Last week, we noted the birth of Trig Palin, the fifth child of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Sarah Palin, a Republican, is currently sporting a 93% approval rating, the highest of any governor in the country, and we suspect it might be even higher if guys would stop drooling over her, and listen to the pollster's questions.

Turns out Sarah Steelman, pictured above, is running for Governor of Missouri. Jay Nixon, the state Attorney General, appears to be leading in the polls, although his lead over Silverman dropped from 11 points in February in 7 points in March, according to Rasmussen. She faces Congressman Kenny Hulshof in the primaries, with Nixon's lead over Hulshof dropping from 18 points in February to 11 points in March.

Nixon had a 21-point lead over Steelman with women voters, but Steelman had an 8-point lead among male voters. Rasmussen shows Nixon leading against either Republican candidate in March, with voters preferring a Democratic candidate to a Republican one by a 60/40 margin.

The present governor, Republican Matt Blunt earned good or excellent ratings from 42% of Missouri voters, and 30% poor. He made a late decision not to pursue re-election.

Steelman has been State Treasurer.

Missouri's state primary will be August 5.

Although it's Senator Clinton that has cast aspersions on Senator Obama's qualifications to be president, she is the one that Russian President Vladimir Putin doubts.

When asked about Clinton's remark that KGB officers have no soul, Putin replied: "At a minimum, a head of state should have a head."

"I only have one good eye, but I can see that my Marines are OK." Heidi had drawn in her breath when she saw what was under his eyelid. A thin, dark stem of tissue protruded from the gaping empty socket.

The back cover of Dr. Heidi Squier Kraft's book, Rule Number Two calls it the M*A*S*H of the war in Iraq, but if so, it's the M*A*S*H of the movie, brutal to watch, not the television M*A*S*H you could comfortably watch while eating supper.

Rule Number One, Henry told Hawkeye, is that young men die. Rule number two, of the rules of war, is that doctors can't change rule number one. Rule number one, Heidi points out, would be slightly different today. With modern body armor, Rule Number One might now state that war damages people. Rule Number Two, of course, would be unchanged. Heidi discovered something, though, that Henry didn't mention. War damages doctors, too. They are damaged by Rule Number Two.

Heidi Kraft was a Naval Flight Psychologist who was sent to Iraq in 2004 to treat Marines fighting in Iraq. Her book is brutally frank. I raced through it, trying to get to that page where Bobby is taking a shower, and we find out that the entire season was a bad dream. We find plenty of bad dreams in the book - but Victoria Principal never opens the shower door. It's real, and while Heidi is in Iraq, her twin babies are growing up without her. The book Rule Number Two, it turns out, is damaging to readers as well, socking them right in the gut.

At one point, Heidi is in the Expectant Room. Triage is the act of classifying medical cases into three groups - those that will survive on their own, those that will survive only if they immediately receive critical care, and those who will die no matter what is done. The expectant room is where they send troops who are expected to die, to provide fluids, pain management, and comfort in their last moments of life.

Corporal Dunham was the first of 14 to enter the SST from the Black Hawk, and Jess, a pediatric cardiologist worked rapidly on him, with his team of corpsmen. There were two obvious entrance wounds to the frontal lobes of his brain. There was no meaningful movement, and Dunham was moved to the Expectant Room.

We told him, Heidi writes, that we were proud of him, and the Marine Corps was proud of him. They waited for his breathing to become labored and his heartbeat to become irregular, but neither had happened. Many minutes passed. Heidi moved his arm; it looked uncomfortable. She continued to hold his hand, and she felt him squeeze. If you can hear me, she said, squeeze again. He did.

Five physicians - all the company had - arrived in about one minute flat. The corporal left by medevac. The chaplin wandered back in, looking confused. "I told him, laughing, that I thought this young man might need a different prayer." But nine days later, Corporal Dunham died at Naval Medical Center Bethesda.

It turned out that Dunham had thrown his helmet over a live grenade, and tucked it under his body. Jason L. Dunham was the first Medal of Honor winner in over a decade.

Deb Dunham, Jason's mom, got a phone call that he was in critical condition, and she prayed for his survival for a while, but in the middle of the night, she started praying that he not be alone or afraid. In Deb's opinion, Heidi appeared to have answered that prayer.

There are other stories, about "Mr. Oda", an Iraqi who is suicidal because he has fingered a relative as an insurgent, and about a Marine who's trying to quit smoking. He managed to get himself down to two packs a day before asking Heidi to use hypnosis to cure his habit. What do you call a Marine in a combat zone, one of her patients asks, who is worried that two packs a day will someday give him lung cancer? An optimist.

Five of her group of six motivated smokers became smoke-free during her deployment. Only one Marine left treatment, explaining that after trying, he became convinced that people need to start smoking in Iraq, not stop.

In the end, we see everyone getting excellent care, except, perhaps, the psychs giving it.

Sometimes the Black Hawks bring in a patient that isn't a Marine, Sailor, or Soldier - at least the kind we normally think of. Sometimes, the patient is a dog. The beautiful, sinewy German Shepards are "treated like royalty, with guaranteed air-conditioned spaces and terrific food." Wearing a fur coat in the heat of the Iraqi desert, air-conditioning would not be optional for those dogs. And sometimes, they need treatment.

Sometimes, the dogs provide treatment, as well. A female sergeant in the Marine Corps, afraid she would let herself and her unit down as the only woman, found caring for a dog cured her depression.

Both the movie and the television version of M*A*S*H tended to be laugh-a-minute entertainment, but the theme song is called "Suicide is Painless", because in the movie, the dentist decides to kill himself. The television series has a painful moment in the episode where Henry finally gets to go home - only to be aboard a plane that spirals into the sea.

There's a little of both in this book as well, but it tends towards the latter. When we read "Band of Brothers", it's about a war over before the Boomer generation was born. Korea happened when many boomers were too young to remember. Vietnam touched our lives, claiming the lives of our classmates. Iraq is killing our children and our grandchildren. There's nothing funny about that, nothing at all.

And yet....

Thank you, Heidi, and thank you to the soldiers you cared for.

"The Hippocratic Oath", he said.

"What about the Hippocratic Oath?", I asked.

"What is it?", he asked.

"It's an ethical code, that doctors swear to," I said.

"I know that," he said. "But what is the Hippocratic Oath?"

"Oh. First, do no harm is how it starts out," I replied.

"And what next", he asked.

"Well, " I said, "I guess the next thing is do harm."

The polls are about to close. I thought someone might want to know how the presidential delegates will be divided up for the Democrats.

Pennsylvania gets 158 delegates. Of those, 55 are at-large delegates, and 103 are allocated by district.

If a district has 4 delegates, Clinton will get two of them and Obama will get two, if it's anywhere between a 74-26 split favoring Clinton, or a 74-26 split favoring Obama.

Districts are awarded delegates based on the democratic vote in the 2004 presidential election. That means roughly half the delegates go to Philadelphia-area districts, a quarter of them go to Pittsburgh-area districts, and a quarter of them to the rest of the state.

A week ago, governor Ed Rendell told Dr. Terry Madonna, the pollster that's run the Keystone Poll for many years, that he expected the Philadelphia area to go heavily for Obama, Clinton would do well in the northeast counties and Clinton would have a slight edge in the rest of the state.

Because the districts around Philadelphia get so many delegates, there will be more per district. If there are 5 per district, each delegate represents 20% of the vote, and a 60% majority gives one a 3-2 split. If there are 7 delegates, each delegate represents 14% of the vote, and a 74-22 split in the vote would lead to a 5-2 split in delegates, while a 74-22 split in the vote in a district with 4 delegates would lead to a 2-2 split in delegates.

That means that Obama is likely to end up with a majority of the delegates, even if Clinton wins the popular vote.

But is Clinton going to win the popular vote? The Allentown Morning Call just did a telephone poll in which Obama wins, even though Allentown is in those northeast counties where Ed Rendell predicts a nice Clinton lead.

If he's leading in NE Pennsylvania, it might be an upset by Obama.

When I voted,. there seemed to be a lot of people voicing loud support for Clinton - and even more keeping quiet. Some of those keeping quiet were, like me, restricted to voting for McCain, Huckabee, or Paul, but some of them were obviously Democrats. When the voters actually started blacking in the boxes of the paper ballots, I wonder if perhaps Obama hasn't a lot of hidden strength.

The Fairview Avenue poll, consisting of driving down the street, looking for yard signs? There was one yard sign for Obama, and one door knob with a hanger for Obama on the other side. There were two yard signs for Paul, which really surprised me; I didn't know there were two other Republicans on this street. There were no signs at all for McCain, Huckabee, or Clinton.

We'll soon see.