Life is short

I have had too many reminders of this fact of life recently. But here is another.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Six weeks after Phil Mickelson announced his wife had breast cancer, his mother was diagnosed with the disease and is to have surgery later this week.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on its Web site that Mary Mickelson discovered she had breast cancer last week. She is to have surgery Friday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the same hospital where Mickelson's wife, Amy, had surgery last Wednesday.

Sarah Palin

As I stated at the time, one reason that I decided to support Obama in the last election was because the idea of Sarah Palin becoming president scared me. It still does. With respect to the current circus, Eugene Robinson, a man with whom I agree with infrequently, states it well:

You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously -- or pretended to take her seriously -- should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate. Imagining Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency should be enough to make even die-hard Republicans shudder. . .

The thing is, Palin's unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.

There are basically two reasons the political class and the commentariat continue to speak and write about Palin as if she were a substantial figure whose presence on the national stage is anything but a cruel, unfunny joke. The first is fear -- not of Palin and her know-nothing legions, but of being painted as elitist and sexist. . .

The other reason Palin is taken more seriously than she deserves is that she has a constituency. Heaven help us.

Michael Jackson - RIP

The second cultural icon to go on the same day.

I was never more than a lukewarm fan of his music, but his historical status is undeniable. He was the Elvis of my generation.

Farah Fawcett - RIP

She lost her long battle with cancer today. I had this poster in my bedroom when I was in junior high school.

TV movie

This story is going to be made into a TV movie, for sure.

Obama is brought down to earth

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's

Nixon's ongoing disgrace

His contemporaneously recorded reaction to Roe v. Wade in 1973.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

YouTube video of the day

Iran

In my judgment, Krauthammer offers nuggets of wisdom from time to time. But not everytime.

This time, I think that his advice is not wise.

And I think that he is willfully ignoring Obama's obvious strategy, which is to tread very carefully so as not to taint the demonstrators as American stooges. Obama is prudently content at this point to let Britian do the heavy rhetorical lifting.

So far, I approve of Obama's moves, but this is a fluid situation. 48 hours from now I could be agreeing with his harshest critics if he doesn't adapt adeptly.

This is a big moment. A really big moment.

Book review

I have not done book reviews before. This will be my first, and it will be terse.

My Mother gave me a copy of Nelson DeMille's "Wildfire". The plot is right up my alley, and my wife (and Google) attested to the quality of this author's other works, none of which I had read. Sounded perfect.

I enjoyed the book to a degree, as I covered the 500 pages in a few days. But, overall, I found it stupid for several reasons including, but not limited to, the following:

• The premise is that the US Government has a secret contingency plan which provides that if a nuclear weapon is detonated in the United States and there is no substantial negative evidence within 30 minutes of detonation that it was not the work of Islamic radicals, the US would automatically and without discussion launch 122 ICBMs at Islamic countries from Morocco to Pakistan and wipe them all out. No presidential authorization would be needed to launch these 122 missiles that would kill at least a billion people, and would contaminate the entire planet indefinitely. Under this plot, the President had to take affirmative steps to stop the launch of 122 nuclear missiles, not specifically authorize such launches. Hence, part of the plot is to have the President distracted and out of communication during those 30 minutes.
• The hero, along with his wife, identifies the body of their friend and colleague in a morgue, the victim of a gruesome murder. After they leave the morgue and go back to their B and B and while they are unraveling a conspiracy of apocalyptic proportions with only hours available, they are uncontrollably horny and decide to use one of those hours to have sex.

I will stop there. The book was not an uninteresting read, with all of its flaws. But it made the early James Bond movies seem remarkably plausible in comparison, including the "Mr. Bond, here is my plan, you cannot stop me, and have a seat over there and enjoy some Scotch while you watch me destroy the world" final chapter.

If plots like this still make the NY Times bestseller list, I need to seriously consider a different line of work.

You want to do what?

It isn't that I don' t understand the issue but, still, this story has a strong "say what?!" factor for me, so I can only imagine the gut reaction of someone who is a more casual observer of the news of the day.

After so much bad news, it scarcely seems possible. But having regained a financial footing as well as a bit of their old swagger, major banks are racing to pay back billions of taxpayer dollars. Many insist they will do so by year-end. . .

But now that big banks seem to have stabilized, regulators are trying to determine how and when these institutions should be allowed to return their bailout money . . .

Weather oddity

The fact that I was even tempted to do a blog post about the weather (much less that I yielded to the temptation) may be a sign that I should shut this thing down. Anyway.

The Twin Cities blasted into a heat record Tuesday with a high temperature of 97 degrees, breaking the previous record for the date by eight degrees.

Meanwhile, as Granite Falls hit 100 degrees at 5 p.m., Grand Marais was recording 34 degrees, giving Minnesota both some of the nation’s warmest and coolest temperatures simultaneously.

Strange, indeed.

Did he really say this?

This guy just signed a contract for over $50 million for the next 6 years.

When the Super Bowl XLIII champion Pittsburgh Steelers make their trip to the White House Thursday, one of the players largely responsible for their victory over the Arizona Cardinals says he won't be attending.

Linebacker James Harrison said he'll pass on the invite from President Barack Obama. . .

"This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won," said Harrison.

Well, yes, when you have a ceremony to honor the champions of a sporting event (no matter how silly how that may be in the first place, particularly when it happens many months after the competition ended), it is better to invite the champions, not the runners-up. I hope to heck that this is a joke and this guy is not really this stupid.

What ails conservatives, as described by a conservative that I can respect

Posner.

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

Excuse me?

Current banner headline on CNN.com:

"LIVE BREAKING NEWS: News briefing on future of Miss California USA Carrie Prejean".

Seriously?

Kentucky Derby

For reasons that aren't entirely explainable because I'm not a horse racing fan generally, I have always loved the Kentucky Derby. This year was a classic, the second biggest upset in history. Because I can, I will preserve it forever on this blog.

John Edwards

There are degrees of asshole-ishness. By any measure, John Edwards clearly deserves an A+.

After the former presidential hopeful confessed his betrayal, Elizabeth Edwards writes in her new book, "I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up." . . .

Edwards admitted the hanky-panky to her days after declaring his candidacy in 2006 . . .

Let me recount. First, cheat on your wife who is suffering from terminal cancer. Second, convince her to back your bid for president. Third, only after she commits and you publicly announce your candidacy, you reveal to her that you have been cheating, a fact that is sure to be exposed and will cause her incredible public humiliation, on top of the deep personal hurt.

Once again, a scene from one of my favorite movies seems appropriate, although I include it only for the last line.

The real world

Today, our son was told by one of his best friends that the "friend" didn't want to be friends anymore. The reason? Because our son is Hispanic and adopted. The friend later called to apologize, apparently on his own initiative, and to request a play-date.

I'm not looking forward to the cruelty of junior high school.

All good things must come to an end

An amazing streak ends.

Not unlike shooting 59 for even the most talented golfer, a no-hitter requires a rare combination of skill and luck for even the most talented baseball pitcher. But, as far as I know, no one has ever broken 60 on a regulation golf course four times in a row.

Twitter

I don't get the Twitter rage, and I'm not going to try to get it. I'm just going to ignore it the same way that I have ignored other crazes among some folks, like NASCAR and The Food Network. If Twitter makes the people who use it a bit happier, good for them.

But some people just can't ignore something that they don't understand why anyone would be interested in, so instead they lecture in a holier-than-thou-way about what other people should be doing with their time.

I really enjoy unintentional self-parody.