DECISIONS So, with a semi-official act duly performed, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seriously running in a political race to determine if she can, indeed, become the next President of he United States. She has, in fact, been running - even campaigning - for the office for some time including her recent ventures overseas so it comes as a surprise to very few people. For her to have turned and gone the other way would have made more people wonder.
Making an announcement of intent, an "ism" customary in our system," a "ritual", perhaps, with some older members of Congressional members of both major parties would have been irked. The by-play of an "announcement" or the naming of a "committee" to explore that which is already an established idea in the minds of those who hear it being said. It is an "established custom".
Hillary Clinton chose a different way do to do it
She told all who wished to hear of her decision to run for the
office and set forth a deliberate agenda in which she intends to engage in conversational union with all of us. She, as an active, aggressive candidate, plans to talk more with a emphasis on exchange, discussion and mutual self-assurances of steady improvement. The nation is promised more "Fireside Chat"
encounters as in problem-packed days of F.D.R. Today, the Internet Web Page holds much of intimacy as did then old-
-fashioned fireplace did in days one by.
In using the Web page to make her bid official, Hillary Clinton sounded a death knell for government-by-printed handout.
The candidate talks to and with the nation's voters rather than passing cold, information sheets to reporters so they can spell out for you what they, or their bosses, think was said or done.
The Clinton-H drive faces special problems.
This is for the Democratic party nomination. The complexity of the problem is that if the nominating body can bring itself to nominate either a woman or a black, there is nothing sure about the actual electorate out here in sprawling America will obediently, follow an order or instruction which can also be seen as a suggestion or guideline. Old fashioned "or else" provisos are stillborn.
Andrew McCaskey Sr. amccsr@comcast.net 1-20-07 [c385wds]
HIGHWAY ROBBERY I have seen situations when entire sections of newly constructed highway disappearsed overnight.
It has happened in areas were has tried to build a road across really swampy land. When I was six or so, we were riding across the south side of Virginia in our Model T Ford, I remember being filled with some doubts about continuing to travel along that road - new though it was - just north of the massive, dark and mysterious Great Dismal Swamp. A local citizen warned my father to drive with special care because the road had been known to disappear overnight. We were on our way to see our Grandmothers in Norfolk and South Norfolk, Va. - now called Chesapeake.
I had seen enough swamp water along the edge of the road to know it appeared to just stand there shades of gray folded among layers of deepest black down, down, down to such depths as onlya six year old boy can imagine. All Ford cars were painted black then you may recall, and I could easily imagine a sudden swerve to the right as I awakened. My mother and sister would be screaming;Dad would be manfully twisting the big, black steering wheel; my brothers would be operating the hand powered windshield wiper and tooting the "ah-oo-gah" horn we all loved so much! "
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Bout then I'd sorta wake up and they would all tease me. I would "wake up" only no one knew I hadn't been asleep at all.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@comcast.net 1-16-07 [cGHT264wds]
BLAME PLACEMENT We seem to more time and money trying to place blame for some of our least admirable decisions rather than to find solutions to some of the problems themselves.
We couldn't even throw a decent "Boston Tea Party" today or write a Volstead Act to force all of the nation to go dry without
deciding just who we might blame if either plan went wrong. We'd spend weeks in determining which Indian tribes we could pretend to be upset in future court room procedures by setting precedents. We would feel obligated to say we did whatever it was we were going
to do as a surprise.
Maybe you saw the item in the news just a day or two saying the price of Mexican tortillas has skyrocketed in recent weeks. The price was said to have risen by seven or nine per cent causing untold suffering millions of tortilla lovers to face starvation.
Blame for disaster has been on the United States of America.
It has come about as a direct result, you may wish to know, of our sudden use of millions of bushel of good, green ears of corm being mashed and boiled to become ethanol to keep our stretch limos, semis, RV's and our ever-growing numbers of large, gas-hog cars on the road. I have not been aware of any glut of excess supplies of any fuel my local filling station, have you? I know that many bands of gasoline already contain small amounts of ethanol and a score of small plants eye refining more as needed.
Environmentalists of some sort are speaking out against such alternate fuels,too, because "as long as we have hunger in this world we have no right to use for foods for fuel."
They blame us. We blame them.
There must be some middle road we can travel together.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 1-14-07 [c324wds]
