Monday, January 26, 2009

Friday Night Wine Blogging - birthday edition

the cork was rotten but the wine was fine.









The sweet potato au gratin (w/mushrooms & marinated veet) with roasted carrots was sublime as was the blueberry cobbler. A wonderful repast to celebrate my 51st.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Savoring political wagers


Have never lost a political wager & this year I hit the quinfecta winning two bottle of scotch, 1 bottle of Drambuie, a dinner at Spago, a night at Dave & Buster's plus beignets at Cafe Du Monde. JJ being the gracious loser treated me to 20-year old BenRiach.
It is amazing the wager folks will make. 4 years ago, a woman at work wagered that we'd capture Bin Laden in October just before the election. I'm far from a Bush fan, but if Bush ever had a chance to capture Bin Laden, he'd have taken it & never stopped crowing about bringing the man behind September 11th to justice. We had 1 chance at Tora Bora, but once Bin Laden slipped through our fingers, he was too wily for us to ever capture or kill.
My sister also wagered that Bush would reinstitute the draft - no way. For all his flaws he was too shrewd a pol to ever take such a political disastrous position that really had no upside to it. The draft will certainly never come back in my lifetime.
I also managed to brow beat a friend to own up on the wager that Bush would never have pardoned Ken Lay based on Bush's lack of final pardons. I knew that commuting Libby was as far as he'd go, but even I thought that Bush would not be so parsimonious.
Going forward, I have three remaining political wagers. One is a gimme - Kurdistan will not be recognized as a nation by the UN by August 11th, 2011. The other two are not slam dunks - Israel will not attack Iran by the end of Obama's first term and two years afterwards. Still for all the bluster by Israel, in the end, they have their hands full with bi-annual battles with their neighbors, and adding another direct (i.e. non-proxy) war would be too much for them.

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