Cracked Window

Not posting to my blog for two days feels a bit like neglecting my toddler. Say, not giving him breakfast or lunch. Resuming with a chorus-of-snores subject — health insurance — is almost as neglectful.

But health insurance came to mind today when I read that President-elect Barack Obama is resigning his U.S. Senate seat, effective Sunday. Does it mean he has to pay the full cost of his premiums, including the share his employer paid? That’s what my wife and I have had to do under the so-called COBRA bridge plan.

After closely following the mainstream media’s superficial coverage of the presidential campaign, I’m not surprised that much in Rolling Stone’s damning new portrayal of John McCain’s life and career isn’t widely known.

The piece feels like a hatchet job but only because the sheer volume of negative information is so shocking. I’ve read some of it elsewhere but mostly in bits. To see it aggregated in a single piece is jaw dropping.

Long after midnight, I heard sea lions barking. The sound echoed off Yaquina Bay, exotic at first as if I was on an isolated Pacific atoll, alone except for the abundant wildlife. After awhile I craved stillness and had to step inside from my perch on a condo balcony to escape the incessant cacophony.

The next evening along the Newport waterfront, I saw the sea lions sprawled on a floating dock beneath the pier where I stood. They were quiet except for an occasional honk. Not so of their comrades on a nearby jetty. They swayed on the rocks as they called out all at once.

Reading for me is breathing. A good story, fiction or non-fiction, is among life’s wonders. I like fiction because it opens another world and allows me to inhabit it. I like non-fiction because if well done, it illuminates truths otherwise beyond my reach.

All this brings me to Sarah Palin. The story she told at the GOP convention and reinforced by McCain and his staff is compelling in a superficial way. Buzz words such as hockey mom and reformer and maverick create a pleasing picture that people long to embrace.

In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.

So proclaims John McCain. His short-term memory loss is, well, disturbing. Maybe Iraq doesn’t count. More disturbing are his efforts to interject himself into an international crisis for political gain. But then again, one of his top foreign policy advisers, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia. Like McCain, he also was an energetic proponent of invading Iraq.

McCain and George Bush’s ties to Georgia run deep. And now comes speculation that Karl Rove may have a hand in what’s unfolding. Would anyone be surprised if it’s true?

I watch and listen to McCain closely. I’m baffled that someone who spent years as a prisoner of war, was tortured and confessed to crimes he didn’t commit, appears so eager to see our nation go to war — again.

At any moment I expect to see McCain rip away his face, a mask behind which lurks Dick Cheney.

“Daddy, I see raccoons,” Atticus says over breakfast today, his third birthday.

The raccoons frequently visit our garage roof and use the ladder leading to our Portland backyard.

I‘ve been known to travel with a laptop computer. I’ve also been known to write and store on its hard drive the most private of thoughts, not to mention personal financial information.

Now I read that the Department of Homeland Security has bestowed upon itself the right to search computer hard drives and other digital storage devices belonging to people entering the country. Without probable cause.