My Friend

Catching the scent on the morning air, the scent of winter, of cold. Smiling at the pleasant memories it stirs.
The first signs of frost on the blades of grass, the falling of the leaves, the first morning you need a jacket!
The gray gloomy sky's that tell of things to come, of snow and rain and other wonders.
Having to grip the steering wheel tighter at the first sign of slickness on the roads.
Sitting by your window you start to feel the cold creeping in, not all at once just a bit at a time.
I admit begrudgingly that my old friend is back, every year he comes to visit, each stay is slightly different. Yet
for all of the complaining I do I am glad when he arrives.
To wake up in my warm bed, feeling content and safe and knowing that it awaits, my pal with his icy fingers
and frosty breath.
I face him, to spite the dread, to spite the desire to return to my slumber. I face him, some days he amazes me with his work!
The way he covers the earth with a blanket of white, encasing tree branches with ice, I long for the days as a boy, I would run out to play with him, to make angles in the blankets of white, to torment my sisters and the other neighborhood girls with a volley of snow balls.
How my pals and I would take our bikes and look for icy patches in plowed parking lots to see who could stay up the longest.
The best ones are of grandpa and are they rare, so I treasure when he brings those memories forth. Of granddads lake house with its mighty hill, how he would let me sled it, even though mom said it was too dangerous. The way I would run in all red faced from the wind and cold he, would give me coco or coffee when grandma was off spending his hard earned money. The way I would sit on the foot stool in front of his chair, just happy to be near him. He would listen to the news and read his paper, occasionally asking me how my coco was? I can still; years later when that sweet old man is long in the ground, hear his voice on those cold winter days. Smell him breath as he spoke, a mixture of coffee, cigarettes and peppermint.
It is because of that one that I welcome my friend winter, not for the piercing wind, fridged days, slick roads, head colds, or numb hands, no it's for the smells and tastes and sounds of sitting on that foot stool, with the man I loved most in my childhood, and feeling the scratch of his whiskers as he hugged me. For those times that it was just us! Those winter days, long gone, in a house long sold, with a man long dead. Yet every year my friend lets me go back if just for a moment, long enough to say I love you.
So come snow and ice, you will always be welcome here!

Silver Lining

Last night and much of this morning I have done a great deal of thinking, I have also abandoned any hope of the GOP retaining either house of Congress, that being said I think I may have found the silver lining in this very dark cloud. That lining is that maybe after a few years of wondering in the wilderness ( aka the congressional minority) we can after thinning the heard a bit of the weaker elements we can realize get back to the basics of what our party is suppose to stand for.

Maybe this lose will wake us up. Perhaps we can now get back to those things that are important like reducing the size and scope of government. Reducing taxes, balancing the budget, getting rid of unnecessary regulation, weening the American people off of the government tit that far too many of them have come to think there entitled to! Perhaps we can get back to being the party that is going to vigorously wage the war on terror, and actually fight that war to win it! Perhaps we can stop waisting our time worrying about whether of not gay people get married and focus on making America great, doing the things government is suppose too. So to my fellow republicans it's gut check time! Now we must be the party in opposition, we must carry the Presidents water when he's a conservative and right, and oppose him when he loses site of those principals. So it may be a long too years, but if we make these internal corrections now it won't take forty years for us to once again control the rudder on the ship of state. So lets get to work my fellow conservatives!

Contrasts

Today I listened to the Presidents news conference and had to chuckle at transparent delight many of the reporters where showing because there guys won in the election. I thought that the President showed grace in expressing his commitment to working with the new....democratic majority ( as if he really has much of a choice). I also think this will define him as a president, for the first time he will be able to show the American people the stark contrast between his policy's of cutting taxes, reducing regulation, (finally in the last year or so) attempting to get spending under control, vigorously fighting the war on terrorism, and holding the line on the free will sucking entitlement programs, and the positions of the liberal leadership in the congress, there policy's of raising taxes, increasing spending, remember no democratic congress has balanced the since the 1950's to spite the fact that they held control of the house from 1954-1994, so if you take out Vietnam years of 1964-1973 in which there was at least a some what valid excuse for deficits , that leave thirty -one years in which there was no war, no major economic depression to justify deficit spending and yet in 31 years during which they( the democrats in congress) four Presidents of their party Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and yet they still could not find the political will and courage to make the hard choices and balance the budget. So on that issue they have NO credibility, yet I digress.

As I was saying the President force the liberal leaders in the house like Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and Majority Whip Emanuel to show their true colors, that they want to raise taxes, increase regulation, increase spending by at least 15% which was what they wanted in the last budget that they worked on, reduce spending on the war on terror, oppose listening to terrorists phone calls, give terrorists constitutional rights, something by the way that FDR didn't give to enemy combatants during WWII but that was back when democrats still thought there where somethings worth fighting for, besides the U.N. of course., and of course there desire to lose in Iraq and return to a pre 9/11 mind set. If this President can do that while also getting some victory's out of the congress on immigration, a energy bill, and hold the line on there attempt to cut taxes he will leave office in 2009 with a 65% job approval rating.

The next two years will be interesting to watch from a political scientist point of view and scary from the point of view of someone who is able to recognize that our nation is at war and needs one united voice in fighting an enemy with which there is no negotiation, reasoning, aside from our destruction. So we shall see how it plays out.