Archive for January, 2010

THE GOLD RUSH

Monday, January 25th, 2010

One hand giveth, the other taketh away.  That’s how I’m feeling after days of euphoria following the victory of Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election.  A stunning upset that finally tells the world, or more importantly, the Obama administration, that the Tea Party movement is not imaginary.  It’s not a bunch of rednecks, it’s not a bunch of angry republicans…it’s working-class Americans saying “enough is enough”.

What could be more demonstrative of that fact than a republican winning Ted Kennedy’s seat?  I know, I know, it’s the people’s seat, as Scott Brown reminded us during his debate with the diminutive Martha Coakley.  Better yet, he went on to prove it with a solid win that came with margins that made stealing the election impossible for the corrupt political machine of that state.  Senator Scott Brown, in my humble opinion, may be one of the best things to happen to this country in a long time.  It was more than refreshing to hear him in Washington, speaking in decisive, clear tones and articulating the simple rules of the game that most of us would like to see implemented in our Federal Government.  Fiscal responsibility being first and foremost.

Just as I was beginning to wonder if the euphoric feeling would ever subside, the Supreme Court stepped in and squashed it for me with their ruling last week regarding some of the basic tenets of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.  The legislation, originally intended to squeeze corruption from the political donation process, enraged most republicans and further distanced McCain from his party when he introduced it.  We all say we want politicians who “get things done” and who “reach across the aisle” and who “compromise in an effort to produce actual legislation”, but be careful if you are a politician who actually does any of those things.

Remember when McCain called for the troop surge in Iraq?  This was not a popular notion at the time and his fellow republicans ran in the other direction, but McCain was right.  He put what was best for the country ahead of his own political ambitions, an act that is as rare in Washington, D.C. as are Polar Bear sightings in Hawaii.

McCain-Feingold was no exception.  Republicans cried “foul” and felt that free speech was being squashed.  I find that argument ridiculous and invite anybody to find me one person in this country who is not free to speak his or her mind, on any subject, in any media, with fear of repercussion.  I mean, really…look at what transpires in this country.  We have everything and anything available to us 24/7, every conceivable type of information or opinion.  The argument that Free Speech as guaranteed to us in the Constitution, was somehow taken away or diminished by not allowing corporations, groups or lobbyists to offer huge donations to political campaigns, seems ludicrous to me.

I don’t necessarily want Boeing, AIG, or Wal-Mart to have a bigger voice than the rest of us.  But it wasn’t about that, anyway, and we all know it.  It was about big donations being rewarded with big federal contracts and politicians being paid off for the favor.  We all know that.  We all know what McCain-Feingold was meant to do.  We all know why republicans hated it.  It was killing the cash cow, the goose that laid the golden eggs, and again, when it comes down to cash or character, most politicians will take the cash and compromise their character.

I laugh at the people I hear celebrating this ruling as some kind of victory.  It’s like the chickens celebrating a new dental plan for the fox.  Watch now, as the river of corrupt money again floods the political process.  The very last thing we need right now, and it is odd, also, that the Supreme Court seemed to have missed the “Scott heard ’round the world” from Massachusetts.  Let’s see who, during the mid-terms and the campaign of 2012, takes the big money, and how they pay back that favor if and when elected.  Then, put a little star next to their name…and make sure they get booted out next time around, as is about to happen to most of Congress this Fall.

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WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Probably more than you think.  I’m not talking about that popular parcel delivery service with the brown trucks that park in the middle of the road, I’m talking Scott Brown of Massachusetts who is the talk of the country, and for good reason.

The coveted U.S. Senate seat left vacant after the passing of Ted Kennedy, and widely assumed to be promptly filled by another well-heeled political hack from the political hack Center of The Universe, Massachusetts, is suddenly in jeopardy.  To the utter dismay of hard-core Massachusetts democrats, the campaign of Attorney General Martha Coakley, is in shambles and by Tuesday night we’ll know just how bad.  This doesn’t mean she’s going to lose, although I hope so, but even if she wins, the campaign has been a train wreck, and the fact that she didn’t simply walk away with the election, as most people expected, has shaken the National Democratic Committee to it’s core.

Instead, she actually had to face a viable opponent, and given the current political climate in the country, Scott Brown was the right guy, in the right place, at the right time.  He has that most important element working for him.  Momentum.  And, it came at just the right time.  Not too early…not too late.  Nearly every poll, save the Boston Globe’s, has shown Brown gaining on Coakley.  First fifteen points…then ten…then five…then two…and now a dead heat by nearly every account.

It makes sense, as both candidates are emblematic of the political fire that is burning in the country right now.  It’s almost like a steel-cage death match.  Coakley, the entrenched pol, steadily climbing the ladder for years, but with a career blemished by bad plays and deal-making.  Brown, on the other hand, the consummate every-man.  Two decades in the National Guard, a family man, still driving an old pick up truck with 200,000 miles on it.  Speaking with conviction about what people want to hear.  Smaller government, “no” to the health care bill, “no” to increased government spending, “no” to the massive over-reaching that is becoming the moniker of the Obama administration.  He answered David Gergen, who moderated a much publicized debate between the two, that the race was for, “not Kennedy’s seat, not the democrat’s seat, but the people’s seat…”.  This line went instantly into the campaign-line Hall of Fame, along with Reagan’s famous “I paid for this microphone” line from his Presidential campaign.  Gergen, of course, made it easy.  Deeming himself “neutral” but then asking Brown about Roe v. Wade then asking Coakley about her favorite sandwich, the questioning was typically stacked in one sides favor.

Still, Brown will have to take it by a wide margin, to off-set the attempts that will be made by corrupt forces to shape the outcome of this election.  Let’s not forget, this is a State House with more convicts than most prisons.  Only Chicago conjures up quicker images of political corruption than Massachusetts, and Chicago doesn’t hold a candle to Massachusetts in my opinion.  The Big Dig itself is an internationally recognized hallmark of graft, payoffs and corruption.  The state is second only to Vermont in their absolute repudiation of any attempt to capture and convict child-rapists.  Coakley herself, though she has campaigned as one who is tough on child predators, has been benign when it comes to protecting children.  Indeed she was implicit in protecting a police officer who was convicted, finally, of sodomizing his own niece with a curling iron.  She spent weeks in the burn unit at Children’s Hospital.  Coakley has been at odds with Rep. Karyn Polito and Wendy Murphy, two of only a small handful of Massachusetts politicos who have faced the problem of child predators head on.

Martha Coakley, decent person though she may be, is out of step with average Americans.  Like her political counterparts, she just doesn’t get it.  People have had it.  We’re rising up.  It’s not going to be business as usual anymore. Real hope and change is coming, I expect in the mid-terms this year, only it’s not “slogan hope” it’s the real deal.  Change?  Oh, yeah…change is coming.  We’re going to “change” back to a government that reflects the desires and wishes of the majority of Americans, not the few.  A government that will stop and lend an ear to folks whose parents and grandparents wore, or maybe died wearing, a uniform for this country.  We can have compassion for the less fortunate, we can open our arms to people seeking a better life, but we can also expect them to understand that there are citizens who would like their voice heard as well, maybe even….gulp…first.

Win or lose Scott Brown will be a household name from this point forward.  Like Sarah Palin early on, he has captured the imagination of many.  And how refreshing, at least for me, to have someone capturing my imagination for a change, instead of simply straining it.

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GONE WITH THE WIND

Monday, January 11th, 2010

“Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!”  Yes, and in this rendition of the timeless classic, “Scarlett” is code for about seventy percent of the country and it is our President making the strident exclamation.  “Blunder Road” might be the title of the musical analogy for the Obama Team.

The handling of the terror-attempt over the skies of Detroit is just another example of the incessant fumbling that is quickly becoming the trademark of this President.  A delayed and somewhat cavalier response to the initial event on Christmas Day, followed by an even longer delay in returning with a more forceful performance.

And it is a performance, make no doubt about it.  It is becoming increasingly clear that this President is a fine speaker, but there’s not a whole lot more than that when you peel back the layers, or rather, as events peel back the layers for us.  Yet, we learned this about him long ago.  His first foray onto the campaign trail left audiences weak and starry-eyed.  And why not, because as we look back now, we see that both the speeches, and the promises made in them, were larger-than-life.  Worse than that, really.  They were pure fantasy.

Oh, how we tortured George H.W. Bush for his “read my lips” line which had become the hallmark of his campaign, and when circumstances later forced less enjoyable news to pass from those same lips, he was skewered by the Press.  And yet that renegotiation of a campaign promise seems like child’s play now.  This President as left campaign rhetoric so far behind, even the Hubble Telescope can’t find it no.  Yes, gone with the wind are the campfire songs that promised “change” and “hope” and “transparency” in government.  The promise of “no more earmarks” and Congressional jockeying being covered live on C-Span.  The halcyon days of simply making promises and effectual speeches are long gone now, replaced with a legislative bulldozer that simply tramples everything in it’s path, and dismisses as ignorant or racist, any disagreement with the Obama philosophy.

You know things are bad for Obama when his number one sycophant, the abominable Nancy Pelosi, slides in a barb about the President, when questioned about the closed-door dealings of Congress and the campaign promise that those things weren’t going to happen anymore, says “he said a lot of things  during the campaign…”.  Then again, she was so taken aback by the question that she almost fell over, and she may well not remember saying it.  It’s one of few things she has ever said that I remember, because I am usually so stunned while watching any news video of her, that I don’t even hear what she is saying.  I find it increasingly marvelous that so many undesirable traits and mannerisms managed to coagulate in one person.  She looks and acts more like a creature one would find nibbling on cheese in a basement, than she does a person who is only slightly less powerful than the President.  How….HOW…does such an insipid, diminutive, shell of a human being ascend to such a position?  Constantly impatient with us stupid-folk who are so concerned with a reliably inept government taking over a tenth of the country’s economy, and borrowing a trillion dollars to do it.

Janet Napolitano, too entrenched in her own dream to resign after announcing, with a straight face, that “the system worked” in the wake of a suicide bomber travelling half way across the globe with an explosive in his underwear.  Someone who was on a red flag list and a known danger.  Janet, whose own hairstyle should have been the first warning sign that there are some slow moving returns on the radar scope of that brain, had she a shred of dignity, would have spared Obama having to take the sword for her.  They sent her out to try and launch that line.  When it doesn’t fly, you take the cyanide.  Then again, we’re talking about a woman who looks like “Thing 3″ from Cat in the Hat.  Honestly, there just has to be a screw loose there.

Sadly, there is much at stake.  The future of the country, for one thing.  A livable future for our children and grandchildren comes to mind as well.  What is more disturbing about this President and his followers, though, at least to me, is the way they love to dismiss the rest of us as too stupid to know what’s good for us.  A little humility would go a long way, yet there is not a single person on that staff who even knows the meaning of the word, much lass has a grasp of that concept.  Maybe it’s best, because I would hate to see the movement that is afoot, to save this country, fizzle and die because we think things are getting better.  The mid-terms are getting close, Obama and his Flying Monkeys are going to want us to doze off in a field of poppies, sleeping quietly as snowflakes touch our face, while they finish their work of dismantling the Constitution and arranging civilian trials in this country for every two-bit thug that has killed, or wants to kill, Americans.  Don’t do it.  This is no time to let up.

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TWIN TOWS

Monday, January 4th, 2010

You’re probably thinking this is a confession-type piece, finally coming clean about my foot deformity, but no, that would have been spelled “toes”.  This is a reflection-type piece, in keeping with the New Year, as sometimes it is worth a glance back, even while considering the future.

Our local newspaper, The Cabinet, ran a photo a few weeks ago of a local ski hill called “Twin Tows”, named after it’s two…count ‘em…two…rope tows.  The picture had been taken in 1964 by the late Bernice Perry, also a New Hampshire treasure.  Twin Tows was a treasure, one of many smaller ski hills that used to be a staple across New Hampshire.  I was fortunate enough to have grown up just several hundred yards from the top of this venerable hill, and it was an integral part of my childhood.

This particular picture showed a crowd of several hundred, which was not unusual on the weekends.  There was night skiing, too, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and tickets were $1.00, daytime or night time.  There was a small warm-up hut at the bottom, a small snack bar with hot dogs, hot chocolate and the like, and a small rental shop.  Looking back, it was very Norman Rockwellesque.  A place where folks from the surrounding communities gathered for good, healthy fun.  Even a few prominent skiers got their start here, including Steve Lathrop of Amherst and George Frost.

Grooming the slopes did not include any fancy Sno-Cat, just a row of us kids, side stepping the entire hill.  Just that part would kill me now.  And my kids?  Unless the grooming can be done with a remote…

The rope tow was a monument to Yankee ingenuity in itself.  The brainchild of Arthur Hodgen and the late John MacDonald, both of Wilton, NH.  Buick motors, if I remember correctly, and wheel rims for pulleys, tacked to the top of a telephone pole.
Safety procedures at the top of the tow included either John or Arthur grabbing your ankle if you became somehow attached to the rope and were heading for the inner workings of the engine house.  You know what they say about watching sausage being made.

Learning the nuance of rope tow riding took some time, too.  Grab too fast and it would pull your arms right out of their sockets.  You had to slowly increase your grip until you started to move, and then hold tight.  Take too long increasing your grip, though, and your mittens will be on fire in no time.  Then there is the matter of keeping your skis in the tracks, as a single ski shooting off in one direction, while being pulled by a Buick-powered rope, can give your groin muscle a lightning strike, so to speak.

It was some place.  More memories than I could shake a ski pole at, and friendships forged there that still endure today, some forty five years later.  It’s sad, that as a culture, we have litigated ourselves into a corner where such a place could never exist today.  Insurance companies would buckle over in laughter at the very proposal of insuring such a place.  That’s too bad.  These places were priceless, they served their communities in many ways, and are generally a part of New Hampshire that I miss.

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