It's Sunday, which means my local newspaper feels compelled to assault me with Charles Krauthammer.  In this week's column, Krauthammer is – SURPRISE! -- attacking Barack Obama.

In a stunning upset, Barack Obama this week won the Iraq primary. When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki not once but several times expressed support for a U.S. troop withdrawal on a timetable that accorded roughly with Obama's 16-month proposal, he did more than legitimize the plan. He relieved Obama of a major political liability by blunting the charge that, in order to appease the MoveOn left, Obama was willing to jeopardize the astonishing success of the surge and risk losing a war that is finally being won.
Original column in the Washington Post

He goes on (and so shall we), but buried deep in the article, echoes of an old familiar friend ring out.  Well, not exactly "friend", unless you're counting the kind of friend who steals your tools, breaks your windows, sprays weed killer on your trees, unleashes a sewer back-up on the neighborhood, and drives over the neighborhood children in a drunken stupor.  Come on inside if you dare.

My wife is sending me wingnut emails -- but relax.  It's not as bad as it sounds:

Date: Thu, 2008 16:37:34 -0500
From: ms.dsteffen@nearbystateuniversity.edu
To: dsteffen@domain.net
Subject: FW: FW: FW: Obama – For or Against

A definite response is needed!!!!!!!!!!

Ms. dsteffen

Attachment: Obama – For or Against.doc

A response?  As you wish...

Okay, so I drag myself out of bed last Wednesday morning, shower and dress, and go retrieve the newspaper from the front porch.  I sit myself down at the kitchen table and begin reading, eventually making my way to the editorial page.  Let's see -- which wingnut has my local paper seen fit to harangue me with today?  If it's Wednesday, it must be Thomas Sowell.  And sure enough, below Sowell's rather dated mugshot...

Sen. Obama's cocky ignorance shining through

Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates.

**Sigh**  What a way to start the day...

The GOP can't seem to decide.  In a diary earlier this week at Prairie State Blue, AC4508 reported on an item in Roll Call relaying an "insider" claim that the Illinois Republican leadership had settled on concrete contractor Martin Ozinga to succeed fund-raising adverse Tim Baldermann as the GOP candidate to replace retiring Jerry Weller Rios-Montt in IL-11.  An article in this morning's Bloomington Pantagraph seems to indicate that the decision isn't a done deal yet.

http://www.pantagraph.com/...

Details inside

Though it may seem impossible to imagine today as I stand here veritably dripping wisdom, staring down the barrel of my fast-approaching seventh decade of life, I was once young and stupid.  Though there is a plethora of evidence I could produce in support of that assertion, let me offer just one.

In my college days, some friends and I, having sampled dorm living and rooming house life and not being particularly what one would consider "fraternity material", decided to go the independent route and rent a house outright.  One of our number found a nice three bedroom ranch in a residential neighborhood not terribly far from the University of Illinois campus that was available for sublet during the summer with a subsequent one-year lease beginning in the fall.  And we were all, each of us, young and stupid and didn't want to let this gem slip through our fingers and so gave the multi-page lease's obtuse legal jargon a quick once-over and signed on the dotted line.

Inevitable conclusion on the flip side.

I was nine years old.  I came home from school on the afternoon of December 1, 1958 to a Chicago radio station blaring "breaking news" back in the days when, if they said "breaking news", you'd better freaking pay attention because Heavy Sh*t was going down.  Firemen and reporters were rushing to the scene of a fire amid escalating levels of "alarms" at a parochial school on Chicago's West Side.  There are things in each of our lives we will never forget, memories we will carry, still crystal clear, to our graves.  Those of us of a certain age will always remember where we were and what we were doing when the news came that John F. Kennedy had been shot.  I diaried previously about my earliest exposure to national events as a child, events I will never forget.  In the comments of that diary I also mentioned another incident from my childhood that had a profound effect on me.  This week in Chicago, 49 years after the tragedy, officials are dedicating a memorial at the site of that event, the Our Lady of the Angels school fire.

On November 20, 1620, a ship bearing a group of people we know as the Pilgrims, dissenters against the Church of England, arrived in America.  After surveying the situation for a month, they settled on a spot near present day Plymouth, Massachusetts on December 21st and founded their colony in the New World.  They came to escape the religious persecution they had suffered in Europe.  It's impossible for a child to go through the American education system without learning the story.

But there were other things we weren't taught, and apparently haven't learned.  

I know DailyKos is supposed to be a site dedicated to electing Democrats, but I feel compelled to go off-topic to tip off DailyKos readers to one of the funniest print humorists I've ever read.  I'm not sure how long our newspaper has been carrying his column – there used to be a dour, mean-spirited African-American conservative with a similar name whose column ran on Wednesdays , but I read today's column under the "Thomas Sowell" by-line, and let me tell you, it's some of the funniest stuff you'll ever read!  Check it out inside.

My old friend K____ dropped by unexpectedly the other day.  We've known each other practically forever.  We went through grade school, junior high, high school and college together -- even roomed together for a year in the dorms, before he pledged a fraternity and I set out in search of accommodations that could be sustained on a part-time, minimum wage job.  Although our lives now revolve in different orbits, only crossing occasionally despite living just a few miles apart, it's always good to see K____.  

And to make it even better, he brought me a present.

Bill O'Reilly was in a royal snit this morning in this column which appeared in our local newspaper.  It seems that one Charles Rust-Tierney, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia, was arrested February 23 on charges of possessing child pornography.

Outrageous, certainly, but that's not exactly what has OhReally?'s Jockeys in a bunch.  All is revealed inside.

DailyKos certainly suffers no lack of healthcare diaries, and diarists far more astute than I, so I usually refrain from cluttering up the diaries list with my own meager contributions.  That said, having recently been through another of my periodic Adventures in Healthcare, I thought I'd try to draw on that experience to expand on a health insurance issue I've touched on in a few comments in others' diaries.  Where I live, it's damn cold out, so come on inside where it's warm, and I'll fill you in.

Alan Guebert writes a weekly column on agribusiness issues.  His column this week focuses on the federal crop insurance program and hints at a business plan that would leave Adam Smith a jumble of quivering tics.  Details after the leap...

I didn't comment in DavidHenry's diary.  I wanted to.  I wanted to talk about a lot of things, but it was late, and I was suffering that way-past-my-bedtime mental fuzziness, and there were so many things I wanted to say that I couldn't organize my thoughts.  And besides, I was busy turning the house inside-out looking for a book.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere

Tracy Chapman
Fast Car

In a few days, the little lady and I will be heading off on vacation to...  Well, we haven't exactly decided yet.  We've both been too busy to think about it -- almost too busy to even schedule it, hence the October if-we-don't-block-out-some-time-
soon-we're-going-to-run-out-of-year vacation for the third year in a row.  We don't know where we'll be, but -- given that we haven't bought any airline or train tickets yet, and still wouldn't know where to buy them to -- we know for certain that we'll be driving.  And in my book at least, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  More inside...

I regret to say that I'm no particular fan of my Governor, and tend to share Kos' view of his negative effect on the way the public perceives the Democratic Party.  But neither am I a fan of shoddy, biased reporting, and the Pantagraph article in question had it in spades.

And I felt compelled to let the Pantagraph know it.  My LTE inside.

And dreamed.  

You know where to find it.

Reuters, via Yahoo News:

Vote rigging was widespread in Mexico during the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which President Vicente Fox defeated in 2000.

But a European Union team of observers said last week there was no major fraud in this election and foreign leaders including President Bush have called Calderon to congratulate him.

Consistent, that is except for a little public radio station on a university campus out in the boondocks, which apparently never got the memo and took the extraordinary and unorthodox step of, you know, actually talking to an election observer.

Details on the flip.