I’ve been thinking about why that picture of President Obama’s daughter wearing a peace sign T-shirt at the G8 summit has bothered me so, and I think I’ve finally figured it out:

The fact is, people who wear such shirts - whether it to look au current or not, wear it to protest war. That’s how the whole peace sign thing got started, right? It was to protest what people thought was an illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. And, since that time, they’ve worn it as a form of protest against everything from nuclear proliferation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And there’s the rub: the fact is, her wearing a war protest T-shirt disrespects the men and women of our armed forces who are sacrificing their lives and fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan - the very soldiers and sailors who serve her father in his role as Commander-in-Chief over. Sure, she may be only 11, but it’s not just tacky, it’s wrong. And the fact her parents allowed her out wearing that shirt in that kind of setting shows not only poor taste, but an unconcious disdain for the men and women of our armed forces, those who are serving, those who have been injured and are recovering from horrendous injuries, and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country and the cause of freedom.

But frankly I’m sick of talking about the hypocrisy of limousine liberals like Barack and Michelle Obama. Let’s talk golf. Courtesy of my partner this year, Steve “Killer” Kowalski, check this link out. Amazing.

Finally, something I agree with Nancy Pelosi on. Wouldn’t you think the idiots in Washington would have more important items to consider? You know, like, um, the economy, for example? Maybe that’s expecting too much.

Lest one think I’m totally negative on President Obama, a couple of observations as evidence I’m willing to cut dude at least some slack:

1. This sounds like a good trade-off to me. Exploit the Russians’ paranoia and fear so they put the pressure on Iran. Good for us, good for them.

2. People are dissing the Prez because of this photo (an aside: how the heck do you capture a photo like that, anyways?), but if it were me I’d probably be doing the same thing. I may be married (happily so) but for Gawdsakes, I’m not dead. Can’t blame the Prez - after all, there’s some serious boo-tay goin’ on there. I just wonder what she looks like from the front…

I know I’ve used this title before, but like they say, if the shoe fits…

Today we hit 107 again, but just wait until this weekend, when we go from hot to (eexpletive deleted) hot.

Some other brief observations worth nothing, I’m sure…

* I know she’s just a girl, and peace logo T-shirts are not uncommon for girls her age to wear, but for some reason the Presiden’t daughter wearing one in public during a world leaders summit doesn’t sit right with me. Don’t know why, it just doesn’t.

* Light dawns over Marblehead. Like Captain Ed I’d ask the AP where they’ve been, but that would be a rhetorical question, since it’s obvious their lips have been firmly planted on President Obama’s posterior for the past year.

* Are Democrats starting to get nervous? They ought to - I’ve been talking to some friends of mine with impressive knowledge of the country’s financial system and they’re shaking in their boots right now. This country is closer to a financial meltdown - perhaps even civil unrest unlike anything seen since the late ’60s - than anyone thinks, and the people who are truly ‘in the know’, know its amateur hour at the White House. believe me, there’s real fear out there.

* Mark my words, the Obama house of cards is not far from tumbling. Investor confidence is dropping by the day, and his approval numbers are starting to reflect that. I don’t know whom the country thought they were electing, but they didn’t think it was a radical socialist from Chicago who was going to, with the help of a Democratic Congress, spend this country into the toilet.

* Why Red Sox fans are concerned about Toronto hurler Roy Halladay going to the Yankees baffles me. Why on earth would Toronto would trade one of baseball’s best pitchers to another team in their very own division? Makes absolutely no sense.

* What a freakin’ waste of money. This at a time when California can’t pay it’s own bills and is passing out IOUs? Seems to me somebody’s priorities are out of whack.

Tonight was one of those nights where everything seemed the same - the air temp was 96, the pool was 96, and even though there was a significant breeze, everything felt the same - air, water, life. The moon was pretty, however, and the green glassy diamonds its reflection created on the pool bottom was peaceful and relaxing to look at.

How much of an idiot is Al Gore? This much. Anyone who compres some arguable threat of global warming akin to a evil regime that slaughtered millions upon millions of people, be they civilian or combatant, is simply a peawit.

Isn’t Michael Jackson buried yet? It seems like he’s been dead for months. Let’s get this national - oops, international, immersion into insanity over with and get on to more important stuff.

This is kind of a cool story.

It’s about time someone from the Left calls the petty, pathetic, and vicious treatment of Sarah Palin for what it is. Key line: “Self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ made a blood sport of hating and dehumanizing her.” She’s right, and I know a few of them.

Mark my words, the Dodgers are about to find out exactly what Manny Ramirez is all about - he’s a spoiled, selfish, man-child a$$hole disguising himself as a professional baseball player. He gets suspended for PEDs and is welcomed by the idiots in La-La Land as some kind of a conquering hero. He now knows he can get away with anything, and believe me, he’ll try.

The final thought for today isn’t mine, but it’s about time someone had the clarity of thinking to write the following. A key excerpt:

…The media had better find something that actually sticks, or they are in for a world of hurt. As more people catch on to their game of attempting to keep us ignorant and misinformed, they will continue to lose credibility. If this media loses credibility, so does their entire liberal agenda.

The double standard in the media is hideous. Barack Obama does dealings with a felon (Tony Rezko), is politically mentored by a proud terrorist (Bill Ayers), is steeped in 20 years of the racist preachings of Jeremiah Wright, and the media pursues nothing. Sarah Palin is edited to sound like a fool in an interview with Katie Couric, and the media pounces. Barney Frank can run a homosexual prostitution ring out of his apartment, while railroading our housing market through felonious dealings with government agencies, and his credibility is never questioned. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has to defend her accent and her proclivity toward sports analogies.

The disgusting coverage of the death of Michael Jackson, and the pathetic fawning over a President that is bypassing our constitution and overrunning our ideals has indeed sparked a backlash against the American media. The media’s credibility is wavering, and therefore the liberal agenda is also on the ropes. This nation may be on the cusp of something wonderful. Perhaps a return to conservative values, conservative philosophy, and the American way of life (reason and enlightenment), is just around the corner.

I’m thinking he’s a bit optimistic here, but I do think the media has so overplayed its hand in its obvious love affiar with President Obama and the over-the-top Michael Jackson coverage that there’s bound to be a backlash. Of course, maybe Americans have just gotten accustomed to being ignorant and misinformed - hell, that’s how Obama got elected to begin with.

At any rate, if that’s the case, we have a much bigger problem than just Barack Obama attempting to destroy this country’s economy for his own radical socialist and statist purposes.

The Accuweather site doesn’t lie, it was brutal yesterday: 112 in the backyard. Fortunately, today it cooled down to a brisk 107. Almost had to put on a sweater. But this week looks like it’s going to be one of the hottest of the year. Check out these projected high temps and click on the next 5 days. Wow.

The pool got up to 96 yesterday - with a 12-degree differential off of a 112 high you can’t exactly say the water felt cool, but it was still wet. I don’t think it’s possible for that much water (it’s 10,200 gallons) yto get much warmer than that, but three years ago during a stretch of 110+ days and two 100 degree nights the pool did hit 100 for a day.

Just when I thought my petunias had had it - all the white ones burned to a crisp - the red ones have made a bit of a comeback, and I think I know why - they were the ones planted in the middle, away from the sides. Even though it’s a big planter, it’s still ceramic, and you can imagine how warm that gets after the afternoon sun has been beating on it for several hours.

But I think this week might be more than they can take.

Just like me.

Wow! 2 1/2 days without work. It almost felt like a vacation. Not there wasn’t anything going on worth checking into, however…

There’s an old adage in baseball that you’re never as good as you look when things are going well, and you’re never as bad as you look when you’re going bad. But the Red Sox have looked bad without Mike Lowell in the lineup and losing 2 of 3 to the Mariners. Just goes to show how important a cog he is in their lineup.

This is a good move for the Celtics. Ought to be an entertaining winter.

Ahhhh, winter. Just the sound of it brings a small sense of relief. The heat has really gotten to me this week. Brutal.

Maybe it’s just me, but I never had a problem with states collecting sales taxes from Internet-purchased goods delivered to their state. Why should large Internet sites have any taxation advantage over the shop down the street?

Isn’t Michael Jackson buried yet? This whole continued media frenzy about his death is beyond nauseating. Not to take away from his talent, but you’d think someone important had died.

While I think Sarah Palin should have at least finished out her term as Alaska governor, I can understand why she chose to step down as soon as she did. Being the governor of a rather faraway and parochial state after the flash and dash of a national presidential campaign can only be a letdown, and she’s had to put up with more than her share of abuse from the loony Left. In her case, I think it’s less ‘if you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen’ than it is, ‘if you can’t (any longer) stand the kitchen, find a new kitchen’…

I love it when liberals feel the need to impose their own worldview on what the Republican Party and conservative movement should do. Yeah, like Democrats would be wise to listen to anything a conservative would counsel them on!

Isn’t all this early speculation about 2012 candidates beyond absurd? I mean, how many people in July 2005 even though Barack Obama had a ghost of a chance?

I’m sitting in a patio chair sipping a cold Caguama and looking at the lightning flashes to our southeast. Supposedly there are dust storms in the forecast for tonight; this might be the leading edge of one of them.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from one of my fellow project managers asking for answers to some questions being asked by one of our newest clients - one whom, ironically enough, I used to work for many moons ago, for the better part of twenty years. When I asked her who she happened to be working with there, the names she dropped created a tsunami of memories flooding through my mind. They were all former co-workers of mine, people I considered close friends, even family, for a good many years. Hearing those once-familiar names in such a different context, the distance and difference between who and where I am now, and who and where I was then, seemed so vast as to be almost unrecognizable. I suddenly felt old, washed up and burned out, and feeling as if I was living on the moon, looking back at my former home on earth.

You see, between 1979 and 1998, and then from 2002 through half of 2003, I was an integral part of that employer family. We were a tight-knit group: together we went through all sorts of corporate battles and upheavals, and personal changes together, and some of the people my co-worker mentioned used to actually work for me. Of course, like any relationship - professional or otherwise - over such a length of time we would have our ups and downs, but through it all we were more than just co-workers, we were family. It was a time and a place you rarely - if ever - see anymore.

I’ll admit the whole episode freaked me out. It took a good twenty minutes in the quite darkness of the pool surrounded by now-familiar sights, scents, and sounds just to regain some semblence of who and where I was, to regain some sense of presence I could grasp on to because I know if I didn’t it could mean a forever fall into some abyss I might never be able to crawl out from.

In that transcendent moment, my brain seemed lost somewhere back in the mid-’90s, my body was splashing around in 2009, and all I could think of is who I am and where I am now, and how little I feel a part of anything. I have a home, a wife, a bunch of funky rabbits, a job that demands 70+ hours a week, and some surf and tropical MP3s to keep me company and fill my days. But there seems no real end game here, no ultimate and underlying purpose to it all.

Recalling those Massachusetts days and my old job, surrounded by familiar surroundings, family, co-workers, and friends, everything then seemed to have substance, where it was meaningful or not. Out here, I’m just a stranger living amongst strangers, my connection to work, family, and friends dependent on electricity passing through a phone cord or Internet cable. Whether or not this is what and how it’s all supposed to be and end up, who knows? And maybe it’s better that way.

But for now it still feels like life lived in exile.

A hot breeze has suddenly kicked up, the palm trees are stirring, and the wind chimes are tinkling away happily. It appears that lightning is sliding to our east and north - too bad. Me, I’m grabbing myself another Caguama, and the pool awaits.