1. I had a similar experience roughly thirty years ago; it started out a little differently, because I got run out of my home town as a teenager (long story), but once I stopped shaking the next year of wandering was, on most days, a big adventure, not least because of the people I met and esp the ones who helped me out. There were also people who made me interesting ... um, offers ... but no one who couldn't take 'no' for an answer, and also that guy who tried to strangle me for sleeping in his spot under the bridge, but they were, for the most part, just more characters (or so it seems now, anyway).

The other great way I met people I wouldn't have met otherwise was in the army. Aside from the regional variation (all those yankees! city folk! surfers from california! yikes!), the in-your-face lessons about race definitely made an impression. Like, in basic training, having my (black) drill sergeants insist to us fighting trainees that they would not allow any of 'that racial bullshit to ruin my army'. Or having some of the best leaders you've ever seen (still) be people from groups you might not even have known, until you acknowledge your surprise, that you had expected less from.

I hear Noonan and Williams and others make their pale paens to 'normal people' and bounce them off those experiences, and I have to laugh. And then I frown, because I realize how thin is the background of people we accept as 'experts', who 'know a lot' and 'have a lot of information' ...

BTW - I don't mean to say the military is the only way someone can have an experience like this, but we'd be a better people if there were more opportunities, similarly structures. This year is the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); maybe a good time to have that aborted discussion about the merits of national service?

Peggy Noonan makes Maureen Dowd look better. Not "good". Just "better". (Same for Brooks)

Cheers,

Noonan in her flailing about does manage to hit some targets. But of course she is too afraid to offend the men who pay her salary. While suggesting that ordinary people are fed up at being treated like criminals in airport terminals, she also had to rave about the 49ers in the gold rush and so on. That is, just plain folks continue to be just and plain, but great men are great and have made our country the great country that it is. I believe that is her train of thought.

Ms.Edwards is a wonderful commentator. I guess we really did miss a bet not getting behind Mr. Edwards for President.

America needs more Canadians to cross the borders illegally? Then we can have help with honest labels. Who is idiotic. Canadians need to be recruited to help Americana. The GOPS fill out the crossword puzzles using random numbers. Wow. 'um So so insecure, bad fakers.

A monkey who is terribly insecure?

A politico who is an embarrassment?

'um had careers in a GOP conglomerate.

It was a rip-off con game until a honest U.T..

Now 'um stand all naked.

Dust-off the MSM craps.

They gamble. Losers.

Glenn, say, sthu! ok.

I can see that you folks still don't get it about "character". Let me try to spell it out in terms you might relate to.

Sh**ter, you have nothing to say to us about "character" that's worth our listening to. You're a dishonest, dissembling, annoying eedjit.

Cheers,

There just isn't a moment to squeeze substance into the evening newscasts--Miley Cyrus posed with a sheet over her breasts!

A top story on ALL network broadcasts.

"Perhaps someone can design a clock along the lines the one Fox News used to taunt Obama into appearing on their GOP network, or which the Heritage Foundation hilariously used during the debate over the Protect America Act to count down the time we had left before the Terrorists could use the PAA's expiration to slaughter us all,"

You know that clock is still up? 72 days and counting. I guess they don't realize that the longer that clock is up, the weaker their argument is.

"I'm a regular Joe-Six-Pack NASCAR fan! Sure, I make millions of dollars and live on the Upper East Side, but I know what is best for you, fellow NASCAR dads!" GAWD.

Oy. GWB is the foremost example of this syndrome, that silver-spoonfed, private school-attending, Ivy League legacy frat-joinin', inherited business-ruinin', fake ranch-buying, draft-dodging, fake accent adoptin' East Coast pansy-ass all-hat no-cattle FAKE.

I'd like to "have a beer with him" so I could tell him so to his face.

When did Obama start running for president?

Kudos to the Politico's Ben Smith for apparently piecing together an interesting puzzle and reporting that Barack Obama may have begun to make early moves toward a presidential campaign as early as 2004, before he was elected to the Senate.

Smith noticed this sentence from a story that ran in the Wall Street Journal last week: "By the end of the [2004] campaign, his aides were sending workers into Iowa, the first Presidential caucus state, to begin developing contacts among Democrats there, according to Al Kindle, an Obama campaign aide at the time."

From there, Smith fleshed out the story, talking to Kindle, who "said there had been outreach to Iowa and, he said, Wisconsin, with a possible presidential campaign among the aims." Smith also quotes Kindle as saying, "As he was planning his prominence in the Senate, there was a need to begin to extend those coattails, so neighborhing states were critical -- and if in the future [the presidency] was ever going to be a possibility, those states were going to be critical."

Obama's chief strategist told Smith, however, that "there was not one iota of thought or discussion about 2008 in 2004. Not at all." Dan Shomon, an Obama aide at the time, also told Smith he didn't recall any presidential planning in 2004.

Smith does note, however, that Obama's first stop in Iowa was "notably early: October 4, 2004 in Davenport, right across the river from Illinois, where he was still just a state senator."

A month after that appearance in Iowa, and after his election to the Senate, Obama told reporters, "If I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, without having served a day in the Senate. Now, there are some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I'm not one of those people."

In Obama's defense, if he was indeed not telling the whole truth at the time he made that statement, he wouldn't be any different from any other politician. "I'm not running" is, at this point, practically code for, "You bet your ass I'm running, would you like a campaign bumper sticker?"