And have you looked at Larry Summers' butt lately? Yummy...

I'm in Santa Barbara. And still stunned by the dichotomy of what burned recently in Montecito versus what suffered not so much as a scratch. The canyons up into the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains primarily off East Mountain Drive burned to a crispy moonscape. Blessedly, my in-laws and most of their friends/neighbors were unharmed. On Sunday, the community poured out in force to fill sandbags to then use in protection against the feared flash floods of seasonal rain that may well arrive as early as tonight. If heavy rain spills down from the mountains over the ashen landscape through the countless canyon creeks...well, it could be bad. I drove along the winding, narrow path through the damage on Sunday for a first-hand view. It was so odd for someone unaccustomed to such destruction. Little things caught my eye. Wholly protected houses just up the driveway from burned-out vehicles. The smell of what an unaccustomed Wisconsite might assume was a charcoal grill overwhelming everything once you open the car windows. Beautiful pottery and porcelain address markers warped and scalded by what was surely a hot, hot fire. The sense of loss most assuredly hasn't disappeared for those in the path of the firestorm that now must worry about flooding. What a crazy confluence of risks. The sense of a support structure is nonetheless inspiring to consider.

A quick assessment of Obama's early picks for his Administration. They all seem centrist, qualified and eager. But there's also a certain uptick in hotness. Case in point - Melody Barnes. The Washingtonian named her one of DC's Ten Best Dressed. Rawr. And his Social Secretary, Desiree Rogers will run everything from the Easter Egg Roll to formal State Dinners. With hotness. Today we were introduced to Rob Nabors (the 37-year-old (!) Deputy OMB Director). And there's more cute geeky white guys than at a Dave Matthews concert (Rahm Emmanuel, Timothy Geithner, Peter Orszag). And you thought Obama was just going to be all about coolness...

Hope your own appointees have rockin' brains AND bods today. Rock on.

"First question, Rahm - where did those pesky Bushies hide all the 'O' keys from our keyboards?"

The morning's big exclusive - Rahm Emanuel accepted the offer to be President Obama's Chief of Staff. Emanuel's always impressed me. Surely in direct inverse proportion to how much he pisses off the withering Republican establishment. He was a major strategery planner for Bubba. He rose through the ranks in the House like a rocket. He's sacrificing something major in terms of his own personal lifeplan by taking a job that is as demanding as any in Washington. But he's the right dood for the job. Kudos and congrats to all involved.

Hope your own job offers include health club benefits today. Rock on.

Let's all please agree to stop calling it a "bully pulpit" for the next, oh, 15 months or so, mm'kay?

Maya's sick and has been so for a few days. Discomfort on the level of a Larry Craig interview. But there are a few nuggets that I need to weigh in on before all the highly-paid pundits steal my thunder.

Sam Brownback's dropping out of the GOP race. So all the Brownbackers will now presumably become Huckabees. Ah, poetry.

The House failed to override Dubya's SCHIP veto by a handful of votes. Somewhere right now, Rahm Emanuel is toasting the future of his Party with Snidley Whiplash-like glee. Meanwhile, millions of kids are suffering. After a few days of seeing how much a child can suffer with exceptional healthcare, I feel more than ever that we as a Nation don't know shite about this issue any longer.

Dubya's invocation of "World War III" as a boogeyman during yesterday's press conference will, in my estimation, be one of his most quoted banana peels from this era of incompetence. To even bring it up from his self-proclaimed "bully pulpit" indicates how little he knows about his job. After nearly 7 years on the job. If he was a teacher, he'd have hit the bricks by the final bell yesterday. Instead, we've got 15 remaining months of this goober.

Seattle was warned that a big windstorm was bearing down on us today. It veered and it now appears that British Columbia might soon be leveled. Which is a drag, because I still hadn't made it up to Whistler.

Hope your own hatches are battened today. Rock on.