Strong words from new pols

They make things worse: President Obama says we face disaster, or at least a grave crisis. And now here comes his new Attorney General to call us cowards.

Never mind that Roosevelt, our sainted leader in the depths of the Great Depression, claimed we had nothing to fear but fear itself. But then, what did he know? He was a rich white guy.

Uh, oh. I’ve stumbled again into the briar patch of our black and white world. Writing about race, even if in jest, can get you in hot water in no time flat. I speak from experience--although such digressions have occupied my local columns here and elsewhere maybe three or four times out of my more than 700 commentaries in the past 14 years.

“...it’s no wonder America is a nation of cowards when it comes to race, because so many of us are terrified of being called racist the moment we step out of line with liberal orthodoxy.” That’s how Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online put it recently.

He has a point. Twice in the past year I have ventured opinions in print that have made at least two people angry enough to fire off hot charges that I’m racist.

Not so, but still better than being called one of those cowards that Attorney General Eric Holder had in mind when he said that “we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

Granted, writing isn’t the same as talking, but to me that is a distinction without a difference if you include reading. At my age I do a lot more reading and writing than talking, which becomes more difficult the older I get. Friends often have to finish sentences for me, with words I try but fail to say. Besides, I’ve loved to write for over five decades about contemporary concerns and my opinions about them, whether in columns or in letters to editors and friends.

Readers have often lent encouragement. But not when the subject has been about blacks and whites. (By the way, lately you more often see references to African-Americans than blacks, which may soon be going the way of prior terms now discarded. But one Internet blogger quipped, “What do you call a Canadian African-American?”)

Years ago in a column here, I commented on black-white relations and got an adverse reaction from within my own family. One thought my copy was too blunt.

I wrote tha t whites and blacks increasingly were getting along better because intermarriages have become more common. “...between 1960 and 1990, black-white marriages more than tripled, to six percent of all marriages involving blacks. Another study says over 12 percent of all new marriages by blacks were to white partners.” The increasing trend continues, albeit slowly.
Then, I added, “How can your attitu de toward another race not change if one becomes your kin?” And now, our President?

In a piece here last year, in applauding the mixed-race outcome that produced Barack Obama, a person of obviously high intelligence, I noted it may have had something to do with hybrid vigor. It’s well known in biology that breeding of dissimilar lines of animals can result in superior traits such as improved feed efficiency. And consider the genetics of another superior product of mixed breeding, Tiger Woods.

One reader thought that reasoning was atrocious, anti-religionist and demeaning and told me so in no uncertain terms. I was surprised. Touching a sensitive racial chord can be tricky business.
Then in a political piece in a community bulletin last fall, I noted my preference as a Republican for the GOP presidential nominee. I professed a liking for the one who is white...haired. Bombs fell: “He continues with his usual insult-laced partisan rhetoric, which, over the years, has become tiresome enough in o ur community newsletters.” But only, I should have responded, in presidential election years. And by the way, had you noticed the new national chairman of our GOP folks, named Michael Steele? We couldn’t have chosen a brighter up-and-comer, I’d say. He looks mostly bald.

So there, Eric Holder, you have my small but real efforts to avoid cowardice by communicating openly about race. It’s gotten me, besides another year older and deeper in debt, another column under my belt. Thank you very much.

Besides, as the Washington Post editorialized, “We take issue with Mr. Holder’s somewhat dour assessment in at least one sense: his insufficient appreciation of generational change.”

Precisely. Were my dad still alive, he would have laughed at my racially sensitive tiptoeing of late. We do change

Hurry up and leave, Winter

"Spring will be a little late this year." Perhaps not physically, for it’s only a few weeks hence. But that moody song title had only the emotions in mind. And never mind the sprouting of the daffodils.

The song’s lyrics are as blue as blue can be, and today who among us isn’t? (Excepting liberal Democrats, of course, who are still Oba-mesmerized.) Gosh, when have we had so many negative things coming at us during an otherwise anticipatory time of year?

God-awful deficit spending by our government for everything you can think of, more banks failing, the stock market still way down, unemployment soaring. And as a J.P. Morgan analyst noted recently, “Our best case (for stocks in 2009) is a bad recession. Our worst case is a really bad recession.”

And then here come my daily newspapers to provide further aggravation.
First was Fredericksburg’s daily, dissing my beloved Aquia Harbour. We were headlined as an area leader in home foreclosures and stressed sales--a cheap shot. Yes, we were up there in the totals, if you ignore as the paper did that Aquia Harbour has many more residences than the other truly troubled communities mentioned. So naturally, when I get upset I fire off a hot letter to the editor, and I did.

But only days later, the Washington Post hits me again. It’s killing its Book World, a major reason why I take the Sunday edition. Not that I’m a book worm, mind you. Rather it’s because I like to read about them. Book World, R.I.P.

Columnist George Will captured my bad feelings about how Congress is stimulating us to hell and gone, writing, “Sensible people are queasy about throwing trillions of dollars at barely understood problems on the basis of untested theories.” Precisely. Queasy fits my mood.

To wit: A plain-talking Texan I have long admired for his skill and common sense, former Congressman Dick Armey, recently claimed that “politics is silly, inane.” I couldn’t agree more, especially when I hear of bids for some of the government’s bailout money--can you believe it?-- by car rental companies. Next: Dog groomers?

Frankly, if it’s all a little too much for me, it must be way too much for folks not yet old enough to qualify for membership in my typically happy, run-out-the-clock retiree cohort.
I don’t have a job to depend on or risk losing. My pension is safe and my home and good car are paid off. My lovely wife and I just celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary, together, thank you very much.

Yes, but it’s sad to realize that things beyond our comfy little sphere are so bad. I can try to ignore the situation and thank my lucky stars for getting through my earning and family-growing years without any major setbacks like wars affecting me or mine.

But I do worry that today’s wild throwing of borrowed money at our national woes will greatly burden my grandchildren and their kids with much higher taxes. John McCain calls it generational theft. Precisely.

What might others call the mess we’re in? How about “Supine ‘09.” No, that’s not mean enough. With the Democrats firmly in control, it will be something like “2009--Dawn of Recovery from the Bush Depression.” Remember, you read it here first.

“The failed Bush presidency” is already the accepted wisdom, at least outside Texas.
Politicians are paid to pin labels, I suppose, and to make wacky ideas sound reasonable. It brings to mind Al Gore’s recent appearance in Washington to continue his preaching about the coming Armageddon, our warming planet--which by the way is not.

But just watch. Any green initiatives he succeeds in subjecting us to (and hang the cost) will be acclaimed a huge success. CO2 levels--harmless but considered dangerous by global alarmists--will likely drop, but not because we did things like banning plastic bags. Rather, the worldwide economic recession-depression will have done the trick.

Meantime it seems we’ll soon get another stimulus check. How to spend it to benefit fellow Americans? Friend Walt Kreutzer forwards me a recommendation: Keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or buying prostitutes, beer and domestic wine or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the U.S.

It can’t be that bad, but it’s looking like we can’t avoid another Slough of Despond. Look it up.

Dark thoughts on an upsetting winter

Today please consider my profound observations below, lest the depthy mood I’m now in dissolves once again into retirement’s comforting incoherence and lengthy nap.

*Stafford County keeps growing, although there may seem to be way too many of some of us nowadays. But this is no sermon against illegal immigrants, except for the flying kind. To wit: There are far too many Canada geese. Bless these beauties, nurtured so they may fly into airplane engines and keep our aerospace industry in fine fettle. Otherwise, why should we tolerate the near-quadrupling of their numbers in recent years? Just shoot them. That’s the ticket.
No don’t, honks the organization Geesepeace. It campaigns for humane methods instead, such as teaching the resident geese to learn once again how to migrate themselves to elsewhere. I’m not making this up.
The same skepticism of mine also applies for our Bambi hordes in the area this winter. They are bidding to wreck untold numbers of neighborhood shrubs, undoubtedly to the delight of Meadows Farms nursery..
Our deer, like those geese, are also becoming settlers instead of transients, right here in my back yard. My pup Lollipop and I were venturing towards the rear of our est ate the other evening near dusk when, wouldn’t you know, we spotted five large, fat deer browsing casually nearby, barely noting our presence before strolling away. What gall. I say it’s better to shoot them, since they are much more dangerous for area motorists than those Canada geese will ever be for airplanes.

* Our precarious economy-- I’d rather not think about it. I recall bitterly those authoritative past assurances by really smart and rich analysts that blue-ribbon stocks would stay valuable no matter what. Well, “what” matters now. Such foresight ranks right up there with experts’ claims that the globe is warming. The recent fates of most of even the best blue chips (think GE, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Citibank) have pained my pocketbook. And alas, the probable coming of a nationalized U.S. Bank is an unfortunate symbol of our financial times. (And here let me mention a prescient column of mine last fall chronicling the numerous name changes my own two banks had undergone over the years. Then within days, my Wachovia became Wells Fargo and who knows where things will end. In Washington, probably.

*Things change-- Va. Gov. Kaine claimed last fall that the environment would be a key focus of his final year as governor. With the financial situation now spiraling into the toilet, the greenies’ wishes--such as the promotion of smaller carbon footprints (how quaint the sound)-- will remain in the sh oe box. The scientists, by the way, who have loudly proclaimed the coming ravages of a warming globe (now cooling instead) have shown no better forecasting skills than those Wall Street experts who hawked safe investments.

*Inauguration asides-- Remember those good old days, back in January? D.C. police placed signs along 5th and I Streets, announcing a “ Prostitution Free Zone" for the duration of the Obama ceremonies. Forgive the taxpayers who may have erroneously presumed the new administration had already come up with a handy 2009 version of last year’s tax rebates.
There was also the threat of lawsuits, given a predicted shortage of outdoor toilets on the Mall and the prospect that they wouldn’t be gender neutral. No doubt this problem landed in the lap of our new Number Two in Washington, Joe Biden.(re: the Patriot blog).

* Second black president--Some folks once called Bill Clinton our first black president, but it was obvious to see he wasn’t. Now ours is the real McCoy. So he’ll surely attend to all the concerns of African-Americans who did so much to get him elected.
Don’t be so sure. Obama can count voters, as the primary races showed. And one reality is there are more Hispanic than black Americans and multiplying rapidly. They have special problems that blacks don’t--the stain of illegal immigration and the barrier of language. Granted, many=2 0blacks also face a language barrier. Have you, as I have, been on an elevator with several black youngsters talking among themselves? For the life of me, I couldn’t interpret their jive English. Let’s hope Obama’s eloquent diction will prove instructional.

Whatever. Stafford’s Hispanic population has more than doubled since 2000. And according to projections by the Pew Research Center, the U.S. will see a tripling of them by 2050, making us a white-minority nation within three or four decades. Sorry I’ll miss it, Amigos.

But we old codgers also must adjust even now. Overheard: “What did you get for Christmas?” Answer: “Wii.” We? ....We what? Wee-wee? Oui? No. Oh. Wake me when it’s over.