October 12, 2013.

(picture to be added soon)

Reid, McConnell Meet in Bid to End Impasse

The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. He finished up his beer, more slowly than before. When he spoke it was with a tolerant philosophical air, as though the beer had mellowed him.

WASHINGTON----The Senate's top Democrat and Republican opened negotiations on Saturday aimed at avoiding a U.S. debt crisis and reopening the government, marking a new chapter and new urgency in efforts to resolve the political stalemate in Congress.

"I know what you expect me to say," he said. "You expect me to say as I'd sooner be young again. Most people'd say they'd sooner be young, if you arst' 'em. You got your 'ealth and strength when you're young. When you get to my time of life you ain't never well. I suffer something wicked from my feet, and my bladder's jest terrible. Six and seven times a night it 'as me out of bed. On the other 'and, there's great advantages in being a old man. You ain't got the same worries. No truck with women, and that's a great thing. I ain't 'ad a woman for near on thirty year, if you'd credit it. Nor wanted to, what's more."

The talks between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) were their first face-to-face negotiations since the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, and showed a changed dynamic in the Capitol. House Republicans, a dominant force in budget battles, have been sidelined after withdrawing many of their policy demands, only to see President Barack Obama reject their proposal for ending the impasse.

Winston sat back against the window sill. It was no use going on. He was about to buy some more beer when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled rapidly into the stinking urinal at the side of the room. The extra half-litre was already working on him. Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at his empty glass, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into the street again. Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, "Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?" would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long dead sister's face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified----when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

Instead, the focus has turned to the Senate, where members of both parties had started talks in recent days on a compromise proposal, before discussions were elevated to Messrs. Reid and McConnell on Saturday.