The simple straight-talking truth is that blood 'n' guts McCain doesn't support the troops. He supports the brass.

It may be hard for a third-generation officer to make that distinction. The troops, however, will be able to figure it out.

At the end of April, the Commercial Appeal ran an important report about guns in the Memphis public schools - 162 incidents over five years. Even with no fatalities and only a few actual woundings, this is a jaw-dropping number - close to one a week during the school year.

Six of the incidents happened at a school I once attended. One happened where my mother taught remedial reading many years ago, another where my father taught math even more years ago. Three guns were found at the high school that I could see from the dining room of the first house I really remember.

I have to wonder how many guns are not being found. Metal detectors only managed to find eight of the guns. Tips led to most of the confiscations. Many of the violating kids started as victims. How many gang members are too intimidating for anyone to rat on? How many of them carry a gun every day without the school system finding out?

The people who think the public schools should indoctrinate children in whatever the local majority believes about God (as long as it's Christian, of course), may think that allowing public schools to teach about the Bible is a huge victory. You'll find some of them in the comments at the link. They should read the story again.

Unsigned editorials are seldom useful, but this one from the Boston Globe is an exception. It's really a news analysis and should have run on the front page, but still, it contains a strong fact basis that everyone should be aware of.

In the run-up to the war, President Bush's top economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, said it might cost as much as $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the actual amount would be just $50 billion to $60 billion, calling Lindsey's projection "baloney," much as Rumsfeld had belittled General Eric Shinseki's estimate that it would take several hundred thousand US troops to fight the war successfully.

Both Lindsey and Rumsfeld were far from the mark. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University's Linda Bilmes have just published "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict," and they consider that figure a conservative estimate.

$3 trillion! It's a debt that our grandchildren will find hard to pay off.

No branch of government is clean in Louisiana. But don't sneer at the Cajuns for Edwin Edwards and Huey Long and now John Weimer - the federal gummint is corrupt, too, by money and by power.

Judge Robert Nader, dissenting, could barely contain his disbelief, saying the initial decision was infected by “approximately $1 million in contributions from a very financially interested individual” to Judge Batchelder, a Republican, and to the local Republican Party.

Make no mistake about this, though, both parties are to blame.

But any state where judges raise campaign cash to run for office is more subject to this obvious conflict of interest.

I'm so white it would be a relief to find some ancestry from outside northern Europe. I'm a walking collection of recessive pigmentation traits. If I sit in the sun unprotected for a few seconds, I can get enough vitamin D for the whole day.

I'm a heterosexual man, fond of pretty women and sports, often at the same time. At age eight, I already knew I wanted to be a scientist (didn't happen, by the way), but a first career as that age's Tom Brady definitely appealed to me even then.

My parents taught me Protestant Christianity. It didn't take in the end, but they gave me what all parents at the time thought they should give.

I grew up in the South, Tennessee to be exact, a Democrat by birth, inheritor to that complicated and often sullied legacy.

In short, by demographics, I was the natural target of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy to move Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, racism, regionalism, and conservativism intact.

How did the Republicans miss me?

In short, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

USA number 1!

Keep yelling that loud enough, and it might cover the truth.

In pretending to be a reporter (though not pretending to be unbiased), I've described the way John Edwards has outlined the problems facing the middle class and his proposals for helping improve their (our) job prospects. Should I say that this is the last in a series and hope for a Pulitzer? Sure, when the ice cap melts, uh, when the ice cap refreezes, ok, when hell freezes over.

What does JE say about his other goals after good jobs?

John Edwards has done a pretty good job identifying the problems facing the middle class. But what does he propose to do about them? The mainstream media is all over that question, hot damn!

Oh, right. They're saving their precious typing power for haircuts or Hillary sobbing like a toddler (they wish!) or Obama's middle name (or maybe his ears). Yup, they know substance when they see it. Maureen Dowd, now there's substance. Something's gotta make her voice that squeaky.

Or Chris Matthews, there's a guy who's insightful. In sight, full ... of Grey Goose, anyway.

Hey, if all the Heathers want to do is act like they're still trying to crash the cool clique in high school, I can give some sass back to 'em.

OK, my man John Edwards finished third in New Hampshire.

We all know that Edwards talks about the middle class and that the other Democrats have picked up the mantra. But what does Edwards actually say in the stump speech he delivers every day? What are his priorities? What would he try to do?

Conservative blatherers are obviously missing some part of their brains related to consistency, and modern technology can tell us where the anti-hyprocrisy center is or ought to be.

If Bill Clinton allowed sale of this much technology to China, the wingnuts would be calling for him to be drawn and quartered for high treason, while flecking so much spittle all over studios nationwide that hospitals would be stockpiling rabies vaccine.

Originally posted here.

What I eat on days like today says loud and clear that I came from rural and small town roots in West Tennessee even before growing up in Memphis and Knoxville. Today, I'm eating black-eyed peas, and damn they taste good. How about y'all and you-uns?

Come visit at my home.