I'm afraid I'm a little off my "talking points rocker" today, as it has come to my attention that I am currently: against Elizabeth Warren for Senate in Massachusetts, interested in what Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has to say, and in agreement with Charles Krauthammer's opinion in today's Washington Post.
I'll just let that all sink in for a moment...
I like Elizabeth Warren. She's a bright woman who should have been allowed to serve in the consumer economic office she herself conceived. And if she wants to be in the Senate, that's great. Just not in Massachusetts, please. Maybe she could move to Nebraska, Missouri, or Louisiana and run where we could actually use a real Democratic senator. For while I do not agree with him all the time, I've been pleasantly surprised with Scott Brown's (R-MA) voting record. He seems to be thoughtful and deliberative, and I'm comfortable with him in that hallowed seat.
I was not happy when "Bob's For Jobs" McDonnell won office in Virginia shortly after Presidenet Obama carried the state in the general, but cannot refute the fact that he took a big deficit and turned it into more than $500 million in surplus. He even chided Rick Perry's "anti-climate science" comments on Morning Joe today. Good for him. He seems to be a nice enough guy. But my problem with him and the other "Jobs Gov.", Perry of Texas, is that they do not go much beyond saying their states harbor a "business-friendly" environment. Now to me, that is code for "anti-labor" and "right-to-work". So when Governor Bob went on to say that the reason so many US children are in poverty is that there are too many one-parent families, I had to wonder how many of those kids are in the homes of workers who "benefitted" from those "new jobs" recently created. Just what kind of jobs are we talking here and what, if any, are the benefits offered? I have my own ideas.
(I do need to interject a note on Perry's "trail talk" in which he told a child that in Texas they teach both creationism and evolution because "evolution has some holes in it". Of course they do not mandate that teaching approach as it would RIGHTLY be unconstitutional, but as the child's mom so aptly put it: "Ask him why he doesn't believe in science." And while I would never knee-cap a Rain Dancer--my great-grandmother was Cherokee--I don't think the Governor of Texas should turn solely to prayer when faced with catastrophic droughts. Maybe that's what Bush was attempting in those first few days after Hurricane Katrina.)
I will admit that this is not the first time I've agreed with Charles Krauthammer. It pains me to say so, but there it is. In his current column in The Washington Post, he discusses two points which have been bothering me:
1. President Obama has yet to lay out a specific plan for entitlement reform.
2. The President wants to end the surge in Afghanistan in September of next year, right before the election.
If the incumbent was a Republican, I would be all over them for these two sins--one of omission and one of commission--and I should hold Mr. Obama to the same criticism. I don't know that he is using the polls as his guide nor consulting the election day clock on these matters, but the optics aren't the best and cause me to call these points into question. I believe we do need to give President four more years, but he cannot get re-elected if he refuses to take charge in his first term in office.
Letting the Congress, especially this Congress take the lead is, in my opinion, his worst decision so far in office. I hope he surprises me in September and takes the reigns of this run-away horse of state because that pony needs to be tamed. If he chooses to stay in the comfort of the barn and "make political hay", then we may be faced with another Republican administration in January of 2013, and you know how I feel about cowboy presidents.
In a recent interview in The National Review, Alan Simpson (R-WY, Ret.) said that if your horse dies and you don't get off, you're crazy. I would add to that by saying if you don't lead your horse in a charge while he's alive, then you really haven't made much of a case for keeping yourself in the saddle.
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