Paco sends his regrets

Well, now, that’s strange. I received an email invitation at work today to attend the “Human Capital conference”, sponsored by something called “Excellence in Government”. The email rather breathlessly announced that NBC Chief White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd will be the luncheon keynote speaker

I googled Excellence in Government and found out that it’s an association of federal managers. The connection to excellence of any kind would seem to be tenuous, given the membership, but the presence of Todd is baffling. He is a garden-variety liberal talking head who, when he left National Journal’s Hotline to join NBC in 2007, remarked that, “It is more than a bit humbling to think I will be calling Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews (!) my colleagues – all three of whom I admire and respect greatly(!!!).” He has recently been detected in the act of being willfully blind to Obama’s contributions to high gas prices, he suffers occasional, sudden attacks of bitter-clinger-itis and he sees little or no difference between the media’s treatment of W and Obama. Oh, and he’s married to Democratic operative Kristian Denny Todd – a lovely woman and wonderful human being, no doubt, but does anyone really imagine that this pairing was an ideological mismatch?

I kid, of course. Who else would a group of bureaucrats tap for an hour of comforting, big-government blather besides someone from the legacy media who’s practically a gaslight sconce in the quaint old temple of inside-the-beltway navel-gazing.

I believe I shall give this luncheon the miss-in-baulk, and trickle round to Five Guys Burgers and Fries, instead.

Update: Speaking of Five Guys, here's a little background.