When is a book tour not?

Hillary is already past retirement age, but as a guy in the checkout line at the supermarket said yesterday, while we were talking about it, "What else is she going to do - follow Bill around?"

The problem with American politicians, of course, is that they spend more time getting re-elected than they do running the country. Running the country is almost an afterthought. And if you consider other factors like the Koch brothers and their political meddling, or Lockheed Martin and its involvement in more than two dozen government agencies, ranging from the Department of Defense to the CIA, FBI, IRS and even the US Postal Service, the picture gets complicated, for sure.

And then, as Nikita Khrushchev once said, "Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even where there are no rivers." And as the comedian Gallagher said, "You couldn't get the Ten Commandments through Congress if Moses was buying the drinks."