A true hero died today. A Polish woman by the name of Irena Sendler passed on in a hospital in Warsaw at the age of 98. She was, I suspect, the world's greatest living hero – and I'll bet that you've never even heard her name.

The era around the Second World War, perhaps by necessity, produced a lot of heroes. American fighting men like Audie Murphy, who received the Medal of Honor for risking his life to save 19 other soldiers in his unit. The list is long and distinguished but I'm left wondering if any of the over 200 CMH recipients from that era begin to hold a candle to the steely tenacity and dedication to a mission in the face of incredible odds of Mrs. Sendler.

This is her story. At the beginning of the war she was a low-level social service worker for the city of Warsaw. She was able to retain that position when the Nazis invaded Poland and took over the city. In keeping with their policies of the extermination of all Jews, the Germans established the "Warsaw Ghettos" which were walled-off sections of the city that served as holding camps from which Jews were systematically shipped to the labor and death camps throughout Poland and Germany.

Throughout the existence of the Warsaw Ghetto (which the Nazis burned down in 1943 – with people still interned there), the 29-year-old and several of her collaborators used her position as a social worker to gain access to the ghettos working tirelessly to smuggle infants and children out then placing them with foster families for the duration of the war. Only being able to smuggle out one or two at a time she managed to save an estimated 2500 children. Think about that for a minute. It's hard enough to smuggle one person away from the Nazis, let alone place them in some sort of foster care system in a Nazi-controlled country– but 2500 people, and only a few at a time? Amazing.

If caught, the common fate that would have befallen her and her family and friends was summary execution. She would certainly have known that, yet she regularly risked her life, day after day to save the Jewish children of Warsaw from extermination at the hands of the Nazis. When the Gestapo finally caught up with her she was interned and tortured at Pawiak Prison yet she never revealed any names of her accomplices nor the people she saved. She miraculously escaped from the prison and continued her work trying to save Jews.

If another person regularly risked as much for so long I'm not aware of them. Had Mrs. Sendler been an American soldier, her heroics would have warranted the highest accolades this country gives. Sadly, with the occupation of Poland by the Soviets after the war very few people were ever aware of her efforts.

I think it's a sad commentary on our values that Mrs. Sendler's efforts didn't receive more recognition. She was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 but as you know the committee, in their infinite wisdom, awarded that prize to former Vice President Al Gore for making a documentary on global warming.

I wrote Mr. Gore earlier today and asked him to review Mrs. Sendler's accomplishments and consider abdicating the prize to her. I'll let you know if he gets back to me.

This is what I intended to write today:

SO, Tuesday's primaries pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton. Read 'em any ol way you want, the truth is Obama did better than projected in Indiana showing that his popularity actually rebounded faster than expected from the Rev. Wright attack. (yeah, that's right, I called it an attack, if you don't think that debacle was orchestrated from behind the scenes then you really need to pull your head out.)

The thing about elections, which are basically mathematical models, finite, limited outcome models, with all these extraneous factors is that the longer they run, the fewer factors will affect the outcome. At some point, say about… now, when the scenario has run long enough, the outcome isn't rationally changeable. At that point there are no longer trends, there are only the cold hard numbers. Run the numbers any way you want to, there's no freakin' way the Clinton campaign can pull this one out.

So why, you might be asking yourself, is she still in the campaign? Denial? Well, that's always a desirable quality in a president but there's something else going on here. There's the convention and before the convention there's the rules committee meeting on May 31st. The rules and bylaws committee, you see, is made up of 30 high-ranking party officials, 13 of whom work for the Clinton campaign.

But Dan, didn't you say a minute ago that at some point in the model that factors and trends can't affect the outcome? Well, yeah, I did. But if you change the model, by changing something like, oh, I don't know… THE RULES AND BYLAWS then you have an entirely different model.

Keep your eyes open kiddies, expect some crazy, underhanded shit to go down starting May 31st at that meeting. Hillary Clinton may not be ethical, but she's not stupid. She knows the numbers as they stand today and she'd drop out now if she didn't have something up her sleeve.

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That's what I was going to write, then the Clinton camp fired off this little nugget this morning. Below is a real quote; I didn't even paraphrase for dramatic effect:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” (citing an article by The Associated Press).

It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Ok, first off, that statement fundamentally says: "stupid people think I'd make a good president." An emerging pattern? Um, no, no pattern at all, just white sheets (with little eye holes cut out of them). WTF? Really, is she expecting "W" cross party lines and vote for her? I know Rove is looking for a job these days. I guess she's courting the 23% of America that still approves of the Bush administration.

By the way, in case you don't think that the Clinton political machine has the press in their pocket. That quote has been pulled off both the NY Times and the CNN feeds this morning since they noticed how poorly it was playing…

Well, it's been a few months since I blogged. I just finished up what seemed like the longest move in history. Rebecca had to start work early and our stuff came almost a week late -- you'd think that for almost ten grand they could at least be on time! At least nothing appears to be broken or lost!

So we're officially Phoenicians now. The weather has been unbelievably nice thus far and the neighborhood seems like a good one. We're about 500m from the bar that the Phoenix Hash uses for its mismanagement meetings. Serendipity.

Spare bedroom is open for business so give us a call.

On-On,
Chlamydia

God hates me and so I'm in Iowa

You know things are pretty fucked up when the best news you've had all week comes from Fish!

Well, if things had gone according to plan I would be in warm Austin, TX right now drinking a margarita on the patio of Eddie V's with a couple of hot Harriettes. Tomorrow I'd be eating some kickass sushi at Chon Som and on Friday I'd be kickin' back in the Carousel listening to the sounds of the Mad Cowboys -- getting my Lone Star fix and trying to sneak a beer from the bar without Stella catching me. On Sunday I would be doing the second annual Chuck Norris Hash. Big if.

But god hates me and so I'm in Iowa. Let me tell you about Iowa these days; Iowa City is a bi-polar mess of slush soup by day and ice obstacle course by night. When you walk out the door in the morning you don't know if you're going to fill your shoes with ice water or slip and fall on your ass. The choices kinda suck but the suspense keeps things interesting.

All the more reason to head south, right? Unfortunately, wrong. You see as it turns out there are three flu viruses out this year. I already caught one of them for Christmas so I should be home free -- but this weekend I managed to catch another one. For those of you who haven't ventured north of the Mason-Dixon line, let me just tell you that you haven't really lived until you've walked a hyper German Shepard through an ice storm at midnight with a fever of 103. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Rebecca just had foot surgery last week so there's only one dog walker in the family.

Boo hoo for me. I'll stop bitching now, it's not really that bad. Besides, Fish shot me some good apple news yesterday and next week I'll be in Austin where the only ice I touch will be when I reach into the beer cooler.

On-On!

A 70-year-old American tourist killed his would-be mugger in Costa Rica earlier today.

The U.S. Army vet put one of the three knife-wielding attackers in a choke hold breaking his clavicle (and probably his neck) when the other (also seniors) tour members began fighting back the two other assailants fled the scene.

This is a great propaganda campaign for the Middle East: US Army, even our senior citizens will kick your Haji ass!

Jeez, and they say that I'm an asshole.

I just looked at Sprinkles' blog from the other day and he compared me some poor girl he knows who happens to have a name phonetically similar to mine (no, her name isn't Chlamydia). Talk about guilty by association... then again she is a friend of Sprinkles so she can't care that much about her reputation!

Well I've never met the other Dani Davis but I can assume there are quite a few differences besides her being obviously way better looking.  So in deference to David Letterman here are the top ten ways Dani Davis is different than Dan Davis:

10. Dani still thinks Brownie is straight.

9. Dani doesn't call Brownie "Sprinkles."

8. Dani doesn't make Brownie always be "the Bottom."

7. Dani probably wonders why the Crack Whores all seem know Brownie's name.

6. Dani hasn't seen Brownie throw up as many times as I have.

5. Dani probably doesn't suspect that the reason that Brownie left Austin is because he had to.

4. She has probably never written on Brownie's forehead with a sharpie (but that would make her one of the few people).

3. Dani still thinks that when Brownie talks shit to girls he can actually back it up.

2. Dani has never made a song up about Brownie.

1. Dani probably thinks that rash he has is from his running shorts.

A Good Thing to Know:

Today I learned an helpful piece of information. Did you know that the Colorado Springs Postal Service will not deliver mail addressed to anyone named "Sprinkles the Wanker"?

I'm not sure how he's going to get his mail when he legally changes his name but I guess he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

On-On!

Vickie Lynn Hogan, better known as Anna Nicole Smith died today at the ripe old age of 39. Ancient tycoons all over the world shed a collective tear -- at least they would have if their lacrimal ducts hadn't ceased to function long ago.