Please stand by

While I get up to speed.

I have been temporarily disconnected from the world.
My Internet service was down.

It took an accounting student, Mohammad, working as a technical support representative for France Telecom/Orange internet service outsourced to Tunisia to pay for his studies, who upon detecting my accent and learning that I am American told me in fluent English that he has learned English by watching Larry King Live on CNN every day while he studies, to solve my problem.

He was the 4th person with whom I had spoken there in 2 1/2 days (I still have an appointment for an "expert" to call Monday between noon and 2 PM), and he did it with delight in English, which he said risked him losing his job because they are not allowed to speak English with callers, not even the poor British and Americans who move to France, cannot speak French and have to go find a neighbor to call France Telecom/Orange for them -- I know this is true; I knew a lot of those people when Sam was still at the EAB in Paris -- but Mohammad can't stop himself; he loves speaking English.

He also says he looks "75% like Barack Obama".

Problem solved, I raced back on-line to find out the answer to my burning question: Is Sarah Palin still the GOP VP candidate?

Yup, it appears so. Audouin was under the impression that she hadn't gone away from the French news reports to which he listens.

And while I was gone...

Barack was on Letterman.

McCain got it wrong on earmarks with the ladies of The View, and good old Tucker Bounds had to try to find something semi-intelligent to say. Hard for him.

Palin finally got interviewed and Krauthammer says Palin wasn't the only one to bobble the Bush doctrine; Charlie got it wrong, too. It appears there have been several incarnations of his doctrine. Who could be expected to know all four? I didn't, but I provide helpfully the answers at the bottom, right way up since I can't type upside down.

(Does that mean I have to take down my MoveOn Palin clock? Hey! MoveOn took their link to the clock down! It has left a blank in my previous posts. I guess it counted as "talking to the press". Will she do it again?)

And, my brother emailed to tell me to calm down. The kooks aren't going to take over the country, and I will probably be able to let Sam continue to be a US citizen.
....

The Bush doctrines answers, according to Charles Krauthammer:

1. The Bush administration's unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty and Kyoto Protocol.
2. The post-9/11 "you're with us or you're with the terrorists."
3. The preemptive war in Iraq. (Gibson's understanding of the Bush doctrine).
4. The "freedom agenda" articulated in Bush's second inaugural address that "the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

I'd say the corollary of number 4 is also true. Way more true.