Countdown to the End

Quote of the Obama Era

Whatever happens tonight and in the following days over the debt ceiling, this quote defines the years during which Barack Obama was President of the United States. It’s from Tuesday’s White House press briefing with Jay Carney. It’s around the 9 minute mark in the video at the link.

“[W]hen you put forward a position … on difficult issues … it becomes charged politically, and your chances of actually getting an agreement diminish significantly,” Carney said. “That’s how it works.”

Yes, that’s how it works. And that quote reflects a rank cowardice and adbication on the part of the White House to make tough calls and assume real leadership when circumstances call for it.

In 2008, millions of well-meaning Americans decided to give someone who struck them as a nice young man a shot at the most difficult job in the world. They did this mostly for good reasons, for many of the same reasons that we’re in the debt mess that we’re in. They gave Obama a chance a the presidency maybe because they agreed with him, maybe out of guilt, but mostly because they’re nice.

The signs were all there, though, that Barack Obama was not a real leader and would be a bad president, almost from the moment he declared his candidacy. Even before, actually — Obama himself reacted to the first questions about himself as a candidate by laughing and saying “Maybe I should actually do something first.” But a lot of smart, political people saw potential, not in the man but in the brand he could be. They created an iconography and a set of slogans. They raised money. They ran and they won and he is the president.

But the man who so often voted “present” in the Illinois Senate to keep from having to show his cards, and who was a backbencher liberal in the US Senate known for speaking well but doing little, the adjunct professor and community organizer with almost comically evil friends who wrote two autobiographies before having lived much of a life, is still the same man regardless of the office he occupies. Barack Obama is not a leader in the sense that a nation needs. He never will be. And his lack of capacity to perform in the most difficult job in the world has brought us to the brink of national ruin.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.  - H. L. Mencken

Heat Wave.

Adrift in South Texas.

I lie adrift in an azure pool

with arms out stretched

in weightlessness

and shut my eyes behind

my shades

and gaze through eyelids

red with blood at

changing patterns light and dark.

The sun bares down

from cloudless sky

gulf breezes slowly

turn me round

and I can feel

my skin turn brown

as afternoon slips into night

and with it every troubling thought

fades on the gentle swells.

Dennis Price

What is so hard about the term "Debt Limit"?

Dear Mr. President,
   Do you have trouble with the term "Speed Limit"?  It means the top speed you can legally attain under optimal conditions.  If you call something a "debt limit" but continue to raise it, it is no longer a limit.  Let's look at a few of your comments on the matter from recent talks;

Obama repeated his warning that the country is "running out of time" to avert a financial “Armageddon.”
Obama said he is still pushing for a “big” deal to raise the debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline despite the hardening of positions on Capitol Hill.
"I always have hope," Obama said. "Don't you remember my campaign?"

Yes, Mr. President we remember everything.  Seems like you may have forgotten some of your own advice proffered before your election.  Let me remind you:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

…Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here'. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and Grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Barack Obama March 2006

To the Republican Senators who are ready to cave at the slightest pressure from the liberal left I say get your retirement packages secured soon.  We are tired of a lack of leadership at the top levels of government.  Everyone I know is ready for huge cuts in social programs, and no one I know wants to increase the debt limit or taxes.  It is time to take an ax to wasteful spending and balance our national budget.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,

the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,

its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..."

-- Winston Churchill