et ceteras

Sarah is 6½ and Erika and I have taken several trips without her. This week she is in the mountains with her grandmother, aunt, and cousin, and it is her first trip without us. The first night she was gone, I almost walked into her room to check on her when I went upstairs to get something. It was muscle memory, force of habit, whatever you want to call it -- and it made me feel sullen when I remembered she wasn’t there. I always miss her when we are apart, but it’s strange how much larger her absence seems to loom when she is the one away from home.

Do you need another reason to ignore what you read in the MSM? Last week, the punditry was going on and on about how Mitt Romney can not possibly beat Barack Obama in 2012. But yesterday, a poll showed Romney ahead of Obama. And then today, a headline said “Obama holds big 2012 lead over Republicans.” This schizo-style inconsistency reminds me of a quote I read many years ago, which noted that “when you hear two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, it makes you wonder about history.”

Here is an excellent editorial by Mark Steyn, which uses the Weiner affair to illustrate just how big government has gotten.

And here is one by Jonah Goldberg, about politicians’ destructively irresponsible impulse to pass the buck.

When it comes to a much more inspiring topic -- hockey -- I must admit that I love the edgy tone of violence that has taken over the Stanley Cup Final. I love that after being the perpetrator in Game One’s biting incident, the Canucks’ Alex Burrows rang up three points in Game Two, including the winning goal in overtime. But even more than that, I love that the Bruins responded by taking the fight right to the Canucks in Games Three and Four and bloodying their noses while outscoring them 12-1. I love the finger-wagging at Burrows, and the way Tim Thomas leveled Henrik Sedin on Monday and then chopped Burrows’s leg on Wednesday. This has become a man’s series and I have to question the manliness of anybody who does not enjoy watching it.

Sticking with hockey, one of the things I wrote on June 1^st -- that “as the series unfolds and I see how Vancouver and Boston play each other, there is a better than average chance I will find myself choosing a side” -- has come to pass. I am cheering for the Boston Bruins. Not because they are based in the U.S. or because they are from the same conference as the Lightning, but because I can not stand Vancouver’s attitude. There is nothing particularly wrong with the fact that the Canucks dwell in the gray area of the rulebook and sometimes play dirty, but there is something very wrong with the fact that they pretend otherwise and try to portray themselves as the virtuous maiden being unfairly attacked by the dragon.

And lastly: Am I the only one who thinks Tim Thomas resembles Yukon Cornelius?