Nice To Meet You

Well, it's been a sparse two weeks, mostly due to two reasons: My mother was in town a week and a half ago for a few days, and then I'm having to pick up a bunch of slack and extra time at work, due to a co-worker being on some sort of leave. So the days have been long, the nights have been not long enough, and it doesn't help that I religously watch every Atlanta Braves game that goes out over the airwaves.

Today, I got to meet someone pretty cool, since he's one of the few national politicians I have a lot of respect for. Sen. John McCain was in town today stumping for Asa Hutchinson, who is running for governor of Arkansas, attempting to replace the popular and lean Mike Huckabee. I happened to be at a sort of press conference that he was giving at the Embassy Suites in Rogers, in front of a pretty small crowd of people. After he got done, he was milling around and shaking hands with people, saying hello to everyone. I guess I happened to get lucky, because I was one of the last people who tried to talk to him, and I somehow caught him in such a way that I got to talk to him for about 45 seconds without anyone else coming up to touch a REAL LIVE SENATOR FROM ARIZONA!




I told him I saw him on the Daily Show last week, which was of course, hilarious. He laughed and sort of rolled his eyes, and said something about it being a little rough this time. I told him I thought he was pretty smooth and that Jon Stewart definitely likes to give him a hard time. He said something to the effect of "When he said the thing about the 'Straight Talk Express heading straight to bullshit town,' I almost passed out!" He added that it was pretty freaking funny (and I very carefully agreed.)

He asked me if I caught the part when he first came on and Stewart asked him a question and he responded by saying, "I just want to start by bringing in my two lawyers....", which was an obvious nod to the train wreck of Cynthia McKinney on CNN the same day, when she answered the first question from Wolf Blitzer the same way. I told him I was from Atlanta, and that they could keep Cynthia McKinney in Washington and we'd all appreciate it...

Right about there a staffer finally came up and pulled him away to whisper something in his ear, and they disappeared into a room to stand with Asa Hutchinson between an American Flag and an Arkansas Flag for an hour and have their picture made with tons of rich Republicans who paid lots of money to be photographed with the two pols.

I'll take my 45 second conversation about the Daily Show with a few laughs anyday...

On a much heavier note, the Benton County Sheriff's Office and the prosecutor's office took all the grand jury members out to the spot on Highway 412 Monday where Erin Hamley was killed March 7 by State Trooper Larry Norman. They put a dummy on the ground where Hamley lay, and recreated the entire scene, down to the shotgun and the exact position of the police cars.

Once I finally realized how far it was out there, I was struck by something. Hamley lived back a few miles to the east from where he was killed. It would have taken him 2 hours (or much more) to walk all the way out there from the Taco Bell in Springdale or wherever he was hanging out in Lowell. How did he get there? I heard somebody say today (total speculation) that maybe somebody picked him up to give him a ride, and just dropped him off all the way out there to be mean. If that's the case, then that's just cruel.

Of course, not nearly as cruel as being shot with a shotgun just a short while later....

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