“It’s opinion journalism masquerading as news.” — Anita Dunn in reference to Fox News

Anita Dunn is a critical voice of the Obama components. I read this from a Time magazine as I leaned over the coffee table and enjoyed a bowl of soup at the Coffee House on Main. Usually I just drink their coffee but the other day I was told the soup was really good, and it was.

It was also comforting to read Ms Dunn’s assessment of Fox News. I have watched moments of Fox News, but they are more than I can bare. On the way out I stopped at the table where another coffee house dweller was reading the Star Tribune. She’s there every day during the week, and we had a brief discussion on how ugly the world of politics is getting. But at the same time respecting Obama’s efforts, and he is part of a whole not the whole part.

I grow frustrated with the yakking Obama faces about not being decisive in Afghanistan where he was recently burned in effigy for “desecrating the Qur’an.”

People forget that not to decide is to decide. Who can decide, with any certainty what direction to go in.

I don’t think our portion of the world was downsized like it was until George W. declared: “You’re either for us or against us” advised, I suspect, by Dick “dithering” Cheney.

And now Iraq is coming back in the thick of it where “at least 147” were recently killed. What was once relatively calm now pits the Shiites against the Sunnis. Initially there were no claims of responsibility “but now massive car bombs have been the hallmark of Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow the country’s Shiite-dominated government.

Closer to home, a school board election is coming up with three incumbents and three new faces. One of the incumbents began some time ago when I first ran and lost in spite of my card that read, “A vote for me is a vote for you, yabba dabba dabba do. That was borrowed as I’ve mentioned before from “Love 22” who was running for President in the late 70’s. He passed out his own “Love 22” dollars with his picture on the front of the dollar bill in place of George Washington’s. We hung out together for a bit on Maui.

I believe he got into trouble in one of the southern states with his “Love 22” dollar bill. There was also something unusual about the other side too.

Going back to Cheney for a moment, I read the other day how he was somehow able to get out of going to Vietnam yet further on down the way becomes Mr. Hawk. And then there is McCain saying “Every day we delay will be a delay in this strategy succeeding.”

I did attend a chili dinner Saturday at the DFL Headquarters where multiple chili’s, desserts, cookies and coffee was served. One of the speakers was a father of one the candidates running for governor. The father was born and raised near Blooming Prairie and then moved to Austin.

His son, the candidate was somewhere else.

Then RT Rybeck spoke next, the current mayor of Minneapolis and just as important he is half Czech. What appeals to me what he has accomplished in Minneapolis and he is not a legislator.

One of the largest employee unions, AFSCME has endorsed Mark Dayton for governor. Mark spent $12 million of his own money on his 2000 Senate Campaign.

I remember asking him, when he spoke at a campaign rally at the Holiday Inn, what George W. had for books in his office and he thought back and said he didn’t see any. I think some were added later.

Another DFL spokesperson spoke on behalf of Matt Entenza

This is my last week with Emerson and then he goes back to the Unitarian Church in Rochester. I will wind down with one of Emerson’s personal favorites that reads: Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,/Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,/And marching single in an endless file,/Bring diadems and fagots in their hands,/ To each they offer gifts after his will,/ Bread, kingdoms, stars and sky that holds them all./I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,/ Forgot my morning wishes, hastily/Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day/Turned and departed silent. I, too late,/Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Uncle Bill is back in town.