It was a very late night despite starting aperitif at 6PM yesterday. We had a fun 85th birthday party for our neighbor and things continued until well after 1AM. Bouncing back from these marathon meals is getting more difficult with age but hey, if our 85 year old friend can do it, why not? The snow has returned again to Paris. Nice big flakes at the moment though it looks wet, so it probably won't stick around for long. We had our own blizzard the other day when 2, maybe even 3 inches blanketed the streets. One centimeter is generally enough to trigger chaos on the roads here.

It's a busy day as we are preparing a fun dinner for a neighbor who just turned 85. She used to run a restaurant in Saint Germain and still can prepare classic brasserie food without missing a beat. Common friends from Halifax, Canada have organized a bunch of Canadian lobster for the party which turned out to be more complicated than expected. Funny how "complicated" and "expensive" turn up when there's a local industry that likes to charge outrageous sums for their own product even though they're in short supply. Either way, should be a fun evening with neighbors. We had a late night after visiting our friend Jane in the hospital. After months of chemo, she had her surgery this week and is recovering well. We're really looking forward to having her and her family with us on Christmas along with other friends and family. I'm thinking of a few guinea fowl, chestnuts and some farm cheese. What else does anyone really need for Christmas besides being together? Good luck preparing for the holidays this weekend.

Crooks and Liars has the transcript.

You have to understand a bit of US Senate procedure to fully appreciate this. No one, ever, objects to someone taking just one more minute to finish their speech. I've never seen it in 20 years in this town. It's funny as hell, and clearly Franken has had enough of Lieberman. These are the small ways that Senators can make Lieberman's life hell. It's a small thing, but you know Lieberman walked out as there pissed. (UPDATE: Reid's office says Franken was simply trying to keep the Senate on schedule. Uh huh. That's why Franken didn't say anything of the sort.)

The text below is only an excerpt of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night about the fiasco known as health care reform. You can read Keith's entire comment here. The last year has been hard for a lot of us. Joe and I, like many of you, busted our butts to get a Democratic Congress in 2006. Via this blog, we raised over $100,000 to help the Democrats in that year alone. We were there as well in 2008 for the presidentials. At the risk of alienating a good chunk of our readership, we came out swinging for President Obama early in the primaries. With the help of many of you, we raised $43,000 for candidate Obama, and were proud to do so. For that reason, it didn't give us any pleasure having to take the White House, our White House, on through much of this year. On issue after issue we cared about, our President was on the wrong side of his own campaign promises. When the moment called for courage, for backbone, and for action, our White House was AWOL time and time again. And our leadership in Congress, especially in the Senate, wasn't far behind. The only silver lining I can give our readers, after what has been an incredibly dispiriting year, is that for those of you, who like us, helped put this President and this Congress into office, and who have been wondering if your growing concerns about our party have been warranted, Keith Olbermann's Special Comment is about a clear a sign as you could ask for that you were not wrong, that you are not alone. Here's an excerpt:Finally, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest version of H-R 35-90, the Senate Health Care Reform bill. To again quote Churchill after Munich, as I did six nights ago on this program: "I will begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing: that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, without a war."... [S]adly, the President has not provided the leadership his office demands. He has badly misjudged the country's mood at all ends of the spectrum. The