Bensblurb #576 10/29/10

It’s getting chilly, in the White House for sure...

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, the old song goes, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game...September, November. Maybe that’s what caused our President to get out on the stump recently and rave and rant.
To HIspanic voters, he talked about their “enemy.” Americans are too “scared” to think straight. Tea partiers are just local yokels.
Then came last week, his really bad week. He went on a talk show and became the butt of his host’s jokes, talking of the “heckuva job...” the audience jeered, whereupon his host addressed him as “Dude.” That disaster was followed shortly by the revelation last night that Bill Clinton, with White House awareness, had tried to get Fla. Dem senate candidate Meek to quit the race.

As I commented in Huffington Post last night: “Republicans could not have sucker-punched the Dems as effectively this late in the campaign as a fellow Dem has. His name.....wait for it...Bill Clinton. It's true. As Politico reports tonight, Clinton had almost persuaded Fla. Dem Senate candidate Meek to withdraw so as to help swing the election to Crisp, now an "independent" and away from the GOPer Rubio. With that news, Rubio will coast to election. Clinton has egg on his face for messing in Florida's election, and Obama will say....What?”

If you think that was bad for the Dems, wait until the election returns next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, check out this even gloomier stuff:

It’s the latest missive from noted pessimistic economist Nouriel Roubini, in Financial Times:
“The current gridlock in Congress will soon get much worse...That they now see Mr Obama as a one-term president will soon mean the worst open warfare inside the Beltway in 30 years...
The coming stalemate will only be made worse by the lack of a reason to act on the deficit... In short, kicking the can down the road will be the political path of least resistance...
The risk, however, is that something on the fiscal side will snap,...Only then will our politicians suddenly remember that, on top of our federal debt, the US suffers from unfunded social security and Medicare liabilities, state and local government debt, and public pension bills that add up to many multiples of US GDP...
...The result will soon be the worst of all worlds: neither short-term stimulus nor medium-term fiscal sustainability. Fiscally the only light at the end of the tunnel may be that which causes the upcoming crisis. With two years of gridlock in prospect, it will fall to the next president in 2013 – whoever he or she may be – to start fixing America’s fiscal mess. Whether that is Mr Obama or not, that he may leave this challenge may become the worst of his legacy.”

---Whatever, let’s drink to the winners next Tuesday and hope for the best.

--Ben Blankenship

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Beyond politics, Brenda Crowe

Bensblurb #575 10/22/10

Beyond politics, a local jewel
　
Today’s fever and folderol, given the GOP’s tidal wave due momentarily, is understandable. And for sure, get with it and vote early and often.

But for a moment, I’d like to pause and pay a nonpolitical tribute to an area resident. She has served Stafford longer and certainly more congenially than just about any politician or anyone else you can name--and before they ever broke ground for most of north Stafford and Aquia Harbour.

Indeed, when it comes to honoring Stafford’s unsung heroes, this individual would certainly top my list.

No politician herself, she has nevertheless been giving us her best here for over 50 years. Her dad had moved the family to Quantico in the service, from Tennessee where she had been born and raised, on a farm.

Once here, she immediately began driving...a taxicab...and hasn’t totally stopped yet. My wife and I have enjoyed her services and friendship for all our 32 years in Stafford generally and Aquia Harbour in particular.

Brenda Crowe, at age 87, is still awesome. Her “Brenda’s Taxi” has been tooling around the area longer than just about any local enterprise you can name. She always bragged about being involved in only one auto accident, and never getting a traffic fine. She still has received not even a single ticket.

But after surviving a heart attack, about three years ago she had a head-on collision with a big pickup truck that had run a red light at the intersection of Hope Road and U.S. 1. That could have ended the taxi service and Brenda herself.

It was a close call. And since then she’s had other sundry ailments. However, her taxi service, aided by other drivers (much younger, of course) still thrives. Just call 659-3295 and see for yourself.

If a man answers, though, don’t hang up. It’s probably Timothy Nageotte, who has been helping Brenda sustain her business and get her through her numerous health problems that have arisen recently. .

For many years a widow, Brenda’s son and two daughters also reside in Stafford, along with her three grandchildren. At home, she has kept her bungalow on Stafford Avenue near the Court House in good shape for over 50 years, while maintaining numerous colorful plantings in her small yard. Over a decade ago, she gifted me and my wife Carole Lee with one of her large potted plants. Just like her, it’s still going strong.

I am so happy we’ve chosen to live here since the late 1970s, and Brenda’s enduring friendship has been a reason.

I mentioned her in an article I wrote here in 1997. It told of a certain fare she had taxied from Quantico. A career Marine Corps officer riding with her marveled that he had also ridden with her on a similar ride 20 years earlier..

Brenda Crowe, a genuine Stafford icon, has for many years attended Stafford’s Victory Baptist Church. May God keep blessing her and her taxi service.
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All about Obama

Bensblurb #574 10/18/10

This election: All about Obama

Hello again. Now that the hole in the macula in my left eye has been closed, following a mandatory two weeks with my head down (which was trying, to say the least), my blood is up again, anticipating a GOP tidal wave two weeks hence--and hoping never again to need eye surgery from the MD who truly resembled a junior in high school.

Obama reneges...

He recently said most stimulus funds didn’t go to any actual “shovel-ready” projects. I guess that was just his manner of his boosting construction spending that was actually slow to materialize. “Shovel-ready” spending thus disappears from his talks, after he used the term repeatedly until he found out the facts, I suppose.

Reminds me of something I read recently (before the eye mess) about programs that stimulated spending. Here’s George Will commenting on old remarks by honored economist Milton Friedman: “Upon seeing a foreign public works program without heavy equipment and being told there were so many men with shovels because theirs was a jobs program, he remarked, ‘Well, if it’s a jobs program, why don’t they have spoons instead of shovels?’’l

Further on in Will’s column there was this: “ We see, in the rampant indebtedness of our country and the European countries, what Yuval Levin has called a ‘gluttonous feast upon the flesh of the future.’ We see the infantilization of publics that become inert and passive, waiting for the state to take care of them. One statistic: 50 percent of all Americans 55 years old or older have less than $50,000 in savings and investment. The feast on the flesh of the future is what debt is.”

...And fails before our very eyes:

As Jonah Goldberg put it recently: “Obama has lost his connection with the American people. He's aloof without inspiring confidence. On issue after issue--terrorism, immigration, the oil spill, the environment, and the Ground Zero mosque--he seems determined to craft his responses in a way that will annoy the most people possible.

Liberals are frantically trying to explain away Obama's problems. Some want to protect their investment in Obama, and some want to protect their investment in liberalism. So some claim that his mistakes stem from not being progressive enough, while others insist that he's played his cards right, but we need to wait a bit longer for the payoff.

I'm dubious on both counts. Obama has delivered massively for progressives, and it strikes me as idiotic to say that if he had only squeezed a bit more liberalism into his first two years, everything would be better. Moreover, I don't think the payoff is coming, because I think the policies are wrong.

...AMEN.

...And now let’s get ready to see what Americans are going to do about them, at least so far as the elections in November are able to indicate.


--Ben Blankenship

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High school football insanity

High school football insanity

So you think Redskins fans top them all, or at least most of the time?

Well, you don’t know squat. Because they don’t hold a candle to those fanatics back in my old home town, cheering for...Abilene High School’s Eagles.

You see, they recently were named the nation’s top high school football team. They won the Texas state championship last winter.

So? Well, there are two reasons I bring this to your attention. For one thing, long ago and far away, I once played on that fabled team, earning a letter and a concussion--and the local newspaper’s apt moniker: “heavy timber.” Back then, 215 pounds meant something. We may have been light, but we were really slow.

The major reason, however, isn’t to extol former glories. We didn’t even win district that 1950 season; we may have, with a few black kids, but our school was lily-white. Rather, it’s to marvel over today’s technologies and a TV that has presented, in hi-def, a live night game, from Abilene no less, between my beloved Eagles and the three-time state Florida champion, Plant, from Tampa.

Lots of fans must be watching these nationally televised high school games. Otherwise, why would Nike go to the trouble of outfitting both teams for the game in brand-new uniforms?

Needless to say, my team won. How good are they? You may be able to see for yourself when they’re on TV again this fall at night. Check ESPN2, on October 14. But fame, alas, can be fleeting. After their TV win, AHS narrowly lost the next two games. (Update: AHS 49, Odessa 21.)

Nonetheless, excellence in high school football and fan support has remained at fever pitch in West Texas for a long, long time despite TV. It’s the breeding ground for college football stars, too. Only a few miles from Abilene is where former Texas Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy played, for tiny Tuscola High. And ex-AHS quarterback Taylor Potts is now quarterback for Texas Tech.

Fan support? Check this out. Today’s Eagles play to a full house in a modern stadium that seats 15,000. Back in my day, we played home games in an old stadium, full at some 10,000. TV hasn’t cut the attendance. A few years ago, AHS played for the state championship in Dallas, in Texas Stadium. Before the game, its upper deck had to be opened to accommodate the crowd of nearly 35,000. Thousands of Abilene’s fans traveled the 150 miles to see that game.

Having said all that, there’s one more reason for filling this space now with my school’s football lore--a sneaky one. Alas, as anyone can see, age is catching up with this senior. This past summer I finally went to have my eyes checked. The drugstore reading classes were failing. And now I’ve just had an eye operation to close a macula hole in one of them. To recover successfully, I had to hold my head down with eyes constantly down--even in bed and asleep--for five straight days, obviously unable to write. At least, I hope I’m able to read this column when it is published. We’ll (ahem) see. Update: Make that 10 days and hoping the hole is finally closed.
　
Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com