. You can read about them here.

For anyone who isn’t aware of The Regiment it is “a group site for those willing to work to take back our country by education, activism, and grass root effort. It is also a social networking site for conservatives.”

Go by and check things out, register, and join in the fun.

I wish more politicians understood this:

Scott Brown in his debate with Martha Coakley. (h/t Gina Cobb)

He also had a pretty good day fund raising, ending the day with over a million dollars.

The Democrats from the bluest state in the nation have to be in panic mode. To actually win this seat every star will have to align perfectly, not a high odds bet. Still, it could happen and, whatever the outcome, it will be a quite a indicator of conservative chances in the rest of 2010.

First there was Breitbart and BreitbartTV. Then things got big — Big Hollywood and Big Government big.

Now we are treated to Big Journalism. Here’s what Editor in Chief Michael Walsh has to say:

So let me be blunt: we’re not here to compete for Pulitzer Prizes, to sit on committees, to scratch each other’s backs on the weekend television wagfests or to conform to some arbitrary code of ethics cooked up in the days when the mainstream media was the only game in town, and had already begun to cozy up to the government and the establishment, thus abandoning its constitutional mission of keeping a finger on the pulse of America, and an eye on the crooks:

[...]

So welcome to the other side. I am extremely proud to be joined in this venture not only by my colleagues here at breitbart.com but by the more than sixty writers and reporters who thus far have volunteered – volunteered! – to enter the fray.

The list of contributors and the deserved success of Breitbarts other ventures are reason enough to add BigJournalism to my feed reader, twitter, and blogroll, but this focus more than justifies those decisions.

No longer need we simply assert and ask you to trust us: now, we can use pictures, links, and video clips to carry the argument forward and make our case. Or at least get you to think about it in a way perhaps you never did before. Because we believe the search for the truth is not some figment of Derrida’s imagination. We believe that the truth, while elusive, is knowable, or at the very least worth trying to know.

We stand foursquare with the Founders. We believe in the First Amendment, not just for we, but also for thee. We believe the phrase, “Congress shall make no law…” could not possibly be clearer. We despise “political correctness” and everything it represents. We will not be told, “you can’t say that,” because to accept that stricture means we cannot think it, either. We believe that freedom of inquiry, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are the fundamental liberties upon which this country was founded. And we will fight to defend them.

I encourage you to check them out, and follow the stories that they will be offering.

Cross Posted at The Regiment

A pair of Democratic Senators will not be running this fall.

North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan made the announcement yesterday.

North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan stunned fellow Democrats when he decided not to seek re-election this fall and swung open a race that Republicans are convinced will help the GOP dent the Democrats’ fragile majority in the Senate.

Today Connecticut’s Christopher Dodd will announce his retirement.

Trouble-plagued Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, who has for months been considered the most vulnerable Senate incumbent seeking re-election this year, will announce Wednesday that he is ending his bid for a sixth six-year term, a Democratic source confirmed.

Dodd will make the announcement at a press conference at his home in Connecticut.

I guess this moves Harry Reid up to the “the most vulnerable Senate incumbent” spot. Unless he wants to join the departure parade.

Central Florida, and by extension me, is in some desperate need of a bit of global warming.

The two hours before dawn Wednesday will be the coldest, perhaps the coldest on record in Central Florida.

Forecasters are predicting lows just below freezing with some cold spots in the mid 20s. The wind chill will make bare skin feel like the temperature is 6 to 8 degrees colder.

When sun peeks above the horizon at 7:19 a.m. when many people are heading for work, the cold will be a shock. The wind will make it seem colder.

Central Florida residents are already preparing for another night of chilly weather in the Sunshine State. Don’t expect much improvement in the temperatures until Friday.

It is 30 degrees right now, the same as it was when I took the dogs outside a little while ago. We get cold weather in central Florida — a day at a time. This is the third day (and the coldest) and there’s no warming forecast for another few days.

I can only imagine what those of you are going through where it’s supposed to be cold.

Brrrrr.