Thunder snow?

I awoke early this morning to find out whether or not I would have to report to work. If so, I was going to call in sick, not that I am feeling all that bad anymore, but I have been feeling achy despite the fever being gone. So about the time the alarm went off, I heard what I thought was thunder, only it was snowing pretty heavily. So I then thought, well, maybe it's a snowplow at one of the nearby fast food joints digging them out, but I know the sound of plowing and this definitely did not resemble it. Shortly thereafter, still lying in bed wondering what to do, there was a bright flash of lightning and then more thunder amidst the heavy snowfall. I told myself, now I know I did not imagine or dream that, I am fully awake, so indeed, we did have "thunder snow" this morning, a rare meteorological phenomenon that, according to what I have read, occurs only in a handful of places in the world, and the Great Lakes region is among them. Usually when there is some bizarre or unusual weather occurance, the Record-Courier will consult Dr. Thomas Schmidlin of Kent State University who will doubtless explain to us in tomorrow morning's newspaper what happened and why. This area has a penchant for weird weather anyway, which makes it an interesting place to live, to say the least.

AL GORE, COMPROMISE CANDIDATE?

There is talk that if, by the Democratic convention in Denver this summer, the great divide between Hillary and Obama cannot be resolved, that a compromise candidate could ostensibly be chosen, and the talk is of having Al Gore be that candidate. Now, whether or not he'd consent to being the nominee after this bruising primary season is over is anybody's guess, but I suspect that even supporters of Hillary and Obama would happily vote for Gore if that were to become the case. Many of us feel that he deserves his rightful place in the White House after having the election of 2000 stolen from him by the Supreme Court. He would surely be able to restore moral leadership to the country and to the world and could also probably beat McCain rather handily in the November general election. I don't know what Hillary and Obama think about this kind of talk, after all the campaigning and fund raising they have done. They might reject a third candidate being proposed at the convention unless they can somehow come together across the great divide and stop trying to tear each other apart and work instead toward criticizing the Bush administration and its disastrous policies. I rather doubt that Hillary will sit for such a thing, frankly. There seems to be a mindset among the Clintonistas that they deserve a Restoration of sorts, a vindication from the bitter impeachment fight that raged when the Gingrich Congress took power. I know that there is no love lost between the Clintons and Gore. Imagine how angry Hillary would be if the convention decided to go with a "compromise candidate" and nominate Gore, contingent, of course, on his agreeing to be said nominee, which, from the sound of it, is dubious at best. Obama would probably take such a defeat gracefully and return to his work in the Senate, but as they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So the race for the Democratic nomination goes on and on in the coming months until the eventual end of the primary season. Who knows what the eventual outcome will be, but I'd rather see the two contenders, Hillary and Obama, criticizing the failed policies of the Bush administration instead of trying to tear each other down in a bid to win the nomination. It could well end up that a "compromise candidate" will become a necessity in order to unite the Democratic Party once and for all, but I really hope that it doesn't come to having to resort to that in the end. I just don't want to see a repeat of the contentious 1968 election, where back biting, disagreements and disunity among Democrats basically handed the Presidency to Nixon. I don't exactly relish the thought of a President McCain, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in that thinking.