Obama, Jake, melting cakes and tears.

Hello chums, glad to see you are alive and checking in to see if I am.

Well, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Or something like that. Now if I could just Tom Sawyer someone into picking up the leaves here at the Palatial Retirement Compound things would be Jake.

I don't know, or at least can't remember, where "things would be Jake," comes from. I guess not knowing and can't remember comes out the same, except I have found that the latter becomes larger while other things become smaller and thank goodness for Google. For with it I shall soon be able to know everything that ever happened to anyone. Now, don't YOU wish you had purchased the PPV of last night's UT's beating of the mighty Bulldogs?

No? You say one swallow a summer does not make? My, my what a doubting Thomas you are.

My, my brings me to American Pie and driving Chevys to levees. Or something like that. I think that song was the start of the end for me and pop music. I can't say why. But I do know that whiskey is scotch, rye is made from rye and bourbon is made from corn except for Maker's Mark which is wheat based.

A friend once told me that for someone who loved "McArthur's Park" I had no right to complain. True, but you didn't need to listen to Donna Summer sing, just looking was enough. She can also sing, which is icing on the cake, even cakes left out in the rain.

Jake, of course, is mostly a nickname for John. I have a friend named John who was a Jake many years ago. We did some unreasonable things together as younger men, actually older boys, although both improved with age. He became a minister and I, well, let's just say I aged. As any poker player will tell you, Luck Does Count.

Which brings me to Hussein. Although I admit he is good, he had the good luck to run into a campaign by Hillary that she thought of as a coronation and now one by McCain that he can't seem to understand that there are issues that are mean and nasty and that he isn't serving the country by not bringing them forward.

So while Hussein mouths sweet nothings about the economy and attacks a plumber for asking questions McCain should have, McCain continues to claim that civility is THE issue.

No, John. Winning is the issue. The only issue.

This campaign will be remembered as the campaign ran during the middle of a war in which the war was mentioned only fleetingly, if at all.

Jake and I and John McCain have seen the beginning. We will not live to see the middle or the end. I shed tears for those that will. I pray that we will have enough of older boys who will become hard men to do the hard things that Hussein's minions run from.