From an article in the L.A Times:

"With less than three weeks before an election that will decide control of Congress, the Democrats are within tantalizing reach of a House win that would almost certainly make Pelosi the first female speaker of the House — second in line to the presidency — and the first from California."

Whoop de freakin' do.

"Yet Pelosi is not necessarily the public face most Democrats would have chosen to represent a party struggling to look strong in these unsettled times — a 66-year-old liberal congresswoman from war-protesting San Francisco who looks too demure to stand up for national security and isn't great on TV."

Gee, ya think?

"Look, if I weren't effective, I don't think they would try to take me down. You're in the arena, you're in the ring. That's what happens," Pelosi says on the way to another fundraiser as she crisscrosses the country, her cellphone affixed to her ear in the car, at breakfast and in the beauty salon, where she recently dropped it into a pedicure bowl.

What in the eff are you doing getting a pedicure if you're so busy? Nobody's going to see your toes anyway, honey, unless you wear flip-flops or Birkenstocks. Can't you get someone to trowel on your makeup a little better instead? You know--to shave off five years, so you actually look 66.

"While the children were small, Pelosi served as California state party chair and learned the art of raising money. People would ask how she managed to do so much with so many kids. "I told them I couldn't have done it without the children," Pelosi says now.

Each one had a job addressing envelopes, stuffing, sealing and stamping. Their hard work at the Democratic Party office earned them a bowl of French onion soup across the street at the old Liberty House department store in San Francisco. Not to mention occasional recognition at church, where they belted out: "He's got the stuffers and the sealers, in his hands … "

Slave labor, eh? "You lick and stick, then go across the street to cadge dinner, 'cause I ain't gonna make you any."