But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians who are imprisoned behind these bars music's got these bars and measures you know.

Most recently we've been working in concert situations rather than clubs. because there aren't too many rooms there like Ronnie Scott's that are pure music rooms where people come specifically to listen to music.

Now if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French based upon movies rumors recent headlines unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.

I have come to understand and appreciate writers much more recently since I started working on a book last fall. Before that I thought golf writers got up every morning played a round of golf had lunch showed up for our last three holes and then went to dinner.

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years the MP3-playing alarm clock I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.

For us political activists and candidates the morning after any election is a mix of emotions - the personal and the immediate the culmination of your own recent campaigning efforts and the fortunes of your party and the success or otherwise of what you stand for and believe in.

I recently took up ice sculpting. Last night I made an ice cube. This morning I made 12 I was prolific.

A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.

Look I'm very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we've gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money tax cuts with borrowed money and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here.