And so it has come to this.

A French poet, Paul Valery I think, wrote that great ideas began as poetry but always ended up in petty politics.  (The rhyme works in French  between poetique  and politique.)  We have seen this happern before our own eyes over the past two years.  With Obama the Democratic Party went into willful self delusion. They wanted so totally to believe and love Obama that they pushed him into an office he is and was even then clearly  unprepared to take. He has a shorter resume than Sarah Palin and everybody knew it.  He had never even been a shift boss at a hot dog stand.

Hillary Clinton got more votes, a couple million more as I recall, than Obama and she was rejected. The Party went nuts over Obama.  As Sarah Palin put it in her inimitable way when she asked, "How's that hope 'ee change 'ee stuff workin' out for you?"

Do you think the Democratic Party would be in today's titanic trouble if Hillary were President? 

The Donkey herd today would be fine if Hillary was our President and they would be acting like a governing party not a bunch of hopeless academic ideologues and left wing moon bats. What a crew Obama has in office, most of them are head in the clouds academics, leftist fanatics or cant spewing pedants. Under a President Hillary the Democrats might drop a normal midterm twenty to twenty five seats in this November election. She would have pushed and coaxed the House GOP into line and not tried to do something as crazy as the vast overhaul of all Health Care. She had been there and knew what a thankless hopeless mess that was. She could have gotten  a program of solid piece meal reforms through with real bipartisan support and avoided the hair pulling or  eye poking. She would not have turned the banks over to the Wall Street elite and she would not have let small and medium size business roll over and die. 

If Hillary were President today I would guess she would be holding in the low to mid 50's and not have to worry about losing either house of Congress. The Democrat would not be risking an almost total Republican control of next years reapportionment in thirty five states (That will mean at least 15 to 20 seats shifting to the GOP for sure). She might be attacked by both the right and the left but she would be solid and have strong business and labor support. She also would know just how much to give to the Rep's to keep them in line. 

This Obama disaster was not inevitable and could have been avoided if the Democrats acted like adults. What a mess,  and now the latest polls show the folks are really so over Obama that Dub'ya is running eight points higher than he is in Ohio.  It seems most people would rather take their chances with Dub’ya again than  continue down the path Obama has charted.  Who’d a thought it would come to this?

Why do we give up the dreams and challenges for the ordinary?

The single most tragic and telling item in President Obama's proposed budget and the one that may very well be of historic importance it what he has done to NASA. Perhaps it is my generation grew up with the soaring dreams of the 1950's and 1960's of a real new frontier. We believed the cosmos was the real new frontier. We heard JFK pledged to be on the Moon in a decade and it happened. The gradual step by step rocket launches and mission following mission that brought the moon landing to reality were a big part of our youth.

Now we can not afford it, we are told. (We sure seem to be able to afford every sort of dumb thing, so I doubt this.) What we don't have anymore is the vision, the drive and the dreams to pursue further advances into space, to Mars and generation by generation further and further into the cosmos.

So we will not lead and dream anymore and we will let somebody else do it. Sad. We should not be surprised if China picked this up, they already have the bit in their teeth. We also might see Japan and Brazil (perhaps with Israeli support) pick up the task. The Japanese and Israeli scientific establishment are more than capable and now that Brazil has entered the varsity level of industrial capability they could do it. Even more Brazilians have the pride and optimism to bring off a project if they can get the technical and practical cooperation of others.

If we no longer dream and strive to go beyond the narrow streets of our daily life, we become ordinary and boring. If we forget that science and engineering are also kind of poetry, that they are and be elegant and beautiful expressions of human striving and hope, we become dull and boring. What we have is a failure of nerve and a poverty of imagination and hope by our governing elites. It is critical that we strive. What if Prince Henry called off exploration when the Portuguese sailors reached the Azores in the mid Atlantic and the mouth of the Congo River in Africa? What if Queen Isabel told Christopher Columbus that she had already pawned her jewels to pay for some new bridges on the road from Valencia to Barcelona. How much poorer and small the world would be.

This smallness of spirit that troubles me deeply. The accountants have replaced the dreamers Ironically, it is our immigrants who do not share it. To dare, to seek, to explore are the spark of human greatness.

Basta!! Get out of my face.

In Friday morning’s paper there was a news story about a bill the California State Senate has passed that would vigorously discourage if not out and out forbid free parking in California. The purpose is to force people to use public transportation and not drive cars. It passed at the same time the State’s fiscal meltdown is causing major cut backs in public transportation. Great timing.

Of course it is backed the Sierra Club and almost every one the usual hyper green zealot organizations. Why do they feel compelled to get in our face every chance they get? These activists always burn with a righteous and compelling need to impose their elevated moral judgments onto every other human, especially us ignorant peasants and peons. So we do not drive Prius’s, shop at Whole Foods, wear natural fibers and try to be friends of Polar Bears, Quail, Spotted Owls, obscure rodents and reptiles. We don’t hate critters, we just don’t include them our Christmas list.

Why do these ever so earnest people feel compelled to whack us in the chops every chance they get? This is one of those wonderful examples of supposedly ecologically inspired do goodism that really is just another mean spirited attempt to make life more difficult and trying for ordinary people. It would bring even more needless inconvenience and more useless wasted time. This bit of preemptive vengeance annoys everybody as it snatches away long enjoyed rights and it feeds the egos and self-importance of bloody minded enthusiasts.

These zealous greenie meanies are as bad or worst than the most obnoxious fundamentalist preachers. They are secular counterparts of the Taliban and all the other way over the line religious fanatics. The inflicting of pain on other people is a goal deeply embedded in their ever so pure souls. They are the ardent agents of their idols, be they a pantheist Earth Mother such as Gaia or Erda, Astarte or whoever. These zealots act in the name of a ferocious easily offend and vengeful Gawd or belligerent all punishing deity or force far beyond the teachings of any and all orthodox religions or faiths.

All I can say is that I want to keep my free parking and I want you enthusiasts to stay out of my face. You can believe and espouse any nonsense you wish but keep it away from me. Have a nice day, and if it makes you feel better go right ahead and pay ten bucks to park at your neighborhood Whole Foods. Just leave us alone and tend your own garden.

All Obama, all the time?

Random takes:

Again, the White House staff is trotting the Bamster all over the place to beat the drum for his new budget and his vast and half vast plans. OVEREXPOSURE, I mean big time over exposure. President Obama comes from an academic background and it shows. He is bright and smart (perhaps not quite as smart as we hoped, but who is?).

There is one big problem with this, besides his off the tell-a-prompter gaff’s, like yesterday’s gratuitous slam of Las Vegas, which got Sin City’s Burgermeister to say, “He’s not a friend of ours.” It also earned him a pained snarl from ever loyal Harry Reid and the Bamster made the required chest beating apologia. Poor Harry Reid is literally burning on the funeral pyre of the Health Care Reform fiasco and didn’t need the Bamster to trash his home town. The GOP crew no doubt will treasure this and Obama’s other snide cracks about Las Vegas and run them all night long on Nevada TV.

President Obama’s over exposure problem is compounded by his cool professorial demeanor and slightly above the fray distance. He ain’t warm and fuzzy. He doesn’t have have JFK’s charm and disarming wit or Ronnie Reagan’s midwestern version of the same. He isn’t the warm hearted varsity football coach like Jerry Ford. Most Americans -- even those who hated their regimes -- would have liked to had a beer with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush because were flesh and blood humans, and in private are lively guys who pepper their conversation with rude rustic jokes and lots of funny stories. They both mastered the “I’m just an ole country boy” persona, even though they really were a lot more.

The Bamster unfortunately is much like Jimmy Carter, who Bill Clinton often called “The Parson” because he could never come down from the moral heights nor stiffle his need to preach. Nixon had a huge warm and fuzzy deficit, even worse the Bamster. Bush the father seemed so tied up by his patrician DNA and upbringing, he always seem awkward.

There is no way to make Barrack Obama a warm personality. He is not Harold Ford, cute enough to be a TV star, overflowing with charm and good humor, an ability to listen and as my daughter says, those flirty eyes.

So my free advice to the White House is, cool it with the Bamster on the Road National Tour. He isn’t Bill Clinton or Ronnie Reagan. I honestly think like with Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover, the public is tiring of his preaching and his odd Chicago combination of high concepts and rough house politics. They have noticed his inner stiffness as the did with Bush the father, and his stubborn streak like Bush the son’s.

One more thing, I think Michelle Obama is doing her job very well and her hubby could take some lessons. There are even times I think we put the wrong half of the First Couple in the Oval Office and she in fact would be a far more effect manager of the country’s business. She like most female leaders would do, not go into Hamlet like contemplation and on things like legislation would talk a lot with not talk to the Republicans and bring them on board when she could and knock them around when she couldn’t.

The ultimate high tech weapon.

In the current loud and overwrought rumpus about terrorists sneaking explosives onto Airliners in their skivvies we can see one of the great but usually overlooked flaws in the American character. When we face a problem we always seen to gravitate to the most envelope pushing high tech solution. We love gizno’s and the fancier and more expensive the better. Everybody is talking about new and better and far more expensive sniffing machine to spot terrorists hiding explosives on their persons. Who knows if they really work in the field, if we can train TAS schleps to read and understand the data they get from the machines.

What irritates me greatly is that we avoid the clear and obvious answer, the one any child would know and understand. We already have the world’s most sophisticated and discriminating sniffing machine. Yeah, you see where I’m going. We have the DOG. Canis Lupis Vulgarus.

Among the various breeds of dogs I am told that the Beagle is particularly good at sniffing out contraband. Additionally it is a relatively small dog, ever so cute and amiable and hardly likely to frighten women and children. With it’s big dark eyes, floppy ears and perkiness, who could object to getting sniffed by an adorable friendly Beagle? We know that in the USA and UK Beagles are used very successfully by dermatologists to identify skin cancers. The cute mutts when trained, not very hard apparently, have a 100% success rate in smelling targeted malignancies. It is child’s play -- puppy play may be more accurate -- for them.

Ah, but it too simple. There is no big bucks pot of gold at the end of the R &D drama if we mandated every airport have a kennel full of cheerful Beagles who would sniff down passengers and baggage for us. What would it cost us? Not much beyond flea collars and bags of Iam’s dog chow supplemented by whatever human food they can charm out of their handlers and the airport staff and passengers.

Would it work? Damn straight it would work like a charm. The perky mutts would sniff out potential terrorists, they could also nab drug smugglers and folks who violate our food and drug laws by smuggling in meat contraband like real Italian salami, sweet and salty Hunan ham or South African beef jerky.

The photo is from Wikkapeda's entry on the Beagle.

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In the current loud and overwrought rumpus about terrorists sneaking explosives onto Airliners in their skivvies we can see one of the great but usually overlooked flaws in the American character. When we face a problem we always seen to gravitate to the most envelope pushing high tech solution. We love gizno’s and the fancier and more expensive the better. Everybody is talking about new and better and far more expensive sniffing machine to spot terrorists hiding explosives on their persons. Who knows if they really work in the field, if we can train TAS schleps to read and understand the data they get from the machines.

What irritates me greatly is that we avoid the clear and obvious answer, the one any child would know and understand. We already have the world’s most sophisticated and discriminating sniffing machine. Yeah, you see where I’m going. We have the DOG. Canis Lupis Vulgarus.

Among the various breeds of dogs I am told that the Beagle is particularly good at sniffing out contraband. Additionally it is a relatively small dog, ever so cute and amiable and hardly likely to frighten women and children. With it’s big dark eyes, floppy ears and perkiness, who could object to getting sniffed by an adorable friendly Beagle? We know that in the USA and UK Beagles are used very successfully by dermatologists to identify skin cancers. The cute mutts when trained, not very hard apparently, have a 100% success rate in smelling targeted malignancies. It is child’s play -- puppy play may be more accurate -- for them.

Ah, but it too simple. There is no big bucks pot of gold at the end of the R &D drama if we mandated every airport have a kennel full of cheerful Beagles who would sniff down passengers and baggage for us. What would it cost us? Not much beyond flea collars and bags of Iam’s dog chow supplemented by whatever human food they can charm out of their handlers and the airport staff and passengers.

Would it work? Damn straight it would work like a charm. The perky mutts would sniff out potential terrorists, they could also nab drug smugglers and folks who violate our food and drug laws by smuggling in meat contraband like real Italian salami, sweet and salty Hunan ham or South African beef jerky.

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