Crazies to the Left of Me

The Locksteins threw a huge party for Jesse's mom Cathy this weekend. She celebrated a big birthday (but I won't give away the number). It was great to see all the cousins running around and playing together, and it's so nice to have the opportunity to catch up with everyone we don't get to see. Jesse has so many cousins whom I love and never talk to enough. I'm still recovering from the strain of the day. Jesse served as the bartender for the day, so now he's thinking up new opportunities to do it again.

Jessie from Freedom, WI won last week's book blog with this email: So Michelle's and my song is "my best friend" by Tim Mcgraw. We picked this song when we were moving into our apartment about 4yrs ago. We were taking separate cars out there with boxes to unpack. I had the country station on and was having some fears and reservations going through my mind about moving in together (we had only been together for about 1 month) - Than I heard this song on the radio and it just totally hit home and struck my heart strings. It talks about how your partner is more than your lover, they are your best friend. About how you make wrong choices in your past and never had anyone to count on, and finally finding that someone. Michelle and I had both been down that path. It also talks about how feeling alone and they are your rock to help you through it all and always stand beside you....... When I arrived at our new apartment just walking in that door, and her being there to greet me smiling, it felt like home right away. Since Michelle and I are both music junkies we of course had all our totes of CD's there. I pulled out my Tim Mcgraw Cd and played that song for her. We had only one chair in the apartment it was a yellow "directors chair" she sat in my lap as we listened to it. Right than and there, we knew that was going to be our song for life. When Michelle proposed to me, in my engagement ring she had engraved "more than a lover" than in my wedding band she had engraved "my best friend". It was also the first dance we had together as couple at our ceremony.

Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right by Bernard Goldberg is an enjoyable if uneven read. I love Bernie, and I've read all of his books. His book Bias changed how I look at mainstream media. In this latest book, he reviews his falling out of love with the Democrat party, becoming Republican, and then losing faith in his newfound party. He traces the changes in policies Democrats have made over the last fifty years going from the party of the worker to the party of the entertainment industry and intellectual elite. On their road to change, they've made some wacky decisions, most have been reported and covered in other books. The Republicans have gone from being the party of small government, big business to the party of same business as usual. I am a conservative at heart with a few libertarian tendencies, and much of the book rings true to me, but I was disappointed in Bernie's recycling of stories that have made the rounds in nearly every other conservative book published in the last two years. He loses some credibility when he shifts from objectively pointing out each party's flaws to name-calling. His redeeming quality is his insistence that neither party is doing right by America, but are failing in refusing to listen to what voters want and believe. He beats up on the Religious Right, Ann Coulter, affirmative action (again and again) and the liberal bias in the media. His take no prisoners approach is sometimes refreshing, sometimes uncomfortable. No matter where your political loyalties lie, take a look at this book.

I will be running another blog tour with a contest for a new book next week, make sure to come back then!