Is anyone going to blog about the Fair Share Health Care hearings next week in Trenton?

(Cross-posted from Blanton’s and Ashton’s)

Let me tell you about my mother-in-law and father-in-law.

My mother-in-law is in her seventies now. She is a terrific woman with a wonderful character and a mind that is as sharp as a razor. She was an incredibly hard worker and, even now, it is hard to imagine her as less than a force of nature. She used to make great babkas (but never less than five or six at at time because her recipe wouldn’t work if she cut it down), is a terrific pinochle player, and loves to laugh as much as she loves to do anything. When she was a young woman and fresh out of high school she joined the Navy so she could see the world. She saw Kansas as a Navy air traffic controller, and has more than once mentioned that she was the person who taught Allen Shephard how to land an airplane.

Mr father-in-law, also in his seventies, is just as terrific. I cannot tell you how many people have told me that my father-in-law “introduced me to my wife”…and they weren’t angry at him, either. He loves to talk. If you need a joke, he’s your go-to guy. He has a huge heart and he’s generous beyond sensibility. At the age of 68 he took up golf and he plays every chance he can get. The joke is that he’ll try out for the Senior Tour when he’s old enough.

Example is leadership.
Albert Schweitzer

Christopher Dickey wrote an article on the Middle East reaction to the SOTU. It’s titled Battleground of Ideas. I read it yesterday, but it’s stuck with me, so I figured I’d share it. Following are some exerpts that struck me, but you should read the whole thing.

So only a few people in the region listened to President George W. Bush
deliver his State of the Union address last night. But they know the message,
now, almost as well as they know the call of the muezzin; it has been repeated
so often, so relentlessly, and so mechanically. The difference is that many
believe the muezzin, and few believe Bush.

We shouldn’t be surprised. The State of the Union, perhaps more than any other speech the president makes, defines the way the administration wants to see its world. But its narrative is so foreign to the thinking of most people in the Arab world that they’ve come to hear Bush’s language as a kind of code: “liberation” means occupation, “freedom” means war, “victory” means victims, “reconstruction” means chaos, “democracy” means following directives from Washington. Bush, whatever his intentions—and I think he should be credited with some good ones—has come to be seen as a caricature, talking about strength and determination, projecting an image of stubbornness and confusion.

More below the fold.