Howdy, Blenders! Sorry to be away so long, but I was at the edge of the earth. Well, the edge of North America, anyway, Manzanita, Oregon to be precise, enjoying the winter storms over the ocean and waddling through Oregon’s recent rash of flooding and mudslides. It’s all fine with me; I love winter precipitation that I don’t have to shovel.

You know that I like to follow the surging career Princess Barbie Talibania back in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. She’s dedicated to making America a better place for all the good straight American Christians (and other, false religions, secularists, sodomites, and womb babies) and I subscribe to her mailing list, just to know what monumentally important projects she’s up to now after losing her Boise City Council race by 70% to 30%.

So, with the advent of 2006, with troops dying in Iraq, with the deficit spiraling out of control, with our administration shredding the Constitution, with global warming set to devastate our planet, with addiction to oil threatening our security, what will our fake-tanned warrior for Christ dedicate herself to for a New Year’s Resolution?

(Thr!ve) I’m going to make the commitment to work towards getting [Boise City] Councilman Alan Shealy to say “one nation, under God” during the pledge of allegiance at City Council meetings. I’m going to spend the next year working on that, and see if I can get him to say it at least once.

And when that glorious day comes, we can all sleep more securely, knowing that al Qaeda has been defeated, once and for all! Anything else, Brandi?

Also, I’d like to teach Dan Popkey how to write better columns. I’m all about building relationships, so I thought maybe we could sit down and have coffee and talk about content.

Popkey is the Idaho Statesman columnist who criticized Brandi’s campaign in an article deemed sexist and offensive by some of her supporters. Here’s some of the content of Popkey’s (a veteran political reporter with many years experience) that Brandi (a high school graduate with no writing or journalism experience) probably had a problem with:

Swindell graduated from Meridian High School but has no college degree. Image is everything. Good looks got her TV time on O’Reilly; she made headlines protesting condom handouts at the Salt Lake Olympics; her rap sheet includes protests over abortion, the Ten Commandments and stem-cell research.

For all the help she’s getting, Swindell is highlighting her shortcoming, inexperience. Take a look at her glamour shots on her Web site. Or read her blog on her “AMAZING!!” discussions on how to “fix the roads” — a job, I suspect, she doesn’t know belongs to the highway district not the city. Swindell looks like she’s auditioning for “America’s Next Hot Model,” not a seat on a council that stays up past midnight deciding dicey land-use disputes.

Swindell (real first name Melissa) isn’t grown up enough for this job. If voters want to revive RiverFest and make Brandi Permanent Princess, she’s your gal. If they want a seasoned hand for the gruelling job of running a city, Jordan’s the pick.

Of course, Swindell and her supporters missed the real content of the article, which had noted how Idaho’s GOP broke with the tradition of not backing candidates for non-partisan offices, like City Council.

When she’s not badgering city councilmen to swear allegiance to her God or giving journalism lessons, Brandi will be back on the road, stumping for the womb babies and her favorite Supreme Court nominee (you know, the guy who they say has no litmus test on abortion and can be counted on to make fair and impartial judgments on the matter):

Also I’d like to get back to the projects I do locally and nationally (speaking engagements at the National March for Life and Judge Alito’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., and the International Pro-life and Pro-family Conference in Dublin, Ireland; and working on a new clinic called Stanton Healthcare Services and a national campaign concerning sexual integrity and AIDS).

But Brandi, as an aspiring female in the political realm, I wonder where was your die-hard support for Hariet Miers?