Two Dogs All the Way, and Side of Cheese Fries

Blah blah blah blah. Does that ring a bell? Probably because it’s all you heard on the morning shows today – except on the George Stuffing Envelopes show, because Obama was his guest and even if this President-elect never gets anything done, he will have done more than George Bush did in eight years. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. However, on the other ‘news’ shows there was a plethora of chatter and not much substance. Just to be fair, that may or may not be true when there was chatter about the economy, because I don’t pretend to understand the economy but other than Tom Friedman, it appears that neither does anyone else who was talking about it. This may be a result of having to put network correspondents, regardless of expertise, on the air as often as possible because it is cost effective. And since no one (expert or otherwise) has an idea of what’s really going on, it doesn’t seem to matter. But when Peggy Noonan talks about anything other than writing a speech (at which she was only OK), I just want to gag. Actually, I’m still waiting for someone on a panel with her to say “you know Peggy, I don’t think you are that smart. Remember when you repeatedly and intentionally mispronounced Barack’s name, that was either pretty disrespectful or are you simply an idiot?” OK, I’m living in some kind of fantasy world where people don’t have to be solicitous to a moron, but one can only, (as Obama would say in many speeches), hope for real change.

Anyway, President Elect Obama says he wants to be a part of the Washington DC community. Yesterday, he went to Ben’s Chili Bowl. If you live in Washington and have never been there, you should go back to from wherever you came. You didn’t have to like it if you went, but it’s a rite of passage and in order to remain past whatever administration brought you here, you needed to go. So anyway, he went. The news coverage was pretty cute. He did all the right things. He asked what he should order, he sat and ate the right thing, he held a beautiful baby and he even paid his own bill—something a candidate and the President never do. For whatever reason they never carry any money. It’s not like they have to worry about getting mugged. Nor is it because the campaign left them without any funds (they always have a personal penny.) But I can’t tell you the number of times I had to fork over a $5, $10, or even a $20 to pay the food bill for a candidate. Of course, I also carried one Candidate’s American Express card and paid for hotel accommodations and private planes, but that’s another blog. What you didn’t see was that they closed most of NW Washington in order for him to get to Ben’s.

Today, he told George that he’s going to look, not only for places to eat, but for a place to worship. The nice thing is that he is sensitive to the consequences of his security demands and he understands that wherever he goes it will inconvenience the congregation (“You don't want to subject your fellow church members, the rest of the congregation, to being magged every time you go to church...”) But he wants to go somewhere to pray, and shouldn’t he be able to do that? The good news is that he’s not looking for a Synagogue – so we don’t have to worry. Nope, we’ll just keep focused on the lack of intelligent conversation on television.

And speaking of inconvenience. We're pretty much over this inaugural--what a pain in the tush. You can't go anywhere downtown or anywhere near where the President elect might be. Note, I said might be. If he's thinking about going, no one can be there--even if you don't know where that is. This is no different than it’s ever been – except maybe a bit more intense. We want this President to be safe and secure. We just don’t want to be anywhere in any area where that’s happening. We’re just sayin’....Iris