Flaunt That Holiday Hula Mr. President

As you and I spend buckets of our stockpiled money in the final dash to ring cash registers like Salvation Army beggars' bells for Christmas, please forget I'm a Catholic conservative, that President Obama' s a Democrat, and know that as un-Christian sounding and unsavory as this picture is, I'm so mad I'm shitting tinsel-trimmed, blue spruce pine cones.

Is Mr President taking the peoples' 747 (Air Force One) to Camp David (the Presidential retreat for which we pay Maryland) for Christmas, or back to be welcomed in the arms of the community he 'organized' (Chicago, Illinois)--the home state from which he was elected to Congress--to drop some Obama bucks on that devasted economy?

Naw...in order to make his Yule less cool [okay, frozen-cold] and ensure Michelle and the kids have a swell (of the ocean waves' variety) Noel, he's taking his air taxi--a 747, its crew and secret service and personal/Presidential entourage, all the way from Virginia to Hawaii and what's that gonna cost us taxpayers?

I don't wish him or anyone a lousy Christmas while the country's on its financial ass, but I'm hotter than spiced cider that he's so flagrantly flaunting it in my face and yours when suffering seems to be the commodity of the Season.

While the White House P.R. team engineers accountability for this poorly timed, festive, financial faux pas to (somehow) be hung on George Bush like a Boy Scouts' bag of mistletoe on a door frame, the 'first family' will be doin' the island booty-shake to strains of Don Ho on your nickel and mine as the Presidential poi party sways under Hawaiian skies.

He might have earned his first shred of respect from me had he taken Winnebago One to the projects and handed out hams to the needy even if it meant the wholesale slaughter of more pigs than the amount of pork in the Omnibus bill, but this latest gargantuan gaff is just our fearless leader's continued, demonstrative lack of good judgement from the same side of a brain that made the decision to hand an iPod to the Queen of England.

Downed Angel Rebound

Jim would be self-conscious to hear me describe him as a 2-legged angel with "Awww, shucks" humility and selfless energy to help and empower others, just the kind of friend one's always sought.

But Jim is unconscious, in ICU, and has been on a respirator since December 2nd.

Jim, my brother's best friend since before my birth, and who helped me through my brother's death, had just left a Louisville restaurant when a car ran a red light and, at 45mph--without any evidence of braking--stuck Jim's car in the driver's door.

His exercise classmates, his walking buddy, his fellow retired teachers, church friends, neighbors, his fishin' buddies, his golf cronies, and his life-long friends all suspect a cellphone may have been the secondary cause of carelessness that's left Jim teetering on the frail thread between this life and the next.

My grief week in Louisville was spent in daily contact with Jim, in his company on the phone and in person, with him and his family.

Our conversations included a 6S discussion, leading him to my writing and this site, and awakening a voracious appetite to express himself in this form albeit on legal pads with a pen, and with exhuberant zeal I pray he'll recover to enjoy.