Carol Paul hospitalized for 3rd surgery, is in intensive care.

The AP reported this tonight.  As I'm an incurable night owl, I saw this when I went to check my email.

This week, I'm on vacation.  It's odd; I feel like I'm cheating my employer, a mindset I'm fighting to kill.  I'm not cheating my employer out of anything.  My God, many Americans would kill to get even a week off work with pay--this is only the first week out of three I've earned.

Yesterday, Karl Rove was supposed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, and didn't.

In fact, Karl Rove is apparently on "a long scheduled foreign trip."

Women soldiers in the Iraqi-Afghanistan theaters have mostly been ignored, save when they can be trotted out for the cameras like Pfc. Jessica Lynch.  Used by the armed forces in greater numbers, women soldiers are not only serving in ways their predecessors never got to.  One in three women who join the military will be raped or sexually assaulted by men in the military.  Of the 94 women who have died in Iraqi or in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 36 died from "non-combat related injuries."

One of these was Pfc. LaVena Johnson.

I supported John Edwards when his candidacy began.  And when he announced he would no longer run, I felt as though someone had ripped my heart out.  I think I mourned as if he'd been a friend or family member.  (Okay, make that a friend.  You all know too much about how I feel towards family.)

I had reservations about Barack Obama.  He's an elegant, eloquent man of great intelligence.  He has had an amazing political career at a young age.  And he has solid principles and goals.  However, for a while I considered him a better-spoken, smarter version of Shrub--all talk and no action.  Too glib.  Too charming.

Barack Obama has, however, shown a toughness under that charm.

He has also won the delegates he needs to become the Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States.

Coming to DKos lately is a little like walking into a family reunion an hour after your uncles and cousins have broken out the Pabst, and your aunts and grandmother have had just about fucking enough of each other before they've finished using sharp utensils.  There's always the core of the family's main contention, which usually is no more than I hate your guts and wish you'd get crushed by an exploding jetliner.  But throw in food, alcohol, paring knives, and a heap of crockery ready to be shattered and used on vulnerable flesh, and you have all the ingredients for a bloody, knock-down, drag-out brawl that threatens to bring ten patrol cars, three fire trucks, and at least four ambulances before it's time for "American Idol."

Am I right?

So, because everybody and their family trees have vented about Obama, Hillary, McCain, Barr, and whatever third-party idealist is currently swinging over our heads, I am going to take my turn and do the same.

I am going to vent about venting.

I wrote a diary some time ago, titled, "On Why I No Longer Discuss Politics At Home."  I won't link to it here.  But I did talk to my brother and mother this past weekend about that disagreement.  And they gave me their reasons why they supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.  I almost posted about it a couple of times, and then I thought, God, no, why do that?  It'll sound like an excuse.

And then Hillary Clinton, from some Lovecraftian part of her limbic mind, brought up one of 20th Century America's worst moments ever--the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

And I couldn't keep quiet about this any longer.

Picture, if you will, a family dinner.  Mother's Day Dinner, to be precise.  We're having fettucine with a choice of alfredo or pomodoro sauces, sauteed chicken or sweet sausage, salad, various dressings, bread, and butter.  The wine has been poured.  The flowers have been set on the table.  The gifts and cards have been given.  And we're devouring the food because it's delicious, and because dessert is gelato.

(God, I love being part of an Italian-American family.)

I love horses.

I get it honestly.  My mother has loved horses all her life.  When my grandfather won his farm in a dice game, one of the things that he got with it was a pony named Star.  That pony was Mom's best friend until she ran away from home at 16.

As I grew up, Mom gave me books about horses to educate me.  When I turned six, the book was "Profiles in Courage," a compilation of stories about real horses and dogs who'd performed acts of bravery.  At ten, I received, "King of the Wind," the story of the Godolphin Arabian, and one of my favorites still.  That was followed by, "Black Beauty" and "The Black Stallion," and if you really want me to cry, you'll watch the movie of "Black Beauty" with me from start to finish.

So why do I watch horse racing?

I pretty much live from paycheck to paycheck.  It's a way of life I've followed ever since I entered the workforce in 1992.  I'd lost two job offers due to the '91 recession, and clung to the part-time job that had helped me pay for a lot of college costs.  When I look back on those days, I don't see happy, carefree, twenty-something cuteness; I see the grim hell of wondering if I'd be able to pay the electric bill or buy something other than tuna fish and peanut butter for the month.  I see getting my phone cut off for months at a time.  I see driving a car with brakes so bad I had to literally hold on to the steering wheel to keep it from drifting right off onto the sidewalk.

Those are the days you laugh at, they say.

I wonder what these days are supposed to be.

Merrill Lynch was on the hot seat a few weeks back--remember when Bear Stearns officially bit it?  Wall Street observers pegged Merrill Lynch as the next big name to go down.  The firm astonished the Street when it posted a loss that wasn't quite as big as feared.

I'm a "friend" of sorts of Poppy Z. Brite--that is, I read her blog on LiveJournal and occasionally comment on the fan journals.  I've been a reader since 2004, but truly got caught up in her life after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levees destroyed much of New Orleans in 2005.

Poppy's turned her considerable writing skills to defending New Orleans.  She's chronicled her and her husband's struggles to get their lives back on track after "Heckuva Job" Brownie and FEMA finished ruining what the floodwaters didn't finish off.  Anyone who's read her work can tell you that her love for New Orleans and its culture is as deep and honest as any you'll find.

Recently, she posted this on her blog:

This may seem opportunistic, or an attempt to jump on a bandwagon.  But the truth is, I've been moved by other diaries here, and I feel the right thing for me to do is, basically, to offer this to all who support Hillary Clinton on DKos.

I read Pam Spaulding's blog, Pam's House Blend, on a daily basis, just as I do DailyKos.  I'm bisexual; the issues that concern the GLBT community are my issues.  I've lost friends to AIDS, watched other friends lose their children in custody battles because they were lesbian, and watched in disbelief as hordes of people seek to assert that a person is unfit to raise a child or marry--or worse, is on a par with someone who sodomizes animals!--because they are gay or bisexual.

And Pam's a damn good writer, too.

Recently, she commented on Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's statement on Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race.  I was struck by the fact that Rice actually made such a statement.  So was Pam.  And Pam made a grim prediction.

I wonder about the men and women who loved the soldiers killed in today's suicide attack in Baghdad.

I think about their parents and want to cry.  I've seen the face of men and women who've lost their children; there's a dazed emptiness after the initial agony of loss in their eyes.  All their hopes for their child are dust; all their fears have come true in an endless, waking nightmare.

But I must admit, I wonder most about the ones who loved those soldiers, who hoped to make a life with them, and are now looking into the abyss of where their future used to be.

I'm at home, and while home does not quite look like a bomb went off, it's still chaos.  My mother, who had her flu shot last October, has caught this latest strain, and is now taking bed rest, Guaifenex, hot tea, and Hall's cough drops.  What was just the flu last Saturday is now a full-blown assault on her body, complete with chest congestion, vomiting spells, fever, and a complete lack of appetite.

Oh, good God.  People, you need to seriously get lives and brains if you think your collective hissy fit is worthwhile or having any effect.

I read Talking Points Memo like a fiend; it's one of the most informative political sites out there.

Today, TMP covers what's going on with the Canadian envoy who leaked the bit of NAFTA misinformation to the news.