TIME TO HUNKER DOWN

Wednesday, 8:45 AM.  20 degrees F, wind W, calm to light with occasional gusts.  the barometer is trending down at 29.71 in., the humidity is 87%.  The early morning sky was mottled, both clear and clouds, and it has continued to clear.  The sun will warm things up and it will be a nice winter day. The Bayfield roads are slick with frozen slush, and I put on my Yak Tracks to walk.
    It was a pretty easy trip yesterday, only one stretch of icy road with one car in the ditch along I 39 mid-state.  Wisconsin is bisected by US 51 to the north which becomes I 39 from mid-state south to the Illinois line, and the long highway was like a black ribbon laid on a white table cloth.  The state is all snow now, forests, fields and towns incased in winter’s icy grip.
    I did learn a modern day driving lesson yesterday; the tire monitors in each wheel work.  When a tire icon lights up on the dash identifying a low tire, check it out.  I did, and a twenty minute stop at a tire store in Westfield saved us a nasty emergency on the lonely road at night.  The tendency to ignore the warning or look at the tire and assume the sensor is faulty is analogous to thinking there is something wrong with your compass when out in the woods.  Pay attention, or pay a price.
    Which brings me to the last two hours of our trip, as we listened to the almost endless, Castro-like fulminations of President Obama.  We were at once fascinated and bored, as we have heard this sonorous, nonsensical spiel way too often. It was akin to being so enthralled with a truly awful “B” movie that one watches it over and over, fascinated.
A few of the details of his tirade always change, but the basics never do;  more spending, bigger government, more rules and regulations, blame Bush, blame the Republicans, blame America and its people.  He prattled on and on about government investment (taxing and spending),  cooperation (my way or the highway), social justice (give everyone everything I think they need, and it won’t cost anything), ignoring unemployment (the ghettos are  tinder ready to burn as he plays with matches), ignoring foreign policy entirely (except to brag of ending wars, but not winning them). And of course gun control, while increasingly nervous Americans have purchased 64 million guns since he took office and started his campaign against the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
We got home just in time to watch a sincere but obviously shaky response by Republican Senator Marco Rubio.  Joan and I looked at each other and said, “way to young and inexperienced, even in four more years.” 
We need a real general or a damn good governor, and there seem to be few of the former and none of the latter strong enough to both win and govern.  It looks like we have to hunker down in survival mode until the long winter is over.