Hammer Mill Days

Check the World Book. Not in there? Okay. Now check Britannica. No reference? Right, right. I guess we'll have to resort to Compton's. Pull out the 1963 edition, that ought to do it. Oh, hi. Good god, y'all.... this is a grueling task. To what do I refer, you may ask? No, I'm not making gruel, at least not this evening. (Tomorrow's menu, however, may include that dubious delicacy... who knows?) Lord, no... many of us here are engaged in finding evidence of the man-sized tuber in various historical accounts, including encyclopedias, history textbooks, comics, etc. After all, it is HE who saved the Republic from a fate worse than death. It is HE who rescued the honor of our most revered president and restored him to the exalted position he once held in the pantheon of the American story. And it is HE who introduced the chocolate cream pie to the post-civil war dinner table... and this BEFORE the invention of the refrigerator. Yes, this is one man-sized tuber that'...

I saw parts of the President's speech at the University of Cairo this past week and I have to say that the symbolism of the event was striking. This man whose personal history embodies a kind of cultural crossroads and an international experience previously unknown in the White House - to see him make reference to historic wrongs so seldom acknowledged by Americans really puts the lie to that old "only Nixon could go to China" conventional wisdom. Sure, the rhetoric was, well, just rhetoric, and even as such carefully balanced and qualified, but just the same... what an odd impression it must have made on an Arab world so accustomed to the condescending ignorance and arrogance of Obama's predecessor. I've got to think they think we're goddamned weird, veering our little electoral pinewood racer from one side of the track to the other (and, doubtless, back again before long). Not hard to see why we're hard to trust. And yet, through all that swerving, casca...