All day long I me mine, I me mine, I me mine:
A young cancer patient is putting out a call for help after someone broke into his family's home and stole his brand new puppy.What's worse, investigators believe whoever did it knows the family and the fact that the little boy is sick.
Ryan Morgan was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma four years ago, and he has been fighting his cancer on-and-off ever since.
Ryan turned 10 in July, and his parents gave him a miniature dachshund for his birthday to help him keep his spirits up.
"Whenever I went to the hospital or something, I would always think of her, and it would make me happier," he said. "I really like her. She's cute."
Ryan and his family were stunned when they returned to their Barrow county home two weeks ago to find that someone had broken in and stolen the puppy named "Dixie" from inside her crate.
"Who would steal a dog when you see pictures of a boy who has cancer," Ryan said. "I don't know why."
Ten years old and still as egocentric as a toddler. Hopefully when he's 90 he'll look back at this shamefacedly and offer the world an apology.
Duane in New Orleans, like I will be tomorrow. My high however will be of the aeronautic variety.
Wail on, Skydog!
Duane in '68, having a better (fill in the blank) than anybody.
Wail on, Skydog!
Apparently a lot of the white American ones want a woman in the White House:
Republican Rep. Candice S. Miller says Barack Obama had only one shot at Palin-proofing the Democratic ticket — and he missed it when he passed over Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate.“Every woman in America knows what Barack Obama did to Hillary Clinton: He looked at her and thought, ‘There’s no way I’m doing that,’” said Miller. “If Hillary was on the ticket, he’d be in a much better position to win women voters.”
Sarah Palin’s presence — coupled with Clinton’s absence — may be altering one of the great verities of American politics: that women voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week showed white women swinging hard against the Democratic ticket. Obama left Denver with an 8-point lead among white women; by the time John McCain pulled out of St. Paul, Minn., with Palin at his side, he had taken a 12-point lead.
Former Clinton strategist and pollster Mark Penn on Tuesday said that it’s too soon to know where women will wind up in November, and he declined to engage in any “woulda, coulda, shoulda” speculation about how things might be different if Clinton were on the Democratic ticket.
But another former Clinton adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the “Obama people have got to be kicking themselves” for not putting choosing Clinton as his No. 2.
Julia Piscitelli of the American University’s Women and Politics Institute agreed.
“I don’t think Palin would be seeing these kind of gains if Hillary was on the ticket,” she said. “When Obama picked Biden, it gave Republicans an opening, and they are taking full advantage of it. ... The question is: How long will it last?”
The answer, some Democrats say, is not long.
“I don’t think this is a real swing [in the polls] until it’s been a week, said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of Obama’s busiest female surrogates. “We’ll need to see whether Sarah Palin is willing to answer questions. ... No one will be a stronger advocate for Barack Obama and Joe Biden than Hillary Clinton.”
Sen. Blanche L. Lincoln (D-Ark.) also sounded the Palin-will-wilt-in-the-spotlight theme.
“Sarah Palin delivered a great speech, but we haven’t heard anything else about what she’s going to do,” Lincoln said. “American women are smart, they’re bright and this election isn’t just about Sarah Palin. This is about what they want to do for the country.”
The Obama campaign has denied that it has a serious problem with female voters.
On Monday, campaign manager David Plouffe told a Washington Post reporter, “Your poll is wrong,” adding, “We certainly are not seeing any movement like that. Polls, time to time, particularly on the demographic stuff, can have some pretty wild swings.”That view won support from two unlikely sources Tuesday: Penn and a Republican senator who backs the McCain-Palin ticket.
Penn said that women are going to be “the absolute swing vote in this campaign, and it’s not clear which direction they are going to go in.
“I don’t think it’s a Hillary backlash we’re seeing,” he added. “With Palin on the ticket, we’re going to be seeing this thing swing back and forth.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has had a strained relationship with her state’s governor, downplayed Palin’s power. “I find it difficult to believe that many of the Hillary supporters are going to come over just because of Sarah Palin,” Murkowski said. “It should be about strength of positions” and policy.
But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is locked in a tough race of her own, says several women — former Clinton supporters — have come up to her in Maine to say Palin gives them a reason to back McCain.
“I have never seen such excitement in the Republican Party as we’re seeing in response to Sarah Palin,” Collins said. “I’ve had a lot of Democrats and independent women in Maine who say they’re happy to see a woman on the ticket. Many of them saw an Obama-Clinton ticket as unbeatable. ... That is significant and remarkable.”
Quinnipiac University Polling Institute Assistant Director Peter A. Brown said the Obama campaign is fooling itself if it discounts the importance of the problem. “This isn’t about Hillary; it’s about Obama’s problem with white women voters,” he said. “Hillary won about 10 million votes from women voters in the Democratic primaries — there are 52 million women voting in the general election.”
Clinton has said she’ll hit the road for Obama, but her team says she refuses to be an anti-Palin “attack dog.” Further complicating matters for Obama, Hillaryland fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell is leading a group that will fight media sexism against the Alaska governor.
Grim satisfaction chez Clinton, no doubt.
We'll see how this shakes down over the next few weeks.
(Hail Mary link via George in e-mail.)
Another from the undergarment series, this one via Scotia Dave.
Wail on, Skydog!
If ever there's a movie made of Joe Biden's life, I think Leslie Nielson would be pitch-perfect in the lead role:
In introducing local elected officials, from Ninth District Congressional candidate Judy Baker to former Gov. Roger Wilson, Biden tried to give a special recognition to Sen. Chuck Graham of Columbia.“Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,” Biden says. He was a bit chagrined when he realized that Graham uses a wheelchair. He recovered quickly and told the crowd to “stand up for Chuck.” The crowd responded with a standing cheer for Graham.
He need only resummon the gravitas he displayed as Commander John J. Adams in "Forbidden Planet" to have his subject down cold.
Glad this hurricane's giving us a miss. The local news folks aren't, though. They were awfully excited a few days ago when we were in, as they were calling it, "the cone of death." I don't believe that's the meteorological term for it.
How long can you tread water? The Marinos of Oviedo, Florida peg it out at 12 hours apiece. They have a long way to go to beat Norman Albert's 1978 Guinness Book record of 64 hours, but they weren't in a placid pool at the University of Pennsylvania:
A father and his 12-year-old son are safe after spending more than 12 hours overnight treading water in the Atlantic miles from the central Florida coast.The Coast Guard said the two were swept away by the tide Saturday and found by rescuers the next morning. The father was found about 8 miles from shore and the boy two hours later and one mile from his father.
Both were in good condition Monday at a local hospital.
Authorities said Chris Marino was swimming when he became caught in a current. His 46-year-old father Walter Marino jumped in to save the boy. Marino's daughter saw them being carried out to sea and called the Coast Guard.
The two became separated after dark as they floated in 3-foot swells. The family is from Oviedo in central Florida.
I can't find an official survival record for being alone and trapped in a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine, but North Carolina's Amber Pennell has just beaten Florida's own contender for the crown, grandma Tillie Tooter:
The kudzu patch next to Woodbury Lumber on Valway Road shows few signs it was plowed through by an out-of-control pickup truck.No gouges were visible in the median Tuesday to indicate a truck careened over the curb and down an embankment into a healthy patch of kudzu, either.
The busy four-lane highway that passes next to the kudzu patch is flat and straight and it was virtually impossible for the layman to see the trail where the truck left the road. Even from the picnic table on Woodbury Lumber's front porch - just 15 yards from the edge of the ravine - it was impossible to know what lay at the bottom.
It took the expert eye of Caldwell County Emergency Medical Services Director Tommy Courtner to spot a line of slightly tamped-down kudzu that led to the bottom of a 70-foot ravine where Amber Pennell, 21, of Lenoir, lay alive and trapped in her crushed pickup truck five days after her husband Mitchell Pennell, 24, reported her missing.
Emergency extraction teams equipped with electric saws and hydraulic extraction devices arrived and rappelled into the ravine at 7:45 p.m. By 8:30 p.m., they had freed Pennell from the wreckage, gotten her out of the ravine and into an ambulance headed to Carolinas Medical Center, said Keith Davenport, Caldwell County Emergency Medical Services assistant director.
Davenport talked Tuesday about Courtner finding Pennell suffering from broken legs, dehydration and fear she would not be found.
Congrats to all these folks for staying on the right side of the grass, and many thanks to all the people involved in their search and rescues.
UPDATE:
My own survival story doesn't have near as happy an ending. I died a thousand deaths watching my university's production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." It was Maggie's screeching. Her voice pierced my spine multiple times and I had to crawl along on my belly from the performing arts center propelled by chin strength alone.
I still suffer flashbacks.
She gave an excellent presentation and much of what she said resonated with me. Both me and my husband are liking the McCain/Palin ticket and no doubt there are many other Democrats like us who are feeling the same way.
Also Obama needs to see about getting his trousers taken in because Palin just handed him his nuts:
Duane's playing transcends space and time; fringed leather does not.
Wail on, Skydog!
(Via BigV.)
