Buy buy buy!
The 100 blank DVDs should be coming any day now. Tonight I ordered the iPod, which should be here in a week. And I ordered the ALS guide to patients and families. It will be a starting point. I wasn't to research this topic as if it were a graduate-level course, as if my life depended on it.

Actually, it is amazing how lackadaisical I am about this, even when my life really does depend on it. I have always been just a little, tiny bit lazy. Not willing to stress myself too much. Maybe now my life depends on maintaining that attitude.

I plan to wander into the local mega-bookstore (the national chain that is driving out local independents) and see if I can find a Nolo Press book on making a will. I have one already but it was just me, typing.



Statesman
I encountered this fellow, a very nice guy, and conscientious and caring, and at one point I guess he mentioned his military service and I thanked him for it. The conversation went on to other things. We both like some of the classic 1960s rock bands, and he must have figured I was a right guy. And I am. But not quite the way he figured me. "I don't know how much of a Clinton hater you are," he said, "but I got this amusing email. It's kind of fun." And then he read from a sarcastic thank-you note circulating on the internet that contained an allegation about Clinton freeing a terrorist who later flew a plane into the WTC on 9/11. I had run across this one months or maybe a year previously and had already researched it and found it to be false. "That would be sensational if it were true," I said, "But I looked into it and it's not." I asked him to print out the email for me and he did. A few days later I emailed him:

Thanks for printing out the "Thank You Bill and Hillary!" email for me.

I agree with you that the thing about Bill Clinton and Warren Christopher insisting that the Israelis release the Egyptian 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta would be a big deal.

But it looks like that never happened. Some Jordanian guy named Mahmoud Atta (not Mohammed Atta) was extradicted against his wishes by the US and sent to Israel. The Israeli courts apparently later released him on a technicality. The censorship of the idea that he was a 9/11 hijacker apparently relates to the fact that it was untrue.

The Anti-Defamation League explains it like this:

In fact, the perpetrator of the April 1986 attack was a 33-year-old Jordanian and a naturalized U.S. citizen, who went by the name Mahmoud Atta. The Mohammed Atta behind the 9/11 attacks would have been 18 years old in 1986 (he was born in 1968) and was an Egyptian citizen. The Boston Globe, which was one of the few newspapers that printed this rumor, issued a correction a few days later and said their original report was "a case of mistaken identity."

The parts of the email about blow jobs is fair game. Now I am real curious to learn about the White House silverware and the vandalism.

After this I went on about my business of moping with ALS, and wondered whether his response would be something like one of these:

• "Thanks for pointing that out! I emailed my buddies who are on this list to let them know the facts. Sometimes I guess people get carried away and just send out anything that sounds bad about Clinton."
  



• "OK, that may be true. But the spirit of it is correct. Clinton did all kinds of things like that, that we never hear about because of the Media."



• "Got your little note. You remind me of those whining Liberal lawyers always picking over the rules to find a weasel way out. Get this: CLINTON SUCKED! THE LIBERALS SUCK! Don't annoy me again with your feebleness."

Given the current state of political discourse in America, any of those could be likely responses. I had my hopes up for response number one, because he seems like a right guy, just a bit misinformed.

So what was the response? Two more forwarded emails ridiculing Liberals and Clinton.