June 12: From Barack to Baca

National:

*Starting with a Chicago Tribune article about Barack Obama's calculated path to the presidency, which was originally supposed to be on the relatively slow path - similar, I think, to the kind of experience John F. Kennedy picked up in Congress before he ran for president in 1960. But with the opposition to the war in Iraq climbing, Obama decided to accelerate the process - too fast, in my opinion. When I heard him speak during the 2004 Democratic convention, I figured he'd run for president one day, but this is much too soon. Mr. Obama, you're no Jack Kennedy - at least not yet.

*Just an observation on presidential polls, which seem to veer from one day to the other, with Hillary Clinton 10 points ahead of Obama on Tuesday and 3 points ahead on Wednesday, or Rudolph Guiliani way ahead on Thursday and tied with Fred Thompson on Friday (or today, as one poll says): I think the polls have become their own force of nature, seemingly motivated by forces that have nothing to do with the problems this country has or how to solve them. They've become like junk food - empty calories that do a lot of damage to what should be a healthy entity - the electoral process.

*The Christian Science Monitor had an article today by Mark Trumbull about the struggle by teenagers to find summer jobs:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0612/p01s03-usec.html

The article came closest to the mark, I think, in mentioning that teens are competing with others in the workforce.....But I don't agree that there's been any "solid economic growth," over the last few years, at least not for the middle and lower classes. Look at the thousands of workers, both blue-collar and white-collar, who have been laid off over the last few years. Many of them get jobs with twice as many duties and a lower salary than what they left......

Florida:

*Behold the ghosts of Florida Legislatures past in the promises by the Republican leaders that they'll restore the money their property tax proposal threatens to cut from the education budget.....Behold and beware. They sound just like the Democratic leaders of the late 1980s who said that Florida Lottery money would pay for education "enhancements." All it enhanced after that was the main education budget, which got cut. Florida needs property tax relief, but not like this....

Sports:

*Hal Bodley of USA Today writes a good column about Gary Sheffield's statements, and why Sheffield is mostly wrong:

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/sports/20070612/hal12.art.htm

It's good to know that, in fact, Major League Baseball is planning various domestic baseball academies, which will help matters all around. The game also faces a serious marketing problem, not only losing athletes to the convenience and bigger bucks of basketball, but also with the image problems some of its own (Barry Bonds) face. And Bodley brings up a good point with colleges not providing enough baseball scholarships to African Americans.

*Speaking of colleges, a boo-hiss to the NCAA for throwing out Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett for blogging. The organization said it was protecting against unsanctioned live coverage of the game. Bennett has been covering the Louisville Cardinals' run to the College World Series. Here's a link to his blog:

http://www.courier-journal.com/blogs/bennett/blog.html

By the way, in a USA Today article about this, Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center, points out that someone can just as easily write a blog while watching the game on ESPN. Get a clue, NCAA.....And get off Bennett's back.

Entertainment

*There's an effort underway for a voter recall Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who, you may recall, handed Paris Hilton her "Get Out of Jail Free" card last week. Since Baca is an elected official, that's the only way they can get rid of him for his celebrity glad-handing and general incompetence. Recalls are difficult, but this is California, where they managed to recall a governor.

*Finally, a word about series finales: I've never seen "The Sopranos," so I didn't see the now-infamous last few seconds of the last episode. But it sounds similar to the end of the soap opera "Dallas," where Bobby Ewing hears a shot go off in J.R.'s room, walks in and says, "My God," and the camera fades to black.
With "The Sopranos," I was kind of hoping that after the fade to black, Bob Hartley would wake up and tell his wife, Emily, that he'd had another strange dream (A reference to the classic end of "Newhart," which had a touch of "The Bob Newhart Show" in it).