Now COPD is personal

As I write this my father is in Fairfax Hospital and I’m asking for prayers from everyone who reads this.

He’s been feeling badly for the last few weeks; he’s been diagnosed with COPD. This isn’t much of a surprise as he smoked a pack and half of cigarettes for about 40 years and the cough he developed earlier this month was thought to be a common cold.

Having a cough is more an irritant than anything else but he also developed swelling (edema) in his abdomen and left leg. The good news is that a doppler test (developed by my friend Lori’s father George Leopold) ruled out a blot clot.

The bad news is that he was having a hard time speaking and we didn’t know why. The hospital called at 3AM and told him to go to the Emergency Room. His sodium level was low (111) and we think it’s a bad combination of his hypertension medication Linisopril and Hydrochlorothiazide. That explained why he was so sluggish. The Lisinopril is a good idea but having Hydrochlorothiazide wasn’t. It’s a diuretic which is normally a good idea for hypertension but it lowers both potassium and sodium which messes with heartbeat. The doctors have changed the medication to stop the diuretic and we all hope it’s the beginning of good news.

I pray it is. My father is a good man, but he doesn’t enjoy being a patient; it’s hard for him to ask for help or be the center of attention. It will be good news for everyone when he gets to go home and I pray and hope he comes home soon to my mother (who he has been married to for nearly 54 years). They belong together.

I love them more than I can say.

Updating the Candidate's List

Every four years I put myself through the torture of following the candidates for President and if you look at the left column of this page you can see as many of the serious candidates as I can find.

Today Herman Cain announced he is “suspending” his run for the Republican nomination. It’s a technical thing and I can’t imagine he will gain the nomination. Suspending instead of ending his candidacy allows him to continue to raise money (though I can’t imagine anyone contributing) and spend money. I suspect he’s doing this so he can close his books and pay his campaign staffers. More about him later.

I also looked at the links I have for other candidates. For several I’ve updated the links when they’ve changed the URL. Others have broken links and I can’t find a campaign page and I’ve deleted them. Here is that list:

Democrat
Jeff Boss
Republican
Herman Cain
Bob Forthen
Roger Nichols
John Revelis
Green
Winona LaDuke (this was actually a mistake: there is a web page to draft her but no page where she says she wants to be President. There are several names being mentioned for the Green nomination but I haven’t found anyone who has announced).
Libertarian
Jim Duesing
Independent
Jim Duesing
James Cooper
Temperance Alesha Lance-Council (this was also a mistake. Her web page is about her candidacy in 2008)
If you are running for President and have a web page, please email me.
Now onto Herman Cain. My last post spoke of his 9-9-9 tax plan, but it’s been clear for the last several weeks that his campaign was doomed.

Charges of sexual harassment are nothing new in political campaigns and they are always bothersome: they turn on he said/she said. What troubled me about this was that the story was first broken by Politico.com in October and they gave the Cain campaign 10 days notice that they were going to publish the story. You can read the original posting here. With 10 days notice the campaign didn’t have a coherent response; at first they attacked Politico.com without denying the charges. Then they couldn’t explain why the National Restaurant Association settled with women who claimed he harassed them. As the weeks went on it just got worse; his poll numbers fell through the floor and it became clear that he was not electable. I give him credit for figuring this out.

The charges notwithstanding, he should have done a better job responding to this. Our President has to respond quickly and coherently to all sorts of things: world leaders who make stupid and provocative allegations, countries or groups that threaten violence, or just plain bad news. The fact that Herman Cain and his campaign fumbled so badly on this told us that he was nowhere near ready to lead the country. He may have had good management skills, but our President needs the type of skills he showed us he doesn’t have.