Friday, March 01, 2013

Presidential Tomfoolery

Although President Obama has made a concerted effort for the last four years to bury both Congress and the Courts, basing his action on the “WE WON” theory, the chickens have come home to roost, as his mentor the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright might say. Although everyone should have known the “Sequester Act” passed by Congress a while back was the president’s baby, that fact is only now being recognized, mainly through the performance of the legendary Washington Post columnist Bob Woodward, noted for his part in the takedown of Richard Nixon’s presidency.

Woodward, as far left as the president (well, almost), has both written and taken to the talk-shows to decry the fact that Obama made the deal and signed the law with no intention of acting in good faith to do something constructive budget-wise at a time when the nation is existing on borrowed money. Instead, Obama has mounted Air Force One about every other day to fly off to some rendezvous with most likely a captive crowd, to which he spews in rank pomposity teleprompted rhetoric designed to intimidate Congress, especially the republicans, and make both look bad beside the “dear leader,” who’s got everyone’s back.

Sequester was designed as something so foolhardy that Congress would have to bend to the president’s will…or else. The objective was to forestall any likelihood that it would actually be enforced, i.e., across-the-board cuts in equal percentages. The current basis for his actions: “WE WON AGAIN.” He received only 52% of the vote so his win was more Pyrrhic than he understands. The big-city/state votes (welfare establishments) put him back in the White House. Taxpaying citizens who bother to know anything about anything have about had it.

As commander-in-chief, Obama took an action the other day that was plainly stupid and blamed the need for it on Sequestration, even though the act was not in force. Scheduled to deploy to the Persian Gulf, the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman’s crew had made arrangements – things like canceling apartments, selling cars or even houses, relocating families, etc. Then, on virtually the day before departure, Obama canceled the deployment, thus leaving thousands of crew members and/or their families just holding the bag.

Arrogant thoughtlessness! Even worse, the deployment was a measure used in defense of the nation, for which, according to the Constitution, the president is absolutely responsible. Granted that he was probably totally ignorant of the inconveniences he had caused, having no military acumen whatever (remember “corpse-man”), he actually let down the nation’s guard, and that’s intolerable.

For days now, illegal immigrant prisoners have been released from federal facilities, long before sequestration triggers, with Homeland Security honcho Napolitano (actually Obama) explaining that they can’t be afforded. The reason: Obama will not sit down with lawmakers and decide where the cuts will be made, not in spending but in just slowing the rate of spending. These are criminals being released into American neighborhoods. If something untoward happens, like robbery and rape, the responsibility will be the president’s but he’s too mentally challenged to understand that. Remember Willie Horton? But then, there’s the Latino vote!

A steady stream of scare-mongering has emanated from the White House for days—loss of child care, loss of teachers, loss of policemen, loss of Head-Start, loss of air-traffic controllers, long waiting lines at airports, for instance. None of this will happen. Obama and legislators will meet and come up with some kind of plan – probably cockamamie kick-it-down-the-road-stuff – and sweat out the next crisis at the end of the month, namely, the debt-ceiling catastrophe.

Obama and his czars have participated in the best example of bullying that can be found…literally trying to scare the bejesus out of the entire citizenry. People with even half-sense see these scare-tactics for what they are – tomfoolery and disingenuousness on a grand scale. The small amount of money (cuts in increases) in question is almost immaterial.

Probably at no time in modern history has this country been governed by both an administration and Congress with a greater degree of incompetence or self-serving. The Senate might as well have been in Philadelphia since 2010. It hasn’t even passed a budget in more than three years. It is in the back pocket of the president, though republicans have tried to get something – anything – done. Obamacare (about all the Senate has done), finally passed in a shady midnight Christmas Eve deal, is already responsible for soaring medical costs, and citizens haven’t seen anything yet.

House Speaker Boehner should long since have pointed out the sham that defines the president but he has allowed the House to be buried by the man. He should at least speak out now for those who pay the freight in this country, lest it actually go over the cliff.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

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