Rockinsteve's neighborhood

Ah, politics.

Here's what's been going on lately on the streetwhere I live.

Last Sunday, I gave up on the Oakland Raiders game against whomever they were beating on TV (Buffalo, I think - is that a town?), and decided to wash my neglected 1980 Volvo, probably the newest car I've ever owned.

So I'm out washing my car and finding that there is still some paint underneath the grime, and bathing myself in the process, and here comes the guy - a professional Internet gambler, no less - who lives across the street. I figured that the gossip tree had been activated ("Look out the window, he's actually washing something!!").

He's visting to tell me that I story I wrote in the Long Beachcomber(you can read it yourself for about the next week athttp://www.longbeachcomber.com/index.php?CatID=2&Story=951) aboutthe local Hawaiian Gardens Casino he's well acquained with and it was more or less spot on. Pretty good start to our conversation.

Then he mumbles something about me being a reporter, and I finally figure out he's trying to accuse me of being in bed with Dan Rather (does he have photos?), because I write news stories, and he knowns of 50 reasons why the documents used in the Bush National Guard story were forged and whyisn't Rather apologizing?

OK, fair enough. I asked him "does this story diminish or improve youe life?" or is your life more impacted by the lack of decenthealth insurance in the U.S. (which Bush has never really addressedlike Clinton did, at least) or the impending restablishment ofselective service (because of Bush's Iraq fiasco) which would affecthis two teenaged sons."

But Dan Rather" did this and did that, he answered. And I replied,the Rather story is being kept alive so we can't have theconversation about the issues I brought up, the ones that reallymatter, the ones that make Bush and VP Hal E. Burton (I mean DickCheney), a bad bet for a second term.

Well, my neighbor is still hung up on Dan Rather and I think the story will become another Monicagate or Vince Foster or some grand conspiracy ball of wax. And just when I'm hoping that CBS can provide some documentation about authenticity of some old photocopies, my world explodes: Rather apologized!!

Now the story is gathering big-time momentum and I still don't thinkit's a big deal, but it seems like a whole bunch of folks do. Do you?...care, that is?