MSMBC Has Cornered the Market on Bright Women

It finally occured to the management at MSMBC that if a woman was attractive and smart and had proved herself either on the radio (Rachel Maddow) or NBC assignements (Andrea Mitchell) or as a medical reporter (Nancy Snyderman), maybe she could get her own show! What a boon to intelligent viewers.
All three of these babes are simply great. Rachel is such a rising star that she is chosen for the Flagship: Meet the Press. There, she slaughters Dick Army and is the internet show with host David Gregory. She goes on to rip on David Brooks and spar with some grumpy conservative whose name escapes me. (Neverless, he looked like a luminary.)
But best of all, she is a real muckraker. Unlike the majority of talking heads, she knows how to look things up and find things out. What a hoot to watch her show and learn things nobody else knows. And Kent Jones, her comic relief? He is as original as she is. What a pair.
I don't know how on earth NBC could have harbored Nancy Snyderman for years, knowing her ability to ace medical school, and still kept her hidden. It took that showman Dr.Oz to show networks that medical stuff sells. Here's a solid reporter in the field who is limited to three minute spots on the nightly news, and the network executives don't have a clue what she can do. Voilla. Give her an hour a day and she shines like the sun.
Now, take Andrea Mitchell. Also given an hour, coincidentally right after Nancy. She's NBC's answer to Farred Zakaria, she knows so many of the powerful people and can quiz them on air. Years of newshenery on NBC have set her up to create a really interesting show. She owes her shine to the network; again, they were awfully slow to showcase her.
Anyhow, a belated hats off to the News Department at NBC MSNBC, and even CNBC, although the latter is enamored of Maria Bartelomo who doesn't hold a candle to the MSNBC ladies.
I have thought often of how hard it is to have a national sensibility here in California. If I want to watch Morning Joe, (which I do), i have to get up at 3 in the morning. To see Howie Kurtz's Reliable Sources, which is usually really fine, I have to wake up at 7 a.m.on Sunday here in San Diego. The cretinous network guys don't have the sense to feed it from here, hence the lack of sleep for us current affairs junkies. Pooh to em all. They catch on way too slow. At least they got the gals right.

Hard-Won Perspective

Because I am 76 years old and have been paying attention for most of that time, I can tell you what's going on with health legislation in Washington.
The old farts in the Senate are clashing with the young Turks in the White House. The former believe in deliberation, practice, and understanding. The latter think it is possible to be be too deliberate, and to understand too much. They are result-fixated; rather like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks.
We faced this in our Church Workday, when the young Turks were in charge. We got prodigious amounts of work done, some of it awful. For example, an amateur crew refinished cabinets, and the result was shameful. They didn't think they had to learn to do it.
We old farts believe in experience, because we've had a lot of it. When the Chuck Grassley's of the world boast they've held up Obamacare, they think it's a good thing. And if Diana Finestein is right and they've funded it in the Finance Committee (Grassley's bailiwick) then it is a good thing, indeed.
Makes you believe in the Senate as a deliberative body. But for heaven's sake, let's get this thing done.

Something all of you should know

I'm afraid this bit of history will be lost if I don't record it here. When Grandma Letty was born, lo these many, many years ago, her birth announcement was a Blue Eagle/NRA (National Recovery Administration, not in a million years National Rifle Association). This group was a Roosevelt Brain Trust which your very smart great-grandpa Robert Lemon was a part of; On Grandma Letty's birth announcement was the NRA motto which was, appropriately, "We Do Our Part." Pretty funny, if you ask me.
In fact, great-grandpa Lemon ran for Governor of Kansas when I was five years ago, lost, but put himself in line to realize his ambition, which was to be a federal judge. When Jack Kennedy campaiged in Kansas, it was great-grandpa and great-grandma who introduced him to the Democrat establishment. Naively, Kennedy told them my parents they would be Republicans if they lived in Massachusetts.He was clearly confused by upper-class Democrats. Many years later when I went to graduate school in that state, I met lots of upper-class Democrats; we all voted for a strange man called George McGovern and we were one of two states in the Union who did, but that's another story.
Anyhow, I was always very proud of my papa who died in 1990; he lived long enough to enjoy taking Carole and her pretty Theta sorority sisters to lunch in fancy places to show them off. They all loved him.

Well Doggone, We Did It

Russia was wonderful. The food was wonderful---it was a Swiss riverboat. The room was ok. The facilities elsewhere (dining halls, bars, libraries, etc) were fine. We had to climb lots and lots of stairs: A small drawback in light of the many plusses.
Grandma Letty got to the Hermitage, something she had wanted to do for years and years. Ditto the Amber Room at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin. For a look, go on YouTube and search Amber Room. Almost as good as the real thing.
My feet, now in their mid-seventies, gave out a few times but I missed only a little; John was even more energetic than I with his new heart valve (put in a year ago) and his new SAS shoes. He could go for hours. I have not been similarly brought up to date. Mores the pity.
We have tons of pictures. We used up a photo card holding 100 shots, and printed most of them. We had many really pleasant experiences with Russians and Swiss; most of the waiters and waitresses on the boat were from Siberia which seems to sport a first-class Language Institute.
I was glad to know it had something to recommend it other than Gulags.
Our bus guide spoke great English and was the best and most informative of a crew of 5. All in all, we lucked out..
John gave two lectures on the ship on Russian Opera, a subject he is writing a book about. They were well received. I was very proud.
We even met a few couples who had read our newspaper column and extolled it. Very gratifying.
Now we want to go to Egypt, despite still jet-lagging from a 17 hour crowded flilght. Are we crazy? Don'tanswer.

Riverboat Trip on the Volga is a month away

Dear Ones:

Your grandma and her (relatively new) husband fly to St. Petersburg next month, hop on a riverboat, and cruise down the Volga (by way of a few lakes) to Moscow. You know what? I won't believe it until I'm on that ship.
Because I have long been a predictor of things, I believe that the Russkies won't let us off the plane (or later, the boat) because of the Swine Flu. Look how the Chinese quarantined an American group, and the Russians could do it, too. I also think I could meet my maker, via a heart attack or an auto accident, before I ever leave California. That wouldn't be a really bad thing,but I would prefer to see the Amber Room in the Summer Palace first.
Since travel inducements are everywhere, we got a twofer on the trip. So we're dipping into our meagre capital. So what!
I am perusing catalogs for packable items and planning, planning, just like I thought I was going to be there. But I don't. It's too exciting. It will never happen.Your grandma just isn't going to be this lucky.
I know. I was similarly doubtful before I took myself to Malta. Ditto, Rome. The fact that I actually got to those places should strengthen my belief.
If I do, I'll take pictures. And eat borscht. And cabbage. And,God willing, caviar.

My Heroine, Tina Brown, Advised:

For those dears who don't follow news (and these days, probably none of you do) Tina Brown is the creator/editor of a wildly successful on line paper called The Daily Beast. As of today, I expect all of you to google it. It's a reasonable and newsier Drudge Report, which your uncle Carl swears by.
Today I did what I've wanted to do for the year or two the beast has been in business. I wrote the editor, a snappy blond almost as pretty as I. Because she appears frequently on a MSNBC morning show (don't rush to conclusions; it's pretty moderate Republican) hosted by the last surviving republican moderate, Joe Scarborough, and because the GOP is up against it with attractive candidates, and because the party always seems to do best with show business types, and because Joe is a former member of the House of Representatives, he would be spiffy.
Because of his TVand radio stints, he is also better informed and seemingly intelligent that most of the Luddites in his party. I might even break a long-standing liberal tradition and vote for him.
Anyhow, the point of all this is I Fed the Beast, a department for, sure enough, feeding data to the Daily Beast.
Since I've been right for a few years about politics, and since your Grandfather was honorary secretary of the 1940 Democratic Convention (who supported Wallace instead of Truman and therebye robbed himself of a coveted Federal Judgeship.) and my birth announcement was a National Recovery Administration Blue Eagle with the legend, "We do our part" (papa was one of those, too) I do think my pick is good. Keep this in mind for four years hence.