two nuggets...

and, btw, the pr of digging out in Iowa and emailing supports to volunteer and send money to the Red Cross might seem obvious - but I didn't see McCain or any Bushes out there.

“Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL,” he told a huge African-American congregation in Chicago. “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home that can guide you and lead you and set a good example for you.” “What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — any fool can have a child,. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

and

"You know, sometimes I’ll go to an eighth-grade graduation and there’s all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it’s just eighth grade. To really compete, they need to graduate high school, and then they need to graduate college, and they probably need a graduate degree too. An eighth-grade education doesn’t cut it today. Let’s give them a handshake and tell them to get their butts back in the library!"