Hope Springs Eternal

It's pleasant on the inside but on the outside it is rather dreary and slightly rainy. Still cold but should be back into the 70's by midweek. Bleech.

I read this afternoon on a community board from our subdivision for the internet that the dinner theatre we were to go to for our Christmas Eve's entertainment burned to the ground in the early morning hours. Apparently it was a 3 alarm fire around 5:30 this morning. Bummer. The owners are a sweet couple with a child in our son's former private school. I hope the insurance premiums were paid up and they can re-build. We enjoy that place.

All weekend it has been impossible to check in with the news and not find a story of Senator Barack Obama's pilgrimage to the great state of New Hampshire, disguised as a book signing event. Obama is the flavor of the season for Democrats looking to the 2008 presidential election.

Barack Hussein Obama, son of a Kenyon Muslim father who left him at the age of 2, and a mother who raised him in Hawaii and Indonesia along with his grandparents. He's a little of everyone - half black, half white, Muslim, Christian, while practicing neither religion. He's the whole package. The political machine behind his ascension into national political life is determined for him to be the anti-Hillary candidate. The Daly machine out of Chicago hearts him.

Senator Dick (gulags) Durbin, the senior senator from the great state of Illinois, waxes poetically about the junior senator from the great state of Illinois. Since Hillary is a native of the great state of Illinois, it could be all about Illinois. Hillary grew up Republican and was a Goldwater girl, though. And she is strictly a WASP.

Obama appeals to voters with his pleasant public personality and words indicating his willingness to work with people of both parties. His voting record shows the opposite, though. He talks middle of the road and votes as a liberal. He is ranked the 18th most liberal in the Senate, ahead of 60% of fellow Democrats. He gets 100% rating from Planned Parenthood, The AFL-CIO loves that he votes 9 out of 10 times with them and the ACLU agrees with him, too.

Barack's recently published book, "The Audacity of Hope" is rumored to have been ghostwritten. That isn't so unusual, Hillary's book was, too. But it shows a bit too much naivete for a potential President. He speaks, in Chapter 5, of airline travel. This chapter is getting a lot of play for his remarks of how great it is to fly on private jets instead of coach on commercial airlines. Duh. What I suppose we are to not notice is that this is a Senator and the private jets are owned by lobbyists. He made 23 reported trips in his two short years in the Senate and then stopped when he was made the point man for the ethics rules legislation in the Senate. Hmm.

Barack is accomplished for a man of 44 years. He was a student in the Ivy League. He was a professor of constitutional law, a state legislator and now a Senator in D.C.

People like Barack. No one liked Al Gore or John Kerry. Not their personalities, anyway. Being a personable human being is always an asset in the professional world. He will need, however, more than easy slogans and the Democrats' bumper sticker speeches to get to that big White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.

He's young yet, there's time.

Now is not his time.

Perhaps a Clinton/Obama ticket. Covers all the bases.