London Blogging

Today, history is made......The Pursuit of Happiness goes international.

Good evening and welcome to the moment that the world........well some of the world.....ok very few people if anyone at all, has been waiting for. Live from London it's the Pursuit of Happiness.

There was a time in my life, pretty much from 1995 - 1998 that I did this route as a commute. Two weeks in Chicago, and two in London. To be perfectly accurate, it actually started out as two weeks in Zurich, two in Chicago between '94 and '95 and then morphed to London.

It was amazing how quickly I got used to it, and established a iron traveler routine. The gate personel in both locations knew me by name. I'd get on the plane, order the quick meal, down a couple glasses of wine and then fall promptly asleep. Once we landed I'd hit the ground running, go straight to the office work all day, go to dinner at night and collapse exhausted sometime around midnight. In fact, so frequent a visitor to the Zurich airport was I that last time I checked, I was in the Swiss Air "Welcome to Zurich" video..........I'm the guy in the background pushing a luggage cart.

So, after not making this run in five years I wondered if I could return to my old habits. The answer is yes. Landed at 8 this morning, made it in to the office and had dinner tonight. I sit here now blogging in a state of sleep deprived mania as CNN International reports on the incredible cold in my home town. Note to Mrs. P: its in the 40's here!

Speaking of CNN, the international version still sucks. You'd think that overtime the folks at the channel would have realized that the same bland news reporting offered by a guy with an accent doesn't make the channel anymore international than calling fried potatos "french".

So I see Howard Dean is up to his old tricks again; you know the ones where he goes off his meds and says what most Democrats are secretly thinking. Dean is a real piece of work. I say this not so much because he is such an unapologetic fool, but more because he actually convinced the party elect him as their head. As a conservative I find this to be a real tragedy. In general, I have no use for politicians and while I tend to vote Republican I have never identified myself as a member or supporter of the party.

Politicians, when you boil away all of the philisophical mumbo jumbo that they claim to support, are really nothing more than mercenaries supported by our tax dollars. To the extent that we at one time in our country had a credible liberal party - the Democrats - then shear brand differentiation required Republicans to be the conservative party. Never mind that many of the Republican politicians didn't really support conservative principles, they at least were willing to go along with them if such an alignment served their need to get re-elected.

Tragically, the Democrats went insane. How else can you explain the party's warm loving embrace of losing positions, nut job celebrity "activists", and anti-American foreign policy pronouncements. This was supposed to be the foundation of a ruling coalition? Only in bizaro world.

All of which is a long winded way to get around to my point. I say this is tragic because once the Democrats went crazy, the Republican politicians were free to revert to their real impulses and became the tax and spenders that they secretly always wanted to be. The rest of us are stuck with this sorry state until we can identify a true revolutionary to act as the catalyst for change. One wonders what would happen if Newt were to run. Say what you will about the man, while I'm sure he isn't electable, I'm equally sure that he would force some serious discussion about fiscal sanity. Then again maybe I'm just really tired.

Which brings me to old White Flag. Have the Demos realized hitching their anti-war case to Murtha may have been a really bad idea? Yes, he is a war hero who we all really, really respect for his service, but what the hell has gotten into this guy? Not only is he speaking against our troops (the army is broken), but on the Sunday shows this weekend he was contradicting himself between comercial breaks on the same show!

Really, this is quite odd. The only time I've ever seen a performance like this from politicians has been when they were trying to get out in front of some impending bad news by attempting to claim the moral high ground on an issue of the day to make themselves uncriticiseable. I have no way of know whether or not that is what is happening here, but really, something is going on.

One final thing on a completely unrelated topic. What is going on with my blogroll? I load up these guys as recommended reading and then one by one half of them have quit posting! Was it something I said?

So, I'll be updating the blogroll to get some real posters and those that aren't posting (Habitat Girl I'm talking to you) will be removed. Any recomendations for a new blogroll will be appreciated.

Over and out