LiveBlog for Thursday, October 1, 2009

Written on October 1, 2009

• Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) calls in at 6:30am Pacific to talk about health care reform and bringing the Olympics to Chicago.

Moore • Filmmaker Michael Moore calls in at 7:30am Pacific to talk about his new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

• Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) calls in at 6:30am Pacific to talk about health care reform and other news of the day.

• The U.S. and five other world powers began high-stakes talks today with Iran to demand a freeze of its nuclear activities, with a senior U.S. official saying Washington is open to rare one-on-one talks with Iranian diplomats.

• A White House-backed overhaul of the nation’s health care system survived a long day of GOP challenges over abortion, illegal immigration, and other issues yesterday, and the bill’s architect claimed enough votes for passage by the Senate Finance Committee, possibly by the end of the week.

• Samoans dug through the wreckage of homes and told of the terror of being trapped underwater or flung inland by the tsunami that ravaged towns and killed at least 149 people in the South Pacific. Officials expect the death toll to rise as more areas are searched.

• First lady Michelle Obama arrived in Copenhagen yesterday to lend her support to Chicago’s effort to win the 2016 Summer Olympics. President Obama arrives in Denmark tomorrow.

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gabby hayes

Jack's father was a Canadian who moved from St. Thomas, Ontario to Flint, Michigan, to work first in a disreputable establishment his uncles ran in Flint, Michigan (to all appearances, it was a restaurant) and later to work on the line and later the metallurgy lab at GM. I don't think they had green cards back then, but he did eventually get his citizenship. Jack, my father-in-law was born in Flint, attended a two-year college, married my mother-in-law and immediately enlisted in the Army Air Corps (some years before it was renamed the US Air Force) and was sent to Okinawa to predict weather over Korea, where there was a "police action" going on at the time. He was a very sharp man and rose quickly in rank, became part of the Strategic Air Command when it began and served on a SAC base in Michigan near when he grew up. As the Cold War became infinitely more technical, his expertise in weather led him to be ever more involved with intelligence and in that role, he served in Heidelberg, Ankara, Texas, and finally Fort Meade outside of Baltimore where he was one of the founding generation of NSA, an organization so secret, its initials were said to mean "no such agency." After 20 years, he had a difficult time dealing with retirement. He sold insurance for a while, tried to get a job as a weatherman at a television station (his lack of a four-year degree stood in his way, just as it had in the service--he retired a senior master sergeant rather than an officer). He was dedicated to his kids and enjoying himself, golfing every chance he got. And when it came to making someone laugh, he had no boundaries--one Christmas he received a set of red "long-johns" and suddenly appeared in the midst of us dressed in his flannel finery as the superhero "Underwear Man"--solving crime, leaping over grandchildren in a single bound, and so forth, to the withering embarrassment of his sons but to the delight of everyone else. He was intensely competitive and would not be proven wrong either logically or on the facts, which is why he and I were usually at odds. This past year or two we watched this athletic and vital man become bedridden because his skeleton seemed to be disintegrating. His vertebrae were becoming crushed together, pinching the nerves that controlled his extremities and experiencing the kind of pain you feel when your leg "goes to sleep"--numbness and burning. My wife retired in order that she could be with him full-time, and I don't know how they would have coped if not for her nursing experience and dedication to her old man. This morning past one (I babysit my grandchildren most nights until their father gets home from work, so I was still up) my wife called from Baltimore to tell me that her father had just died. So I wanted to let you know a little bit about him. He was one of the guys who prevented nuclear holocaust all those years by outthinking the soviets. One of those real guys about whom could be said, "Deep down inside, in places we don't talk about at parties, we wanted him on that wall; we needed him on that wall." In any case, aside from his saving humanity from a fiery end, he was a good man with a big heart and we who loved him will miss him terribly.