Travels

Mary (Nancy's cousin), her son Andy and her friend Tom visited us on Saturday and Sunday. Besides an enjoyable dinner with good conversation, they got in some swimming (our creek water must be at least 80 degrees) and kayaking. Great to see them.

On Tuesday we left for Cape Cod for a relationship tune up and a mini vacation. Besides the tune up, which was quite successful, we toured much of the Cape ending up in Provincetown way out on the end. We even got some hiking and beach walking in. On Friday we met Terry in Mystic and toured the Mystic Seaport. A great place to learn a little about our sailing history. Another hike on Saturday before returning home. The weather was great the whole time. We averaged just over 50 MPG on the approxomate 1000 miles of the complete trip (good old Prius). Great when gas was $4.00 to $4.45 a gallon.

On the political front, I'm interested in the tax proposals of each of the persumed candidates, McCain and Obama. As I understand it, which is probably not very well, both candidates would keep the current tax cuts for thoes families whose annual income is $250,000 or less. Obama would increase some of the tax custs for those in this income catagory. McCain would also keep the tax cuts for those whose income is greater than $250,000/yr, while Obama would increase the two top marginal tax rates for these income earners to 36% and 39.6% where they were during the Clinton administration. McCain would leave the capital gains tax rate at 15% while Obama would raise it to between 20% and 28% for those whose annual income is greater than $250,000. Both McCain and Obama would keep the Alternative Minimum Tax (ATM) while keeping the option of possibly changing it some (for example indexing it to the rate of inflation). McCain has proposed the largest tax cuts and says he'll make up the revenue by "looking at" entitlements and other federal spending programs. Obama has less to make up but still must obtain additional revenue even after the additonal high end tax increase he proposes. Int's not clear to me where he thinks this will come from. It's difficult for me to comment on Obama's proposal not knowing where either the added revenue will come from or what programs will be cut to balance a budget with less tax revenue coming in. McCain's proposal sounds, to me, like pure wishfull thinking. He needs to get additional revenue or cut spending to the tune of somewhere around $1,000,000,000,000 ($1T) to obtain a balanced budget. This doesn't look very reasonable to me and, again in my opinion, could only happen under a very sunny day scenario. Anyone got an opinion on this?

Visits

This week we had guests. Sara came and left Ella with us while she went to Johns Hopkins to work for a couple of days. She and Ella left on Wednesday. It was great having them here and being able to spend some time with Ella while Sara was working. It seems amazing how fast grandchildren grow up. I don't remember such speed as I was growing up. On Tuesday Nancy and Jim arrived and stayed for a couple of days. It was nice that they had a little overlap with Sara and Ella (they'd never seen Ella). Nancy and Jim came with a loaded van. In it, among other things, were 7 boxes of dishes and glassware that Margot and Jeff had decided to jettison prior to their move to California. Margot had made them available to anyone who wanted them and I said we'd take them. At the time I didn't realize that she had a china store's worth of the dishes (she did say there was a lot of them but I thought that meant a dozen plates and maybe some desert dishes). Anyway, Nancy and Jim were kind enough to lug them up and we've already used some of the dinner plates. Many more of the dishes are awaiting unpacking. They are very attractive and I'm sure they'll get used, especially in the summer.

This was also the week that Barack Obama cinched the nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for president - an historic moment for the United States even if it goes no further. He appears to have a message that resonates with many Americans, espically the younger ones. It looks to me like a battle between more of less staying the (economic, military, environmental and political) course (John McCain) or leaping into the unknown and hoping a relative newcomer (Barack Obama) can engender real change in our current direction. I am so worried about our current directions, both domestic and international, that I'm willing to give most anyone with a vision of an improved United States a chance. It will be tough and maybe impossible but, in my opinion, we need significant and lasting changes in our approach to the many real and large problems we, as a country, are facing. Not the least of these is our current acrimonious and extremely partisan three branches of the US federal government.