White House Suffers another Reversal

My early-morning walk to the bottom of the driveway to pick up a couple of newspapers was well rewarded. Coffee in hand, I gathered the Courier News and The Star-Ledger. The front- page story in one of them was enough to warm any American’s heart in this sub-freezing cold:

“New York ruled out as site for terror trial,” it read. The jihadist bum Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators will not be tried in lower Manhattan, after all. It looks like the American democracy’s pushback against some of the nonsense continually seeping out of the White House has finally taken hold.

Even Democrats on The Hill are also resisting the Obama/Holder decision to provide Constitutional rights to enemy combatant nut jobs who are working hard to destroy that very document. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence and who is privy to top secret information, strongly opposes the trial’s venue in New York City.

Ever since the day that Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts came on the scene, matters seem to have taken a turn for the better. I’ve never liked one-party control of both the White House and Congress, no matter who is in charge.

But don’t expect the Obama/Holder camp to relent very much. What it should but won’t do is to remit KSM & Company to military authorities for trial as enemy combatants under the code of military justice.

Thanks for reading. Keep warm and give thanks for what you are and what you have.

Plouffe Goes Plop

If last night’s speech was to be the beginning of the winning strategy that would accompany the return of Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe into the inner circle of advisors, that beginning fizzled before it started.

How in the world can the President possibly deliver on everything that he proposed last night? Perhaps he could start by focusing on the single outcome that I think we all want: Getting the economy back on track first.

Yesterday, that’s what he said he would do. But that only happened because his super-majority was blown to bits with the election of Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, as well as the mounting threat of further casualties feared by Obama in the November mid-term Congressional contests – that’s why Plouffe is back.

Soon, it will be a return to the same old Washington power game. In his speech, Mr. Obama addressed his Democrats, “We still have the largest majority in decades, and people expect us to solve problems, not run to the hills.” To Republicans, he said, “The responsibility is now yours as well.”

Democrats aren’t running for the hills; they are eyeing November and running for re-election already. Republicans always had the responsibility, but Obama, Reid and Pelosi have been hitting them over the head with the sledge of a super-majority.

Obama’s habit of thinking and speaking of himself in the third person as a Washington outsider is not a good sign. He has been in office a year now, sitting in the seat of the highest position in the land. He is Washington.

Looking Beyond Obama

Tonight, President Barack Obama will go before TV cameras and will deliver his first substantial report to the nation. He should stay home and go to bed. Here is more of what I think:

Despite Obama’s presence in the White House, spring will come. Yes it will. In several months, despite all of his misbegotten and self-absorbed approaches to governance, we will be able to go out into the warmth of the spring sunshine and see nature awaken from its winter slumber.

We will be able, once more, to watch the buds bloom; to coax our gardens into fresh growth; to make do with what we have – that which has not yet been taken away from us by the mismanagement of the boys and girls inside the Beltway. Yes, we can.

And there – in that eternal yearning for a spring that always comes – is where we will find the genuine hope and change that we can truly believe in.

My Truck ‘n Me

It was a midnight blue Isuzu pickup. I bought it secondhand from a neighbor who had retired from New Jersey Bell. It was one of the most practical vehicles that I’ve ever owned. I used it to clear yard waste from my property and to carry all manner of stuff that would not fit in the trunk of a car. I even removed about four full truckloads of old tree stumps from my neighbor’s yard.

When I first purchased the truck, though, many of my friends and acquaintances asked me why I had bought it, instead of a car – didn’t seem to fit my personality some told me. Others were not quite as direct about it, but seemed to imply the same. I found it amusing, because it was as though I had suddenly developed another personality.

But now I get it. Scott Brown drives a truck, and politicians are not supposed to be seen driving trucks – somehow it kills the image of what a politician should be. Even President Barack Obama, when he made a last-minute flight aboard Air Force One to Massachusetts, trying to break the momentum of Scott Brown’s drive for Ted Kennedy’s vacant seat referred negatively to Brown’s truck.

Big mistake. Even more so when it’s made by the President of the United States. There are millions of people who drive trucks in this country, yet the image still seems to linger of some redneck guy in a pickup with a rifle slung in the back.

As for me, I like truckers, whether they drive pickups or eighteen wheelers. Even if they are politicians.

Such a Fuss!

His victory made him the 41st vote for Republicans in the U.S. Senate. Still, I am bemused by all the attention being heaped upon Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts and the unexpectedly glowing characterization of the Bay State by talking heads, writers, and bloggers of all stripes. It’s as though someone had just discovered a 51st state tucked away in the northeast.

Having been born 26 miles northwest of Boston; having roamed the Bay State and its environs for nigh on to four decades, I think that I know a little about Massachusetts, its people and the region. Trust me: It’s the same U.S. Commonwealth that it was before Scott Brown was elected – no better, no worse.

Massachusetts, a Source of Firsts: I won’t go through a list. But I will point out that long before Barack Obama began to remind Americans so often of how he is the first this and the first that, Massachusetts residents once chose Edward Brooke as the first modern African-American to serve in the U.S. Senate way back in 1967. I was proud of Brooke back then; yet I don’t recall Bay Staters making such a ruckus over it. Voters thought him qualified, put him in office, and that was that: Get to work.

Getting down to work on their behalf is no more, no less what Bay State residents expect from Scott Brown. He entered the race as an underdog, had the platform that voters wanted, worked his butt off campaigning, and pulled the rug out from under Martha Coakley, a lifelong Bay State resident fully backed by the Kennedys, but who simply did not keep her ears to the ground, and who forgot to campaign.

The Kennedy Factor. The mystique, charm, negotiation skills, effectiveness, political street-smarts, family tradition and tragedy associated with Ted Kennedy – love him or hate him – constituted the psyche of a political giant. Personal psyches, as Martha Coakley and the remaining Kennedys discovered, cannot be duplicated and are not transferable.

That is why Scott Brown is heading for Washington and Martha Coakley is not.

Note:  Photo of Edward Brooke, Courtesy/San Francisco Chronicle