Today I am flying to Philadelphia for a brief weekend visit with my parents and a couple of my sisters. Or rather, I am trying to.

Let me preface all of this with a warning so dire, you would be foolhardy to ignore it: fly not on US Airways.

This morning, while I was relaxing at home, wife safely off to work, children in her care for the next 54 hours, I got a call. It was a recording, and I almost hung up in a reflex honed during this past electoral season.

But just as soon as I had determined that this was not a Real Person on the other end, a multi-phonic chime of the sort you hear in an airport told me that while not Real, this was probably a call I should listen to. US Airways was informing me that my flight had been cancelled. Nothing else beyond an 800 number if, IF!, I had any questions. Like, what was I supposed to do now?

The young woman on the other end of the 800 number helpfully got me a seat on another flight leaving at 2:30, two hours later than my original, arriving in Philadelphia at 9:30, five hours later than I was supposed to be there, with a stop in Washington, DC. Did I want that flight, she asked helpfully. And I refrained from suggesting that my other option seemed to be handing her my ticket money and staying home.

When I got to the airport, I was informed that my 2:30 flight was now going to be taking off at 4:00, and that I might have to run in DC. This with a helpful smile.

In the end, the flight wasn't so bad once I got off the ground. Reagan National Airport even managed to provide a vanilla milkshake in the terminal, which can't be all bad. I sat next to a nice young woman from a company called... Vangard? Vagrant? I thought I'd remember it, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Vagrant. And then next to a very serious young man in a suit, who reminded me a little frighteningly of Pee Wee Herman crossed with Tim Roth. He spent the whole flight in zen-crazy mode, hands flat on his thighs, staring straight ahead. Though I did catch him nodding off a little.

We're moving to a nice golf course down the road. Just spent the morning pulling a deer tick off my wife, then checking all the boys for ticks, too. This a few days after finding a fully engorged dog tick happily snoozing on the carpet in our upstairs hallway. Really wish two of our neighbors would take better care of their yards. Heck, the back yard to the West is getting so overgrown we're about to lose sight of their bird bath.

I am as sick and tired of this nomination as anyone else. But Hillary Clinton keeps making me angry. Yesterday's stories about women's groups up in arms was one thing, and yet I managed to quell myself. But today there's a story that her finance chair, Hassan Nemazee, is warning that not including Clinton on the ticket as VP might lead to a "risk" of financial backers not supporting Obama's general election campaign.

Here's the relevant quote. He says, "But there's a risk that if she isn't invited on the ticket, Hillary's political and financial supporters may not feel compelled to be as integrated and involved in the Obama campaign in order to provide the maximum support that he'll need to prevail in November."

Here's the article.

Deep breath.

This past legislative season, here in Kansas, the Republicans in State government have been trying to get two coal-fired power plants built in the Western part of the state. It has been an environmental fight, highlighted by three or four different bills being written up and passed, and all of them being vetoed by our Democratic Governor. In the end, the plants are not being built.

But at one point, the Republican leader of the legislature, Melvin Neufeld, introduced a "memorandum of understanding" along with the latest version of the bill, a letter that had the coal plant owners offering $2.5 million to Kansas State University for energy research. On the floor of the legislature, Neufeld warned his colleagues that this offer of money was only good if the bill was passed in the next two months, or something. Essentially, he showed a bribe, and then threatened to take it away if he did not get what he wanted.

At the time I thought this was the height of inappropriate political shenanigans. It was immoral. It was typical of what I consider to be the Republican way of doing business. Bully, bribe, slander, whine.

Now, I see the same thing in Clinton's campaign. And it pisses me off. How does she expect to be a strong Vice-President in a strong Democratic Party if she has to threaten her way on to the ticket? How would that be a partnership that helps the country? This may be the way politics has always been done, but that doesn't make me any happier about it. I don't want the person next in line for the Presidency to be that sort of person, that sort of Melvin Neufeld person, the sort that would stoop to anything to get what he wants. Bully, bribe, slander, whine.

I wish I could love Clinton. I really do. I used to like her a lot. I have no doubt that she is qualified to be President. Six months ago, I probably would have voted for her, based on her experience.

But the campaign she has run since then has driven me away. Between her apparent belief that the nomination was hers for the taking, the naked politics of ignoring small states at the beginning, and now crowing about their importance at the end, the race-baiting her campaign started using in March, the gender-bias whining of the last two weeks, and now this, trying to strong-arm her way onto the ticket? I'm beginning to feel that she needs to retire from politics altogether.

Just. Go. Away. Drop out. Let any of the numerous other, up-and-coming political stars in the Democratic Party, many of whom are women, let them come fill your spot.

I don't watch the local news on television. I don't know many people who do. If I happen to flip to local news, I might watch if the weather is on, but I will never go find it. Why is that? Because one day in winter I saw a news story so dumb, so asinine, that it forever turned me off of local news.

It began with promos appearing during commercial breaks in a show I was watching. (This was before TiVo.) "Hidden danger on the roads!" it said. "Breaking news you need to know first before you drive!" they cried. After several drubbings of this I actually thought maybe I'd stick around and watch, to see if I had anything to be concerned about. Maybe it was serious, a toxic tanker had spilled its load. Maybe it was tangential, invading Japanese weeds were choking out native plants along the highway. Maybe it was topical, massive potholes along the route to work.

So I stayed.

And the news started. And they built it up, and up, and up, and they went to their man on the street, and he turned to a typical car, just like one that could be owned by you or me, and he crouched down and the camera zoomed in and he showed us... the danger that roadway salt could pose to our cars. Rust! he exclaimed! Rust could eat away at your car! Beware!

Oh, and be sure to wash your car regularly in the winter. With that undercarriage setting.

I was so dumbfounded I think I actually watched the rest of the news broadcast. My last local news broadcast.

So. What drove you from local news?

Got an unsolicited telemarketing call from the American Lung Association yesterday. The woman assured me quickly that they were not asking for money, so I held on a few more seconds... until she told me that I could help them out immensely if I would just send sixteen letters to my neighbors on [insert my street name]... OMG. So they want me to do their fundraising for them? It's one thing if I volunteer for that, but to cold-call me and ask me to do it? We have no previous association with the American Lung Association (no walkathons, no relatives, no donations) and now, I am pretty sure we never will.

I've been hearing a lot about Chevrolet's new electric car, the Volt. It is supposed to be America's answer to Toyota in the green car exhibition. On Chevrolet's electric car site, they proudly proclaim, "It’s unlike any previous EV (electric vehicle), thanks to its innovative rechargeable electric drive system and range-extending power source." This "range-extending power source" can be gasoline, E85, or biodiesel. Which makes it a hybrid, no? Like the Prius parked in my garage. The only difference seems to be that the Volt does not use the gasoline engine unless you run out of electricity, making electric-only trips possible for short distances. Of course, I can do that today with a modded Prius, or one I buy in Japan. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid concept vehicle with lot of marketing hype. And not much else.