One of the joys I have experienced since being assimiliated into the Wizbang collective, is the amount of emails you get from people tipping you off to something. Being a little Florida blogger(400-500 daily visitors) for 2.5 years, I rarely got those types of emails. Rather I was sometimes the one sending tips out to bloggers. Ask Jim Addison, who I sent at least 5 politics tips from April to July of this year.

After being a part of Wizbang for about a week, I learned to just delete most of what ends up in my mailbox. That hasn't stopped me from sending out a few terse emails threatening to Knucklehead someone if they didn't stop sending me their junk.

Like the PR agency for some pharmaceutical company who expects Wizbang Sports to promote some Super Bowl contest of theirs. I haven't heard a peep from Laura Kelly of MS&L Healthcare since. Apparently she got the message.

Today's underwhelming tip of the day involves one Iowa newspaper endorsing Fred Dalton Thompson for President. The email sender saying- "This is a pretty significant sign just days ahead of the caucus."

So what Iowa city's newspaper are we talking about? We know it isn't Des Moines(The Register endorsed McCain), so is it Cedar Rapids? Ames? Davenport? Sioux City? Waterloo? Iowa City? No it is none of these.

So what city is it? Ottumwa! Population, just under 25,000 according to this website. Which also ranks it as Iowa's 20th largest city.

That's significant? Maybe if you're Radar O'Reilly or Tom Arnold, both Ottumwa natives. Though one is fictional and the other I hardly think lives in that Iowa city anymore. Does anyone living more than 30 miles from Ottumwa care what candidate the Courier endorses? How many people in Ottumwa care what candidate is endorsed by their hometown newspaper.

Note- I'm not making fun of Ottumwa or Iowa but the sender of the email I got today. I just got through setting a webfiction story in Iowa. Mostly set in the Des Moines area(somewhere I haven't visited since 1987!) but it included a brief mention of Ottumwa in it.

This email sender must be a twin of Chris Mathews. For Chris on yesterday's Today show said if Obama beats Hillary in Iowa, it will be news around the world. From Iowa to Myanmar or something like that. The first votes in the US presidential race is going to be big international news in a Buddhist country half way around the world? Yes and I'll be writing a weekly column at the Palm Beach Post before 2008 is up.

Sorting out the important from the trivial comes with being a blogger I guess. Contributing to Wizbang is the most fun I had since the nurse turned on my wound vac(I had surgery to drain an abcess in my right leg) for the first time last January.(Sarcastic laughter time)