The outtake.

The kids.

Taken yesterday, down the street from Bernardos on Capitol.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

(via Kos)

Mr. noun-verb-911 on John McCain, when McCain was Rudy's opponent in the primaries:

...has never run a city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people...

And Rudy on Sen. Obama.

..he's never run a city, never run a state, never run a business. He's never had to lead people in crisis.

I commented a while ago that this election was interesting because it was the first since John Kennedy was elected that the winner would come out of the Senate.

The whole 'admin' experience is a red-herring. Or at best, not a reasonable predictor of future success. Clinton had been a governor for ever and by all accounts ran a very loose ship. W was all about process and we saw how that worked out.

I am, of course, happy to buy into the argument that Obama has run a very successful organization for the past 19 months, with a budget larger than Alaska's. (and unlike the socialist* state of Alaska, his funding came voluntarily).

* Like Saudia Arabia, most of Alaska's income comes from the Oil Industry. Alaska actually pays people to live there! Isn't that socialism? When you get money & services just for being there?

Sister update

On Tuesday the Sister and I went to Stanford Medical Center, Cancer Division and met with Dr. Wakelee. The purpose of the visit was both to get a 2nd opinion and to see if there were any clinical trials currently underway at Stanford  that might help the Sis.

To answer the latter, no. No magic wand. But we're welcome to check back.

The good news, from my perspective is that Dr. Wakelee was on board with the treatment the sister has been receiving. She might have done things slightly differently, but not substantially.

On Wednesday we had a follow-up with the primary oncologist, a Dr. Wong,  and based on the discussions with Stanford and a previous discussion with him, decided to try Tarceva. The primary benefit of this drug is that the Sister's qualify of life goes way up. Tarceva is a pill, taken daily with much softer possible side effects.

The current lifestyle while undergoing chemo therapy is to have chemo, feel like crap for 2 weeks, start to recover, wash, rinse and repeat.

With Tarceva, the hope is that 'normal' becomes the norm. We'll see. It'll take a month or more for her body to clear the toxins from the chemo.

Jesus was a Community Organizer, and Pontius Pilate was a Governor

(Sorry, it's gonna be like this for a while...)

Two different things.

First, please go read this: What a Community Organizer Does.  Sarah Palin felt compelled to mock Obama's years of community service. This article responds better than I could. 

Next, what is behind the attempt to tag Obama as an "Elite". I have no idea how a kid goes from being born to a too-young mother, raised by that mother and her parents, to earning his way into Harvard, to working for his adopted community in Chicago - and that's 'elitism'. Whereas McCain, son and grandson of Navy Admirals, marrying into wealth, is living the American dream.
So, how do you get Elite out of Obama's background? Harvard is definetly elite, but he earned it. It wasn't a legacy appointment. And he took the advantage implicit in attending Harvard and gave back to the community. (see above).

Maybe 'elite' is code for uppity.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

"Westmoreland" is a U.S. Congressman! It just goes to show you, you only need a few votes to make it to the national stage.

(After first posting this, I ran across the perfect title for the post, from here)

This is my problem with the right-wing

Just the inbred hypocrisy.




And, no, you don't get to say the Democrats do it too, because then your 'all about change and kick the bastards out' Republican ticket is just more of the same (and considering that the bastards they want to throw out are Republicans just makes it more recursive.)

Not that it matters

from Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Not that it matters, not that my heart's cry
Is potent to deflect our common doom, "

I'm unclear on the benefit of pop stars speaking out on major issues, lord knows there are still starving children. But on Friday the 5th, there will be TV show that will be shown concurrently on the three major broadcast networks that aims to end cancer.

Here's some interesting facts about Lung Cancer:

Lung cancer will kill:

• More people than breast, prostate, colon, live, kidney, and melanoma cancers... combined.
• Over three times as many men as prostate cancer.
• Nearly twice as many women as breast cancer.
• An average of 439 people a day.

Over 60% of new cases are never smokers or former smokers, many of whom quit decades ago.
One in five women and one in twelve men diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked. (My sister never smoked. We learned today that lung cancer among non-smoking women is increasing.)

This explains it, I think....

From an Op-Ed by a Hillary supporter. Money quote:

During the campaign, we scoffed at events like this, mostly because we were not capable of producing them.

"This" is Obama's acceptance speech at an outdoor stadium attended by 70-80,000 people and watched by 38 million.

I think this explains why the McCain camp has substituted 'scoffing' for political discourse. In their wildest dreams, they couldn't produce an event like this. They don't have the right candidate. 

Cat Man Do

Game Over

I think John McCain just lost whatever chance he had of becoming President.

On one hand, McCain has robbed the Republicans of the one hammer they had, Obama was inexperienced. Here we have someone who had been mayor of a town smaller than the subdivision I live in and then has been governor for two years of a state with a smaller population than the county I live in. At a similar point in life when Obama was in Harvard Law School, Palin was entering beauty pageants.

On the other hand, the point that the Democrats have been making for the last week is that McCain has exhibited poor judgement. He was wrong about Iraq, he is wrong about Afghanistan, he is wrong about the economy and on and on. And he just made their point. If this is an example of the kinds of decisions he'll make once in office, we have been warned.

Hopefully, the voters of Alaska are outliers. The fact the Ted Stevens, who is under indictment!, just made it through the primaries indicates a wild-west approach to politics that provides a nice launching pad for someone like Palin.

So, the 26% of the electorate that continue to support W have been mollified by the selection of a right-to-life, anti-environment, creationist. The rest of us can look forward to the renewal of an American government worthy of pride.