October 9, 2008
For Severely Injured Veterans, How Much Can a House Do?
By LESLIE KAUFMAN, Home Section, The New York Times
ROSS TOWNSHIP, Pa.

SIX weeks after James Fair, a 22-year-old combat engineer, began serving in Iraq in the fall of 2003, he detonated a homemade bomb while walking away from a barbed wire fence he had just erected near Falluja. He lost his eyesight and both arms below the elbows, and sustained brain injuries.

Click here to continue reading.

Politcal humor and wisdom: If the candidate were a TRAIN

Source: The Bilerico Project

The Bilerico Project is the web's largest LGBTQ group blog with 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer contributors. The Project is the coming out and together of LGBTQ activists, politicos, journalists, novelists, advice columnists, and video bloggers.

You'll find news and opinion on the Project from 50 different perspectives and backgrounds. You'll agree with some, disagree with others, and be somewhere in the middle with most. But wherever we're all coming from, we can bridge the geographic divides and have creative and productive conversations about issues important to the LGBT community.

Since the Bilerico Project re-launched on July 9th, 2007, we've been nominated for the 2007 Weblog Best LGBT Award and the 2007 Gay Verve Awards for Best Brand New blog and Best Political or News blog. We were also named one of Advocate magazine's top ten blogs of 2007. Don't just take their word for it, here are just a few of the things people are saying about the Bilerico Project:

"Think of The Bilerico Project as the love child created if The Huffington Post and our infamous "gay agenda" were to mate...."

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama [Frank Rich]

The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.

Sunday, October 12, 2008
By FRANK RICH, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Click here to continue reading.

Charlie's Diary: Joining the "Golden Dragons"

In September 2008, I walked two minutes from the condo down to the Willamette River and joined the local Dragon Boat paddling team. Over the last few weeks I have practiced with the team usually two mornings a week (they go out at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, regardless of the weather). I now have my own vest and this week bought my own wooden paddle which a fellow paddler Mert "finished" for me complete with my initials "CJ" on the handle.

Now, it's up to me to build up my stamina, and get to practice! It is GREAT fun. cwj


Golden Dragons— Portland, Oregon

We're a senior, 50 and older, group of active men and women who paddle dragon boats. Many of us enter dragon boat races during the summer and fall such as at the Rose Festival, San Francisco, and Victoria B.C., sometimes against other senior teams, sometimes against teams of younger paddlers.

We paddle for fun, fitness and friendship all year long on the Willamette River.

Click here to go to the website for the Golden Dragons.

Politcal humor and wisdom: A John McCain secret

Funny You Tube video about John McCain.

Click here to see the McCain video.

FactCHECK: ""He Lied" About Bill Ayers?"

"He Lied" About Bill Ayers?
October 10, 2008
McCain cranks out some false and misleading attacks on Obama's connection to a 1960s radical.
Summary

In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false.

In a Web ad and in repeated attacks from the stump, McCain describes the two as associates, and Palin claims they "pal around" together. But so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the street more than a year ago.

McCain says in an Internet ad that the two "ran a radical 'education' foundation" in Chicago. But the supposedly "radical" group was supported by a Republican governor and included on its board prominent local civic leaders, including one former Nixon administration official who has given $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. Education Week says the group's work "reflected mainstream thinking" among school reformers. The group was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, started by a $49 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which was established by the publisher Walter Annenberg, a prominent Republican whose widow, Leonore, is a contributor to the McCain campaign.

(FactCheck.org, which is nonpartisan, also receives funding from the Annenberg Foundation. But we are in no way connected to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which finished its work long before we came into being in late 2003.)

Charlie's Diary: More Kahlil (October 10, 2008)

More pix of our grandson Kahlil, now six months old. He was born on March 29th, 2008 in Flagstaff, Arizona:

"Kahlil is starting to get crawling down but so far he has only managed to learn how to crawl backwards. It is very entertaining for us to watch but for lil Kahlil not so much. He gets frustrated. When he gets into crawling position he pushes back with his hands instead of propelling himself forward with his legs. He does not understand why he gets further away from his toys and gets angry. It is cute."

Documentary film "Call + Response" [Slavery]

Call + Response – A New Documentary Film on Slavery

My old childhood friend Debbie Ward sent out this note today about her daughter Vicky:

" Dear Friends, Family and Your Friends, As you may know, Vicki has set aside med school for a year to promote the new documentary film "Call + Response" which is opening tomorrow around the country. It is a powerful film addressing the tragedy and pain of HUMAN SLAVERY. Human trafficking currently exists on a huge scale and is a very big business. In fact, in 2007, the slave traders made more money than Nike, Google and Starbucks combined. There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide and the atrocities are not only happening in other parts of the world. Tens of thousands of people are trafficked into the United States each year. There are not words to describe how you feel after watching this film. YOU can help to solve this horrific problem. A good beginning is to see this film!"

Click here to see the movie's trailer and see where it's being shown. The movie is premiering in seventeen American cities today October 9th, 2008.

The Obama Surge: Will It Last?

Senator Barack Obama speaks to the audience members at a town hall meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo: Getty)

Thursday 09 October 2008
by: Joe Klein, TIME Magazine

If Barack Obama is elected president of the United States on Nov. 4 - a prospect that is beginning to seem likely now - it may turn out that he closed the deal with a simple answer to a not-so-simple question posed by Tom Brokaw in the second presidential debate: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right or a responsibility?" This is familiar territory for Democrats. The question was framed many years ago by Senator Ted Kennedy, who must have been smiling up on Cape Cod. "Health care should be a right, not a privilege," Kennedy would say, so often that it became a cliché. But it was unfamiliar turf for John McCain, who responded by wandering through his answer - halfheartedly, it seemed - saying it would be his responsibility as President to provide affordable health care to those who needed it.

Click here to continue reading.

Cook County Sheriff: I Will Stop Enforcing Evictions

Approximately 70 foreclosure orders that will not be served are displayed at the Cook County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday. (Photo: Chicago Tribune / Jose M. Osorio)

Thursday 09 October 2008
by: Azam Ahmed and Ofelia Casillas, The Chicago Tribune
Legal, real estate experts wonder how Dart's promise will play out.

As the nationwide mortgage crisis puts the squeeze on homeowners, the Cook County sheriff's office is on pace to evict more people than ever from foreclosed homes.

At least it was until Wednesday, when Sheriff Tom Dart announced he wouldn't do it anymore.
Click here to continue reading.

Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths

October 4, 2008
By SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times

[Blogger: This was the front-page NYTimes story that seemed to bring the Bill Ayers story back into the limelight. Of course, if you read it, it says there's really no connection.]

CHICAGO — At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.

Click here to continue reading.

Photo of the late philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg, Publisher, former Ambassador to UK, and the guy who gave $500 million dollars to advance educaiton reform in the US...

Clearing the Ayers

October 9, 2008
By GAIL COLLINS, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times

John McCain traces the rancorous tone of the presidential campaign back to last summer when he invited Barack Obama to have lots and lots of town-hall meetings with him all around the country. When Obama turned him down, obviously McCain had no choice but to start depicting his opponent as a terrorist-loving advocate of talking dirty to kindergarteners.

Click here to continue reading.

McCain and Obama on Healthcare

CBS News with Katie Couric
Thursday, October 9th, 2008

It's the barbeque that draws customers to The Hickory House just outside Columbus, Ohio.

"Award-winning ribs, that's for sure!" said Randy Wolfe, the restaurant's general manager.

But the employees keep coming back, too. The staff has worked here an average of 15 years.

"Keeping these employees, keeping this consistency is important ... and health insurance is part of that?" Doane asked.

"Yes," Wolfe said.

Click here to continue reading, and to watch the telecast video.

by Henrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
September 15, 2008

A couple of weeks before August 28th—the night that Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President, in a Denver football stadium—Stuart Shepard, the digital-media director of the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family, one of the most powerful organizations on the religious right, posed a question to his Internet viewers. “Would it be wrong,” he asked, “to pray for rain?”

Click here to continue reading.

Favorite Restaurants in Portland: Le Pigeon

We've tried this restaurant twice and loved it both times. It received high praise when it was one of four local places featured in The New York Times. cj

Click here to watch a video from the chef-owner and read about his thoughts on preparing food.

Address: 738 E. Burnside St., Portland, OR 97214
Phone: 503-546-8796
Hours: Dinner nightly
Website: http://www.lepigeon.com
Price: starters around $9-$18, entrees $16-$27
Other: reservations recommended

Debating the debates

Oct 9th 2008
From The Economist print edition
They are unpredictable and often unfair. But there is no better test of a candidate

At first, Richard Nixon vowed he would not debate John Kennedy. He had little to gain from such an encounter, and much to lose. As vice-president, he was better known than the young senator and universally considered a heavyweight. But in the end his fear of appearing fearful overcame his caution. It was a mistake. The camera is unkind to men who look shifty.

Click here to continue reading.

A Yom Kippur Letter to Joe Lieberman's Rabbi

by Jesse Kornbluth, October 8, 2008
The Huffington Post

Yom Kippur, 5769
New York City

Rabbi Daniel Cohen
Congregation Agudath Sholom
Stamford, Connecticut

Rabbi Barry Freundel
Kesher Israel Congregation
Washington, D.C.

Dear Rabbis Cohen and Freundel,

Please forgive the presumption -- not only don't we know one another, I'm the kind of "cultural Jew" who makes even Reform Rabbis weep.

Click here to continue reading.

McCain sinking further...

Watch this new ad from McShame....

Click here to see this new attack ad from McShame.

thanks to my partner for sending this to me...

Palin’s Kind of Patriotism

October 8, 2008
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

Click here to continue reading.

Nine Years Together with an update October 10th

Takashi and I celebrate nine (count 'em, 9!) years together on 10/10. Yup, Friday, October 10th, 2008. I take such events FAR MORE seriously than he....cards, dinners, etc. (I'd bet you five bucks he couldn't tell you the date!)
[Blogger: Update: 10/10/2008. He "remembered" and this morning I received a sweet Happy Anniversary card. And so I put $5 on his desk.]

Anyway, Gorgeous. Happy Anniversary! cwj

two African-American governors have become leading voices for gay rights...

Minority Report
By reframing marriage equality as a civil right, two African-American governors have become leading voices for gay rights.
By Rob McCollum
From The Advocate September 23, 2008

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick and New York governor David Paterson have more than a few things in common. Of course, there’s the obvious: Both men are handsome, charismatic, and in their 50s. Both are the first black governors of their states—and only the second and third nationwide since Reconstruction. But less obvious -- at least to the average voter -- is their similar dedication to pro-gay politics.

Click here to continue reading.

Retirement Savings Lose $2 Trillion in 15 Months

As the stock market continues to drop, $2 trillion of Americans' retirement savings has been lost.

Wednesday 08 October 2008
by: Nancy Trejos, The Washington Post

The stock market's prolonged tumble has wiped out about $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings in the past 15 months, a blow that could force workers to stay on the job longer than planned, rein in spending and possibly further stall an economy reliant on consumer dollars, Congress's top budget analyst said yesterday.

Click here to continue reading.

Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain

October 5, 2008
By FRANK RICH, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times

SARAH PALIN’S post-Couric/Fey comeback at last week’s vice presidential debate was a turning point in the campaign. But if she “won,” as her indulgent partisans and press claque would have it, the loser was not Joe Biden. It was her running mate. With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

Click here to continue reading.

Donna Brazile on Barack Obama and race

On Saturday, October 4th, Jeffrey Toobin hosted a panel discussion with Donna Brazile, Alex Castellanos, Edward J. Rollins, and Joe Trippi. As reported earlier, Brazile stole the show. Watch Brazile’s impassioned closing remarks below.

Click here to watch the Donna Brazile video.

Her bio from Wikipedia: Donna Brazile (born December 15, 1959) is an American author, educator, and political activist and strategist affiliated with the Democratic Party. She was the first African-American to direct a major presidential campaign.

Brazile was born in Kenner, Louisiana to Lionel and Jean Brazile, the third of nine children. She became interested in politics at age nine when a local candidate for office promised to build a neighborhood playground. After graduating from LSU, Brazile worked for several advocacy groups in Washington, D.C., and was instrumental in the successful campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday.

McCain's Mudslide Continues

Robert Shrum, The Huffington Post
Posted October 7, 2008 11:36 PM (EST)

The slide continues, but these days it's a mudslide of desperation and deceit -- so blatant that McCain strategists, if you can call them that, announced they were moving to nasty because they can't compete on the issues. The candidate himself chimed in, promising to take the gloves off in the debate, urged on publicly by his running mate as she threw spitballs at every stop.Then tonight McCain was something of a paper tiger, reluctant to live down to the pre-debate promise to be the agent of slime, trying to seem presidential but coming across as largely empty on the big issues.

Click here to continue reading.

Flirting her way to victory Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse.
Michelle Goldberg guardian.co.uk
Friday October 03 2008

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

Click here to continue reading.

Ex Lehman CEO gets Heckled

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Richard S. Fuld Jr., wearing tie, is heckled by protesters as he leaves Capitol Hill in Washington after testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Monday, Oct. 6, 2008, on the collapse of Lehman Brothers

Fuld's compensation totalled close to $400 million...

Johnson’s Dream, Obama’s Speech

August 28, 2008
By ROBERT A. CARO, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times
Correction Appended

AS I watch Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention tonight, I will be remembering another speech: the one that made Martin Luther King cry. And I will be thinking: Mr. Obama’s speech — and in a way his whole candidacy — might not have been possible had that other speech not been given.

Click here to continue reading.

Sarah Palin's attack yesterday on Barack Obama's patriotism

With Sarah Palin's attack yesterday on Barack Obama's patriotism and his ties to former Weather Underground ringleader William Ayers, the McCain campaign has left little doubt about in which direction it intends to head over the final month of the campaign. Namely, they're going to drive their campaign into a ditch -- and hope they can find a way to take Obama along for the ride.

It is a sad denouement for what was one to be a high-minded campaign focused around themes of honor and reform (themes that were resuscitated briefly during the Republican Convention), possibly accompanied by McCain's taking a one-term pledge. It is also, however, Mr. McCain's strategists would seem to have concluded, their only remaining hope.

from the wonderful political website fivethirtyeight...October 6, 2008 Click here to view the five hundred thirty-eight website.

Economic Unrest Shifts Electoral Battlegrounds

October 5, 2008
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY, The New York Times

The turmoil on Wall Street and the weakening economy are changing the contours of the presidential campaign map, giving new force to Senator Barack Obama’s ambitious strategy to make incursions into Republican territory, while leading Senator John McCain to scale back his efforts to capture Democratic states.

Click here to continue reading.

Recalling La Dolce Vita in Eritrea

October 5, 2008
Journeys
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, Travel Section, The New York Times

WE were covered in soot, sitting on rock-hard benches, hot, sweaty and crawling along at maybe five miles an hour.

But we were loving every minute of it, chugging straight up a mountainside, puff by puff, in a 1938 steam train built by the Italians when Eritrea was the jewel in their African crown. Outside our windows unfurled a sun-blasted landscape untouched by modernity — stone walls, trickling waterfalls, boys tugging camels, women with beautifully braided hair and gold hoops through their noses trudging up the mountain paths. The sky was impossibly blue — it always seemed to be like that here — and from the railway tracks 7,000 feet above sea level, we could see for hundreds of miles in each direction.

Click here to continue reading.

[As a Peace Corps Volunteer in ethiopia for three years (1966-1969), I visited Eritrea three times. It was still a province then, now an independent country.]

The Uplifting Debate

By David S. Broder, The Washington Post
Sunday, October 5, 2008

ST. LOUIS -- The McCain campaign, perhaps fearful of the reviews that Sarah Palin would receive for her part in Thursday night's debate here, deployed a trio of almost-vice-presidential candidates to convince reporters that she had passed her big test. Rudy Giuliani was in one corner of the "spin" room, Joe Lieberman in another and Lindsey Graham in a third. All three are favorites of John McCain and conceivably could have wound up on his ticket, had he not been captivated by the governor of Alaska.

As it turned out, the effort was not needed. Palin did just fine on her own, and so did Joe Biden, her sparring partner and the veteran senator from Delaware. In fact, the surprise of the night was that the candidates for the No. 2 job were much livelier and more impressive on the Washington University stage than Barack Obama and McCain had been when they met at Ole Miss.

Click here to continue reading.

Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis"

Charlie --

Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama.

Click here to watch the Keating video.

In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.

But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our time.

During the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings. Overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and ultimately cost American taxpayers $124 billion.

Sound familiar?

In that crisis, John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating, played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee. The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts -- and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain.

So at noon Eastern on Monday, October 6th, we're releasing a 13-minute documentary about the scandal called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis" -- it will be available at KeatingEconomics.com, along with background information that every voter should know.

The point of the film and the web site is that John McCain still hasn't learned his lesson.

And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.

It's no wonder John McCain would rather spend the last month of this election smearing Barack's character instead of talking about the top priority issue for voters.

But if we work together, we can make sure the focus stays on the economy -- and how to fix it.

Please forward this email to everyone you know.

Thanks,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

P.S. -- The documentary will be live at noon Eastern on Monday, October 6th at Click here to watch the Keating video.

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border...

from my friend Dr. Paul Pei, in Toronto

New crisis in Canada:
From the MANITOBA HERALD, Canada (a very underground paper):

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly. Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk." Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves. "A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. "They did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the McCain administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to shoot wolves from airplanes, deny evolution, and act out drills preparing them for the Rapture. In recent days, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the '50s. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are
creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. "I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history and English majors does one country need?"

Favorite Restaurants in Portland: Thai

Kesone Thai Lao Bistro
2600 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland, OR 97232
Phone: (503) 228-5775

We tried this place tonight, and fell in love with it. We had chicken satay and Tod Mun Pla (deep-fried fishcake) - superb. Entrees were grilled beef (King of Tigers was the name) and sweet green curry (Sweet Princess). Forget the names, the point is the food was delicious. (And we use the Lotus of Siam - our Thai Mecca in Las Vegas - as our guide to what is good and bad.)

With two beers, the total bill was $39. And we had food to take home. So try it. CWJ

Charlie's Diary: More Kahlil (October 2008)

Our grandson, Kahlil Hernan Komadina (DOB March 29, 2008), is now SIX MONTHS old. His paternal grandparents Irene & Kevin visited last weekend and here are some pix.

Holding BOTH of his feet.

Irene and Kevin with KHK

KHK, grandfather Kevin and Dad Kasey

KHK playing with Kevin's goatee

Another shot of KHK holding his feet

Irene's note: "Greetings! We had a great visit and picnic with Kasey, Caroline, and Kahlil last weekend. Kasey and Caroline are wonderful parents, and Kahlil is just toooooo cute. (That's why there's so many pictures - I have a hard time editing out any of them!) Love,Irene"

US Fiscal Crisis Seems to Have Altered Political Map

Sunday, October 5, 2008
by: Anne E. Kornblut and Dan Balz, The Washington Post

Obama's path to the White House has been widening according to recent polls.
McCain's Challenge Is Underscored by Pullout From Michigan.

The faltering economy has left Sen. John McCain on the political defensive, altering the landscape in many of the most important battleground states and providing a series of avenues for Sen. Barack Obama to claim the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House in November, according to political strategists in both parties.

Click here to continue reading.