No scandal gossip here. Press coverage of Elizabeth Edwards' metastatic breast cancer has me kind of steamed and as a sister cancer patient, I want to say something about it. My story with breast cancer parallels Elizabeth's. I want to tell you how I am LIVING with this disease, with a treatment plan much rockier than Elizabeth's; I want you to know that Elizabeth Edwards and I are both living with cancer. We are alive!

My first occurrence of breast cancer happened back in July '04; I had surgery, then chemo started the day after Kerry/Edwards lost to Bush II. What a gloomy day in the chemo lounge at UC San Francisco! The next day Elizabeth Edwards announced she, too had breast cancer. My surgeon was on the local news, explaining Mrs. Edwards' treatment. My heart went out to her as we coped with chemo at the same time.

(cross posting to Dove's Eye View. More on my beef with press coverage of EE's treatment after the jump)

We know that George Bush is an addict (possibly an ex-addict, but the patterns remain the same), so we know how to think of his "quick fix" for the economy. Addicts want it fast, easy and painless. Our economy is in tough shape - if you read Paul Krugman you would have seen this coming five years ago. More serious economists debate in the Times here.

Instead of Bush's ideas, how about we fix this: USATODAY.com - Report: Nation's infrastructure crumbling.

Barbara Lee (D-Ca) is chief sponsor of HR 770, in committee right now, banning covert or military action against Iran without imminent danger.

Barnett Rubin's posts alone would not have convinced me of the seriousness of this threat, and I didn't even see the controversial (and removed) DK diary claiming to be from a military person.

I do read Colonel Patrick Lang's blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis. He is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, former "Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism," and later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service.

Col. Lang says re attacking Iran: "the train has left the station."

Below the jump: what you can do today to stop this new war.

Uncle Sam guest posted on my blog today about what a compulsive debtor he is:

Dear world -

I never thought I would say this, but I have a problem I can't handle. I am the United States of America and I am a compulsive debtor!

Compulsive debtors have certain characteristics, they say. It's scary how many of these look like me:

So I was in my car at mid-day today, unusual for me, and I heard legal analyst Norman Goldman for the first time. He went through six very clear charges against Bush for impeachment and removal from office. I remember - signing statements; warrantless wiretapping; Guantanamo; lying to Congress about WMD to go to war.

I have been searching via Google and in diaries and I don't see any place where his remarks are reproduced. He was substituting on the Ed Schultz show. Air America site doesn't show it.

UPDATE:

OK I found it by going to Ed Schultz's site. It's off in a cranny called "Norm's Nook". A listener typed in the list. Read it below the jump.

Earlier this spring, an American writer I know suddenly had to reschedule his life in the States in order to go on a Middle East tour sponsored by the US State Department. The plan was to go to Damascus, Israel, Palestine, Turkey and Greece at the end of April and early May. My friend has no scholarly connection to the Middle East; he was selected to go because he is a successful American literary figure.

Follow the link to read about the strange coincidence of timing with Secretary Rice's trip to meet meeting with the Syrian foreign minister this week.

Update: In a previous version of this, I wrote that Rice went to Syria. Nope, she met the Syrian foreign minister in Sharm-el-Sheikh, an Egyptian resort. (I know the difference, I just hadn't read the Yahoo article carefully - blogging too late at night).

This makes the coincidence of the junket and meeting less obvious. HOwever, Bush was still scolding Pelosi well after the junket was already in the works; I thought then that there was some sort of thaw on the horizon.

My father, a poet, an engineer, a husband, grandfather and second father to countless cousins, was told by his oncologist yesterday that his lung cancer is inoperable and he has between six months to one and a half years to live.

My father loves Lebanon as much as he loves life itself. The land and the people and the language of Lebanon are as his own flesh. The blow to his country this week is a disaster for him (for all of us). He has been holding himself back from the news so as to steady himself for the lab results, all the while hoping that the mass would turn out benign.

My dad heard from my uncle, who talked to his wife stuck in the village just east of Sidon, 30 miles south of Beirut. They're holed up with supplies and hoping this will blow over soon. See my blog for more Lebanese comment.

Sitting here in California I am trying to remember to get rest, exercise, live life offline. But before I sign off for the day, I have one plea.

Democrats, liberals, people who want to take back America from our own Taliban, don't let this Middle East crisis derail us.

I'm an Arab-American woman in my forties. If it matters, which it shouldn't, my Arab ancestors have been Christians since before the Church of Rome. But I have a funny last name and lots of dark-skinned cousins. Therefore I have an insider's view into anti-Arab racism in this country. This latest slur against Helen Thomas has me steaming mad.

What happened to David Brooks? He's tearing into Bush. Am I the only one who heard this tonight?

"JIM LEHRER: Is the president still in kind of a Katrina recovery mode of his own, David, do you think?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, he is in deep trial. The National Review Magazine on the right said President Bush has never been in so much trouble with the conservatives in the history of his life. So yes. Let alone with the rest of the country. The exhaustion, the disillusionment, the worry about the cost, it's just still building.

A massive federal budget deficit

The thread about the Pentagon database contained comments about homeschoolers. I just read the New Yorker article about Patrick Henry College, which describes kids at this Christian college, a large percentage of whom were homeschooled through high school. The students at Patrick Henry are being groomed to go into government, and a disproportionate number of them get White House internships (3 a year, as many as Georgetown University does, and Patrick Henry has a student body of 300).

Kids at the school are described as being rabidly, devotedly pro-Bush. They keep posters of the Bushes and the Cheneys in their dorm rooms. These kids are smart, with SATS in the 1200-1450 range; the Patrick Henry debate team beat Oxford's Balliol College debaters. (But the biology professor at Patrick Henry believes, and teaches, that God created the world in seven days)

I wondered why the reporter didn't profile Patrick Henry kids who are planning to enter the military upon graduation. The article made it sound like they were all bound for Capitol Hill positions.

I haven't seen anybody else reporting this on DKos:

"Boxer comes out fighting: President's aim is to undermine Social Security, she says"

This was on the front page of the Saturday Business section (SF Chronicle, 2/12) with a big photo of our Senator. She's holding a "leaked Republican document" and addressing a mixed group of seniors and students in San Francisco.

Now I'm not following too closely, but this is all news to me. Leaked document? What? Who else is on this?

I am really proud of our Barbara.