T Minus 10 Hours.  It's creeping up on 2 PM and it looks like it will be difficult for the Legislature and the Governor to come to an agreement in time for bills to be processed and passed before the midnight deadline.  A number of conference committee reports were passed yesterday, but they all pertained to smaller parts of the budget.  The top tier--Taxes, E-12, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Bonding--all remain unsettled.  What most of us hear through the grapevine that winds through the Capitol hallways is that things are close.  Policy items that the Legislature would like to see enacted are clearly a stumbling block as the Governor pretty much wants to stick to numbers and not language.

So with that, I post this musical treat (probably your first in a series) to sum up what a lot of folks are feeling.  We return to Kris Kristofferson's oeuvre from which I plucked a song earlier this session for "Help Me Make It Through the Night."