"All My Friends"

Maybe it's just that I've been sick the last couple weeks, and thus haven't gotten out much, but I've been feeling a sort of ache for my friends. No, the reclusiveness goes back farther, since the holidays at least. And with so many people moving away recently and with a trip up to Spokane to rekindle college ties, it all becomes this sort of missingness. I miss my friends.

Yesterday was the clincher, though, when I was at the gym and LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" came up on the iPod. If you don't know the song, check out the video. The end of the song repeats the line "if I could see all my friends tonight," and I realized that was just what I wanted.

I talked with Adam after the workout, and he agreed we have to do something about this. So my very grownup goal is to have a monthly dinner party. I wanted to start with next Saturday, but he's a bit busy finishing up some projects and asked that I hold off for a couple weeks. But this is something I will do. I just hope my friends will be willing to come.

Missing: One voice

Conversations around the apartment have been even more one-sided than usual this past week. Adam has had an extremely painful sore throat (diagnosis: strep; treatment: penicillin) and hasn't been able to speak above a whisper. Which means I talk at him, and he makes expressive grimaces. Perhaps by the end of this we'll be a masterful charades team.

"Universal" Healthcare

OK, I have to say I am really getting tired of Sen. Clinton framing the difference between her healthcare plan and Sen. Obama's as one of "universality." It's really one of mandates -- her plan doesn't give away insurance to everyone, it insists that everyone has to sign up for a plan, and pay for that plan. Obama's plan doesn't mandate coverage -- people can choose not to participate. His goal is to come up with a plan that everyone will want to buy into. Her plan -- she'll garnish your wages to make sure you have coverage.

Now, I'm a freelancer who is paying out of her own pocket for a crappy health insurance plan, so I'll sign up for a better plan if Obama or Clinton can provide it, with or without mandates. But I know that mandatory payments are a complete nonstarter with Republicans and independents, and I worry that this could weaken Democrats in the fall.

Lurleen Wallace

"Hillary Clinton is Lurleen Wallace with a better haircut," noted one response to Rebecca Traister's moving account of her own indecision on Salon. Not knowing who Lurleen Wallace was, I let the interweb educate me.

Two, no three, thoughts. One, I disagree that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be just a third term for Bill Clinton, a way for him to get around pesky term limits (at least, no more so than his administration served as Hillary's first two terms as president — if they were a twofer then, they'll be a twofer now). Two, George Wallace was a complete asshole (yes, this should have been obvious to everyone who saw his pro-segregation political career, so it's no surprise he treated his wife shitty, too). Three, Lurleen Wallace's Wikipedia entry was clearly written by someone who agrees with me about George Wallace's asshole-ness; however, that doesn't seem to diminish it's power as an encyclopedic reference. Sometimes "objectivity" is just a way to give cover to never taking a principled stand. Give me obvious bias over vague objectivity, any day.

"Now he's in, like, Chico."

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, talking about Obama's ad buy in California going outside of the the San Francisco and L.A. media markets. At the moment, Obama is actually in New Jersey.