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Virtually no posts for the next 36 hours – I’m off to London and I’m taking Mrs. PunditGuy with me (No kids for 2 weeks! Whoo hoo!). I’m going on business, she’s getting a free vacation. I should be back to bloggin sometime on Sunday. Until then…

UPDATE: Arrived in good order. Spent most of the day adjusting to the time change. So far, the Holiday Inn London-Kensington gets high marks from me. If you’ve ever been to the Europe, you’re familiar with the “typical” size of hotel rooms. Well, this one has North American size rooms and they’re quite modern. Satellite TV and broadband (12 pounds, or $24 dollars every 24 hours) in the room. No, nothing is cheap here in London.

Cosby: Say it Aint So!

Groping allegations made against Bill Cosby. The woman claims she was fondled by the comedian, who denies the allegations. No charges have been filed.

Cosby is ripe for extortion charges, what with his May 2004 lecturing session to the NAACP. What are the chances that this woman recently cashed a check from the Rainbow Coalition?

Tomorrow’s Threat

It’s Friday (everywhere but the West Coast)…

“The great democratic crusade undertaken by this administration is going far better than most observers will admit. That’s the good news. The bad news is a development more troubling than most observers recognize: signs of the emergence, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet empire, of an anti-American bloc anchored by Great Powers.”

Now go read the rest of  Krauthammer. (WaPo reg. required)

Noonan Rant

In uncharacteristic fashion, Peggy Noonan pans Bush’s inauguration speech. OK, she doesn’t just pan it – she freakin trashes it.

“Whoever picked the music for the inaugural ceremony itself–modern megachurch hymns, music that sounds like what they’d use for the quiet middle section of a Pixar animated film–was . . . lame.”

“The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike.”

“A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president’s evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.”

“No one will remember what the president said about domestic policy, which was the subject of the last third of the text. This may prove to have been a miscalculation.”

“President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.” (uh oh, she said the Kerry word -ed.)

“reality-based community, a dumb phrase.”

“The president’s speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly.”

“Ending tyranny in the world? Well that’s an ambition, and if you’re going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn’t expect we’re going to eradicate it any time soon.”

“One wonders if they shouldn’t ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.”

By this time she ran out of column space – but you have a sense that she wanted to keep going. Cripes Peggy – are we upset because we weren’t asked to write W’s speech? You think you’ve got dibs on him since you wrote for Pappy? Are you tired of the fame that comes from coining the phrase, “A Thousand Points of Light”?

Lots of people agree, she should have stayed home.