snarl

Sunday morning saw Beirut’s streets flooded with Lebanese troops and policemen trying to manage traffic snarled by masses of mourners making their way to the capital’s stadium for the start of an hours-long commemoration ceremony.

They will fail through incompetence, or they will turn out to be un-implementable, or they will be struck down or snarled up in the courts.

Seven hours and a cross-country trip later, I was sprawled on the bed in my Miami hotel room, exhausted from the dawn journey, embracing a nap such that I ignored my suddenly snarling smartphone.

A few blocks east of Interstate 5, with nothing burning between him and the freeway, he had a decent escape route if things went bad — assuming the roads didn’t get snarled with traffic.

“Another Jimmy Carter,” Republicans would snarl about almost any Democrat.