Sunday, January 25, 2009

Presidential Failure = America's Success

I am already tired of hearing the faux gracious, PC-induced non-starter about how we conservatives hope Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama is a successful president. I for one will make it public that I do not wish him success because a) I only have to go back not one full presidential term to find a counterpoint to that argument -- all the liberals who were imposing obstacles, ill-will and outright hatred towards any policy, initiative or doctrine of the Bush administration even as far as it meant bringing about their wanton desire for failure in the Iraq war, which would serve the benefit of NO ONE except terrorists and rogue states and b) it wouldn't be the first time a presidency failed and our country and Democracy at large prevailed. Jimmy Carter is still tinkering with Middle East Peace and he's starting to resemble the Stephen Root character in Office Space, the guy who is obsessed with his red Swingline stapler all the while no longer employed by Initech, yet still showing up for work each day.



Here are some things I particularly hope Mr. Obama fails to do as president:
  1. Expanding the legality of baby killing into the 3rd, 4th and possibly 5th trimester of life. I believe Casey Anthony is hoping the NARAL agenda is put at the front of the line for executive rubber stamping before her trial comes to term so instead of an insanity defense she can claim she was having a late term abortion when she killed Caylee.
  2. Putting an end to our 1st Amendment right to Free Speech a la the Fairness Doctrine - at this post the president has already made his feelings public that you are not in his political favor if you listen to Rush Limbaugh. A slippery slope indeed, mein freunds. Who else am I not allowed to read, hear or watch, Mr. President? What's that?! Reruns of The Smurfs is on the Obama approved list at the Library of Congress? That's cool because I can't locate a transcript of a speech our new president made 15 weeks ago about lobbyists in his administration. The card catalog says, "Permanently checked out to Incinerator"
  3. Circumvent our nearly perfect political system of checks and balances with judicial appointments, unchallenged and ill-conceived Executive Orders and the same style of corrupt ChicaGomorrah "machine politics" that should have been investigated, condemned and dismantled sixty years ago which, in so doing, might have effectively aborted his political career as well.
  4. Undermining our nation's intelligence and military organizations that have kept U.S. citizens within our borders safe from another terrorist attack these past 7 years. His Gitmo policy is a foreshadowing of what to expect.
  5. Giving tax rebates to non-tax payers.

I need the economy to succeed as much as any of us do but not at my own personal expense. If it can't succeed without resulting in our nation compounding the error of already enormous international debt in the face of a trade deficit and /or an astronomical tax burden on me, my children, their unborn progeny and the rest of the endangered species known as the middle class; if it can't "succeed" without bringing about an end to free markets then it hasn't succeeded.

And let's be clear that a check in the mail from the U.S. Treasury Department, particularly to a person who doesn't PAY taxes in the first place is NOT a "tax cut". And the reason this is a bad idea is the same reason it's a bad idea to give indigent panhandlers money at the freeway off ramp. Aside from stopping traffic, it won't change their situation and they are likely to spend it on something frivolous. To really stimulate an economic recovery we need to put gas in the tank of that enormous engine, the U.S. Economy. We need businesses, small to large, sole proprietorships to the largest corporations to have the fuel they need to work and grow. The Federal government can deliver that in the form of real tax cuts, an action requiring far less legislation to create, far less oversight to ensure proper handling and an almost immediate and direct impact in the places it is most needed.

Funding for a Museum of Organized Crime in Las Vegas is not going to help any of us except if you work for a company that makes life size wax figures of Al Capone and Meyer Lansky. And before you have anyone tell you this isn't part of the current stimulus package keep in mind that the arbiter of that monstrous boondoggle, BHO said this, "In a package of this magnitude, will there end up being certain projects that potentially don't meet that criteria of helping on health care, energy, or education? Certainly."

If this last point resonates with you then

- Go here to look up your U.S. Congressman's web page where you can easily send an email telling him or her you don't support this stimulus package in it's current form:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

- Go here to look up both of your U.S. Senators to do the same:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Writing the President would be a waste of time. His most recent displays of arrogance and petulance tells me he's not listening to the American public.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

On the Eve of A-boma-nauguration

In a swirl of world and national events such as an ongoing battle in Gaza, a not so surprising end to the Caylee Anthony missing person's case and yet even more job cuts at major corporations including Microsoft, I have noticed one defining and unnerving characteristic of the first weeks of 2009. You guessed it: the giddy, cloying excitement around empty-shirt / emptier head B.H. Obama entering office and taking up residence in the White House.

I know some people on a personal level who are oscillating (almost at a frequency that would shatter glass) between their Bush hatred and their Obama joy. It's as if the mixed emotion they are feeling is, on one hand, the regret over losing the thing that has defined them for the past 5-6-8 years, knowing inevitably that it will but not wanting it to go away forever and, on the other hand, the impatience over wanting to run downstairs on Tuesday morning and find that present under the secularist’s holiday tree, namely a big eared Baby New Year. Some of the hatred has been transferred to another villain of conservative politics, Sarah Palin. I believe that has more to do with people who have an addiction needing a substitute addiction just as the entryways to an AA or NA meeting or often marked by a throng of chain smokers. The logic behind feeling the need to vilify the Governor of Alaska is unprecedented, even in the annals of Inuit history but logic doesn't seem to be the trait that will define 2009.

So this gives me pause. Would I feel what the liberal masses are now feeling had the 2008 election turned out differently?

Now I only have the past as any accurate indication of how I might feel right now. (As of last Tuesday I just logged a whole extra year of "past" behind me so I have plenty of personal experience from which to draw my conclusions.)

I start by reflecting back to the 2000 election. You remember, that following morning that was much like watching Jennifer Anniston, Mark Wahlberg and the tranny groupie in Rock Star. We all woke up and didn't quite know how to feel, in this case because they were still counting votes in Florida. There was hardly any time for an emotional build-up to the inauguration in January '01. Between the vote counting limbo and the moving trucks hauling away White House furniture to Arkansas amidst Clinton pardons for Hugh Rodham's and Roger Clinton's coke snorting buddies, no one really had time to speculate about the Bush cabinet positions let alone the breed of dog, four legged or otherwise that our new president-elect would select to pee on the rugs Bill Clinton had previously stained with his debauchery.

So I have to fast forward four years to 2004. What did I feel that morning when John Kerry's face did the impossible and actually grew longer? What was the feeling I experienced? It was mild relief. Not because I was disappointed in Bush. He had yet to tarnish his presidential legacy as a conservative. No. I felt relief because the election was over without the protracted drama of the previous presidential election that many of us half-expected. More so though because there wasn't going to be some dramatic and wholesale change to the Executive Branch while a good friend of mine was still serving his first tour in Iraq and while the economy was tracking and trending upward. Most of all though, I knew that the man that would be occupying the White House for another four years was just a man, fallible. That he filled a role in a system of government that was not designed to change the world overnight. More importantly this governmental body was not there to be the end-all, be-all of my daily existence. Quite the contrary. Maybe the federal government would even shrink a little now, at least from our collective consciousness now that the two headed monster of partisan politics wasn't terrorizing our TV screens anymore. It didn't shrink though and that's another factor in my mild­ and even fleeting feeling of relief. I knew that government, at least in the period of my entire adult life has never fully lived up to any promise it or any of the individuals serving it have ever made, at least not completely or all at once. That's not a bad thing. That's just the compromise that is built into our American Democracy. That's all part of the great experiment. There's a certain perfectness in it's inherent imperfections.

You see, I believe that the success of Democracy is that the system prevails regardless of the power of personalities in all the various posts. In spite of any heroic figure or lack thereof it trudges on to serve us. That’s by design. That design is further confirmed as the framers' original intent in our first President’s action in which he rejected the suggestion that he be made king without a term limit.

I look around now and it's not just the agenda-driven extremist liberals who are barely able to contain their preemptive celebrations for a man who quite frankly has done nothing to serve any of our needs in his past and hasn’t done so yet in his latest temporary job. School children to octogenarian weathermen alike are all caught up in the excitement while trying not to pee themselves. Everything is tinged with a glow of it. The annual award shows for the self-congratulatory performers can't ignore it for a moment. Every joke and every acceptance speech has to make mention of what has happened in this election. The talking heads of TV news both local and national are almost beyond giddy. Their smiles crease their faces wider than that of Heath Ledger's Joker. Hollywood is already casting the bio-pic and the title role is predictably looking to be played by Will Smith. (All the while I am still waiting for Oliver Stone’s cinematic masterpiece about the Clintons. I guess that will have to wait for them to truly exit the White House once and for all.)

Violent criminals, unemployed vagrants and illegal aliens are professing to the media how proud they are now to be living in America. Bedtime fairy tales have been published into children’s books in time to hit the bookshelves. QVC is selling all manner of commemorative. The website eVite has canned theme pages for those of you who have been so overcome with raw emotion that you haven’t had the time to put together your Inauguration Parties yet. Classes are canceled on college campuses. Children are being brainwash . . . er, asked to participate in school events their teachers and principals have designed to make this fun and memorable. Yeah! That’s the reason they are doing it. Of course.

I am all for celebrating our Democratic system of government. I am a bit of a traditionalist though, saving my revelry for American Independence Day, Veterans & Memorial Days. I guess I am also traditional, preferring to wait for time to pass before declaring something a historical event. And then I think that when a Republican president is elected nothing of this scale ever happens. I guess that’s because Republicans still have to show up for work the next morning. But to provide further context about how this inaugural sets a high water mark in the flood waters washing over our nation, even when our first “black” president, Bill Clinton was elected there wasn’t this much hoopla. I imagine he and Hillary are stewing about that now as well.

Our nation’s capital is being closed down in order to turn the streets into a Saint Vitus’ Dance floor at a time when no one can say with any certainty whether or not our economy has bottomed out yet. But by all means, let’s party!

Yesterday I heard something and it wasn't the context as much as the style or the phrasing that hit me like a bolt. The thing itself wasn't important but it made a number of other pieces lock into place like a series of gears.

I recall having many conversations over the years with friends and colleagues. We discussed being astonished by certain historical events. How did certain people rise to power and subsequently exercise such tyrannical rule over their own people? Why didn't these people of this country or that country rise up and stop the tyrants? "Perhaps," one of us always playing the devils advocate, "it was happening so slowly and subtly that when the right people noticed it was too late." Perhaps." And maybe when that right moment occurred when the tyrant would turn his head, revealing the horned silhouette but then it was too late or maybe nobody was even paying attention. And the false assurance and feeling of superiority that came from the unspoken, "it could never happen here in this country." But that argument is just so much sophomoric twattle.


People are always paying attention when these events occur. The tyrants don't amass their power while sitting in a cave. And although there's a guy with an AK-47, a satellite phone, various degrees of facial hair and a turban who'd like to disagree; it's tough to argue his case in the face of so much history to the contrary. These tyrants also don't do it by some slight of hand or while putting the masses into some Svengali trance. If that were the case David Copperfield and Cris Angel would control the WORLD and not just the lives of vacuous super-models.

When I think about these tragic chapters in world history I hear crowds cheering back towards the men standing at a podium. I hear speeches. The tyrrants are all long on speeches before taking any action. And although Castro led a guerilla-style revolutionary movement in the spirit and practice of Mao out of jungles and foothills, the most notorious of tyrants the civilized world has ever seen spent his politically formative years as a community organizer of sorts. He worked within the political system of his country. Then he wrote an autobiography that also encapsulated the formation of his political thought process. He then gave speeches, locally in bars and private gatherings but soon to ever increasing crowds in large public forums, exploiting his country’s economic hardships to “connect” with his people in emotionally charged pleas for change. The excitement built and he moved quickly upward through the levels of his own government before his one party wrested total control of that country’s executive and legislative powers. And then this individual systematically dismantled his country's government in a series of actions that would reverberate throughout the world and echo down the halls of history. That man was Adolph Hitler . . . at which point Paul Harvey would say, ". . . and that's the rest of the story."

Is Obama Hitler? The comparison is oft made (Google it and see) but that's not my point. Is it naive and foolish to have a historical blind spot and extol such high virtue on one man in our system of representative government? Would it be a little like characterizing a mere elected official as some sort of a Superman, or as the German's say, Übermensch?

If this remains American Democracy-business-as-usual I will know for sure because little of true consequence will occur in the coming months and years. Many of you celebrants now resemble a Tween on a double espresso, fast-talking with your Tweeny friends about the differences between Twilight the book and Twilight the movie. I will know for sure that our democratic system is still in effect when your seemingly girlish, adrenaline induced jitteriness begins to fade, the voices (including Matthews' and Olberman's) come down a full octave and you start showing signs of disappointment even before Barrack-a-topia in 3:D leaves the D.C. Inaugural Multiplex and lands in the discount bin of your local, nearly bankrupt video store.

Then we can all get back to worshiping the one true God and not false idols. Or in the case of you devout atheists {oxymoron alert} ,you can turn your worship on to a true secular visionary like Steve Jobs. Hey, even I can get behind that kind of hero worship. The guy actually built something so many people in the world find useful and even necessary to their daily lives, all the while creating jobs and real wealth.