Focus!

Less than a week until Turkey Day. I've never been a big fan of consuming gross amounts of food on a special day but really enjoy the company, especially now that I am home with the familia. With all due respect to all my Jewish friends (especially the Silver family) I do love Christmas.

This time of the year also makes me want to forget about the idiot in chief and all his cronies for a while. I am trying a news vacation for big hunks of my day as opposed to the compulsive reading of every shred of news available, including reading the Moscow news. So I am reading books, putting more Christmas stuff out every day, planning the lights in the front of the house, figuring out which day to get our tree, measuring to put up the Christmas village, getting the cards ready to go. The list is very long and I enjoy every bit of it.

So while DC is agog over Nancy Pelosi supporting a candidate who didn't win for leadership, I think I will make ornaments. Plus has anyone else noticed that all of a sudden the punditry have become fashionistas. Who asked, after all, who she was wearing at her meeting with Bush, Chris Matthews? Armani, baby! But the press has been full of accounts of what colors the women are wearing and what labels. Puhlease, did Carrie Bradhsaw get elected? Is Jimmie Choo all the rage on Capitol Hill now? And what do these guys know about labels, anyway?

Me, at least acknowledge I learned it all (whatever that is) from Carrie Bradshaw but putting it on the pages of the Post is a bit much. Does anyone ask Harry Reid who he was wearing? OH, Rahm, who is your designer of choice, Hugo Boss? Sexism rears its pretty little head again to try and make the first speaker of the House a lot less important. So she backed a loser in the leadership race, who will care next week or even tomorrow? People died today in Iraq, I don't care what color Armani suit the woman wore.

Can we get a little perspective here?

My favorite time of the year is upon us and I need to stay focused, get a job, decorate the house, finish the buying and have a damn good time.

Monday quarterbacking

The political scene continues to look like a hockey game which goes really fast with lots of hard contact.

As I predicted, Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican party, bit the dust. You can't preside over a massive loss like last week's ass kickin', lying the entire campaign and expect to keep your job. Then James Carville stepped up for, I would presume, the Clinton camp to pronounce the end of the Howard Dean era at the DNC. Oh my gawd the wailing over that statement, I thought someone was giving birth. But I have never been of the opinion that Dean would last all 4 years of his term and I believe that whoever becomes the Presidential candidate will replace Dean with his person.

Another thing, since this is my blog and I can say whatever I want, I have yet to see some proof that the 50 state strategy was the reason we won this election cycle. I would love to see some data with specific races and numbers to show that this DNC strategy was the reason for the win last week. I don't know that it was Schumer and Emmanuel who are responsible for the winds either but for gawd's sake, can we be a little data based here? The DNC strategy didn't shift the seat in NM-1 that had been hoped for, nor did Pombo lose here in Calif because of it so I am waiting to be convinced about how we got there.

In the meantime, Nancy Pelosi looks fabulous in Armani. I feel like the Dems are saying all the right stuff with the right attitude. Except now there seems to be a little bit of a problem with the leadership battles on our side. According to WaPo:

House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's endorsement of Rep. John P. Murtha's bid for House majority leader set off a furor yesterday on Capitol Hill, with critics charging that she is undercutting her pledge to clean up corruption by backing a veteran lawmaker who they say has repeatedly skirted ethical boundaries.

Like I said, it's a hockey game.

Fidel Castro seems to be clinging to life. The Miami Herald is reporting he is dying of some version of cancer. The US government is always studying pictures of him for signs of impending doom and now the docs studying the pictures say he looks really sick. Like less than 18-months-left-to-live sick. We had a discussion about this yesterday and since my Cuban home boys have beat me about the head talking about Castro and the need for his reign to end, I was going for the quicker is better option. Jo thinks that there will be massive interference by the US government when Castro dies. While I don't disagree with her, I know there are Cubans on both sides of the issue and water on this. They should decide.

One good thing about these election results would be that I hopefully never have to lobby Florida Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtenin or the Diaz-Balart brothers for anything. I hated dealing with them and now, oops, they are in the minority. Yippeee, just like a hockey game.

I think I put enough sports metaphors in here to last a while.