Bits 'n' pieces

Just a few odds and ends to report this time. I don't even know which things to begin with, so I guess I will start here: 1). First off, we on the Social Justice Committee at church have been sponsoring monthly "special collections" to go to some good cause, either locally, statewide, nationally or internationally. Today our collection was for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund which sponsors health care for children wounded in the violence in that region that they could not receive in their own country. Most interestingly, our services today also commemorated Passover, which is about to occur among the Jewish folk. Well, we on the Social Justice Committee received a forwarded e-mail from a member of our church complaining of being offended that we timed this special collection for a commemoration of Passover when it was to benefit a Palestinian cause, and how the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund was a thought to be a group funneling funds to terrorist groups and Islamic Jihadists, and oh, anyway, Hamas was to blame for all the wounded children because of their very existence and the terror they wreak on the Israeli people, blah, blah, blah, etc. Given who wrote the letter, I am not surprised at this response and I am glad that our minister responded to it and took responsibility for the entire situation. I was tempted to say something myself, but I leave that to the minister to handle, lest it turn into some nasty divisive situation. So I'll just keep my mouth shut and say nothing. 2). The injured Achilles tendon seems to be responding fairly well to therapy and not doing any kind of high impact training. I went to Jason's class yesterday afternoon and he had me do upper body strengthening and ab tightening work. I was the only one to show up, and quite selfishly, I was glad to have him all to myself. Whenever I am injured, I feel so much more vulnerable and I feel like I need that much more individual attention and I want to work one-on-one with Jason because of the level of trust I have developed for him. I want to have time to talk to him, ask him questions and know that I have his undivided attention. That's really important to me right now as I mend from this injury. I want to know that I have time to ask about things, get answers and learn what I can and cannot do and should and should not do. That's just very reassuring at a time like this. After all, he's not just my trainer, he's also one of my health care providers, and to have as much time as I want to talk to him is priceless, especially in these days of revolving door medicine.

POST DEBATE FALLOUT
Well, the post-debate opinions are that the recent Democratic debate held in Philadelphia was a real stinker, a farce, and a joke. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos have been widely pilloried for their performances in concentrating on what seemed to be more tabloid issues of who knew who and who was associated with whom than getting to the real kitchen table issues of the economy, the war, the mortgage meltdown crisis, health care and others. Although I fell asleep somewhere during the televised debate, I understand it took 45 minutes for the moderators to get to the real heart of the debate and ask some real questions, not silly stuff about whether or not someone was regularly wearing a flag lapel pin and what someone who someone else knows was doing 40 years ago and other silly nonsensical stuff. That issues like this were even brought up was a sham, but it also gave a preview of what kind of things that the Republican/Karl Rove attack machine will come up with, and yes, a few times Barack Obama seemed to become a tad unhinged when confronted with questions that had nothing to do with what most Americans are asking, and that's "How am I going to pay my bills this month?" Still, he did seem to become impatient with the constant "attack dog" style questioning over trivial matters, and rightly so. Most people could care less about who said what to whom and when and who met who at a party or who went to someone's house that might have a skeleton or two in their closet. That kind of guilt by association smacks of McCarthyism, which seems to have made a return to politics of late. I thought that such things could not happen twice, that people actually learned their history lessons, or at the very least, watched the film "Good Night and Good Luck", if only to watch George Clooney, a film favorite. But I guess I am wrong there. So the long campaign season winds on and on until the final denouement in Denver in August, at which time I suppose smoke filled back room dealings will have to be made in order to determine the final Democratic nominee, by which time McCain will have gotten a good head start as the already default nominee of the Republican Party. Dems had better stop their internecine sniping and pull themselves together before they let this golden opportunity slip by them and allow McCain to become our next President. God help us if we end up with what will basically be a third Bush term. That would surely spell the end of the United States as we once knew it.