Anyway, that is why there is no polished story, no insightful snide comments about the press conference last night. No pseudo-profound remarks on the parallels between FDR and the young man from Illinois via Hawaii and  Djakarta. I thought he looked good, and his professorial demeanor is less irritating than the inarticulate grimacing of our former Chief. I expect […]

(1943 Photo of noted Economist and pick-pocket Secretary Henry Morgenthau)   Sunday morning- it is going to be in the low sixties today, soft on the skin after the bitter cold last week. Washington blows hot and cold, or better said, it just blows.    The dog extended his reservation in Tunnel Eight, and is […]

  (Bacon Torpedo)   Listening to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this morning, apparently a deal has been struck to bring two moderate Republicans into the fold, and secure the sixty-one votes needed to pass the stimulus bill.   Both of the renegades are from Maine, and I have had a chance to work their […]

(Skirt Steak BLT with Basil Mayonnaise) I was walking the visiting dog- he is quite a cutie- but both of us moved briskly in the blast. The temperature might have been in the lower twenties, but the wind had picked up from the north, and coming around the lee of Big Pink’s west flank, it sliced […]

  (IRS Logo)   Former Senator Daschle was a little contrite when he told his former colleagues on the Hill that his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes for the use of a friend’s chauffer and car service was “completely inadvertent.”   I can certainly understand. I was briefly in the business of providing Senators […]

(Tim, Mac and John, Early this Year) “If the Army and the Navy Ever look on Heaven’s Scenes They will find the streets well-guarded by The United States Marines.” The word was passed later last week. Lt. Col. John J. Guenther, USMC (Ret), 79, passed away peacefully at his residence at The Jefferson in Arlington, […]

(USS Pearl Harbor at Nevada Point, Pearl Harbor) Overslept. Stupid Super Bowl. Great game. Weird commericals. There was an edge to them that betrayed the unsettled times. The Boss was great at halftime. I stared blearily at the Blackberry on the desk, pressing the tiny buttons. The Government released three significant task orders just after […]

I slept well, considering the continuing crisis, and I slapped the alarm with a smug sense of Saturday satisfaction and turned over again. The news was not going to be good, and sleep is, they say, so back to z-land it was.   I dreamed of the Kit Kat Klub again, or what I imagine […]

(The Kit Kat Klub, Berlin)  I’m in the dental chair in an hour, spending way too much on teeth I am fortunate to have had this long. There will be time to think, looking up, waiting for the mysterious Persian dentist to apply a porcelain cap in the back of my mouth.   The temporary […]

  (Honor Guard at Arlington in the rain)   It froze again last night, all the water that had run off the Bluesmobile and onto the black asphalt is a neat white glaze, a natural process not unlike the making of an inverse holiday ham.   The studded cloves would be the dark chunks of […]