By Jeffrey Page

Now’s the time for certain Senate Democrats exhibiting bizarre behavior to be relieved of leadership positions and to give the party back to fair-minded people.

Last month it was Charles Schumer, our genius senator from New York, calling a woman flight attendant who displeased him “a bitch,” and getting away with it. There was some critical talk for a day or so, and then all manner of Schumer’s sexist streak – what would he have called a male attendant? – vanished, like it never happened.

And now, a new book quotes Schumer’s Senate colleague, Majority Leader Harry Reid, commenting in 2008 on Barak Obama’s appearance and voice in light of his presidential aspirations. Obama is a “light-skinned” black man, Reid said. Why do I get a sense there was more to this than sheer observation, and that Reid was suggesting that such a lighter skinned African-American would be a better fit for the Democratic ticket than a dark-skinned African-American?

Reid also noted that Obama has “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” (Good god, did the Democratic majority leader of the United States Senate really just refer to a “Negro dialect?” In this, the 21st century?) Reid was saying that Obama’s “Negro dialect” allowed him to sound one way when speaking before the NAACP, another while addressing a reunion of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and a third while appearing before the (non-existent) National Council of Debate Enunciation. I walk away from this thinking that Reid was really saying that Obama can sound pretty white when he thinks it’s necessary.

Obama has acknowledged such varying tones, but hold the thought for a minute because Reid’s concerns seem a little one-sided. If Reid ever took note of the fact that Hillary Clinton’s artificial southern drawl was evident when she campaigned in the south but is nonexistent now when she meets with Hamid Karzai to discuss the legitimacy of the Afghan election, I missed the story.

And if Reid has wondered about that blackboard-squealing Texas drawl of President George W. Bush – who grew up in New England, attended Yale, moved to Texas and only then developed the accent – I apologize but I never saw that story either.

Democrats, having given Schumer a pass by their silence last month, now are falling all over themselves defending Reid. Dianne Feinstein of California, noting that Reid apologized to President Obama and that Obama accepted his regrets, said enough is enough. Let’s move on.

Well, wait a second. You don’t have to be Obama himself to be mortified by Reid’s drivel about “Negro” skin color and speech patterns, and you didn’t have to be the flight attendant to be outraged by Schumer’s sexual slur aboard that airplane. Decent Americans will reject such drivel.

I hate the political tit-for-tat that amounts to: The other party did it and didn’t have to pay a price so why should we? The Republicans are using this line and it’s tiresome. Several have interrupted their field day against Reid with remembrances of the pressure exerted on their own majority leader, Trent Lott, to step down eight years ago when he spoke glowingly of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential bid on a segregation-forever platform.

Lott resigned as majority leader, but Reid is showing no signs of giving up his leadership post, leading Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas to sniff about a double standard. Cornyn was quite wrong.

Granted, Reid spoke the words of an idiot, but what he said was a far cry from Lott’s worshipful recalling the days of the height of Jim Crow – 54 years after the fact.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

In Zest of Dec. 15, I wondered whether the pay of New York’s state senators should be withheld when they ignore the public and basically go out on strike as they did last spring. Now, some readers have joined the discussion.

First, a quick review. The senators got into a hissy fit over who was going to run the Senate. They said this was an ethics issue lest anyone conclude that it was a political matter. Then they basically closed down for a month when the warring sides could not reach an agreement. Even when Governor Paterson ordered the Senate to convene to do the people’s business, a move within his power, the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the Senate would assemble in their chamber, have the clerk call the roll, and with a quorum present they’d entertain a measure to adjourn. This they did time after time.

Despite such behavior, we pay our senators $79,000 a year, making them among the highest paid state legislators in the country.

The Dec. 15 Zest piece suggested that Paterson dock the senators’ pay when they refuse to report for work, and that if Senate members had a problem with that, they could sue. Wouldn’t it be fun to listen to a senator or two, or all of them, swear to be truthful, sit down in the witness chair, and tell the sad story of how much good they do and how they are suffering without a paycheck. Would some even threaten to quit if they didn’t get their salaries? Not likely.

From one Zest reader comes the caution that 62 senators suing for their pay would be a very expensive, time consuming proposition. He also notes that a salary for senators is guaranteed in the state Constitution. And there it is, Article III, Section 6: “Each member of the legislature shall receive for his or her services a like annual salary, to be fixed by law.” Which means that that $79,000 could be un-fixed by law. Of course it would take a legislator or two with conviction to introduce such a measure.

Do you know of any senator willing to do it? I don’t. But let the word go forth: The people are looking for a few radicals in the legislature to head up a cause. Any takers?

Another reader thinks the senators deserve to be paid but says, “It’s time to enact a law that says members of the Senate and Assembly must earn salaries no larger than the salary of the average person whom he/she represents.” I didn’t do the district-by-district math, but I learned this month that the $79,000 base pay for state legislators is 48 percent higher than the average pay of $38,000 for all New Yorkers. This, according to Census data. They even get paid to cover the cost of getting to Albany. Does your boss give you money to get to and from work?

The reader ends with a nice populist flourish: “Let these [senators] learn how to wash their own cars, clean their own houses, mow their own lawns, and shop using coupons.”

Contempt for the Senate gets juicier with a suggestion by a reader named Steve that our elected politicians get merit pay instead of a standard salary for all. After all, many of these men and women have jabbered for years about the need for merit pay for teachers.

“Let our political leaders produce something useful before being paid,” Steve says. “If any of them don’t like such an arrangement, they would be free to seek employment elsewhere.” To which I would add: They don’t even have to give two weeks notice.

What do you think will happen on Election Day in 11 months? Despite the disgust people felt for their senators during their springtime power play, a man in Warwick believes people will complain about the Legislature all the way to the polls, where they will decide that their own individual senators are not such bad guys after all. And nothing will change.

I think he’s probably right – unless people are as angry as they claim to be.

Best wishes to all for a happy new year.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

In 2006, Senator George Allen, the noted conservative from Virginia, was happily sailing along toward election to a second term. There was even talk about his making a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

But in a campaign stop, he saw a young Indian-American man taping his speech, and sarcastically introduced him to the crowd. Twice he referred to the man as “macaca,” which may be a historic European mispronunciation of macaque (ma-KAK), a genus of monkey that inhabits North Africa and South Asia. But enough of science. “Macaca” is a racial slur used by certain ignoramuses to describe dark-skinned people.

“Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen addressed the man. If anyone needed an introduction to the real world it was Allen. The man, S.K. Sidarth, was born in California, raised in Virginia and was working for Allen’s opponent, Jim Webb. The last time anyone checked, this was legal.

The press had a field day with Allen, as well it should. He lost the election to Webb.

Last week, Senator Charles Schumer, the noted liberal from New York who’ll probably seek a third term next year, was aboard an airliner in Washington with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand for the flight to New York. Both were on their cell phones. A flight attendant, a woman, went over and told them they would have to end their calls so the pilot could get the trip started.

There were words; Schumer’s an important guy. But he and Gillibrand ended their calls, and as the attendant walked away, Schumer turned to Gillibrand and muttered a one-syllable description of the attendant.

“Bitch.”

The slur that will not die, and used here by a powerful member of the United States Senate against someone with no such power, someone doing her job.

It’s likely the story would have ended there, but a Republican party staffer was on board and heard Schumer reveal something about himself that a lot of us didn’t know. The GOP aide made the appropriate phone calls. It took a while, and Schumer finally apologized. But his regret reeked of phoniness.

Follow this chronology and statement. The flight was on Dec. 13. Schumer was so stricken by his use of this particular slur that he didn’t say a word about it until it was reported by politico.com on Dec. 15. His apology came on Dec. 16. Did Schumer go before the cameras and recite it? He most certainly did not. After all, he’s a senator.

Instead, he sent an aide out front: “The senator made an off-the-cuff comment under his breath that he shouldn’t have made, and he regrets it.”

The Times reported that Schumer called the flight attendant to apologize – also after the politico story appeared.

One of the things we learned about Schumer in this smelly episode is what he did not do. A moment after he uttered the word “bitch,” Schumer didn’t slap his hand over his mouth, apologize to the flight attendant then and there in front of all the passengers who heard the slur, and ask her for forgiveness.

Schumer’s 20 million constituents need more information.

–Who was the last woman member of the Senate Schumer called a bitch? Or does he reserve that title for ordinary people who displease him? 

–What would Schumer have said if the flight attendant had been a man? Especially if the man had been six or eight inches taller than the senator?

–Does Schumer dismiss other groups with other slurs? You know the words; I’m not going to catalogue them. Or are women special?

George Allen’s political career tanked after “macaca,” but so far there doesn’t seem to be too much outrage over “bitch.” We know what this incident says about Schumer. Does the relative silence about it say something about the rest of us?

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Technically, this column is a mixed metaphor. Bear with me.

Somebody in Albany had the good sense to take a look at the state’s cash on hand and discovered it was $3 million – or about 15 cents per person. This is cutting things pretty thin. You know what 15 cents buys nowadays.

Governor Paterson understood the impossibility of this situation. No state can operate with such a threadbare treasury, especially if it wishes to sell bonds and even more especially if that state happens to be New York, the state of Wall Street, the financial capital of the world.

As a result, Paterson decided to withhold about $750 million in aid to the state’s municipalities and school districts. He said he wasn’t cancelling this assistance, but deferring it for now. He said he expects to be sued over his action, but so far he’s standing his ground. We shall see for how long.

So, as the state of New York teeters on the brink, let the howling from various interests begin. By the way, have you heard anything constructive from members of the State Senate or Assembly about the state’s wretched financial condition?

If the usual recipients of state aid are unhappy now, wait until the suspension of this assistance works its way down to the unhappiest people of all – the taxpayers. Schools and local government won’t be closed – and, in fact, we wouldn’t want them closed – but with cuts in aid to school districts and municipalities, it’s you, me and the guy next door who’ll be socked with higher taxes to make up the difference.

We’ve got to have that money to educate the children because the kids are our future and had nothing to do with making the current crisis, right? We’ve got to fund law enforcement agencies to keep ourselves safe, right? We have to fund Medicaid for poor people, right? We must continue funding our libraries, right? We want to make sure homeless people don’t freeze, right? We want the state parks to remain open for our enjoyment, right? It’s not even winter yet, but we want our highway departments fully staffed and equipped when the next snow falls, right? We’ve got to pay our municipal workers, right? We have to feed hungry people, right?

We’ve got to pay salaries to our elected officials, right? Uh, wait a second; hold that last thought.

Let us agree that it’s payback time. Remember earlier this year when the 62 members of the State Senate proved their incompetence as they forced the end of important legislative business by closing the Senate for a month? Remember how those ladies and gentlemen yammered about what they called “reform” and what the rest of us knew was lust for power?

Those geniuses in the Senate owe 20 million New Yorkers for their bipartisan temper tantrum, and so a modest proposal.

Governor Paterson could more than double the state’s cash on hand by withholding the $4.9 million that the 62 senators get every year. (Each receives $79,000, with members of the leadership getting a little more; would you believe it?) In this way, he could defer only $745,100,000 to the schools and towns. It’s a pittance in the great scheme of things, but wouldn’t it make you happy to know the senators are suffering some of the pain that we’re all feeling?

Let Paterson be sued. It would be refreshing to put a couple of members of the State Senate in a witness chair, under oath, and have them describe what it is they actually do to merit a salary 48 percent higher than the pay most of their constituents get.

The extra money won’t help New York much. But making life a little difficult, maybe a little embarrassing, for the members of the State Senate might be a lot of fun. Make them hire attorneys. Make them go to their in-laws for a loan to tide them over until they get a check from whatever it is they do when they’re not being senators.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Big changes are coming to Warwick.

Almost directly across the road from one supermarket on Route 94 will be a second supermarket, and there will be other new businesses along 94 just outside the Village of Warwick. Add to this the existing retail shops, car dealers, garden shops, machine rentals, etc. and you can understand three major concerns.

One is traffic. A second is the effect of new development on the downtown commercial area of the village. A third is the changing nature of the town and village. Some people say enough is enough. Others are OK with it.

Last month, a man began his letter to the editor of The Warwick Advertiser with a provocative thought: “I wonder how different Warwick would be if the residents back in, say, 1960 had decided ‘no more development.’”

He ended with a rhetorical question, and his answer to it. “Would Warwick be a better place? I don’t think so.”

And so, a modest proposal: Replace the word “Warwick” with the word “Wallkill” and read the letter again. Make other changes if you wish. Here’s how it sounded when I tried it:

I wonder how different Wallkill would be if the residents back in, say, 1960 had decided “no more development.”

Would Wallkill be a better place? I think it would.

Then I called Glenn Doty, who was the managing editor of The Times Herald-Record when I got a job there in 1972. Glenn grew up in Warwick, lived much of his adult life in Middletown, and today lives in Walden.

I asked him to imagine it was 1960 again and that he was driving south on Route 211 from Scotchtown, through the Town of Wallkill, and into Middletown. What was it like? What did he see?

“It was farm country,” Glenn said. “You’d pass several farms on your way into the city of Middletown. And when there wasn’t a farm, you’d see acres of vacant land.”

The area had yet to be discovered by developers, a group of people who salivate at the very thought of vacant land. Route 211 was a country road, not the endless strand of malls, stores, restaurants, burger places and traffic-light-after-traffic-light it would become.

“It was quiet,” Glenn said. “There wasn’t much traffic at all.”

He recalled the first rumblings of development. It was a decision by Ed Lloyd to open a large – by early 1960s standards – supermarket on 211 about halfway between Wisner Avenue and the site of the present Orange Plaza.

“Ed Lloyd was running a grocery store in Middletown at the time and decided to expand out into Wallkill,” Glenn said. “Everybody thought he was crazy.”

As they say, crazy like a fox.

Aprés Lloyd, le dèluge. In came Orange Plaza. In came the Caldor mall. In came the burger places. In came the sit-down restaurants. In came Sears and Sullivan’s, J.C. Penney and Green’s, Thom McAn and Steinbach’s. Later, in came the Galleria, which put Orange Plaza out of business for 10 years or so until it reopened. (Lloyd also opened a supermarket in Warwick; it eventually became the Shop Rite that exists today on Route 94.)

With the massive commercial development, in came more and more traffic until 211 couldn’t handle it anymore. And in came the traffic lights. And in came the traffic jams. Then, in came the expansion of Route 211, which used to be a two-lane road. And with the widening, in came even more traffic.

As Wallkill’s commercial base expanded under the slightly purplish haze of carbon monoxide, the central business district of Middletown suffered terribly. (Now, it’s finally coming back, however slowly.) Not only did Wallkill’s development injure the city, it even caused much of its own rural character to vanish.

In the future, when someone suggests that Route 94, Kings Highway, Route 17A and County Route 1 be widened to make travel to Warwick easier to reach, remember Route 211 – in 1960 and now.

And when it is further suggested that town and village officials make it easier for developers to build a couple of swell malls – let’s say another few Gallerias – remember the Town of Wallkill – in 1960 and now.

* * *

A Clarification: In a rush to file last week’s blog, I noted – without attribution – that threats against President Obama’s safety were running 400 percent greater than against the previous few presidents. Without citing a source, this could have left the impression that it was an official Secret Service statistic. In fact, it comes from a book about the Secret Service and was disputed by Mark Sullivan, the director of the Secret Service, in testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

A wonderful Yiddish expression goes like this: Pish nisht af mein fus, un dertzail mir az si regant. Translation: Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. In other words, spare me the fairy tales and get to real life.

With that in mind, let us turn to a few people who have been relieving themselves on the legs of America lately.

Start with the inimitable Dana Perino, who served as President Bush’s last White House press secretary. Recently, 11 months into President Obama’s term, Perino was on television being interviewed by Sean Hannity.

Hannity lobbed her some softball questions about why the Obama administration refuses to call terrorists “terrorists.” “I don’t say this to be political,” Perino said. “But we should call it what it is.”

Remember those words: We should call it what it is.

Perino then went on to inform viewers about the differences between Bush’s and Obama’s leadership in times of crisis. “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term,” Perino said. We should call that what it is, too. It’s garbage.

Perino recalled the Bush glory days and the inferred illusion that no enemy would dare attack the United States with George W. Bush in command. Just one problem. They did attack and he was in command. America was attacked eight months into Bush’s watch on that day he read “The Pet Goat” to some school kids in Florida and froze when an aide whispered what had happened in New York.

So much for Perino’s not wanting to be political. But did Hannity jump in and correct her misstatement? Not that I saw.

Speaking of Hannity, I recall his report a while back about Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook’s refusal to accept Army orders deploying him to Afghanistan on the nutty ground that Obama is not a native born U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to be president, therefore ineligible to be commander-in-chief, and therefore ineligible to order Cook or any other soldier to do anything.

Hannity noted Cook’s argument with seriousness. “President Obama has not proven that he’s a U.S. citizen.” I wondered who was the last president of the United States who was asked to prove his citizenship.

In the last few days we have been reading of the two White House gatecrashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi. They say they were invited. The Secret Service says they were not on any list of invitees to the state dinner honoring Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister. Eventually this will be resolved.

For now, however, there’s the question of the genius at the Secret Service who reassured a worried nation that President Obama was never in any danger posed by the Salahis because this fun couple from Virginia had passed through metal detectors on their way in to the festivities.

In fact, an official White House photo shows the president extending his right hand to Michaele Sahali. She is grasping it with both her hands as her happy husband looks on. Had Obama and Sahali been any closer they could have done the foxtrot. Not in any danger?

The fact is that if the Secret Service agents working the metal detectors that night were as inattentive and unfocused as the ones handling the guest list, President Obama was in extremely serious peril.

Let us be specific. The current rate of death threats directed against President Obama is 400 percent higher than it was when he assumed office in January. A bumper sticker available on the internet says “Obama lied, our economy died” (a highly charged accusation and another that gives Bush a pass since the economy tanked before Obama ever took office). And, there are the inevitable anti-Obama materials that are illustrated with apes.

Not in any danger?

I need a shower – and plenty of soap.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

With one glaring exception, I’ve opposed capital punishment ever since I read Clarence Darrow’s autobiography in high school. Darrow, among others, has been credited with the observation: Hate the crime, not the criminal.

What I’ve learned about myself is that my mercy has limits, and that I find that in many cases I hate the crime and the criminal.

I veered from my moral comfort zone in 1995 when I saw a picture of Baylee Almon that came over the AP wire in the newsroom in Hackensack. Remember Baylee? She was the little girl – dead in the Oklahoma City bombing – being cradled in the arms of a burly fireman. She was 1 year old. Her face was pointed away from the camera, giving her a Christ-like appearance – like the vision of Jesus in Salvador Dali’s famous painting of the Crucifixion.

Her head was covered in blood. There was a bad gash on her right arm. It was hard to determine what she was wearing except for her bloodied white socks. Her legs, lifeless, dangled over the fireman’s left arm. I was not supposed to hate the criminal, but I hated him passionately.

Later there was a conviction. Timothy McVeigh would be put to death, and I wrote at the time that while I wouldn’t take joy in doing it, I would press the plunger of the hypodermic to carry out the sentence.

I concede that my reaction to McVeigh’s barbarism was emotional, not based in reason or compassion. Compassion? For McVeigh? Aside from Baylee’s, there were 167 more graves to dig in Oklahoma City. I justified my reaction to McVeigh and his crime by directing every ounce of my compassion to Baylee’s mother, to that fireman, and to Baylee. If not for McVeigh, Baylee Almon would now be 15 years old.

So I flunked McVeigh’s test. Once, I believed that capital punishment is never justified, if for no other reason than its irreversibility. And then, with McVeigh, I concluded that sometimes it is quite justified. Soon, I returned to that comfort zone, hoping that never again would I be so tested.

But now there are new tests, and in at least one instance, I’m failing again.

There is the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who acknowledges that he planned the attacks on America of Sept. 11. The result of his operation: 2,976 people dead, not including the hijackers. He too could face a death sentence if convicted.

So what does a restored death penalty opponent such as myself think?

I recall the catalog of Mohammed’s savagery. The hijackings; the slashings with box cutters; the unimaginable terror aboard the three planes being flown into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and the one plane crashing in that wretched field in Shanksville; people looking out their office windows and seeing a plane coming at them; the crashes; the fires; people jumping out of high windows to escape the flames; the prayers on the run; the rush to get down the stairwells; the buildings coming down; people still in the towers falling to their deaths, the panic in the streets as people ran for their lives.

I think about another baby, this one named Christine Lee Hanson, 2½ years old, who was flying to California with her parents Peter and Susan Hanson aboard United Airlines Flight 175. This was the plane that was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Mercy for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should he be convicted and sentenced to death? By the very extent of his cruelty and evil, mercy is not possible. I would press the plunger.

Despite that thought, I will, in this season of giving, write a check to the Innocence Project (100 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011), whose noble work in freeing wrongly convicted people – in both capital and noncapital cases – is exemplary.

I don’t like the moral position I find myself in. I still oppose the death penalty – usually – but I’m not as comfortably absolutist as in the years before McVeigh.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Much of what passes for political discourse on talk radio makes no sense and often sounds like nothing but expressions of barbarity. But the hosts are not journalists; they’re entertainers. If what a caller says rubs a nerve in the audience, that’s show biz. Truth? Doesn’t matter. Accuracy? Who cares? Good taste? You must be kidding.

Still, every so often, a caller will say something so outrageous, so beyond the pale, that you expect the host to chime in and put a stop to what amounts to full-throated slander against someone the caller and/or host don’t like.

Over the weekend, I caught a few minutes of the Larry Kudlow show on WABC. I always thought of Kudlow as an intelligent guy.  Conservative? You bet. But not a bomb thrower. He seemed like a decent man and so I was astonished at what he allowed a caller to get away with in an attack on President Obama.

It was Greg from New Jersey calling, and Greg was in rant mode.

President Obama is “charting the course to America’s ultimate destruction,” Greg said.

Really? I don’t think Obama is capable of such a thing for any number of reasons, most notably Malia and Sasha. Or was Greg suggesting that Obama would sacrifice his own family so that he could destroy America? Does Greg think Obama is insane? I waited for Kudlow to say something. But nothing.

Greg wasn’t through. The president, in his appearance at Fort Hood after Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 people there, expressed “selfishness, divisiveness and arrogance,” Greg said but did not elaborate.

Greg said President Obama thinks we Americans have too much of the good life – did you ever hear Obama say that? – and what he really wants to do is take away our wealth and spread it around the world.

“He hates this country, Larry,” Greg said, still unchallenged.

“He hates Americans,” Greg said. Not a word to stop the embarrassment Kudlow was bringing on himself and his program by refusing to say something as nonconfrontational as “What on earth do you mean by that?”

“He hates the fact that we live good,” Greg said.

“He’s been brainwashed since early childhood into Marxism and communism,” Greg said, and I pictured Obama’s grandmother reading him a bedtime story from “Das Kapital”: “Time for beddy-bye. Goodnight sweet Barack, goodnight. Give Grandma a kiss and always remember that ‘Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation.’ ”

Greg didn’t say how he knows all this, Kudlow didn’t bother to ask.

“He’s heartless,” Greg said.

Heartless?

Come on, Kudlow, you know this is ridiculous. You know it’s time to put a stop to this. But he didn’t.

“Look at his eyes,” Greg said. “There’s no soul in that man.”

Finally, Kudlow was heard. “You’re getting very personal,” he told Greg.

A sage observation. But he never told Greg that he thought he was nuts. He never questioned Greg about heartlessness and evil eyes.

These talk show characters have the same First Amendment rights we all have. But don’t they also have an intellectual obligation to step in and inform Greg and his kind that they sound crazed and that it’s time to end the monologue?

“I don’t like to be personal,” Kudlow said.

The next caller was Lou who said Obama is taking us down the road to socialism.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

As the Democratic leadership in the House goes about patting itself on the back over the historic passage of national health care legislation, it should be noted that the vote was no mandate. In fact, for a party that won 55 percent of all votes for House members in last year’s election, it was pathetic.

This was the bill put forth by House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A few 2008 election statistics are necessary here. Pelosi was reelected with 72 percent of the vote last year. In the mid-Hudson Valley, John Hall was sent back to the House with 59 percent and Maurice Hinchey won reelection with 66 percent of the vote.

The health measure, meanwhile, squeaked by over the weekend with a scant 50.7 percent of votes cast in the House.  Thirty-nine Democrats voted against it; what do they know that Pelosi does not?

This vote could make matters difficult for the party and for President Obama when voters go to the polls one year from now because, if nothing else, it suggests that the Democrats – wildly triumphant last year – are not invincible.

Obama and Pelosi handled things badly. During the summer just past, Democrats made light of the crowds attending tea parties and town hall meetings against health care reform. It makes no difference that some of the protesters – the civil ones as well as the yahoos shaking their fists and calling their congressional representatives liars to their faces – might have been ill-informed. Who will soon forget the guy who told his congressman that he didn’t want the federal government intruding on his Medicare coverage?

Obnoxious or polite, right or wrong, the important thing is that the protesters were out there when they could have been enjoying a summer evening. They turned out again last week when about 10,000 people showed up for an anti-health bill rally on the Capitol steps. This with just two days notice.

Obama seemed to be on a nice long vacation over the summer. As far as medical care legislation was concerned, he let his friends in the House take the heat. His decision to stay out of the fray was as badly conceived as John Kerry’s allowing six precious weeks to pass during the summer of 2004 before responding to the Swift Boaters and their lies about his military service in Vietnam.

In another example of bizarre leadership, Pelosi, in deciding to hold the House vote late Saturday night, was guilty of Old-Think. It used to be that if a politician scheduled an unpopular announcement for anytime between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 p.m. Sunday, no one would know about it. But in the age of the Internet and 24-hour cable news, everybody knows everything all the time, or at least has a headline in mind. For politicians, there’s no hiding.

The next time Pelosi put her foot in her mouth was soon after health care passed – by a not especially uplifting vote of 220 to 215 – when she was asked about the nature of bi-partisanship.

“That vote was bipartisan,” she said, referring to the fact that 219 Democrats were joined by one Republican, Anh Cao, a first-term backbencher from New Orleans who is likely in for a spirited primary next year.

Actually it’s the Republicans who can claim the bipartisanship banner. They got 39 Democrats to switch sides and join them in voting No.

Next year, the 258 Democratic members of the House will have to answer for Pelosi’s midnight vote and delusional definition of bipartisanship.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

We have a president who’s not afraid to let the American people know the true meaning of battlefield casualties. They’re not just a number listed in six-point type in the newspaper. They’re not the nameless people that some talk show hosts posthumously thank for making the ultimate sacrifice – praise from armchair warriors who managed to never spend a day in uniform and who know nothing about sacrifice.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama lifted the ban on news organizations photographing the flag draped coffins being carried off the planes at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. That was the image George W. Bush hid from the American people. Bush may have misunderstood a lot, but was sure of one thing: Repeated pictures of soldiers being brought home in coffins would raise questions that, despite the idiotic certitude of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Bush could not answer.

How long?

How many more?

For what?

Now,  Obama’s military commanders want up to 80,000 more troops to continue the war in Afghanistan and because he promised a decision soon, he’ll probably have to answer those questions.  His deliberation, of course, is what the appalling Dick Cheney had in mind when he accused Obama of  “dithering.” How much misery might have been saved had George W. Bush given more serious thought to war and death instead of just plunging ahead like an elephant in heat? Because here we are, eight years later, still trying to crush the elusive Taliban.

(We must never forget that the invariably wrong Cheney bleated to America as the Iraq war started, “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” That he said of the Iraqi foe in 2005, “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” That in 2005 he said America was “firmly committed” to the Afghan democracy.)

Democracy? Our men and women are still being killed in Afghanistan. And to what end? For President Hamid Karzai’s challenger to drop out this week because no one can be sure that Karzai’s government would have allowed a free, fair election?

Last week, President Obama did what Bush chose never to do. He traveled to Dover in the middle of the night, stood at attention with military officers, and saluted the latest return of coffins.

It took only a day for the Nut Right to have at him. Rush Limbaugh dismissed Obama’s salute as a photo-op, forgetting that the president is the commander-in-chief of the military. Photo-op? Could be. But I checked: If Limbaugh ever dismissed as a photo-op Bush’s landing on the aircraft carrier in his soldier outfit six years ago to say combat operations in Iraq were over, I missed it.

Photo-op? I’m proud of this president for making that short flight to Dover.

There’s a but of course.

But if he decides to continue the fight in Afghanistan, Obama must answer the questions that Bush never would. How much longer will America remain in Afghanistan? Why must there be more coffins at Dover if Karzai believes democracy begins and ends with himself? And how will America know when it has won or when it has lost?

Obama can’t be vague. To dance around these questions would invite utter contempt from the very people who support and admire him.
 
Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com