A Muddy Slog to Easy Street

Things are going well, thanks for asking. The snow we got last week works out perfectly, keeping the ground cold enough despite the mild winter that the apple trees won't start budding too early. The sun gaining intensity every day and that melting runoff everywhere, from the roof, in the road, makes it feel like the whole world has turned the corner at last. Good times are just ahead.

The economic data shows the winds of the recession abating as well, although here in my town, home sales are still at a crawl, and many are predicting a rough town meeting season coming up this month as many are still having a hard time meeting mortgage payments. It's a muddy slog getting to easy street.

But the mood of the country is upbeat, just look at Obama hitting on all cylinders, whether it be domestic politics or the international arena. Used to be, the wise rule of the leader, they said, was reflected in the bounty of the berry harvest and the lushness of the nut crop in the trees. Now we look at the stock market flirting with new highs to measure our well-being.

And let's give Obama his due, the economic policies of the stimulus were responsible for putting a brake on what could have been a major global bank run, and we're starting to see that turnaround today. The Republicans are not going to be able to run on doom and gloom this fall, which means that they will have little middle ground to coalesce around as soon as their primary campaign is done. Many, including myself, have suggested that Obama and his policy advisers have had a hand in dragging the Republican primary season on beyond its shelf life by throwing red meat to the social conservatives in the way of the "access to contraception in Obamacare" issue when they announced the new policy directives last month.

And it has borne spectacular fruit in the final death throes of the Rush Limbaugh phenomenon, as this veteran master of hate-filled vitriol, and the unacknowledged leader of the Republican right wing, seems finally to have hoisted himself by his own petard. Barack, in effect, set the play in motion, baiting the dragon, then rushed to the damsel's side to rescue her last week, calling Sarah Fluke on the phone to comfort her after her bruising by innuendo. This has to be one of the most masterful moments in recent Presidential history. Kudos to Ms. Fluke for not accepting the Rushster's apology.

Obama is demonstrating a rare political maturity as well internationally, and the whole world may have us to thank for electing him. You're welcome, Benjamin Netanyahu. The North Koreans have announced they are throwing in the towel peacefully, chalk one up to the rule of law. And thanks to Barack, we may have also held off the dogs of war in the Middle East for the next few months anyway and therefore prevented a nuclear showdown which might have thrown the entire planet into tilt. This latest diplomatic coup has been done masterfully, under our noses, without major Camp David meetings or attention-getting policy speeches, which has allowed the parties involved to save face.

Between Hillary Clinton and himself, the Obamaites are right now running the table. Wake up America, we are in the midst of an historical moment. One that bodes well for our children.

Lies, Photos and Dead Fish

Putting the lie to claims the oil spill is over with no ill effects, this photo of a massive fish kill in the bayou outside New Orleans was released by a Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana resident to the media on the same day BP claimed the leaking well had finally been capped. In the age of the Internet, the news has spread far and wide. Fisheries experts claim the die-off is due to low oxygen levels, just the effect predicted by scientists, the outcome of exploding populations of oil-eating microbes in the presence of all the oil that BP and the clean-up crews never found. What makes this die-off noteworthy is that it is spread across a wide range of fish species, not just the usual one or two.

In an eerily parallel story, experts from the National Bureau of Economic Research declared today that the recession officially ended in June. We need no photograph to tell us how absurd that feels. In today's issue of the Concord Monitor, I counted two jobs for employment, two babysitting jobs at day care centers. What a long way we still have to go to get back to good times, and yet, it could be worse. The interesting thing is that the people complaining the loudest, apparently, are the very rich, as noted in Paul Krugman's opinion piece in the NY Times. I still can't get over the vehemence of the conservatives who, in the name of fiscal responsibility were asleep at the switch during the Bush years -- as we squandered the nation's surplus built up during the Clinton era 90's. And now they are oh so angry as Obama tries to implement the long feared communist takeover of America. How dare he enact health care for the sake of 40 million uninsured Americans. Bush's lies about WMD, well, never mind those. The redness of their faces, according to Krugman, is due as much to good living and overindulgence as to genuine anger.