Reflections on the election

Well, the American people have spoken. Thank God for democracy! Mr. Obama and the Democrats have been soundly repudiated by the people who rejected their agenda and also the adamant way the party in power jammed their agenda down the people's throats. Duffy believes that is the primary lesson that Obama and especially Mrs. Pelosi will not learn from November 2nd. The unbelievable decision by Pelosi to continue on as minority leader confirms that opinion. The Republicans must be joyous at their good luck. Talk about a state of denial!

Moreover the Democrats are also in denial if they think the Republicans have to meet them halfway. Mitch McConnell, soon to be Senate Majority leader, is right, the Democrats have to come to them, a long way in fact.

What will the Republicans try to do now they can stop Obama? Duffy thinks it would be a waste of time and effort to try to repeal Obamacare. First of all, Obama will veto it. Secondly there are parts of Obamacare that are good and should stay that the public supports. However most of the bill should be repealed and replaced with a far less ambitious and smaller bill that will begin true health care reform. Duffy believes real reform will and should be done in stages over 10-15 years to really get it right. And that the people buy into the changes over a period of time instead of having a massive 2,700 page bill jammed down their throats.

How to fix the economy? Duffy thinks the best way is to undertake a massive bipartisan effort to simplify and eliminate regulations and red tape across all areas and levels of government. Make it easier to do business and business of all types will grow and expand and hire. With that we also need to greatly simplify the tax code. Not cut taxes necessarily but certainly make it fairer and easier to pay taxes. The people inherently know that the tax code is hugely unfair and too complicated, favoring to many special interests. No more social engineering using the tax code.

The next two years may be gridlock or Obama and the Republicans may get some things done. Duffy thinks the odds favor gridlock because neither Obama nor Pelosi will admit they were wrong. Either case the economy will (slowly) improve and the people will likely continue the housecleaning in 2012.

Duffy has been out for a while dealing with some medical issues (to put it mildly) but hopes to get back to sharing his thoughts with his thousands, give or take, fans in the weeks ahead.

Arizona's Experiment

Duffy has been watching the immigration brouhaha with considerable interest. This Thursday, July 29, barring some last minute legal injunction, the new immigration law will take effect. Duffy sure as hell would not want to be a law enforcement officer in the state of Arizona that day! For the law enforcement community it will be "damned if do and damned if you don't!" You can bet that especially in the large cities such as Phoenix and Tucson there will be carloads of citizens both for and against the law actually following sheriff's deputies around in cars to see what happens when someone is pulled over for a traffic stop. I kid you not. Not to mention large crowds of people both for and against matching up and down city streets demonstrating for or against the law. This will be the number one story for days possibly weeks eclipsing even the gulf oil spill in news coverage and intensity. Duffy is sure the ACLU and right wing organizations will have legions of lawyers out in force to closely follow the police as they carry out their duties. Cops will be charged if they follow the law and if they, in the opinion of some, don't follow the law. It will be one unholy mess!

Duffy feels that sooner or later it was bound to come to this. Let's face it. The immigration situation in this country has been broken for at least twenty years. I don't think any citizen actually feels that the U.S. has a handle on border control and admitting illegal aliens into this country. A majority of the population apparently feels a tipping point has been reached. "Enough is enough and by God we have to do something!" Duffy agrees with that sentiment, but what? This country must control the borders, but how? Duffy is sympathetic to the argument that the U.S. government should expend vastly more resources to sealing the border along the southern U.S. I suspect that the a majority of the American people would gladly transfer the tens of billions of dollars now being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan over to building a impregnable (if there is such a thing) fence along the southern border. But what to do with the 10-12 million illegals already here? Some for years if not decades? If one could magically wave a wand and "disappear" all these people chaos would reign in the agriculture and construction industries not to mention thousands of small businesses around the country. Duffy feels the real problem is not sealing the border which can be done if enough resources are thrown at the problem but how to somehow determine who among the illegals already here should be granted citizenship and who should be deported. One has to ask, of the many who have led productive lives in this country for years, "why haven't you applied for citizenship?" Moreover, how to treat the millions who are here to work hot, low paying physically hard jobs in agriculture and construction?

Folks, I know that a lot of you are waiting on ole' Duff's solution to this huge mess.........Guess what? He doesn't have one! Duffy is of the opinion that frankly a lot of money is being wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Duffy feels that a lot of money is being wasted in useless government programs. Duffy also feels that the current administration, Obama and the Democrats, have no answers to the illegal immigration problem and have no real interest in going to Congress asking for the money to really, really spend on tightly closing the borders. So, nothing is going to happen as long as the Democrats control Congress and Obama is president. Which means chaos in Arizona and more states enacting Arizona type laws. You can see it coming......

Obama's Quagmires

President Obama is now entangled in two quagmires. One in Afghanistan and one on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. Either one is bad and both together have continued to and will continue to drag down Obama's popularity with his Democratic base and the American people.

First, Afghanistan. Duffy believes that Obama had no choice but to fire General McChrystal. The general, while a true warrior with an outstanding war record, was truly not up to dealing with the political aspect of the job. The fact that he allowed a Rolling Stones reporter to get up close and personal for a month with him and his staff was both stupid and unforgiving. Obama salvaged what could have been a public relations disaster by appointing General Petraeus to take over the war in Afghanistan. But Duffy believes that the Afghan war is unwinnable if one defines a "win" as establishing a democratic peaceful pro-American country that has eliminated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It ain't gonna happen. Duffy has seen this movie before (see blog of September 2009) and feels that ultimately the U.S. will withdraw and declare victory with neither Al-Qaeda nor the Taliban completely defeated. Once again, thousands of American lives will be forfeited by death and injury. While Duffy also believed that the second invasion of Iraq was also a mistake, nevertheless "Bush's War" will probably end up with a somewhat democratic Iraq who will ultimately be, if not an ally, a neutral state in the Middle East. Obama has stated that Afghanistan is a "necessary war" and he has established ownership. The outcome is uncertain, probably prone to failure as defined by American public opinion and will cost Obama severely in the 2012 election.

Duffy also thinks that Obama has mishandled the Gulf oil gusher badly from the start. While he insists he was "on it from the beginning" facts and on the ground observations by the American people show otherwise. Duffy asks, why hasn't the president still not declared the four states affected a federal disaster area? Why hasn't he nationalized the National Guard in those states to assist in the cleanup? Holding BP's feet to the fire and forcing them to set up a 20 billion fund while appearing to show management of the crisis, is still not cleaning the beaches. As all of America can see every night on the news.

Obama clearly would like to be on to other things like passing a huge energy bill, selling his national health plan, cleaning up Wall Street. All big worthy goals have been sidetracked by BP and Afghanistan. For a narcissistic technocrat like Obama, it must be maddening that he is faced with two complicated, involved, never ending problems that just don't seem to be solvable by all the "experts" he can muster.

The American people are watching a frustrated, seemingly impotent president grapple with two quagmires that will both haunt him and define the rest of this term. The Obama phrase, "never let a good crisis go to waste" is delicious irony to the Republicans watching Obama's poll numbers sink week by week.

What Diversity means to Obama

President Obama has had two chances to nominate candidates to the Supreme Court. As always with Obama one has to see what he does and compare it to what he says to appreciate the all too frequent gulf between words and actions.

All during the campaign Obama promised to promote both diversity and also inclusiveness in his appointments, that is, folks who represented a wide swath of all different types of Americans. The Big Tent as it were. He promised to bring America together to promote harmony between all different viewpoints with the intent of bridging differences between the Left and the Right, between Conservatives and Liberals or Progressives as they now call themselves. Obama stressed that he would be the Everyman President listening to all sides and viewpoints from all walks of life and all styles of politics and beliefs. Enough of the strife. Let's all be One Big Happy Family. Instead we have seen his appointments consist of mostly far left liberals, many African-Americans (what you would expect) and with the notable exception of Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, no notable Republicans or Conservatives.

The selection of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan is a case in point. Both are white, single women who went to Yale (Sotomayor) and Harvard (Kagan), one Catholic (Sotomayor, 24% of the population), Jewish (Kagan, 2 % of the population) who both grew in and lived most of their lives in New York City. This is a background that about 99% of the American people don't share or relate too. Of course proponents of these two women expound about their excellent academics, impressive job records and high recommendations from many friends and admirers. Duffy has no doubt that both Sotomayor and Kagan are both well qualified to be on the Supreme Court and both will ably carry forward the Liberal, uh excuse me, Progressive agenda. But Duffy really wished Obama would have picked someone who worked his or her way through a state university, maybe ran for and was elected to a political office even it was dogcatcher, worked for a private profit making company or better yet built their own company, was married with children or even divorced for that matter and to top it off was from the Middle West or the South. In other words someone who could relate to the vast majority of how Americans really live in this country.

It is apparent to Duffy that Obama is a true elitist, one who really does think that "he knows best" for what is good for America. And that he is going to surround himself with the Best and the Brightest" all of whom went to Ivy League colleges and all who share his vision of what's Best for America, i.e. a far left Liberal agenda that is alien to the majority of the American People. Duffy suspects that Obama knows that November he will lose the House and maybe the Senate to the Republicans and November 2012 he will be voted out of office. Therefore time is of the essence to "save America and by the way, save the World too" before he is gone from the scene. Expect to see more of his agenda pushed to get jammed through like Health Care Reform as 2012 approaches. As for the Supreme Court, it doesn't appear there will be any Conservatives leaving any time soon but Obama may have one more chance to replace another Liberal before he leaves. As for "coming together and lets all sing Kumbaya.....". Forget it.

Did Obama win the battle but lose the war?

Some of my readers have asked me to comment on the recent passage of the Health Reform Act. Or as Obama says, "the Health Insurance Reform Act". Duffy, frankly was pretty astounded seeing what transpired in the last month with passage of this act. The Democrats, seemingly oblivious to the American public's majority rejection of this bill, used every parliamentary trick they could devise and in the end, outright intimidation of their own members to jam this 2,500 page bill through Congress without a single Republican vote. President Obama took a huge gamble that he could get the bill passed. If failure, then his presidency was for all intents and purposes finished with more than 2 1/2 years to go. Looked at it that way, it is no wonder that Obama and Pelosi had to have a win if they hoped to enact anything of significance during his term. In a larger context a loss would have diminished Obama's standing in the world as an insignificant weak leader which would have negative effects on our foreign policy.

However, Duffy feels that the whole sordid process watched carefully by the American people over how this legislation was put together and what it took to get passed likely poisoned Obama to a large, majority of the electorate that will come back in spades on the first Tuesday in November.

Unfortunately for Obama a large part of the "good" aspects of this bill will not come into effect for 2-3-4 years while many of the "bad" aspects will start to be felt immediately. Contrary to what many of the supporters have been led to believe, medical costs and insurance premiums will not come down. Insurance companies will still raise rates and decline people. Doctors and hospitals will not lower rates. People will still experience delays, waits and confusion dealing with the medical establishment. Your taxes, directly and indirectly, will start to go up when "cost savings" fail to materialize. Dealing with medical providers will get even more confusing as they now have to conform to hundreds of new federal guidelines and mandates. There will be fewer insurance companies and more of them will pull out of certain markets. As more and more people believe they are entitled to coverage doctors and hospitals will be swamped with demand and it will take even longer to get in to see your doctor. More doctors will quit or retire. Expect to see even more foreign born and trained medical personnel working in hospitals. A lot of people working for the insurance industry will be laid off thereby increasing the unemployment rate. Your drugs will cost more. The only growth area that will be seen in the next few years will be growth in federal bureaucrats hired to enforce the regulations. The IRS has funding to hire up to 14,000 more employees to ensure that all taxpayers are required to have health insurance.

In short, just like the so called "stimulus package" that has done very little to stimulate the economy, after a while, the American people will come to realize that a lot more was offered than will be delivered.

However, Duffy doesn't mean to diminish this achievement. Universal health care is now the law of the land. Despite what the Republicans say, it will not be repealed. Parts of it are good and should be retained. It won't go awayand the future of the Republican Party will depend on how effective they are in fixing the bad parts of the bill, and they are many, and improving the good parts. This will take at least two elections, 2010 and 2012 to start the process. Duffy thinks the Democrats sealed their fate with this bill come November. You can bet the Republicans will go through every page of this bill to pick out the many harmful parts that in many instances have little or nothing to do with "health reform" or intrude the federal government even more into ordinary Americans lives.

This bill is seen rightly by the majority of the American people as embodying the Democratic ideal of State control of people's lives as opposed to the Republican ideal of individualism and liberty. Obama, for some reason, seems to think that he can, by the force of his will, force the people to bend to his goals whereas in reality the people in this country are tending to be more and more conservative. This blindness on Obama's part will cost his party dearly in November and his job in 2012.

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Duffy had the experience of attending a Jimmy Buffett concert last night at the Amway Arena in lovely downtown Orlando. Now to start off with, Duffy doesn't attend too many concerts. In fact maybe two or three in his whole life. The last one was probably around 1980 in Atlanta when Duffy and spouse watched the (what was left of) the Kingston Trio. Duffy realizes that 98% of the people who read this blog don't have a clue who the Kingston Trio is but they were BIG back in 1962! He also saw Peter, Paul and Mary back in college. Maybe somebody else, he can't be sure. Anyway, Duffy's spouse wanted to see Jimmy Buffett so she bought outrageously priced tickets and got her friend and her husband to go along. Duffy has always like Jimmy Buffett's songs and style and knows that he has a loyal following (Parrotheads) that turn out in great droves to see him perform. Mr. Buffett has worked years to perfect his "brand" and like the Grateful Dead has a vast merchandising empire that includes restaurants, merchandise, concerts and CD's that embody all things "Parrothead Nation". He's probably almost as rich as his other namesake, Warren Buffett.

The concert was sold out which meant about 15,000 parrotheads many of whom had camped out hours before hand in 50 degree weather to tailgate. Many huge RV's in the parking lot and lots of grills, beer coolers and lawn chairs. Was this a concert or UCF football game? The first thing that Duffy noticed walking among the crowds is that there really is an obesity epidemic in this country. It was obvious that a lot of parrotheads had eaten too many cheeseburgers in their life. Many had sharkfin hats on, many of the rest wore straw cowboy type hats. In spite of the temperature a lot of the fans wore shorts and Hawaiian type shirts. True devotion requires some sacrifices.

Even though we didn't have the cheap tickets ("cheap" being a relative term) our seats were in the top level which our group got to by climbing a 80 degree slope up to our row at about 9,000 feet. Somewhere down below we could see the stage. The concert was supposed to start at 8 p.m. but when the appointed time arrived perhaps half the seats were filled. Promptly at 8:20 band members starting appearing and in about 3 minutes 8,000 more fans piled in the arena to their seats. Obviously many of them knew the drill. A few minutes later Duffy saw Joe Biden walk out on stage which set off wild clapping and cheering. Duffy thought, "why is eveybody cheering the vice president?". Duffy knew that he had never heard of Joe Biden going on tour with a band and so looking at the big screen hanging down to conveniently aid those of us in the clouds to actually see what the hell was happening down on stage, Duffy could see that it actually was Mr. Buffett who must have been separated from Mr. Biden at birth. And Mr. Biden wouldn't wear shorts, a T-shirt and no shoes.

Mr. Buffett had 11 muscians and two female singers in his group and one could tell they had all been together for some time. Several of the group looked as old Mr. Buffett, a man in his early 60's, who looked to be thoroughly enjoying himself. The group did all the old favorites including "cheeseburger in paradise", "Havana daydreaming", "changes in attitudes, changes in latitudes" and other songs of that genre. After a while Duffy got the impression that Mr. Duffy has gotten fabulously rich over the years basically singing the same song over and over again but changing the words and the tune a little bit. If one's idea of paradise is living like a bum in a tropical location then one can appreciate the appeal of Jimmy Buffett's songs. And in fact, ole' Duffy does see a lot of appeal in that lifestyle......

Mr. Buffett seem energized and focused in the first half of the set but after a short 10 minute intermission both the energy and focus seemed to Duffy at least, to have devolved into a "when can we get this concert over with?" attitude subconsciously emanating from Mr. Buffett. One supposes that after singing the same songs, telling the same jokes, year after year on the road, doing concert after concert can do that to you. However, it was obvious that Mr. Buffett and his band members were enjoying themselves probably because in their heads they were counting up the gate receipts of the sold out crowd.

Duffy's take on Parrothead Nation is that they seem to share many characteristics with NASCAR fans, i.e. slavish devotion to the whole Jimmy Buffett shtick which includes dressing up in funny outfits and getting drunk. Duffy remembered why he dosen't "do concerts" as he was reminded of sitting middle seat in a Delta MD-88 flying from LA to Orlando. The acoustics was a giant echo chamber and the constant jumping up and down of short, fat female fans wearing cowboy hats distorted his view of the (very) small Mr. Buffett appearing somewhere, way down below him. Nevertheless, the spouse had a good time as well as about 14,900 parrotheads who screamed, whistled, yelled, jumped up and down like Nancy Pelosi and otherwise appeared very drunk most of the time. Mr. Buffett has a good thing going. And he knows it.

Sarah's Tea Party

Hundreds, (more or less), of Duffy's readers have asked him what he thinks of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. Well, for one thing Duffy likes looking at Sarah Palin. She is one good looking woman. When she compares to some of the females in the Democratic Party, Michelle Obama being a notable exception, there is no comparison. (think Hilary and Pelosi). That said, here is Duffy's take on Sarah. Two events in September 2008 transpired that sunk John McCain's election. The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The Lehman Brothers collapse was the tipping point that started the Great Economic Panic of 2008. Sarah Palin drove away moderate Republicans and Independents. They weren't ready to elect someone who looks like a typical 6 o'clock local newscaster. True, she energized the Far Right like no one else but the Republicans will never win a general election relying on the Far Right. In fact, one can say that Mr. McCain did the Republican Party no favors in bringing out of nowhere a woman totally unprepared to be Vice President much less President. Now don't get Duffy wrong. He has nothing against Sarah Palin. She is not dumb or stupid as the liberals try to paint her but she is ignorant in a lot of areas. Ignorance just means lack of knowledge. Mr. Obama is a very smart man but at his election woefully ignorant in several important areas, most notably foreign affairs and the military.

Sarah Palin will definitely have a large influence on the Republican Party and national politics in the years ahead. She is a classic populist appealing to the anger of the middle class. She's not going away as much as the main stream media and liberals try to demonize her. She is smart, hard working and determined to "spread a message." Duffy doesn't think she quite knows what her message is yet except to annoy and confound the liberals and the Obama agenda. Not a bad thing everything considered. She likes the adulation and needs the money.

Duffy still doesn't know quite what to make of the Tea Party movement. The TPM means more than "Taxed Enough Already!" Duffy thinks that the American people have finally reached a tipping point where there is a general consensus in the country that "enough is enough" when it comes to Big Government. Mr. Obama ran as a moderate centrist but quickly showed his true colors once in office as a far left ideologue. Duffy doesn't think his inner nature will allow him to pivot to the middle to appeal to moderates and independents in time to save his presidency. He will, like Jimmy Carter, be a one term president unless he has a total "conviction transplant" between now and November 2012. And he can't shake Nancy Pelosi.

The TPM, by itself, will not elect a Republican president in 2012 either. At some point as this is happening already, the TPM will become an structured organization with recognized leaders, a permanent funding source, office in Washington, the whole nine yards. The TPM will favor Republicans more than Democrats especially as long as Nancy Pelosi is running Congress. And she is, in fact, running Congress. Harry Reid is on his way out and pretty much a hack anyway. Again, the TPM is symbolic of a pervading sense sweeping across America that the total debt burden of this country is unsustainable, that Congress is pretty much worthless to fix anything and that bank bailouts, cap and trade, immigration "'reform", owning car companies, buying off the unions, is not America and shouldn't happen again. The Republicans, Duffy believes, should and must appeal to moderates, Independents and the people of America in the ideological center to elect a president in 2012. They can enlist the aid and energy of the TPM but can't depend on them to set their agenda or expect them to be the "core" that will boost their chances in 2012. Duffy thinks the TPM is a good thing for the country as a whole and the liberal Democrats, who don't understand it, have a right to be worried.

State of the Union: a new beginning?

Duffy has a confession to make. He did not watch the State of the Union address last week. He figures he sees enough of Obama nearly every day appearing on some news show, late night comedian show or as on Saturday both him and the Vice President, Joe Biden, taking in the Duke - Georgetown basketball game. I fully expect to see him on cable hawking the latest $19.95 wonder gadget soon. I guess when the economy is in serious trouble with unemployment at 10% the president and vice president can knock off from work and catch a basketball game. I'm sure the secret service just loves the Prez and Veep sitting together in a large public venue. Duffy wonders whether Obama is as big a narcissist as Bill Clinton. One hopes not.

Anyway, Duffy did read everything he could about the State of Union speech both pro and con and watched some clips on You Tube. The thing that struck ole' Duf is that on one hand he says Americans are angry with "Washington" which I assume he means mostly Congress but on the other hand the solution to the problems lies with........"Washington". The unstated premise seems to be that if the American people would just let the Democratic controlled Congress do their work, i.e. pass the Obama agenda, then everything would be alright eventually. But why the anger? Because the Republicans are fighting Obama and Pelosi tooth and nail against the Health Reform bill that would bring one sixth of the economy under federal control? The American people have already seen what happened with a $787 billion stimulus bill that hasn't exactly stimulated anything. The takeover of Chrysler and GM that bought off the UAW. The people looked hard at a "cap and trade" system that supposedly would increase costs on American business of over a $trillion and "solve" a global warming problem that many people don't think exists. The people are wary of proposed legislation on immigration that would enable 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens without paying a price. You bet the American people are angry and wary of future Obama agenda items engineered by Pelosi Democrats from the Northeast and California. Finally to insult the Supreme Court when six of the members were seated in front of him is the rankest of bad manners. You can bet there will be even fewer or no Supreme Court judges next year at his State of the Union speech.

Obama went to a Republican conclave in Baltimore and agreed somewhat to "listen to their concerns" but I don't think he really meant it or that Republicans really believe him. If he doesn't listen to Republicans and Pelosi doesn't bring them into creating legislation then nothing will change and gridlock will continue.

Duffy now believes that Obama, who claims to be a pragmatist, is really a hard left ideologue that fully intends to move the federal government more into people's lives to solve "problems' that a lot of folks don't perceive to be problems at all. Moreover, he doesn't seem to be able to stand up to the Pelosi Democrats who are still scheming to jam a health reform bill through without Republican votes. Mr. Obama seems to do a good job of sounding tough, but rarely acts tough. He is seen more and more by the American people as a weak president who can't and won't stand up to the far left ideologues in his own party.

The Massachusetts election brought out in the open in the bluest of all states a massive repudiation of Obama policies most especially his health reform bill, and should be a clear and loud wake up call to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi that they have to change direction. Duffy doubts that Mrs. Pelosi, who seems to be living in a parallel universe, will "get it" while Obama will "get it" but will he do anything about it? We'll see.....

The mouse that roared....on Tuesday

A pretty remarkable thing happened this past Tuesday. In Massachusetts, in a record turnout for a special election, voters selected a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Kennedy had held that seat since 1962. Massachusetts is probably the most liberal state in the nation where almost every office holder from garbage collector on up is a Democrat. This election wipes out the Democratic supermajority in the Senate and now means that Republicans with 41 votes can now successfully mount filibusters to stop Democratic legislation. The winner, Mr. Brown, specifically campaigned on "being the 41st senator" that would enable Republicans to defeat health reform and slow down, if not stop, the Obama/Pelosi agenda. What Duffy found especially interesting is that 51% of the voters in Massachusetts are Independents. Republicans only make up about 11% of the electorate. It was the Independents, voting 2-1 for the Republican, that swung the election to Mr. Brown who won 53% of the vote, about what Obama got nationwide in 2008.

The voters of Massachusetts knew exactly what they were doing. A win for Brown would mostly likely stop the 2,700 page health bill from becoming law as well as throw a big fat monkey wrench in the Obama agenda. What made it especially embarrassing to Obama was that he spent all day Sunday in the state campaigning for the Democratic candidate who had a 30 point lead in the polls only a month before. Talk about a slap in the face!

Duffy read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today after the election and was struck by the initial sense of denial by the Times then followed a day later by a particularly, even for the Times, bitter denunciation of Obama and his staff for allowing this to happen. The Journal was gleeful as one might expect and the USA Today opined this election could be the beginning of the end of the whole liberal Democratic agenda.

As much as the Democrats are pointing fingers and blaming everybody and anybody for their defeat, Duffy thinks that it simply boils down that the Massachusetts voters made a stand and said, "enough is enough!". Specifically the bloated, incomprehensible, loaded with mandates and taxes, health care bill and more broadly the wild spendthrift overreaching Obama/Pelosi Democratic socialist agenda. The people in this country are concerned mainly above all else, JOBS! The unemployment rate has increased 20% under Obama with no end in sight, foreclosures are still increasing, businesses large and small are still going bankrupt and the Obama administration, led by the nose by a small bunch of ultra-liberal Democrats, have spent a year on a "health reform" bill that 65% of the people don't want! As Duffy has said time and again, the health care system in this country needs to be reformed. But first Obama needs to do everything in his power to GET PEOPLE BACK TO WORK! Health reform, the environment, immigration, all this stuff can and should wait until the economy is fixed. And it's far from being fixed. This should be a wakeup call. Probably for Obama, probably not for Pelosi. Expect to see Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader, retire this summer.

A word about Haiti. No worse off country in the Western Hemisphere could have suffered a worse calamity than Haiti. A cesspool of a country, that over a hundred years and billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer aid, with very little to show for it, will now require billions of dollars and years of assistance to rebuild. This all should be done but Duffy hopes that this time, many other countries, especially in Latin America, contribute a large share of both money and assistance to rebuild that miserable country. As always, the U.S. will be the largest benefactor but we shouldn't have to shoulder the whole burden ourselves for the long haul.

Not a good start for Obama

Just wrapping up the first week of 2010, a new decade, and things aren't getting off to a good start for President Obama. The administration's bumbling reaction to the Christmas Day attempted airplane bombing reinforces the general impression many people have of this administration that, frankly they don't really care that much about national security as they do say, more important things like national health care. The Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, seems clearly out of her depth and continues to be an embarrassment to the President. Meanwhile, the TSA flounders around causing untold misery, confusion and anger with the traveling public. Duffy, who flew all over the United States for 31 years, is extremely thankful he is retired and off the road. Does the traveling public feel any safer? Duffy doubts it. Will the traveling public be even more inconvenienced, not to mention having their dignity assaulted by increased TSA rules and body scanning devices? You bet. It will get worse yet in 2010. Duffy thinks it is way past time to be "not politically correct" and make a concentrated effort to search, harass and make life uncomfortable for young men from the Middle East to travel to the U.S. Do we want to discriminate? Hell yes! Duffy has yet to see an 85 year old grandmother or a 5 year child smuggle explosives aboard a plane. And on that subject, where are the supposed Muslim "leaders" in the U.S. going on talk shows and denouncing this latest attempted attack? There are more Muslims in the U.S. than there are Jews and more "home grown" Muslims, mostly African-American, than people from the Middle East. If radical Islam is a small minority of the worldwide faith why aren't the leaders of Islam in America screaming from the roof tops against the outrages committed by supposedly only a small radical few? Cowardice or do they secretly applaud what the radical islamists are doing?

Meanwhile, Obama stamps his feet and declares he's going to get tough and straighten out all the intelligence services of this country so that the American people can feel safe again. Good luck on that. Bush kept this country safe for 8 years because he and his people were obsessed with terrorism. The liberals and Democrats howled about the trampling of civil liberties, torture, rendition, etc. No bombs went off in the United States or in any airplanes during the time Bush was president. Duffy doesn't think President Obama will be so lucky. We'll know the terrorists have gotten over their fixation on bombing airplanes when the first suicide bomber blows himself up in a crowded mall. The New York terror trials will see at least one terrorist attack.

Duffy detects a note of desperation if not outright panic to get the health reform bill passed ASAP. The Democrats and Obama know good and damn well that the majority of the American public are against this bill. They seem determined to jam it down our throats anyway. The more Duffy learns about this bill the more he thinks it is a disaster waiting to happen. The damage this bill will do to small business, the insurance industry (the WHOLE insurance industry, not just health insurers) and the economy in general will take years to fix if it passes. As Duffy has said before, he is in favor of health care reform. BUT NOT THIS BILL! The fact that the Pelosi Democrats and Obama seem willing to sacrifice dozens of moderate and conservative Democratic members of Congress to jam through this monstrosity is a clear example of their contempt for their own party and the American people. Duffy advises all who are against this bill to email their congressman and senators to express your feelings in the strongest possible terms.

The economy seems to improving slightly. Obama seems hardly to notice or care. It should be an interesting Winter.