Thank you, sir! May I have another?

Gas around here shot up over $4 per gallon for the first time today. At the rate it's going, we'll see $5 before the 4th of July and $6 by Labor Day.

Don't spend it all in one place

Last week, I was among the many who received property tax rebate checks from the county as a result of a cap passed by the state legislature a few months ago. However, even something good like this provides another example of how inefficiently our local government operates.

Thousands of Lake County taxpayers received rebate checks for $0. The county spent whatever its postage rate is x however many people got those checks to let them know they got nothing. I wonder if anyone tried to cash them.

And speaking of incompetent customer service resulting in paltry rebates, I heard back from American Airlines. They supposedly sent me a check for my hotel for the extra night I spent in San Antonio. I should have stayed in a nicer place.

The e-mail I got announcing that my reimbursement was on the way said, they would work hard to prevent future schedule disruptions. Of course, that completely misses the point. Schedule disruptions happen. It's the insufficient response to those problems that needs to be prevented.

1...2...5 (3, sir!)

Lake County took a lot of national abuse for not getting ballots counted promptly on election night. It was well after 10 PM Central time before the county began reporting any numbers.

Many folks in the national media assumed some kind of shenanigans was going on. This is, after all, the most politically corrupt county in the nation. One CBS reporter contacted the Post-Tribune (a local paper) and asked if Lake was borrowing from Cook County (Chicago) politics, but really, the Cook County folks are jealous of what goes on here.

CNN and Fox News had a field day with Lake County also. Here is a link to a snippet of Wolf Blitzing Gary Mayor (and county Dem chair) Rudy Clay.

The official explanation was that the county decided not to release numbers until after the over 11,000 absentee ballots had been counted. Counting that many ballots takes a lot of time. After all, each counter only has 20 fingers and toes (in most cases).

I think they were just trying to get a little spotlight on themselves by reporting last, and by possibly changing a close presidential race. If that was the plan, it failed because the Clinton-Obama race wasn't that close.

However, the race between the democratic candidates for governor, Jim Schellenger and Jill Long-Thompson, was neck-and-neck all night, with Schellenger up by a slim margin before Lake County reported. The late Lake numbers were enough to put Long-Thompson past Schellenger for the win. Long-Thompson had been endorsed by the steelworkers union, so it was expected she would do well here.

The play for attention worked, though, but probably not the way they hoped. Now, the entire nation thinks our county is either run by idiots who can't even count, or is so corrupt that they'll try to fix an election even in the bright spotlight of the national media. Correct on both counts.

The best and most ironic comment on this was in the Times (another local paper) this morning. George Van Til, the county surveyor, said we (the county) look "stupid" because of all this. This comes from a guy who won reelection in spite of the fact that he stole gas from the county and let his teenage son drive his county-issued car around - until he got caught. It's not the inability to count votes that makes us look stupid. It's continuing to elect guys like him.

Former President visits

Last week, those of us in Schererville got a chance to see something we had never seen before. A former President of the United States came to visit.

Bill Clinton made an appearance to stump for votes for his wife, Hillary, in advance of Indiana's primary today.

Those of you who have read my profile know that I don't favor either party particularly. However, I always vote, and in the primary, I always vote in the Democratic. That is because Lake County, where I live, is so heavily Democratic that the primary is the only chance I have to vote for local officials. The Democratic primary is the de facto general election locally. The fact that I always vote in their primary means that the local Democrats think I'm one of them.

It also means I get to vote for Hillary or Barack Obama, the Senator from Next Door, so I thought it might be useful to hear what Bill had to say. I also thought it would be a good chance for my older boys (11 and 9) to see a former President and get a taste of the process.

But first, we had to hurry up and wait.

The doors to the little banquet hall that Clinton would be speaking at opened at 2:45. We were not told when Bill would actually speak, but we were prepared for a long wait.


The crowd waits breathlessly

We showed up right at 2:45 and had to wait in a little bit of a line to get in. Security was not as tight as I would have expected for a former President. Bags were checked, but that's about it. In fact, I went through a more thorough security check to get into the arenas for the NCAA tournament.

For the occasion, in honor of Hillary's drinking habits, I wore my most obnoxious Boilermakers shirt.

The place was standing room only, but not because it was overly crowded. There were no chairs, so all we could do was stand. The room was a little less than half full, maybe about 200 folks. It was almost all adults too. My kids were the only grade school age children there. There were a couple of babies and toddlers, and a few HS kids as well. There were also a few media types, and seemingly every Schererville cop. It would have been a good day to rob a bank.

I was about 40 feet from the podium, which meant I could see OK, but it would have been better if I'd worn heels. My kids had trouble seeing, but they could find an angle on occasion.

Clinton started around 3:30, so it was only a 45-minute wait. Bill has a reputation for being a charismatic speaker, and he did not disappoint. He was concise, by his standards, funny, and at times blunt. And his style wasn't typical of most politicians. Politicians generally speak as if they are talking to idiots. In many cases, they are. They'll pause. After. Every. Word. As if you need a few minutes to process each one. I can't stand that. Bill spoke like he had somewhere else to go (which he did), even though he went on for 40 minutes.

He was giving us some of the main points of Hillary's platform (jobs, energy, health care, education, balance the budget, get out of Iraq, etc), the details of which I'll leave out here. You can get that in other places.


Bill doing his thing

His speech didn't end until ten minutes after the doors opened at his next stop in Crown Point. Those folks undoubtedly had a longer wait than we did.

Even though he was campaigning for his wife ("I'm just here as a volunteer campaign worker."), I expected to see more presidential stuff. Perhaps this is against protocol - I certainly wouldn't know - but I thought the presidential seal would be on the podium, but it wasn't. He does have security, though. I saw four Secret Service guys total. There was one on each side of the stage when he spoke, and two others joined the party when Clinton shook hands afterwards.

My sons and I got close enough to shake his hand, so we did. He and I actually chatted a few seconds about No Child Left Behind, which I think is useless and which he said Hillary wants to do away with.

And then he was gone, off to Crown Point.

One strange thing about this event was that there was no handouts, which is a sign, I suppose, of how cash-strapped Hillary's campaign is. There were no buttons, stickers, pins or signs given away. They did have a place to sign up to help, but as you can see, they weren't getting much interest.


Little help? Please?

They did give us a black-and-white flier on the way out, but I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do with it. It wasn't any different than the one I received in the mail earlier that week.

Bill and Hillary hit this region hard. We hardly saw Obama in NW Indiana, but the Clintons were here at least once a week. We'll see today if that pays off.

Sports(wo)men of the year

The leaders in the clubhouse for the Sportsmen of the Year award should be the ladies of the Central Washington University softball team, who literally carried Western Oregon University's team to victory in a game last week. It wasn't just any loss for CWU either. It ended their postseason hopes.

Credit CWU first baseman Mallory Holtman for thinking of the idea to carry WOU's Sara Tucholsky around the bases. I would have never thought of that, not because I wouldn't have wanted to help, but because I would thought it would be illegal. She asked anyway, and found out it wasn't.