by the Way . . .

After meeting last week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Merkster), POTUS revealed a couple of items from his inner being that led to a bunch of unjustified gnashing by the pundits. A flash and a fish, so to speak. First, he said he got a "glimpse into her soul". You will remember that, after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin he said was "able to get a sense of his soul". For heaven's sake, now everyone is parsing "glimpsing" with "sensing" to see whether there has been another revision of the Bush Doctrine. What difference does it make? Glimpsing, sensing, flashing, perusing, sneaking a peek, that's not the point. For hundreds of years philosophers debated whether there was even such a thing as a soul, and here we are worried about what kind of a look it is getting.

Then came the fish. A German newspaper asked him to cite his best moment as president. He thought it over and said "I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7 ½-pound largemouth bass on my lake,". Now, according to the pundits, that isn't a big enough fish. They even called the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to find out how big a "big" fish was in Texas (15 pounds). Now if you had a 7 1/2 pound fish on very light gear, you would darn well know what a big fish was. And Bush is known for working with very light equipment.