About 20 people, a long table, a backyard under a fall night sky, carved pumpkins and gourds, candles flickering everywhere, pomegranate margaritas, a magnificent meal (some of which also arrived in personal pumpkins) — and the equally uber-connected and delightful Margaret Carlson and Judith Czelusniak as co-hostesses.

Tomorrow, two interesting books will be hitting the newsstands. I know both authors but have not read their books. My hunch though is that they fill in key pieces of the Iraq and Iran stories that readers will want to know about.

I’m not kidding. Vatican Monsignor says he was “pretending to be gay” to help wayward youth. From AP: “It’s all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the church with my psychoanalyst work,” La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying.

Annie and Oakley the Amazing Weimaraners send their best. I know, it’s blurry. I’m going to have some oral surgery this morning — please be nice while I’m away and nice knowing all of you if it doesn’t go well.

While I think that post-Fidel Cuba is going to look a lot like Fidel’s Cuba unless the US opens the spigots to travel and trade, Jimmy Carter‘s perspective on US-Cuba relations is useful to read. He thinks that we have undermined any chance of organic democratic movements taking hold inside Cuba.

(Steve Clemons and future TWN blogger) OK. . .it’s a great morning in Washington, DC — and I’ve been spending it at the newly refurbished 17th Street Cafe in Dupont Circle.

That’s what former top US Commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez calls our current situation there. It’s also the name of a must see, Sundance Special Grand Jury Prize winning movie. No End in Sight was produced by internet guru and concerned American citizen Charles Ferguson.

I have received quite a number of emails today about the very cool looking Mountain Goat we met this August up in the Cascade Mountains. Some want it as a screen saver.

Generals don’t seem to be able to speak their minds when in uniform. Well, with the exception of Eric Shinseki — and very possibly David Petraeus who seems to be driving his own machinery on Iraq spin.

I really did mean every word in my tribute earlier today to former Vice President Al Gore. Emails from campaigns, Senate and House press operations, the White House, NGOs, and even some in corporate America have been streaming into my email box congratulating him. I can’t imagine what Gore’s own email inbox looks like.