#26 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• After retreating from his earlier positions on FISA's warrantless wiretapping and pro-choice, Obama now seems to be waffling on Iraq. Next, it'll be health care. Troubling. It's reported that he's "shifted from stressing withdrawal" to "assessing the situation" in Iraq. Where's he been for five years and five thousand dead soldiers?! I'm tempted to take my "McGovern-anti-war-vote" back, the one I planned to recast and award to Obama after all these years. But no, much as I admire John McCain as a true warrior-hero in the Beowulfian mold (we all know that he refused a preferential release in his first year as POW until his "less-connected" fellow-prisoners were also set free, and for that remained in captivity for another FIVE years!)-- the country, as we know it, just literally couldn't survive another Republican administration... as we know it. It's not a question of Obama's moving Right or Left; he's in a real DOWN here--undermining his brave progressive rhetoric with, I guess, political expediency. He and his team are deluded. Just look to what happened to Gore and Kerry when they took that road. But I'll still vote for the guy, unless he really screws up and picks Joe Lieberman as his running-mate. You have my word.
• The Drought in NC.

Best of the Week

• Ted Kennedy returns to the Senate. After successful brain surgery right down the road here at Duke, the dissipated old warrior broke an obstructionist-Republican-threatened- filibuster involving Medicare on his FIRST DAY BACK. What a guy. I only hope that he can survive long enough to shepherd through health-care reform, under President Obama, before the cancer gets him. (I know this last sounds cold-blooded--what else is new--but think about it. Ted K. is a very lucky man, and not just because he's alive. He now knows his "death-day"--information provided to a select few. He has lived a long and productive life. Lucky. And with only a few admittedly serious divigations (fill in the blanks) that didn't ultimately impede his success. Lucky. And now Duke has given him a couple more years. Lucky. Finally, and most important: from this point on he need have no illusions, procrastinations, etc. etc.--he MUST, almost as a matter of course, definitively plan out this last measure of life to accomplish the very best he is capable of, and doubtless do it. Lucky, QED.)
• The Rain in NC. Did its thing all week.

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