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.