{"id":796,"date":"2006-10-14T18:19:09","date_gmt":"2006-10-14T23:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=796"},"modified":"2006-12-21T10:25:42","modified_gmt":"2006-12-21T15:25:42","slug":"words-in-edgewise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"Words in Edgewise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Duluth <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/articles\/index.cfm?id=25725&#038;section=News\">New Trib&#8217;s account<\/a> of the big debate was fair enough. I was &#8220;overshadowed&#8221; it said and I was. I had been placed on the periphery of our group and the principals, Grams and Oberstar, were seated closer than even friends would tolerate if they had a choice.\u00c2\u00a0The two of them enjoyed a real\u00c2\u00a0bickerfest.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll link to the debate when TPT puts it on their site. My wife and my campaign manager both gave me credit for framing the issues which were debated starting with Iraq and the nation&#8217;s budget deficit.<\/p>\n<p>Oberstar and Grams immediately locked horns on the vital question raised by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welty4congress.org\/tourjim.htm\">Grams&#8217;s flyer<\/a> about Jim&#8217;s many visits to France. Being a proper midwesterner I let them squeeze everything out that dishrag\u00c2\u00a0before interjecting that I&#8217;d rather hear about real issues\u00c2\u00a0like\u00c2\u00a0the two the boys I had taken on church mission trips who had been sent to Iraq and\u00c2\u00a0whose welcome home gift\u00c2\u00a0was an 8.5 trillion dollars debt to pay off.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t say this with any of the fury I feel about it nor did I expose any raw emotion in the rest of my precious few responses. (Its hard to separate kids locked in combat) The result was that Mel&#8217;s wife said I\u00c2\u00a0seemed polite. Damn that Minnesota Nice.<\/p>\n<p>Oberstar and Grams had their fingers in each other&#8217;s faces throughout. Oberstar said, as he has in the press, that Grams was lying about him and, as the Trib pointed out, the two continued bickering as the debate ended. Oberstar slapped Grams on the back two or three times as they left the &#8220;couch&#8221; in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture but with such ferocious\u00c2\u00a0blows that they probably stung the Senator as\u00c2\u00a0Jim continued to\u00c2\u00a0gripe that\u00c2\u00a0Rod was lying.<\/p>\n<p>There were serious subjects like Social Security which made brief appearances and questions about forest management and water rights. Oberstar who can&#8217;t debate on the floor of the House worth beans couldn&#8217;t shut up on Almanac. He was obviously very pleased with\u00c2\u00a0himself at having tossed out a few mild\u00c2\u00a0bon mots. Grams looked stoic, disapproving and like he&#8217;d rather be almost anywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>The highlight of my day was my visit to my Mother in her Alzheimer&#8217;s unit a couple hours before the debate.\u00c2\u00a0Mom at least would sing with me. <em>Swing Low Sweet Chariot<\/em>, <em>God Rest ye Merry Gentleman<\/em>, <em>You are my Sunshine<\/em> and another hour&#8217;s worth of songs. Her roomate, Timma, joined in on the spirituals.<\/p>\n<p>Jim and Rod just wern&#8217;t my sunshine.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Duluth New Trib&#8217;s account of the big debate was fair enough. I was &#8220;overshadowed&#8221; it said and I was. I had been placed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,56,47,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}