Lima, OH – Middle America

After a leisurely breakfast the family, minus my sis, hopped in the family roadster and headed of to the heartland of America. Our stay in Chicago was short but fun filled. Taking a page from George Costanza, we left on top. The Burning has George obsessed with leaving people wanting more of him. Predictably, it backfires immensely leading to the standard hilarity often involved with arguably the greatest character in TV’s history.

You could make an argument that Chicago is one of the best places in to be in the summer. People are out all day long and there is always something going on. I may have to look into Chicago being a future destination for a summer of Pete. I know sis was glad to see us there and also glad to see us go. When you have Pete’s entire clan staying in a one bedroom, one bath condo, you have a good time but also have crowded conditions. Anyway thanks to Chicago in general and my sister specifically for helping start the summer of Pete in a spectacular manner.

After a very good breakfast sandwich at a neighborhood joint called, Over Easy, we packed up and headed east. We left Chicago and headed across Indiana to Lima, OH the hometown of my mom and the birthplace of my sister. The drive was a pleasant one. I was able to listen to CNN’s coverage of the DNC rules committee conference to decide the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegates. My mom has Sirius satellite radio so we were able to pick up pretty good reception of the meeting for most of the drive. There were lots of haggling, grandstanding, and precious little common sense. The extended nomination process has been a mixed blessing. On one hand the length of the Democratic Party’s nomination season has served as a great Civics 101 lesson for America. I think that the United States now understands in a much better way how fantastic and odd our process is. I also think the nastiness of that same race has given the Republicans a great game plan to beat the Dems. When this thing is all over I think Hillary Clinton is going to kick herself for a long time over the idea she got some very bad advice and hired some folks who did very poor planning. Here are my reasons Hillary will lose (LOST) the nomination.

1. She voted to go to war. Hillary votes against the war back in 2002 and Obama does not have the moral high ground on the very unpopular war and Hillary beats the snot out of Obama and rest the Democratic field.
2. I think she was way overconfident about her position and totally underestimated the grassroots operation of the Obama team, this was totally apparent in states that there were Caucuses. There was no reason a person as politically connected as Hillary and her strategy team should have looked sooo inexperienced running a caucus. Texas was the prime example.
3. Hillary’s team planned to win the first half and thought everyone would go home afterward. To take the sports analogy to far. For the Obama campaign to win the nomination they had to have and execute the perfect game plan, and they did just that. We are talking the movie Hoosiers, NC State beats Houston, or Villanova beating the mighty Georgetown Hoyas.

* On a side note, I think the pundits have totally underestimated the new voters that the Obama campaign has registered and mobilized. I think the general election results will surprise some people.

I, as usual, digress. Once we arrived in Lima we headed to the K of C (Knights of Columbus) with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandpas for some pork tenderloin sandwiches. The K of C is built right next to Lima Central Catholic were my Mom graduated from and my Dad later taught. It is a brand new one and is local hangout for the catholic folk of Lima. A round of drinks for eight people was around $16. It was a good time catching up with the family.