Well, the girls are off visiting family and we have the next ten days or so to ourselves. We kicked things off yesterday afternoon with an excellent brooding session as is our wont during these times. Also an Arturo Fuente, our first in 32 days and 10th of the year.
Hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue...we're fine with everything we've seen in published reports, including almost complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Relax, why would one want one's troops sitting around the rubble of Gaza all day? Accept victory. In the meantime, bomb Gaza.
Related, a good friend of ours who also proofs our novels and is not a big fan of Israel has disappeared from FB. Zap! Mossad? You know what the imams say. We had nothing to do with this.
1995 summer alive...Below, Will: The Chris Farley years. Look at us. Face red. Hair pressed against our forehead. Neck pushed up by our collar. No on looks good in that DC heat. We knew guy who would come to the Hill in shorts and T-shirt and get dressed in the office.
1995 summer alive...Below, Will: The Chris Farley years. Look at us. Face red. Hair pressed against our forehead. Neck pushed up by our collar. No on looks good in that DC heat. We knew guy who would come to the Hill in shorts and T-shirt and get dressed in the office.
As previously mentioned, we were attached to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. We didn't like office work, but we had it pretty good. They gave us our own office with a computer and TV and everything. We worked for a middling boomer man named John Marshall (not that one)*. He was nice enough, but not very interested in us. And really, who can blame him?
What did we actually do? Not much, to be honest. John Marshall gave us a couple of tasks about government reform and hoped they'd blossom into projects. And maybe they would have with a more dynamic and ambitious intern. In 1995 we weren't dynamic or ambitious. We ended up doing office and scut work. Photocopying, data entry and the like. We also delivered a lot of messages, and learned the underground geography of Capitol Hill. There's tons of tunnels down there. And a train! It's pretty cool.
We learned a lot about the senate by keeping the TV in our office tuned to C-SPAN's senate feed, like the senate roll, 'Mr...Abraham...Mr...Akaka....Mr...Bennett...' Also, only grandstanding blowhards give speeches on the senate floor. We saw a lot of Senator Paul Wellstone (D) MN. The senators interested in getting anything done are in their offices, making deals.
What did we actually do? Not much, to be honest. John Marshall gave us a couple of tasks about government reform and hoped they'd blossom into projects. And maybe they would have with a more dynamic and ambitious intern. In 1995 we weren't dynamic or ambitious. We ended up doing office and scut work. Photocopying, data entry and the like. We also delivered a lot of messages, and learned the underground geography of Capitol Hill. There's tons of tunnels down there. And a train! It's pretty cool.
We learned a lot about the senate by keeping the TV in our office tuned to C-SPAN's senate feed, like the senate roll, 'Mr...Abraham...Mr...Akaka....Mr...Bennett...' Also, only grandstanding blowhards give speeches on the senate floor. We saw a lot of Senator Paul Wellstone (D) MN. The senators interested in getting anything done are in their offices, making deals.
What was actually happening in the senate? The GOP was trying to cut 20 or 30 billion from the federal budget. A downpayment on the deficit, Bob Dole called it. This was preparatory to the big budget bill planned for autumn, the bill upon which grand GOP plans to slash and reform government would be crushed. So much for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America.
There was also the Yugoslavia War issue, brought to a head that summer by the Serbs overrunning the UN safe haven at Srebrenica and murdering several thousand Bosnians. The day of the massacre a very annoyed Dole took to the floor and told the senate they would soon consider legislation to lift the US arms embargo. The day of the vote we went to the senate gallery with a buddy from the House side and watched. The bill passed with a symbolic 69 votes, enough to override Bill Clinton's threatened veto. Look at that, we found the vote. You can't see us, but we're in the gallery. By the way, the most eloquent and passionate speaker in defense of lifting the arms embargo, 'A nation has a right to defend itself!' was one Joe Biden.
*Blogger has this thing which automatically inserts links. We'll see how it goes.
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