It was good to have a week off. My brother and sister and I traveled to our birthplace of Perry County, Ky., to visit our one living aunt and a bunch of cousins from both sides of the family. We found the county seat, Hazard, much changed from our last visit. Our childhood home of Fourseam, a coal camp so named because, you know, four seams of coal in the mine, was all but eaten up by kudzu. The vine that ate the South, indeed.
I mostly ignored the news, exceot for all the political stuff it was hard to get away from. Everybody in Kentucky was sort of het up about President Obama's espressed desire to have a sip of Kentucky bourbon with Mitch McConnell. Folks there don't believe in alcohol bipartisanship, I guess.
I was glad to see most of you voted for the right people in my absence. You may recall that a couple of times I expressed doubts about a GOP wave. Turns out I was wrong -- they found a way this time to not be the Stupid Party. They, did it, however, without coming up with a coherent policy platform, so we'll just have to wait and see what it means.
I know what it doesn't mean. All the TV gasbags have been going on and on about how Obama and the GOP Congress had to find a way to work together to get things done and blah, blah, blah. "The people" are tired of gridlock and just will not stand for continued divisiveness. Well, crap. Since Republicans didn't really articulate anything, don't you think that means people were voting against the status quo instead of for the wonderful Republicans? I don't think they want cooperation at all. If you ask me, the electorate was calling for tqo more years of gridlock so we can get the current occupant of the White House out after two more years without any more lasting damage to the country.
I leave you with these words of wisdom from Thomas Sowell (and you can read the full column on tomorrow's editorial page):
People who are increasingly questioning Obama's competence are continuing to ignore the alternative possibility that his fundamental values and imperatives are different from theirs. You cannot tell whether someone is failing or succeeding without knowing what they are trying to do.
[. . .]
Resentment of the prosperous — whether at home or on the world stage — runs through virtually everything Obama has said and done throughout his life. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to find the clues. You have to shut your eyes tightly to keep from seeing them everywhere, in every period of his life.
The big question is whether the other branches of government — Congress and the Supreme Court — can stop him from doing irreparable damage to America in his last two years. Seeing Obama as an incompetent and weak, lame duck president only makes that task harder.
