President Obama speaking in Elkhart this week:

“Now, with respect to Sean Hannity, I didn’t know that he had invited me for a beer. But I will take that under advisement. Generally, his opinion of me does not seem to be very high. But, uh, but I’m always good for a beer.”

I sent that to the Snook today. His response: “I hope he found time to stop in at the Mishawaka Brewing Company for a pint of Four Horsemen on his way back to the airport.” Indeed.

The Big Picture covers the Victorian bush fires. Devastating… but beautiful, too. It was #23 that shocked me, seeing rivulets of metal on the ground that had melted out of someone’s wheels. Oh, and the “graphic” one that you have to click on is of a dead horse (not especially graphic, I’d say).

And while it’s really great that this tragedy is getting international coverage and motivating people to think about what happens outside their own tiny bubble… SYDNEY IS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR MELBOURNE. I’ve had a couple people ask if we were near them. And while it’s sweet that they were concerned, there’s also an annoyance factor there. Australia is as big as the continental US. Sydney and Melbourne are 500 miles apart. That’s about as far as my hometown in Indiana is from New York City. I don’t expect people to be experts in world geography, but I thought it was fairly common knowledge that Australia is BIG.