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With the Memorial Day holiday as a backdrop, the presidential candidates are on the road in key areas today, with issues like veterans health care and the war in Iraq still themes on and off the campaign trail.
Both Senator John McCain and Barack Obama, who traded barbs last week over a new G.I. bill that would provide education benefits to veterans, make Memorial Day appearances in New Mexico – a key electoral swing state.
Mr. McCain will give a speech Monday morning at the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial in Albuquerque. He spent the weekend at his ranch outside Sedona, Ariz., where the guest list included several potential vice presidential picks.
In Las Cruces, N.M., Senator Obama and Gov. Bill Richardson will appear together at a veterans’ town hall. On Sunday Mr. Obama delivered a commencement speech at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, standing in for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The Times’s Katie Zezima reports that Senator Obama, “implored the 737 undergraduates and 100 graduate students to change the country and the world through service to others, a theme Mr. Kennedy planned to focus on.”
Newsweek devoted its cover this week to Senator Obama, with its topic piece on race.
And while the front-runners for the Democratic and Republican nominations will be tackling military issues, the highest-ranking officer in the armed services, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, has issued a directive to service men and women to remain neutral throughout the presidential election. According to The Times’s Thom Shanker, “The essay can be seen as a reflection of the deep concern among senior officers that the military, which is paying the highest price in carrying out national security policy, may be drawn into politicking this year.”
The Los Angeles Times reports how both the McCain and Obama campaigns stack up when it comes to aides with previous lobbying ties, noting that “the history of both candidates is peppered with campaign operatives, policy advisers and others who have clear links to the long-standing but often scandal-tinged practice of making money by trying to influence politicians.”

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

Tags: angeles, day, events, los, memorial

One was soothed by his small-town roots, the other energized by the bright lights of a big city.
One was content with a closet-sized office visited only by his coaches, the other insistent on expansive quarters, stocked with a vast array of Italian delights and often filled with Hollywood celebrities.
One masked his feelings and guarded his words in public, the other could explode at the slightest provocation.
Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda may have been as different as could be on a personal level, but professionally, they were quite similar.
Both arrived in the big leagues with major league credentials hardly worth mentioning. Both managed in the minors, both went on to manage the Dodgers, both enjoyed a longevity that spanned decades, both won World Series championships and both wound up in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Between them, Alston and Lasorda led the Dodgers for 43 years. This will be the 12th full season since Lasorda retired and Joe Torre is their sixth manager over that period.
Torre certainly arrives with a better reputation than did Alston when he was hired in 1954 to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers. The general reaction of the New York media to the 42-year-old Alston’s arrival was, Walter who?
Alston had enjoyed great success in the minor leagues where he had been a league-leading home run hitter four times and had managed for 13 seasons. But that didn’t exactly wow them in Brooklyn, where big league credentials were all the mattered. Alston’s major league experience consisted of one at-bat for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1936. He struck out.
This was the man who was going to take over a two-time defending National League pennant winner?
In the book “Bums,” sportswriter Charles Einstein recalled Alston watching slugger Duke Snider in the batting cage in Alston’s first spring training.

latimes.com

Tags: angeles, coliseum, los