Howard-Brekken nuptials

Minnesota is a singularly bug-infested place. Thankfully, mosquitoes seem to disregard my blood. They'll land on me and make a nuisance of themselves; but I haven't been stung much.

Lights outside the bar at the Ruttger's Bay Resort — site of Saturday's K.C.-Isaac wedding — were absolutely covered with all manner of flying creepy-crawly things. Made me realize Las Vegas has something to recommend it with its relatively buglessness.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner in Brainerd (yes, the one from "Fargo"), followed by drinks and a rousing game of Apples to Apples back at Ruttger's Bay — which sits on Mille Lacks, by my estimation one of the five largest of Minnesota's 14,000-plus lakes.

The wedding is Saturday at 5. I've been informed that the big Coffee Cruise is at 10:30 in the morning; I hold out hope there'll be tea available.

Racist bastard, 86, dies

Jesse Helms died Friday — fittingly on July 4, though, according to Wonkette's Ken Layne, about a quarter-century too late. The country is now a better place.

The Dixiecrat and longtime North Carolina senator was a driving force in moving the Republican Party away from its Lincolnian ideals and toward race-baiting and a general contempt for the downtrodden. It was dubbed the "Southern strategy," and the phrase was popularized during Richard Nixon's 1968 and 1972 White House runs when he essentially conceded the African-American vote.

Helms won election after election by wooing disaffected, racist whites with his hatred of blacks, gays, brown-skinned immigrants, liberals, etc. All the while he rode along in the pocket of Big Tobacco, passing fat-cat tax breaks that never actually trickled down to the huddled masses. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he promoted brutal third-world dictatorships in third world countries when they promoted U.S. Foreign Policy or corporate interests.

Just imagine: 2008 could be the year of the passing of Jesse Helms and the rise of Barack Obama. Maybe there's hope yet.