Good Morning, everyone!

With Bob and Raine still on the road, here's a rare Thursday blog from your loyal TriSec.

It's not a fully-worked blog by any stretch of the imagination, but rather some disjointed observations about the weekend from my notes. (I'm very orderly when we travel...I always keep a journal and work it up into a full travelogue that we stash with the pictures. Sure helps with the ol' memory.)

In any case...here we go!


2008 was a rather tough year again financially. We had long planned a trip back to DC during one of the conventions, but wound up not having enough money to do it. So...we cancelled and stayed local.

Sometime around July, Bob had suggested that if we win this thing, let's all go to the inaugural. So, I booked a room right then, months ahead of anyone else. (ah, smart thinking.) Then it was just sit and wait.

November 4 came and went, and the holidays, and suddenly it was January 17!

We had driven down the coast in 2007, and I don't like to drive the same way twice whenever possible. So....we went down the Mass Pike from here to I-84 through Connecticut, finally down to and over the Tappan Zee Bridge. In my travels, I rarely drive down the Garden State Parkway, but we did this trip. Seemed quiet, little traffic...but it felt much longer than going down I-95.

In any case, there was not any problem getting to DC. We saw many cars heading south with Obama things plastered over them, including a compact car with Maine plates, stuffed to the gills with college kids. "DC OR BUST" and "HONK IF YOU LOVE O" scrawled across the rear windows.

South of Baltimore, Maryland was swarming with Cops....so we laid low and crawled into town. We stayed out near the University of Maryland...but right near Greenbelt and College Park stations on the Green Line.

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93 comments (Latest Comment: 01/23/2009 05:59:28 by Raine)

Blog post on the way....be patient (have you heard that before?). You don't have to be patient much longer: Bush is gone, Obama is our President (thank god we have a president again!). More coming soon - turn on your TV and watch the INAUGURATION!!!

Rather than focusing solely on the closing refrain that is so often quoted, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations,” I instead, on this most auspicious of days, will focus on the following passage from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (a very brief speech by terms of the genre, that being inaugural speeches – which though they varied in length, reflected the man and his times.):
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89 comments (Latest Comment: 01/21/2009 06:13:47 by m-hadley)

Miss Jones, as per your request, here are the excerpts from the books of George W. Bush, Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney. Our company is passing on the Dick Cheney book, as we find it too…. coarse. The Presidents book is going to have to have a complete and total re-write and we have hired several ghost-writers for him. As you can see from his “work” it is completely plagiarized. I’m sure you would expect that, but frankly, we were shocked. He had assured us that he was working hard on his memoirs.

Anywho, I hope this calls us even. I could get into a pile of trouble, should these leak out. I know I said some bad things about you once, but are we all forgiven?

Best,
Jen

Excerpts from “Ponderings of a War President"

I have worked hard all my life and my getting to be the Governator of the great state of Texas was no easy task. Once there, I had to make hard decisions every day. I remember one day when I had to consider a mans life or death. People said he’d raped a white woman and the white girl said so to.

I remember thinking to myself there is one way in the country in which all men are created equal – there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system – that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. In the name of God, do your duty.

And so, I had that man put to death.
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27 comments (Latest Comment: 01/19/2009 02:56:22 by trojanrabbit)

The final indignity of the Bush Administration occurred last night. Whether it was intentional, accidental, or pre-ordained by the whims of the calendar, Bush gave his farewell speech to the nation on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Most people are focused on the fact that Obama will be inaugurated the day after the MLK Day holiday, but his actual birthdate was January 15th (yesterday), and that was when Bush dropped his final steaming pile upon the American populace.

The jarring juxtaposition of Bush's self-congratulatory puffery and the realities of the civil rights movement was revealed when our local PBA station broadcast a one hour retrospective narrated by my Representative in the U.S. House: John Lewis. He described the growth of the civil rights movement from his personal viewpoint as a young leader, his steady calm voice floating beneath the disturbing images and video from the past.
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162 comments (Latest Comment: 01/17/2009 03:53:10 by trojanrabbit)

What is PE elect Obama doing? George Will? Bill Kristol? Maureen Dowd? Rachel Maddow? He met with THESE people?? I will admit it. I can't figure him out. Last night it was reported that PE Obama did indeed meet with bloggers and journalists from the left side of the spectrum -- after we found out about dinner with George Will and his conservative colleagues.

So he really REALLY means to be bipartisan? REALLY? That is a good thing, right? Right?
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191 comments (Latest Comment: 01/16/2009 01:14:46 by trojanrabbit)