Looks what always happens when I'm gone

The Great El-ahrairah has returned from his 10-day self-imposed exile in France and Italy. I was going to blog about a lot of different things, but there are onlyb three things that struck me as important while I was gone.

1. The Death of Ronald Reagan. The Cap'n has already bloggeda about this, but here are my two Euro cents worth. I didn't learn of this until reading it in the Italian papers. The first election that I ever voted in was 1980 (I just barely missed 1976). During the last part of the 70's, I was in France on a LDS Church mission and I can remember how ashamed I was of our president at that time, Jimmy Cah-tah. I remember how mad I was when the Iranians invaded our emabssy and took the staff hostage and how mad I was when the resuce attempt failed. And all the while, President Peanut kept playing by the Barney Rules of Diplomacy. So, it wasn't a big surprise when Reagan was elected. My favorite Reagan political poster showed a picture of him in his cowboy hat framed by the words "America, Reagan Country". I am proud to have voted for Ronald Reagan twice. May he rest in peace.

2. The D-Day Invasion Anniversary. I didn't really get to see any of this since Italian TV didn't show any of it. The reasoning is that since Italy wasn't invited to the festivities, no reason to show anything. About all I know is that Jack "the Ballerina" Chirac took the occasion to lecture President Bush about, you guessed it, Iraq. Ho-hum, what else would you expect? Yes, it has taken 60 years, but any semblance of intestinal fortitude and gratitude has been removed from the French bloodlines.

3. The Tampa Bay Lightning won Lord Stanley's Cup. Well, I predicted 6 games, but 7 games, is close enough. Since our neighbors to the north considered this as some kind of US-Canada showdown, it must really hurt to know that a team from Florida, where 50 degrees Farenheit is the normal winter temperature, was able to come back beat a team from the frozen tundra of Alberta, Canada when the Canadian team was up three games to two (eventhough a majority of the players on the US team were Canadian).

That's about all. My son is still my son, my wife is still my wife, my daughter is still my daughter and my ex-wife is still, well, let's just say that I'm happy that I divorced her.