Our regular poster, twowheelfish, has goaded me out of my silence. Way to go, twowheel! Since you’re an avid fisherman, you know I have to take the bait.

But mostly, I’ll toss this post off to you faithful visitors to mullentown. What can we liberals, who see nothing particularly wrong with moving toward national health insurance (you know, that gol-durned socialized medicine) in the first place, do about this piece of plywood who occupies the White House for 15 more months?

I know the answer to that question: We gotta be patient and wait for our turn. I guess I was simply offering a rhetorical scream in the wilderness.

And what about the Democrats, who now control both houses of Congress? Where is their power — their will, really — to muster up necessary votes to override George W. Bush’s veto of SCHIP (state children’s health insurance plan) reauthorization?

I’m absolutely floored, totally undone, by this man’s complete lack of courage, compassion and lack of political will when it counts. One reckless decision of his seems to bleed right into another, day after day after day. One longtime conservative and very active Republican in Salt Lake City who has given piles of money to his party mentioned the other day that he sees Bush as absolutely having destroyed the Republican Party, especially since the election last November.

Even Bush’s once-blindly loyal followers here in Utah are losing faith.

What does it take to find even the slightest serving of compassion in this country anymore?

(I’m drawn to this thought because I’m back to the Jean Smith biography, FDR. I let Ted borrow it and he read the 900-page monster in about two weeks. Now there was a president who knew compassion. The fact that he could blend it with political instincts and timing made all the difference at a moment when this country was seriously deteriorating.)

Where do Americans go from here? Will we ever get an insurance plan that addresses the needs of the population? If we can’t even extend coverage to children and increase their benefits when necessary, I don’t know where we as a society can go from here.

Canada, maybe? I don’t think they’ll have us!

Ted and I are flying out to Maui in about 30 minutes. Nothing like Hawaiian sun and long, sandy beaches to recover from a hard loss.

Not so hard, really. Jenny Wilson, my fabulous stepdaughter, waged a great campaign for Salt Lake City mayor. That’s all I’ll say here. This Wilson family is spectacular. We wanted Jenny to win. She didn’t. We support her fully and watched a very mature and graceful woman concede last night to Dave Buhler and Ralph Becker.

She has a Salt Lake County Council seat to return to, two adorable little boys and a fine husband. And a strong political future, I’ve no doubt.

I’m so very proud of her.

As to Maui, I’m not taking a laptop. I debated about even taking a phone. Just books, a few pairs of shorts, my bicycle gear and the man I love.

See you back here, I hope, on Sept. 21.

Aloha.

We got word about an hour ago that our dear friend and political and professional mentor, J.D. Williams, died last night at his home in Holladay, Utah. He had been fighting cancer for more than a year.

J.D.’s lovely wife and lifelong love, Bea, called Ted to deliver the news. J.D. was 81 and died peacefully with family nearby.

It’s the end of an era, for sure.

I took an introductory political science class from J.D. (everyone called John Daniel Williams by his initials) in 1979. P.S. 110 was held in a huge classroom, with desks arranged row upon row of semi-circles. He had a seating chart, but knew our names in less than a week.

I’m having trouble writing this. Ted and I knew J.D.’s life was coming to a close, we had spoken to him just a few weeks ago. But knowing what is coming never makes the end any easier.

J.D. inspired thousands of college students at the University of Utah (and Stanford and Harvard, too) to plant their feet in democracy. His was a roll up your sleeves approach to living in this great country. He taught practical politics with an emphasis on ethics. He once said of his former student, Karl Rove, that Karl got the politics education right, but he had missed out on the ethics.

On the personal side, J.D. and Bea took Ted and I to dinner on the eve of our wedding three years ago. It was a lovely June evening in Millcreek Canyon and we dined at Log Haven. They kept telling us what a treat it was seeing the two of us together. J.D.’s blue eyes sparkled. He loved sweets; especially rich desserts. That night we four shared creme brulee and dense chocolate cake.

In days to come people will be eulogizing J.D. in much more refined ways than I can. I’ve lost a committed teacher and friend. The country has lost a true patriot. This nearly one-party state has lost a liberal firebrand who helped keep it honest.

I’m deeply saddened by this loss but grateful beyond words for the time I had with this man. I love J.D. Williams.

OK. OK. I’ve been swamped. Been ignoring this blog again. And some of the most loyal posters on this blog have spoken. They want to discuss the mess surrounding Larry Craig, the U.S. Republican senator from our neighbor to the north and the growing sex scandal enveloping him.

I can’t say I’m surprised. The Idaho Statesman has been chasing down a story about Craig and his long-rumored latent homosexuality for nearly a year. The story has been referred to often in the past couple of days, but in case you missed it, go here. I think the Statesman story nails the issue (so to speak), and it’s a good example of how news outlets frequently have the germ of a story for a long time before an event like Craig’s attempt at a public restroom tryst with a Minneapolis undercover cop breaks and allows them to publish. The Statesman got the goods; good on them. Sometimes the gods of breaking news just smile down on your newspaper and grant you an opportunity to finally tell the full story. So it was with Craig, and news that pretty much proves the gay orientation he has been denying for so long — even as late as yesterday.

So. The man is 62, an ultra-conservative in an ultra-conservative state who has built a Senate career largely on morals crusading. Never seen this plot line before, have we? I’m not sure what I could add. That the Craig scandal is deeply creepy? That, as Mitt Romney, whom Craig was working for in Idaho, says, it’s “disappointing?”

Hmm. I’d say it’s more than disappointing. “Disappointing” is when you’re 12-year-old breaks the neighbor’s window with an errant baseball and lies to you about it. “Disappointing” is when your husband forgets your wedding anniversary.

What is it then? Honestly, it’s crushingly sad. I could get all high and mighty the way so many Repubs did (including our own Utah congressional delegation) when Bill Clinton got caught “not having sex with that woman.” Most mortals who slip up now and again would admit to a bit of glee when a man like Craig gets snared in his own trap of humiliating hypocrisy.

The deeply sad part is the shame Craig must have lived with for god knows how many years. It’s almost a full-time job, I’d imagine, running on a “family values” platform every six years, and headlining conferences with speeches against the “gay agenda.” I can only imagine the self-hatred it must require to try to bring home the bacon from D.C. for your home state while simultaneously making quick side trips to public bathrooms, looking for a blow job from some anonymous male.

One gay activist quoted in a news story earlier this week talked about the way closeted people like Craig live in steady denial about their homosexuality by claiming they only have occasional “urges” for gay sex. Ergo, they aren’t gay, couldn’t possibly be gay, and why would anyone think for a minute they might be gay? An “urge” is just something that happens. You can’t control them.

So I have to think of the old saw: If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be … a GAY man by the name of Sen. Larry Craig.

Man, if we could simply be true to ourselves, knowing that society would accept us for who and what we are. Sorry if I sound like a Care Bear or Mr. Rogers. But really. Think of the pain and suffering living his truth might have saved Craig’s wife, his family and everyone else caught in his fallout. But mostly himself.

What do you all think?

I am 50 today.

It’s a huge birthday, I know.

What I keep wondering is just how am I supposed to feel?

Older? Wiser? Grateful? Relieved?

Mostly, I feel a little blurry. (And not simply because my terrific staff at City Weekly treated me with a rich chocolate birthday cake and a magnum of champagne at 2:15 p.m. today at our weekly meeting. Don’t worry. We split it among 10 people.)

The blurry is about not remembering scores of important … things. I can’t, for instance, remember my two children back when they were helpless little things. I have to look at photos for that. Luckily, while digging through an old blanket chest a few days ago, I turned up a stack of old 4X5 photos taken hours after each of them was born. There is Kit, with the crooked fourth toe on her left foot. And Sam, with a dimple in his chin, just like my dad’s — the grandpa who died long before he was born and who is also becoming more of a blur for me, sadly.

If living in the moment is a gift, I guess I am gifted. Because I can’t remember the moments of the past I never thought I’d forget.

And I just don’t feel 50, whatever that is.

I have to do a little bragging on someone near and dear to me.

Nineteen-year-old daughter Kit and her blogging partner, Holly (that’s another one, and much younger), will be front and center at this event later in the month. This is a back-to-school marketing event for which they are mucho
excited.

Kit and Holly have been nurturing this blog since last winter. Devoted to the niche (and some might say it’s non-existent) of Salt Lake City street fashion, Kit and Holly are finally seeing their effort pay off. If you go to the Black Chandelier site, you will see Kit on the right, Holly on the left. Kit bought that amazing faux-fur hat with pom-pom strings on eBay last year.

Watch out for these women. They have a future and are powerful indeed.

Did you all see this guy this morning during his rant outside the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster?

The screaming bald guy would be Robert Murray, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. I didn’t get to see him on live TV today, but did listen on the car radio to 90 percent of his news conference in Huntington, Utah. My first thoughts were to cut the guy some slack because he is in shock, is sleep-deprived and deeply worried about the fates of the six coal miners trapped some 1,700 feet below the surface of the caved-in mine. But then…

… He spent the majority of his time berating the news media for trying to report whatever tidbits they could grab on tight deadlines, and highly limited by Murray’s own staff and security goons who my reporter friends tell me have been very stingy in sharing information. He blasted geologic experts for discussing the cave-in as the reason seismic equipment may have registered the event as if it were an earthquake. “IT WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE,” Murray bellowed, a couple of times.

At least the seismic experts are holding back a bit, telling reporters they need more information before they make a complete statement on the cause of the catastrophe.

After 27 years in the news business, and having been on site at a few natural and human-made disasters myself, I know the information can be spotty and the scene chaotic. But reporters do their best in these situations, and have no interest in making the case worse for anyone — victims, families, mine bosses, cops and emergency workers. As adrenaline-inducing as these assignments can be, it’s always a horrible spot to be in. Because you can’t win. If you report everything that comes at you, and it isn’t enough to satisfy a rightfully curious and confused public, you’re being lazy or soft. If you get even slightly aggressive, and seek out family members or officials to interview on your own, you are being insensitive and sensational.

In these cases, the press can only work with the information that’s coming to them as a herd, at least until a little time passes and more people are talking.

But Murray had no trouble talking. And talking. The fact that this clown would be jumping all over the liability question (don’t you sense a battle of the experts already brewing to determine damages or insurance payouts in a courtroom?!) while those men are stuck underground, suffering, maybe dead, is the most disgusting and callous form of corporate spin control I can imagine. In fact, I really can’t imagine it — it’s just that bad.

What a dick.

I just got back at 3 a.m. today from a long weekend in Denver with my son Sam, the best 16-year-old in the world. Flew over, watched two Colorado Rockies vs. L.A. Dodgers games and came home on Amtrak’s California Zephyr. I took no laptop, answered no voice or e-mails. I’ll write more tomorrow. Just wanted y’all to know we are alive and had our fill of major league baseball. And I really relished those railroad geeks we met on board who swear they will never travel by any other means than trains. And newly converted to train travel as I am, I’m starting to understand the romance of it all!

Can someone tell me how this happens?

And what is this “a family of about” 15 children? I have “about” 15 tomatoes on my plants in the garden. I have “about” 15 pens and pencils in the cup on my desk.

But counting children? Isn’t that sort of an exact science?

Unbelievable.

I guess a guy has to make a living.

But isn’t it slightly weird to see this man defending convicted polygamist Tom Green’s son? David Leavitt (younger brother to former Utah Gov. Mike) was the Juab County Attorney who prosecuted the elder Green. Back then, Leavitt considered it a crime to be doing more than one child-bride at a time. Now, son William is a victim of a system that lacks appropriate boundaries and this 19-year-old defendant has Leavitt pandering to the court for a lighter sentence.

Whaa?

Of course, you have to get your arms around Utah’s love-hate relationship with polygamy in the first place. I’ve never been able to do it. Mostly because, every now and then, I’m due back on Earth.