Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 2 February 2005

Thought I was going to write today, but with four out of six family members experiencing some violent stomach virus, I'm mostly washing bed linens today and getting opportunity to babysit Vonne Mei in my office all day. So writing took a back seat today, as did virtually everything else.

Did get my car's back window fixed though . . .

And I packed up the rest of my office despite Vonne Mei's presence, and got it all home.

As PNM hits abroad (Japan, Turkey), I start to get media requests from there. Will do interview week after next in DC with Japanese daily and will go on CNN Turkey by phone tomorrow night. I was told to be familar with Bush's State-of-Union speech, which I read but didn't watch (can't stand the ritualistic clapping and cheering--a bit too Soviet for me).

I found the speech fairly tepid in print. Maybe he gave it really well, but it was less interesting to me than the inaugural one. I know that one was Mark Gerson's swan song, so whoever wrote this one really seemed to go out of the way to avoid the high rhetoric of that speech. Too bad. This one did all the familiar stuff on the Middle East, but we've heard it all before from Bush, so no real new ground.

As for the rest of the world, he didn't have anything much to say apparently. Yeah, he mentioned non-proliferation and said US and Asia was trying to convince North Korea to give up on it, but that was it. No China, no India, no globalization, no global economy, just terror and nukes. To me, his foreign policy stuff came off as though he was abandoning the field in terms of anything bold or new and just hoping to just hold his gains in the second term, which concentraing on domestic stuff..

So what I got out of the speech was: I've got some domestic stuff I want to get done in second term, and I want Iraq to get better and serve as an example to the rest of the Middle East. Not exactly ambition defined, I would say, given what he did and tried to do in the first term.

Again, you got the feeling the White House wanted to avoid anything expansive on foreign policy after the way in which the inaugural speech was interpreted. But to me, that's not letting Bush be Bush, and if he's gonna be president another four years, shouldn't he be?

Writing tomorrow no matter who's puking or how much. Gotta get my own stuff out (urp!)!

I keep hoping any twitches I feel in my stomach are just that . . . .