Wouldn't it be ironic if Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who was just picked as John McCain's running mate, was the first to walk through one of those eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton broke in? She even just made a complimentary reference to Sen. Clinton in her first speech as candidate, in front of a Republican audience, who cheered heartily. The Republicans are going after the p.u.m.a. factor. Will they be successful?

I bet that's a kick in the gonads of the Obama campaign. NOW the campaign seems like it's going to be as exciting as the primaries. Let's go!

I'm not voting for you, but you do have (and always have had) my respect.

The Democratic Party convention, which started as a complete yawn, has definitely gained momentum. It's a monument to American diversity. Today, the invocation prayer was led by a rabbi, the pledge of allegiance was led by Shawn Johnson, the gold medaled gymnast sweetie pie of the Olympics and the Star Spangled Banner sung by a lovely black singer whose name escapes me at the moment (she was fantastic). And tonight, on the anniversary of MLK's I Have A Dream speech, the first person of color to reach the presidential nomination takes the podium with what promises to be a barn-burner of a speech. A proud day, indeed, for this embattled nation. The mood is "better days are coming" and the economy took a significant uptick today.

After that classy ad by McCain, is the Democratic nominee going to diss him? I guess we'll see.

If you fanned Obama on FaceBoook you were promised a text message announcing the candidate's veep pick before the major media was informed. What a scam! The media announced that Obama picked Joe Biden around midnight and the FB announcement didn't appear until after 3am -- text messages were way behind media announcements. The Obama campaign data-mined 1.3 million Obamorons on FaceBook, and failed to deliver the payoff. And the hapless FB Barackoids are going to have to live with Obamaspam from now on. I bet the mobile phone service providers just love this windfall. And no, I didn't sign up, I saw this one coming. Once again the bamaheads who think that a new kind of politics is in the offing were hosed, a trickle that will become a downpour.

That aside, Biden is a great candidate for vice president. This is a good ticket.

I am one Hillary Clinton supporter who thinks she would not have been the right choice for veep. Frankly, I think she qualifies for a much better job. VPOTUS has but two duties under the constitution; To replace the president in case he or she cannot fulfill his or her term and to break a tied vote in the Senate. Thats it, that's all. All other vice presidential functions are at the sole discretion of the president. So a veep can be given an empty desk, if the president so desires. The Cheney phenomenon, where he is essentially a shadow president is strictly a Bush administration prerogative. And one of the worst turn of events in the course American history.

More later.

I got out of the car in the supermarket parking lot, habitually clipped my key-ring to my fashion backpack and breezed through the sunshine toward the doors. All of a sudden, I felt a curious little tap on my derriere and turned around.

On the ground was my key-ring; I hadn't snapped it properly on. As I picked it up, I thought how nice it was for my keys to potch me on their way down, I surely didn't hear them fall. How lucky for me. I must have an angel on my shoulder. Another moment of gratitude for small things, a small thing that could have turned into a world of hassle, but didn't.

Not to waste the moment: gratitude for the car, the market, the pretty backpack, the shoes, the sunshine and the rain. For health and wealth and love, for Cable TV, cappuccino and a scenic second story window to look out of while I write. For work and friends and loving family, for freedom from worry and pain, even if just for this moment. There is nothing but this moment. And that's the key.

Last Thursday I was so preoccupied that I not only left the keys in the car, I left the car running. In Venice Beach, where I used to live, that car wouldn't have lasted 72 seconds. When I got back from my errand, there was my fine old Dolly, grumbling at me. Or was she chuckling? After my chagrin at how inattentive I was, I counted yet one more blessing. I find my self under a benign protection from the elements, from the slings and arrows, and, most importantly, from myself.

Home again. I unpack the luscious groceries. Everything is new. The keys are in my pocket, I take them out and place them into their home at home, in a precious small bowl my mother made that sits on a quirky red jelly cabinet near the door.

A squirrel darts across the driveway.
A hummingbird comes to the window.
The key glows in my mind.

Jerry Wexler, friend, inspiration, mentor, music man. I will miss him dearly. The world is a poorer place today in his absence. He leaves a body of music production that will nourish generations to come, as it nourished, informed and enthralled mine.

Jerry Wexler

The 2008 Summer Games will begin in Beijing this week with an opening ceremony of unprecedented spectacle and showmanship. It will be the most auspicious and thrilling opening in the history of the Games. If it is one thing that China excels at (even more than economic development and cuisine) it's spectacle and showmanship. They've been at it longer than anyone else and take it from me, they are the best. It is a prime exponent of the importance that Asian culture places on Face, where the way things appear are more important than the way things are. It is the venerated cultural reasoning behind why China doesn't feel all elements of an agreement are binding, should they prove inconvenient at the point of execution.

Take for instance the issue of open communication and Internet access for foreign journalists during the Olympics. China agreed to this and now at the last minute, they are requiring hotels housing these journalists to install government-issue firewall software, blocking sites and scrutinizing communications that could cause China to lose Face. You can bet your bottom dollar that all onsite Olympic press room communications will be scrupulously monitored.

Those of us who've recently spent a considerable amount of time living in China, when we heard about this "open for foreign journalists" agreement all said "yeah, right." It makes no difference that China appeared to have renegotiated this with the IOC, they will firewall the journalists, that is their way. I lived with the clogged bandwidth of heavily filtered Internet access, with no access to certain news sites, of periodic blackouts of sensitive TV news items on CNN International the whole time I was there. Government has controlled the flow of information for thousands of years there and it's a hard habit to break. They are betting that the showmanship and hospitality with which they present the Olympics will overcompensate for this and I am betting that they are correct (if not right).

China has the home court advantage in the athletic competitions, and they are superbly prepared, so I am also betting that they will give team America a run for the roses for the most medals won. They will either win the medal count or come so close (including disputed decisions, which we can expect) that their aggregation will be a bigger story than an American medal count win. They'll have the largest cheering section in history. When I talk or email with my Chinese friends they all say the excitement is momentous but the inconveniences of urban life during the run up to the Games gets to them as well. If I ask about the air quality, both foreign and native Beijingers unanimously have avoided answering.

Unknown is how they can clean up the Beijing air quality in time. They will throw every regulation, control, every piece of technology at it and cook the books on reports to make it seem better (they do not even include ozone level in their air quality statistics). This weekend has seen three clear days in a row, which bodes well, but given typical weather for this time of year, hot, dusty, humid, overcast or stormy, this may not endure. Environmental controls are very new to China and since they are not cost-effective in the short term, China is not known for their efficiency at nor its dedication to implementing them. I was in China from 2002 to 2006, the last three years of that in Beijing, and when I departed in May of 06, well after Beijing knew it was going to host the Olympics in 08, the air quality, putrid when I arrived, had gotten steadily and progressively worse. They didn't start in time. Smog control in their new and rapidly growing automobile industry? No way; it would slow the Chinese prime directive: economic development. Industrial emission control? Hardly. It would be a miracle if the air quality remained reasonable for the duration of the Games.

There will be no noteworthy political protest visible in Beijing during the Olympics. That kind of pollution they can and will unapologetically manage.

There have been strong calls in the U.S. for soon to be ex-President Bush (how I love that thought) to decline to attend the opening ceremonies. But that was never even a slight possibility. Bush knows China well. It would lose China face and he can't afford that in any way. Besides, now that the Bush administration has sidelined our moral authority in any human rights discussion, it wouldn't even have made a point.

I watched that birds nest Olympic Stadium go up in Beijing. I passed it several times a week on my rounds. It's a magnificent structure. Even under construction it had a sublime and vigorous elegance. It's placed perfectly, in an aesthetic and historic neighborhood on Chang'an and you could always have a long look at it because traffic was usually jammed around there. But traffic can and will be controlled. There's a new subway line and they will enforce massive traffic limitations. That they can do. It's all for the show and it will be a truly memorable one.

So while refraining from posting here on the presidential campaign, I have slipped and posted a short sweet and irate comment on a NYT Opinion piece The Power of the Protest Vote. Scroll down to comment #98 to read it.

I've been nurturing my campaign abstinence by watching Lou Dobbs (CNN) with guilty pleasure (diminishing guilt as time goes by). He's currently my favorite curmudgeon. He's been leaning hard on the food and product safety issue and how delinquent authorities under this administration have been. It's nothing short of criminal negligence. I've been grousing on it in these pages for a while, starting with the tainted Chinese imports issue which surfaced en masse last year (my coverage). He's supporting the pressure on congress to enforce the COOL (country of origin labeling) laws already on the books, which would have identified the source of the recent widespread salmonella contaminations much faster.

What a canard! The American tomato business was severely damaged by the incompetent management of this crisis, which it turns out originated in Mexican peppers. I hope American tomato growers get a public apology and an enormous amount of very visible compensation. And that the next administration is more concerned about the safety of Americans than protecting the import-export business sector.