Last night the Daily Show replayed Sarah Palin's views on the Wall Street debacle, unedited. I was watching it with my 18 year old son and we were both in stitches, me laughing so hard that the water I was drinking came out of my nose. It was ironic that the funniest piece I had every seen on the Daily Show, a very funny program, was an unedited and unintended as humor speech by a vice-presidential candidate. The laughing stopped when we were reminded that it is within the realm of possibility that she will be a heartbeat away from being President. Our nation has already put Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew in such a position. Not so funny!
It is difficult for me to understand the media's preoccupation with whether the train engineer was text messaging at the time of the tragic head on train crash in Southern California. Obviously, he should not have been. IF we need to be preoccupied however, it should be with a train safety system that depends entirely on one man seeing one signal in order to avoid a collision between two trains. Hell, he could have bent over to pick up a piece of paper and missed the same signal. Obviously, we have the technical capability to electronically monitor and prevent such catastrophies. For me, the evil doers here are those in governement that have allowed the nation's infrastructure to decay while we watch bridges collapse and trains collide and blame text messaging.
Tim Russert died of a heart attack a few hours ago; he was a few years younger than me, and an influence most of my adult life. My son Harry and i were lucky enough to hear him speak live earlier this year at the Oakland Lecture Series. We sat less than 10 feet from him. He had a larger than life manner. While most of his speech was dedicated to his passion for politics, he spoke liberally of family, love of wife, son and dad. His deep passion was palpable. His political interviews were vibrant and scary tough. Most of the time I thought fair, but some of the time, it seemed to me like a focused on some small contradiction more to embarrass than inform. None of us are perfect. He was a VERY good interviewer of people with an ax to grind who were difficult to interview. Fair to say that Tim made a difference, both on the small scale of his personal life, family and friends, and on a larger scale for the rest of us. Thank you Tim.
For those who have noticed that this BLOG space has been curiously empty and especially to those who noticed who also chose to let me know, Thank You. All of that is about to change, and in the meantime may your New Year be filled with realized dreams. Peter
