Blondie and I went to bed Tuesday night around 9:30, already fearing that things were not going well as regards Mitt Romney’s chances of taking up residence in that big official governmental residence on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington … so it was not a totally incapacitating shock to the system on Wednesday morning to wake up (to the tune of our next door neighbor’s Basset hound incessantly barking –G*d, are we beginning to hate that dog!) in the wee hours, turn on the computer and discover that Michelle will have another four years of lavish vacations on the government dime.

Ah well – as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, there is a lot of ruin in a nation, and perhaps this turn of events might turn out to be a blessing in very thick disguise. Obama will be in office when all the various incontinent chickens – which he or his party launched in the first place – come home to roost. Fast and Furious, the overrunning of the Benghazi consulate and his administration’s inaction with regard to, the insupportable burden that Obamacare will place upon small businesses, the expected hyper-inflation Weimar Germany Style, Iran taking aim at Israel in a non-friendly and nuclear way, the Chinese edging into a tangle with Japan, domestic AND international threats to our First and Second Amendments, the fact that the nomination of at least one justice to the Supreme Court will be in his purview, the fact that his administration generally seems to be a rancid commingling of Chicago gangster politics, 1930’s style with the worst of the 1960’s academic Marxism … With the best intentions in the world, I fear that Romney would not have been able to clean out the Augean stables in any meaningful way.
So, let it happen and let it all be done. That percentage of the voters who wanted Obama most have now got him. Over the next four years they will continue to get him – good, hard and unlubricated, starting with the prices of gas and heating oil skyrocketing, the money being devalued, our industrial base being even more gutted than it has been already, and rolling brownouts becoming a regular occurrence, and the economy basically going over a cliff. Sometimes there is no way of learning other than to completely and utterly screw up.

What to do, personally? Well, life will go on, much as it has from age to age. Fortunate I am to be living in Texas – who might have thought that it would be our last best hope? Molly Ivins is probably revolving in her grave like a Black and Decker drill. Otherwise – consider the means of going mini-Galt, and ratchet up what we have been already been doing over the last couple of years. Buying second-hand as much as possible. Stockpiling food and other essential supplies. Starving the Beast by minimizing the taxes that I do pay, bartering as much as possible for goods and services. In the next year, we’re probably going to give up cable television – although we’ll keep the internet. Redouble the efforts to keep a viable garden. I gave up just about all of my print subscriptions to magazines and the local newspaper. Our list of entertainment personalities who will not be getting anything from us in the way of patronage of their music, movie and television show patronage is now several pages long. (Goodbye, Cher, so long Ken Burns; in my eyes you have joined the ranks of Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen. Bow down and lick the hands of the new autocrats – enjoy the taste and forget that you ever thought of yourselves as free citizens.) I’ll continue supporting the Tea Party, and carry on with building a support network of like-minded cranky independents who voted with our brains rather than our lady-parts. Get more involved in local and State politics, and utterly reject any attempts by anyone who diminish any part of the Bill of Rights. OK then – it’s not the beginning of the end; it’s the end of the beginning.