Right Here, Right Now 3.0

It appears that the Democratic Party is going to nominate a black man to be the next President of the United States. Win, lose or draw, that's an amazing thing.

I'm hopeful he'll win, but regardless, it'll be nice to have a President that can, unassisted, put a sentence together. The next one will also be the first President since 1960 to come to the job from the Senate.

It will be interesting to see what itch Obama tries to scratch with his VP pick. I think Jim Webb would be interesting. A real military hero. At the end of the day, that's what McCain perceives as his own strength, obviously. In his campaign bio, McCain gives more space to his military heritage than to his political life and accomplishments. And the political accomplishments he offers could be summarized as a mea culpa for his involvement in the Keating scandal.

Compare and contrast this:

The United States is open to bilateral talks with Iran or Syria at a conference in Baghdad this weekend if either country approaches U.S. officials to discuss stabilizing Iraq, a top State Department official said Thursday.

"If we are approached over orange juice by the Syrians or the Iranians to discuss an Iraq-related issue that is germane to this topic -- stable, secure, peaceful, democratic Iraq -- we are not going to turn and walk away," David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, told reporters.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/08/us.iran.iraq/index.html

With this:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080515-1.html

I guess it wouldn't have been appeasement if the unnamed senator from 70 years ago had been approached by Hitler over orange juice. In the Bush world view, if the bad guys call, we can talk. But the US can't call and talk. Got it.

And, Lord help me, in this speech, Bush refers to "suiciders." Apparently not for the first time."

The sister started a 2nd chemo about six weeks ago, maybe nine. The first round of chemo seemed to be doing the job on the cancer, but the cure was worse than the disease. She was exhausted; her blood counts were wack. Not good. So, the 2nd regime was started.

She had a Pet scan last Monday and we got the results yesterday. Not good. Some of the disease which had been stalled or shrinking were growing again.

Next Monday, if all the doctors concur and the insurance company is ok with it, she'll start on her third chemo cocktail.

The sister remains optimistic and determined. She is more patient under this duress than I am in mid-day traffic. I am taking notes.

Through it all I have been extraordinarily impressed with the outpouring of love and support from her friends. Drawn from her church, a central part of her life, other parents from her kid's school, former neighbors and co-workers, these people have stepped up and maintained a high level of support since last November. Meals delivered - multiple times a week, trips to the clinic for treatment, trips to the hospital, a housecleaning service, and, of course, just being a friend.

It is kind, and no less laudatory, to help someone over a few weeks. It is astonishing and redemptive to watch her friends support her over these seven months.

With no end in sight.

From Robert Reich

Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he’ll be – and the kind of president we’d otherwise get from McCain and HRC.

Of course, I processed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But as a sixth grader it didn't really register as something other than 'news'. This was the late 60s when you'd listen to Uncle Walter every night and learn that 49 more soldiers had died in Vietnam. Death was common.

On the other hand, Bobby Kennedy's killing, two months later was surprisingly unsettling to someone too young to be worried about such things. It took me right out of the class picnic.

In honor of Dr. King's life, some links that might not come up in the top 10 in a Google search:

A Miami Herald article on the garbage worker's strike that brought King to Memphis in the first place.

A column by the same writer on Robert Kennedy's response to King's death. I especially like:

Robert Kennedy was, in many ways, not the first person you'd choose for the job of racial reconciler. He was rich and white and born of privilege, his upper crust roots audible in every exhalation of that Brahmin accent that pronounced ''chance'' as ''chawnce'' and turned ''whether'' into ''whethah.'' Nor had he always been a devotee of the civil rights movement. To the contrary, he had regarded it warily, concerned over its potential to embarrass his brother John, the president. Indeed, it was Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, who loosed J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to spy upon and harass King.

But Kennedy was also that rarity, a man with the capacity to change. It is hard to say when that change occurred in him. Maybe it was somewhere in his dealings with intransigent, stand-in-the-doorway Southern potentates who refused to protect the rights of peaceful demonstrators or abide by the Constitution of the United States. Maybe it was that night King and his followers were trapped in a church by a howling, riotous mob of whites, and Kennedy had to send federal marshals to rescue them.

And to connect it a bit (and it's all connected) are there any modern presidential candidates that would quote Aeschylus in an extemporaneous speech?

The sister is going home. Phew.

The sister is in the hospital for a few days. Some general discomfort that had ebbed and flowed began flowing so she ended up at the ER for tests and a blood clot was discovered. She was admitted for treatment.

The blood clot is thought to be a side effect of her port, which was inserted to facilitate her chemo. Hence the Butch and Sundance reference. But I didn't have to explain that, did I?

The Sacramento Bee has discovered gold at the public trough and they're not giving up. The Bee has tapped a state employe salary database and you can now look up the exact wage of your state-employee friends and neighbors! I noticed the headline, but hadn't read the story. The details came to my attention when a friend marvled at one of his friend's salary!

On one hand it's entirely approporiate to discuss wage ranges. A manager in the state can make $XX-$YY dollars. And it is always educational to see how the state tries to compete for talent in the medical and financial worlds.

But to say Joe Blow is making $54,753 a year, when Joe has done nothing newsworthy outside of showing up for work is wrong. The Bee wouldn't presume to ask to see Joe's personnel file. (Again, barring some misbehavior on Joe's part.)

The employees are outraged and I think they have every right to be upset. There's no public benefit for this level of detail living in the public domain. We, the public, don't manage any specific state employee. We don't have a say in their advancement or lack thereof. We don't have the background on why a person has their job.

Of course, the Bee gets ad revenue for every hit to this database. The new editor and now the ombudsman Public Editor has stepped up to defend their right to violate the rights of others.

And here's the tag line from the Public Editor:

It's up to the public to decide whether it is interested in the information and, at least initially, there's no question a lot of the public is.

That's the same logic that keeps the National Enquirer going. Now that's a target to shoot for.

(Disclaimer: mom's living on my deceased father's state pension, but I otherwise have no one in the family on the state payroll. Maybe the Bee will post a list of widow's pensions next? And, I have had state contracts in the past. Fortunately I didn't have to undress or provide my salary information to get those contracts.)