Aircraft carriers are not metaphors for failed policies. They are enormous aggregations of steel and brass and electrical cable. The ex-USS Intrepid, a carrier of the WWII Essex Class, is in trouble. Not only is it hard aground in the muck of the Hudson River, but it is being held up as an example of […]

There is a phrase in business that signifies when the dickering is over, and the deal on the table is the last one that is coming. “Is that your best and final?” “Yes, it is.” That is what Mother Nature gave us yesterday: the best and final day of a glorious autumn. Leaves of rust […]

It is Veterans Day, observed, since we have an aversion to wasting a holiday on a Saturday when we would be off anyway. It is as good a day as any to salute the service of our military, and the sacrifice they have made. It is important to remember the source of this particular holiday, […]

It is too soon for some of us to act, but not too soon for all of us to think. One of the Beltway idea factories has done some of that, thinking, I mean, and their analysis of the Virginia Senate race concludes that the Jim Webb’s razor-thin margin will stand up, even after a […]

I was savoring the delicious feeling of unemployment in the lobby of Big Pink. If you have not felt it recently, it is composed of equal parts elation and nausea. I stopped to dissect the election results for Amare, the Eritrean man who has the evening shift at the Concierge desk at Big Pink. “The […]

I was the third in line at the polling station in the basement of the assisted-living facility kitty-corner from Big Pink. The building is for Dr. Charles Culpepper, who made his property available to build Culpepper Gardens in 1975, shortly after Big Pink began to rise adjacent to Route 50. Dr. Culpepper was a botanist […]

Everyone is doing some contortions this morning. The politicians are, of course, since tomorrow at this time I will be in a line with my fellow voters in the rain, squirming to stay dry. The rain is a factor in these events, particularly if the voting machines malfunction, and the people are wet and cold […]

NeoCons I set out this morning to capture the down-and-dirty politics at the microcosm level of Big Pink. Oh, it is a brutal struggle! The Old Guard on the board aloof, having tried everything in their long years of service, and now reduced to doing precisely nothing, except the anomalous acquisition of a billiard table […]

Local Politics Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neil, famed Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, once observed that “All politics is local.” He was explaining how the concerns of towns and cities around the country affect the actions of the Congress here in Washington, D.C., my adopted home town. Another fine observation came from Chris Matthews, […]

Lucky Bastard Sixty-two years ago today, the black smudge on the horizon over Germany was getting bigger. Viewed from the cockpit it was an ink-print from an errant thumb, a curious little mushroom that contained tiny flashes. It was a man-made cloud, composed of the residue of high explosives thrown into the sky over the […]