The Swamp: Obama: ‘Why can’t I just eat my waffle?’

As Sen. Hillary Clinton was preparing to campaign here today, Sen. Barack Obama was meeting with voters at a diner and apparently pretty hungry.

“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” he said, when asked a foreign policy question by a reporter at the Glider Diner.

Because it’s a staged photo-op with voters at a diner where you and your wife wouldn’t be caught dead in if you weren’t running for President?

As The Fat Guy, I was ready to launch into the necessity of allowing a man his waffle, as even a slightly pink American needs that start, and who knows, he might help us out by making us think harder — and then I read that it’s just another press setup.

Eat your waffle at home or in your hotel room, NMI. You can’t have it both ways.

I know none of you bottom-feeding sonsabitches will click, but this is a gorgeous piece of prose.

There is a symmetry to life on the plains – death gives life, and life ends in death. That is one constant that isn’t balanced out – everything dies in the end, no matter how strong the life force. Life on the prairie flows through cycles. Periods of draught, followed by rains. The season’s inexorable march to the next, year after year. Each season brings its own distinctive weather, snow and ice in the winter, rain, hail and tornadoes in the spring and summer. One constant is the wind.

I’ve never been a sodbuster, but I had family that was. Their grace always took me aback. This is good to know, in your heart, even thrice-removed.

Just a reminder that today is a day of celebration for us old-school Texans, for this is the day we defeated the Mexicans decisively at San Jacinto back in 1836.

The battle is notable for any number of other things, like Santa Anna neglecting to post lookouts, Houston destroying the bridge to prevent retreat by either army, the Texans attacking during the Mexicans’ siesta, “Remember the Alamo!”, and most hilarious, General Antonio López de Santa Anna slinking off from the battle to put on a private’s uniform and hide in the grass.

We should all be mindful of this, since that defeat set the stage for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave us most of the American West, no end of whining and moaning from modern-day Mexicans who regret their ancestors’ weakness, and most recently, a wishful-thinking ad campaign from Absolut.

Reading that link from the Handbook of Texas online is like reading a Texas almanac list of counties, towns, and cities.