Another try at a Russian post...

Я вчера вернулся домой сразу после того, как смена кончилась в 20 часов. Снаружи дом был темным, как будто никого дома не было. Но как только я открыл дверь, на меня накинулась Саша, и когда я зажег свет, я заметил спящую Наталью на диване.

Я думал, что она уже уехала к себе днем. Она должна скоро освободить свою квартиру, а для этого надо из нее все убрать.

Но выходит, что я упустил из виду маленькую деталь - счет от телефонной компании - причем телефон уже не работал когда она решила звонить приятелю. И у Наталии очевидно не хватило сил выйти из дому и позвонить с какого-то другого телефона.

Как только я приехал, она взяля мой сотовый телефон и позвонила приятелю. Молодой человек явился через минут сорок и забрал ее. Я лег спать, так как сил у меня тоже не было.

Спал крепко. Выспался. Утром встал и сразу позвонил с сотового в телефонную компанию. Прочитал им номер с кредитной карточки и заплатил долг. Телефон заработал где-то в течение пяти минут.

Вот какая жизнь у меня была вчера... предельно скучная.

* * *I returned home yesterday immediately after my shift ended at 8 pm. From the outside, the house was dark, and it looked as if nobody was home. But as soon as I opened the door, Sasha threw herself at me and after I turned on a light, I spied Lee's sleeping form on the couch.

I figured she'd already gone back to her place during the day. She's supposed to get out of the apartment soon, but she'll have to get her stuff out of it first.

But it turns out I overlooked a small detail (the telephone bill) and the phone was dead by the time she decided to call her boyfriend. Apparently, she could not find the strength to leave the house and call him from some other phone.

As soon as I got home, she borrowed my cell to call her boyfriend, who showed up about 40 minutes later and whisked her away. I had no strength left, either, so I went to bed.

I slept soundly and got a good night's sleep. The first thing I did when I got up this morning was to call the phone company and give them a credit card number to pay my bill. The phone was reactivated in 5 minutes or so.

That was the story of my life yesterday... extremely boring.

Cheers...

[Corrections suggested by rosie_posie incorporated!]

So, let me get this straight...

The Enron company donated significant amounts of money to both political parties over past years. Enron's business tanks, owing in large part to what appears to be chicanery on the part of certain parties. They address themselves to the politicians who were the object of their contributions. They were not saved, not bailed out, not given a free pass.

Obviously, then, we need campaign finance reform, to prevent rich companies from buying politicians.

So now we have the Shays-Meehan bill that's passed the House, the point of which seems to be to make life harder for political outsiders and independents (by making it harder to raise money) and life easier for incumbents (by making it easier to raise money).

But it would appear that the byword among pols is to at least appear to do "something" in the wake of Enron, despite that fact that Shays-Meehan would have done nothing to prevent Enron had it been in place at the time.

It's a bill that the media are ga-ga over, since by making it all but impossible to criticize candidates using "issue" ads the 60 days prior to an election, the media can - by providing selective coverage or by misrepresenting the facts - exert significant influence on its own on national policies and policymakers during those critical 60 days. (We got a taste of this in the 2000 election, when the media insisted on escalating Pat Buchanan into the ranks of "major" party candidates, while relegating Harry Browne - who ended up getting far more votes despite the lack of media coverage - to the ranks of the fringe.)

Mark Twain was too kind.

Cheers...