I haven’t had power all day, so I read Robert Draper’s Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush instead of blogging. And I buried a dead chicken. Interesting exercise for this city slicker.

I see I missed the announcement that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. After the Republicans get done reminding you that Yasser Arafat also won that prize, their heads will explode. I think it is odd to give a peace prize to a guy for environmental advocacy, but given the current energy wars (which will probably get more Mad-Maxed-Out with each passing decade) I can sign on with it. Good for Fat Albert. Nice show.

Here’s a little tid bit from the Bush bio.

Three days later, on December 21 [2005], at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Bush visited several wounded soldiers. One of them, a young man from Trinidad who was not an American citizen, lay in critical condition and would not live to see Christmas. Bush held the hand of the soldier’s mother as she sobbed.

Through her tears, she did not see opportunity. “How could you do this!” she cried to her son’s commander in chief. And then, thinking of Bush’s two children, who would never face combat: “THIS IS NOT YOUR DAUGHTER!”

On the helicopter ride back to the White House, Bush murmured to an aide, “That big black woman was really angry with me.”

He thought for a moment before adding, “I don’t blame her.” He turned to the window of Marine One and said nothing else.

This is one of the few anecdotes in the book that does not involve Bush riding his bike.