First day of Winter

God Jul. It snowed for a couple of days and now it's biting cold. Stay indoors, where the pizza and the movies are.

Now that the election's over, I find myself drifting back toward the Independent middle. My vote was anti-Bush, anti-war and anti-Hoover in about that order — with a dash of pro-socialized medicine. Obama may have made me lift an approving eyebrow or two, but liberals offended by the president-elect's centrist tendencies weren't paying attention during his standard stump speech last Fall. What do they think that "Obamacan" rhetoric meant, or the remarks about there being no Red States or Blue States, just United States?

I'm not even sure Obama's style is "centrist," in any traditional sense. It's kind of an African-American tradition to color outside the lines, anyway, isn't it? The disenfranchised jaywalk, where the Old School detects boundaries and demarcations. The social contract is more of a handshake, when your village elders remember lynching.

I'm not well pleased with Obama's trajectory for Afghanistan, which is at best a malignant distraction from the true painted elephant in the room — namely, Zionism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Frankly, were I a bettin' dog, I'd bet Obama is going to try to "Best & Brightest" his way out of a lot of turmoil, while getting dragged into Jimmy Carter's vision vacuum anyway, because the problems Obama's inheriting are intractable. Intractable. Full stop. He needs to project less Carter gloom and more Reagan upbeat, or the 44th President will be written off as irrelevant in 300 days.

There is a way to handle Guantanamo, though. Three steps. Fly in a batallion of Marines to seize files, declassify them on the spot, and frogmarch current managment onto transports to under-supported units in Waziristan. Then second, move the orange suits to Leavenworth, Kansas with full POW status. Third, bulldoze Guantanamo and stand it down. Turn it into an international airport and give it to the Cubans, as interest on the $1 a year "rent" we've extorted these last hundred years or so. Nothing complicated about it. The "problems" if any belong to war criminals.