Marylee Shrider: Events of this week point to wild ride of a year
| Friday, Jan 23 2009 07:09 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:34 PM
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What a week.
What an exhilarating, surprising, maddening week.
Our new president was ushered into office in a celebration so moving and so historic that Americans of all races wept as Barack Hussein Obama promised to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
It was a day to set aside partisan differences and most of us did.
But the honeymoon will soon be over and the man elected to lead — not by virtue of a proven record, but by a vague promise of change — has his work cut out for him.
If election coverage is any indication, we can rest assured the mainstream media will hold Obama and his administration accountable with the same impartial attention it gave the just departed President Bush and his GOP.
Speaking of improbable scenarios …
Californiancolumnist Lois Henry, an esteemed colleague and one of my favorite liberals, took some environmental groups to task on Sunday, dismissing their sky-is-falling rhetoric over our “filthy air” as “hooey.”
Noting numbers that didn’t ring true, Henry did some meticulous reporting and found, among other things, a claim by Cal State Fullerton researchers that 800 valley residents died last year due to dirty air was flat-out false.
Our air, she found, is cleaner that it’s been in three decades and pollution isn’t causing us to keel over. It’s just that not everyone wants you to know it.
Environmental issues are as politically charged as they come, so I imagine Henry’s in-box this week was clogged with messages from “enviros” furious with her for bucking the activist line. The column did, however, lead at least one conservative pundit to praise Henry for looking “beyond the press releases of special interests” and that she “deserves a Pulitzer Prize for science and honesty.”
She deserves kudos at the very least, but there will be none from some no matter how convincing the facts.
Speaking of intolerance …
Proposition 8 protesters showed up outside Saddleback Church in Lake Forest again this week, this time to vent over Obama’s selection of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.
Seems the protesters were peeved over Warren’s faith-based conviction that marriage is between a man and a woman, a conviction they felt disqualified the pastor from having a role in the inauguration. Never mind that Obama himself has repeatedly said he harbors that same conviction.
The difference is Warren really believes it. Obama, who says he opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposes Proposition 8 and a federal marriage amendment, really doesn’t. And gay activists know it.
Speaking of games politicos play …
Why is our governor making up six-figure jobs and giving them away to termed-out legislators? I mean, Nicole Parra’s endorsement of Republican Danny Gilmore for her 30th Assembly District seat wasn’t THAT big a favor, was it?
Wasn’t it Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who said, not two weeks ago in his State of the State address, that California is “in a state of emergency” and that our massive budget deficit is like “a rock upon our chest?”
Yes, I believe it was.
A couple six-figure jobs may not amount to much in the bottomless bucket that is our budget deficit, but doling out such jobs at a time when state workers are taking leave without pay is unconscionable. Bad form, governor.
What a week. If this week is any indication of what we can expect in the coming year, hang on. It’s gonna be quite a ride.
These are Marylee Shrider’s opinions, not necessarily The Californian’s. Call her at 395-7474 or write mshrider@bakersfield.com.
