The Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. - Mark Twain

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

On November 5th, 2008 the smug liberals told us that they had finally crushed the idiotic and evil machine, that the American people had spoken, and that collectivism was the wave of the future. Unlike their reactions in 2000 - where they simply decided to ignore reality and created the twisted notion in their even more twisted minds that the one that stole the election was Bush & the SCOTUS, and not Gore with his army of lawyers and the Florida Supremes – which started the liberal slide into illogical insanity, and 2004, where they were dejected to see the country simply not trust that buffoon John Kerry, and driven even further into the wilderness, they could not wait to get out and rub salt into the wounds of the opposition. We were told that the world was finally saved, that other countries would finally love us again, the economy would be fixed, that evil America would stop torturing people and inflict war on poor people whose only crime was that they were brown, everyone would magically be working according to their ability, and get back according to their needs, and Utopia would follow. Cats and dogs would start living together! Oh wait, that was Bill Murray’s character in Ghost Busters, but you get the point. They laid it on thick.

We were promised decades of liberal rule for the evils of the capitalist right. Many of us that experienced the Carter years and knew better, told them that the gloat was not just premature, but that once the American people got a taste of the insanity that’s part & parcel of the left’s ideology and governing, that they would sour on it, and sour on it fast. So it isn’t a surprise to me to discover that just 2 years into their reign of fire that Americans now trust the GOP more on almost all election issues, as the below graph clearly shows.

I and many others weren’t fooled for a second by Obama and the demcorats sweet talking and promises of “Hope & Change” – as I said I remember the Carter years, and to anyone that was paying real attention the left’s ideological shift was so drastic it compared to Carter idiocy redux on steroids - that these people could do anything but set us back. The GOP might have been bad at these things when they had power, but the demcorats, especially the current crop of elitist bastards and crooks, make the GOP losers look damned awesome. And the shift took just 2 years of liberal policy & rule to happen.

No, this is not me gloating. I remain quite aware that the GOP will now actually have to do what the American people want, or they too will face our wrath, and then sooner than later. It might surprise you that am actually looking forward to that, though. I seriously believe that if the GOP, once they have power, doesn’t derail this collectivist behemoth that is driving us at Warp speed into the abyss, reverses course of this out of control spending and lunacy, and lets the American people down yet again, that they will be gone too. The one thing I do know is that the American people, now that they know what they will get under democrat rule, the disastrous policies and last 2 years will still be fresh in their minds, will not go back to the demcorats. At least not the sane ones. And while I expect the left to revert to the same tired tactics of the 8 tiresome Bush years, I doubt the American people will buy either the propaganda or the obstructionist anti-Americanism. It will be their Armageddon if they do so. We might even end up with a third party finally breaking the deadlock that elephants and donkeys have had on our government, and even might be set back on the path of exceptionally when they finally gut that bureaucratic monster that pretends to be serving our needs while really enslaving us to its ever growing appetite for control and power.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The usual Lame Stream Media propagandists must be desperate to try and defend the close to $1 trillion dollar stimulus patronage bill known as the “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” as this desperate and transparently vain attempt by Time tries to make this pig pretty proves.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus — has been marketed as a jobs bill, and that’s how it’s been judged. The White House says it has saved or created about 3 million jobs, helping avoid a depression and end a recession. Republicans mock it as a Big Government boondoggle that has failed to prevent rampant unemployment despite a massive expansion of the deficit. Liberals complain that it wasn’t massive enough.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Hal’s Social Security post brought to mind this little clip from Dumb and Dumber.  Embedding was disabled, so click the link to watch it--it’s amazing how Lloyd Christmas and Moveon give the same basic argument.

“Go ahead and add it up--every cent’s accounted for!” LOL.  Christ, even the government spending of the surplus for superfluous shit is echoed in the $275K IOU written on a napkin.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Guess what? Remember all the talk about how the BP Gulf incident was going to destroy the entire ecosystem of the Gulf? Well, check this latest story out:

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there’s one problem—they’re having trouble finding it. Watch ‘World News’ for the latest coverage on the Gulf oil spill. At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire. Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.

You read that right. There are some hints there though. Did you know that the there is a very active and thriving ecosystem in the Gulf that lives off of oil seepage in the Gulf? And while the story also points out the following:

Still, it doesn’t mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

It goes right on to point out the most important thing in this story:

“[It’s] mother nature doing her job,” said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

I think the biggest lies we have had our political and agenda driven classes tell us recently is how vulnerable Mother Nature is when we constantly have examples, like this one, of nature reversing the effects of these catastrophes of every kind, and in record time.

The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean’s surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.

And it is no coincidence that nature was prepared to deal with this stuff. It has had billions of years of practice. My guess is that man will be long gone before the planet ever goes barren and lifeless, and future generations will make fun of the hoaxsters that constantly predicted man’s demise and evil disregard for a natural order that could have cared less about any of the hoopla. At least Obama can now say the government did a bang up job by doing squat.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

The democrats are in a world of hurt come the November elections. They won huge in 2008 by having the MSM help them overinflate the fact Bush was a wet noodle and that republicans were somehow fiscally less responsible than them. As if the Carter years and the demcorat controlled congress tripling spending while the Reagan tax cuts doubled revenue, never happened. Of course, as soon as they won they proceeded to make sure everyone knew that demcorats being fiscally responsible or able to actually lead us into any kind of prosperity was a myth, on par with the one about demcorats caring about individual freedoms. They took the low bar the stupid republicans let the demcorats set for them, and plunged it to new lows.

For a while there they were able to blame Bush for everything they did wrong. We passed a nearly trillion dollar stimulus patronage bill that served to only “stimulate” the growth of government, fill our campaign coffers and the wallets of our donors, operatives, lobbyists, and friends, at the expense of those working in the private sector? Bush’s fault! A democrat controlled congress first pushed TARP up to $750 billion, despite objections from the not insane during an election campaign nevertheless – and so they could blame “you know who” – and then when they won, literally made TARP a no limit slush fund for all things collectivist government expansion related. Blame Bush! Cap and Tax was not popular and temporarily had to be put on the back burner. But PB, a top Obama donor and well connected to their WH and green efforts, blows a well out in the Gulf, and the same people that accused Bush of conjuring up Katrina to kill blacks in NO, now have let months go bye without doing anything of significance – can’t piss off the unions or let this crisis go bye without taking advantage of it and all that – because now they can bring this economy killer back again. Blame Bush! Passed the most intrusive and massive government expansion program ever, masquerading as healthcare reform, but really intended to recreate something like the Cuban healthcare system over here, against the will of the American people, nevertheless, guaranteeing that the massive cost of this boondoggle will fiscally bankrupt the nation. Blame Bush! Can’t pass a budget because it would show that demcorats lied about being fiscally responsible and have already broken last years record deficit spending and debt growing budget busting shenanigans? Blame Bush! We are being overrun by an invasion from our “neighbor” to the south? Blame Bush! Ok yeah, Bush was a moron on this one too, so he does deserve some blame. Of course, he didn’t succeed at his amnesty attempt, and the ones trying now aren’t doing it because Bush is making them, for sure. The surge worked in Iraq? Blame Bush! Oh wait. Biden says Obama, whom I should remind people because the MSM won’t, was against the surge, gets credit for that one now.

You get the picture right? Everything bad they do is Bush’s fault. Of course, that has now worn thin, and is falling on deaf ears, as the polls showing a massacre come November make clear. Remember the collectivists telling us that it was the end of the age of American greed – because making money and wanting prosperity for yourself, is you know, evil – was dead and the right was gone for the next 50 years? Took them less than 18 months to squander away the support their well orchestrated campaign of lies garnered them, by actually doing what they believe in! As many of us predicted: once the left showed what they were all about, the American people would turn on them. Yeah, I am rubbing it in. Anyway, back to the point of this post: the demcorats are desperate. So what’s the new tactic they hope will help show the American people that they are better suited to be in charge?
More of the same:

The Democratic Party is moving faster and more aggressively than in previous election years to dig up unflattering details about Republican challengers. In House races from New Jersey to Ohio to California, Democratic operatives are seizing on evidence of GOP candidates’ unpaid income taxes, property tax breaks and ties to financial firms that received taxpayer bailout money.

Sounds solid. When you have zero successes to campaing on, all you are left with is demonizing the opposition, and hoping the people are too stupid to figure out that’s all you have. You aren’t fit to lead anyone, fiscally irresponsible, drowning the country in debt, destroying the economy, healthcare system, and the lives of millions, and looking like you are going to be hammered in the election for it – all because people have wised up and no longer buy the “Blame Bush!” meme, dang it! – so what you do isn’t square this stuff away. Nah, you go dig up dirt on those that are going to have you for breakfast, hoping the American people are stupid enough to leave you in charge. After all, as this WaPO post does, the MSM will repeat the talking points you want to get out there even as it is pretending to tut-tut at you for doing this idiotic stuff.

And if you can’t find enough dirt? Well, go make some up:

Democratic officials are advising campaigns to hire trackers to follow their Republican opponents to public events with video cameras, ready to catch any gaffe or misstatement. And the Democratic National Committee last week issued a call to the public to submit any embarrassing audio or video of Republicans, as well as copies of their direct-mail advertisements.

Party officials would not say how many staffers are working on opposition research. Such work used to be farmed out to campaign consultants, but the DCCC brought research operations in-house in 2008 to be more nimble. “It may appear to be more aggressive this cycle because what we’re finding on Republicans is so rich,” Vogel said.

Good luck you morons. If these bastards put in a fraction of the time they would doing this kind of stuff in actually doing their jobs to benefit the American people instead of themselves, I guarantee you they would not need to do this stuff. Like I said: I can’t wait for November.

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Seems the collectivists in DC were not too happy with the SCOTUS telling them the FCC did not have the authority to regulate the internet, and so they have decided that since the internet is destroying their monopoly on what’s news and what isn’t, ruining their control of the narrative, and actually giving voice to other people that point out how evil they are, that the best recourse is to ignore the SCOTUS and go around their decision:

A federal appeals court ruled last month that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to regulate the Internet. No worries, mate. This week the Obama Administration chose to “reclassify” the Internet so it can regulate the Web anyway. This crowd is nothing if not legally creative.

For the past decade, broadband has been classified as an “information service” and thus more lightly regulated than traditional telephone services. This has led to an explosion of new investment and Web innovation, but it hasn’t sat well with Democrats who want more control over the telecom business, as well as with some Web companies (Google) that want more leverage over Internet service providers like Time Warner or Verizon.

So these collectivist crooks are changing the rules of the game to help out their corporate buddies and increase their own power and regulation. Funny that huh? But people still pretend the “evil corporations” and Wall Street are the bad guys. Again, we have the left rigging the game in their and their friends favor. There is a reason big businesses give the largest amount of money to demcorats: they are all for sale.

We should be worried…

Saturday, April 24, 2010

According to a couple of links posted by Mish at Global Economic Analysis, “absolutely nothing.”

Hal’s video in his most recent post struck a particular chord with me, not just because the same money-grubbing, society-damning attitude by the unions is going on in my own city, but because it’s merely one example of a much broader trend nationwide of how public unions have been increasingly at war with the people who pay their salaries--which shows that unions haven’t really changed all that much in 120 years.  Except this time they aren’t at war with some Snidely Whiplash-type “industrialist” Marxist bete-noir, but with everyday taxpayers.

The first one is to this pathetic/hilarious protest sign by teachers and their brainwashed students in Des Moines:

According to the link, the teacher had the students chant, “Show Us the Money!” I can’t think of a better example of the modern entitlement mentality that’s infected society than this, especially the schools--rather than focus on the quality of education, they’re homed in like a laser on the government tit.

For people who think that this won’t come to a head eventually, California, once again shows that it intends to lead the nation (from Steve Malanga at the City Jounral, again, via Mish):

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

Seriously, read the whole article; if it doesn’t make you want to slap a public sector union worker, you have no soul.

It’s stuff like this that really makes me miss Lee--I can just hear him say “Man, I love being proven right--again!”

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

That’s like what that little dwarf told him after stabbing him in that spoof of the Narnia movie! They always say that a conservative is someone that has had sense beaten into them by the real world. Looks like Kumar, who was working for Obama in DC, just got his dose of the real world. Not saying he might or might not come to his senses, but I wonder if he is wondering why the Unicorn ridding Obama didn’t come to save him. Maybe Bush sent them to get him for making fun of him in that funny movie about Guantanamo. Hey Kumar: how did that cockmeat sandwich taste? I am looking forward to the next Harold and Kumar flik. While this stuff is rife with stupid leftists stuff it makes for good laughs.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

I’ve taken a dump on Detroit before, and Lord knows I’ll do so again, but really, this is getting pathetic.  Someone needs to put this city out of its misery (from the Detroit News, posted at Mish’s blog):

Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council must reduce the size of government and slash the city’s budget deficit to stave off bankruptcy or state receivership, according to a report released Monday.

Without draconian cuts and changes aimed at downsizing government, the city could end up with a “possible” general fund deficit between $446 million and $466 million to its $1.6 billion budget.

That’s an overdraft of appx. 28%, kids.  Think it’s going to be enough?  I doubt it (posted at the same link):

The deterioration of the economic base of the city has accelerated. There were an estimated 81,754 vacant housing units (22.2 percent of the total) in Detroit before the recession; that number increased to an estimated 101,737 (27.8 percent of the total) in 2008.

The average price of a residential unit sold in the January through November, 2009 period was $12,439, down from $97,847 in 2003. (Yeeowch!--Emphasis mine) Remaining businesses and individuals are challenging property tax assessments on parcels that have lost value and, in some cases, cannot be sold at any price.

More than half of employed city residents work outside the city limits; the metro area has the highest unemployment rate of the 100 major metro areas in the U.S.

Stick a fork in this city, it’s done.  Detroit is quickly becoming a real-life version of Starnesville--the only difference is that it took about 30 years instead of 12.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

I hope everyone out there had a Happy Easter. Although I’m not a Christian, I celebrate Easter in my own way: read a little of the New Testament, have an Easter Egg hunt with Sal 11000 Beta, then watch Ben Hur and Life of Brian back to back.  That sentence probably encapsulates my entire attitude toward religion.

I’ll be back tomorrow to gripe about Obama’s mortgage nonsense.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Bigelow upended the Big Dog last night, sneaking the Oscar away from Avatar for her Iraq War film The Hurt Locker. I have not seen the film yet, but let me know if you guys have with your spoiler-free thoughts.  It’s nice to see a small film get the award, for once.

I’m behind on my movie watching for 2009 and, of the nominees, have only seen Up, District 9, and Avatar.  I thought Up was good but not as good as Pixar’s other efforts.  I enjoyed Avatar immensely but wasn’t sure it was the best picture of the year.  And I thought District 9 just as good, if not better, than Avatar.

Avatar did run into some political issues of its own.  Many people—notably Gregg Easterbrook—took issue with its (apparent) positive portrayal of US marines getting slaughtered by natives.  Some lefties, like Evo Morales, praised its supposed criticism of capitalism and imperialism.

Meh.  I’m not one for reading Big Political Messages into movie about giant blue aliens.  Avatar is not a subtle movie and neither are most of its characters—especially the villains. The human soldiers are mercenaries, ex- a lot of different services and cut off from command and from home.  Their behavior wasn’t shocking to anyone vaguely familiar with the Heart of the Darkness.  And as for the Evil Corporation ... our past is littered with companies that had armies of their own and used them to destroy natives they would have been better off working with (the East India company leaps to mind).  That’s not anti-capitalism or anti-Americanism.  That’s history, unfortunately.

I’ll agree that the movie’s moral landscape is simplistic.  But I didn’t feel like it was a political film and I tire of anything and everything being seen through the lens of politics.  But maybe your mileage differed.

Update: Sandra Bullock won both an Oscar and a Razzie, collecting both in person. I do think she had a point in her Razzie speech: most of the Razzie voters are voting based on the movie’s reputation and/or the personality of the nominees.  I doubt many of them have actually watched the films.

Update: Whatever one may think of the Hurt Locker, it sounds better than this.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The usual suspects in the MSM are all aflutter about some kids on a “take-your-child-to-work-day” being allowed by their father to direct air traffic. It’s a huge scandalous thing! Have these morons been paying attention to who’s pushing for and running the government healthcare takeover? These kids doing air traffic control has a much lower probability of ending in disaster, and fewer people would be affected, when all things are considered. Yet the MSM morons are telling us we should let government take over healthcare. The great majority of the American people get it, though.

Monday, March 01, 2010

It looks like the movie “Hurt Locker”, yet another anti-military Hollyweird fantasy where the soldiers are all idiots or prone to stupid behavior, while loved by the Hollyweirdos precisely because of the portrayal, doesn’t play well with the troops that have done the real thing, and I am not surprised the troops, and especially those with the ordinance disposal units, laugh at this dumb movie.

Reporting from Baghdad, Los Angeles and Washington - Many film critics—and awards voters—have praised “The Hurt Locker’s” depiction of the U.S. military in Iraq, often singling out the bomb disposal drama for its authenticity. But as the film emerges as a favorite to win the best picture Oscar, a number of active soldiers and veterans say the film is Hollywood hokum, portraying soldiers as renegades while failing to represent details about combat accurately.

Truthfully, my first reaction was to actually wonder how the news this anti-US military movie, which I again am pointing out portrayed our troops negatively to suit the image Hollyweird has of the military, was causing a controversy and getting front page time. I admit that was not the least bit surprised about the movie’s negative portrayal, because that seems to be SOP for the left, which while it claims to have respect for the troops and to support our men and women in harms way, also seem to feel the military is an evil entity used by evil America. That this is being pointed out, and in the lefty rags of all places, is surprising.

My guess is that it is attributable to the fact that the CinC now has a (D) next to his name and his WH, despite the facts to the contrary, is now claiming Iraq as their victory. I have already pointed out that I expect much historical whitewashing and fudging to go on about the Iraqi conflict now that we have literally made all the idiots that said a military victory was impossible eat their own words. I am admitting that I didn’t expect it this soon.

I suspect that over the next decade many will rewrite the facts to create the illusion that the left wasn’t just violently opposed to us winning, but actively took measures to force us to lose in Iraq, just like was done after the fall of the USSR to hide the role the mostly pro-Soviet left played there and then. Today we have the majority of these people that were calling Reagan a warmongering nut that would start WW3, all saying that they were right there with Reagan, pushing for the military arms race and the line in the sand that finally broke the evil empire and ended the 70 plus year suffering of millions at the hand of the first collectivist paradise. That is when they don’t try to tell you Reagan’s role in the whole thing was minimal, and the lion share of the credit should go to Gorbachev, or some such other nonsense.

Anyway, I should also mention that it isn’t a coincidence that a movie that inaccurately and negatively portrays our military, like the Hurt Locker does, is up for so many movie awards. Hollyweird loves

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

John Adams, Defense of the Constitutions, 1787

There is arguably no more dysfunctional institution in this country than the American education system.  Outside of the recent bank bailouts, I can’t think of any other constituency that’s had more money thrown at it, for so few results, than our schools.  That’s why when something like this happens, it’s rather stunning (via Mish at Global Economic Analysis):

The teachers didn’t blink.

Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

The superintendent didn’t blink either.

After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.

Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.

Apparently, the city’s economy resembles a lot of former manufacturing towns back east, with a crumbling infrastructure that resembles Detroit’s or Newark’s.  Central Falls has an average income level of $22,000 a year, yet the average teacher’s salary at the school, in an article that Mish linked to in the same post, was $78,000 a year--for the teachers, not the administrators, who often get paid substantially more.  Yet the graduation rate is about 48%, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the whole student body could barely read above a 3rd-grade level.

Now, there’s no question that a town with such a low average income is going to have great difficulty paying these instructors the kinds of salaries they are getting in “good” times, let alone Great Depression Part II.  But in a lot of ways, I think falls on the entire community.  The one thing that was lost in the all the fatuous praise over Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village” philosophy is that, by itself, the state is incapable of raising children--without support and involvement from the parents, grounded in an ethic of discipline and strong morals, those state institutions are going to fail no matter what kind of legislation is passed, what kind of programs are established, or how much money is shoveled into the system. 

For all of his accomplishments while he was teaching mathematics to poor Hispanics, Jaime Escalante would never have been able to get such a program off the ground if the kids’ parents hadn’t been supportive of the changes as well.  The best teacher in the world is going to have their feet cut out from under them if the kids are getting poor examples of citizenship from their parents.  If charity begins at home, so does education--and in communities where education and knowledge (among other things) are considered to be entitlements rather than the core responsibility of a moral society, there will be very little incentive to give children the foundation they need to succeed in life.

As this depression continues, don’t be surprised to see similar stories like this emerge.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Fouad Ajami published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that summed up why our President looks to have feet of clay so far:

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished.

Dennis the Peasant has noticed this too, and addressed the left’s complaints in the most caring, compassionate way possible--that is, he sarcastically and gleefully tap dances on their misery:

Anyway, my point is this: You, David Michael Green, voted for the empty vessel. That’s what you wanted. You didn’t want a candidate with a record of achievement (and failure). You didn’t want a man already measured. You wanted a blank slate. A blank slate you could project all your hopes and dreams upon without having to worry about reality.

You got what you wanted.

At the time of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama had no meaningful experience or accomplishments in the field of politics. You knew nothing of his character or his capacity to lead. You didn’t care. He looked the part and said the right things. Your imagination did the rest. Now that Obama is faced with real life, and his lack of experience and defects of character have been exposed in the most painful manner imaginable, you find yourself professing shock…

Really? What did you expect? Seriously. What did you expect?

You didn’t want the sort of politician who could draw on experience and strength of character to get things done, you wanted the sort of politician you could give yourself a big hug for supporting. It was never about Barack Obama; it was about you. And if he’s fucked it all up, it is in no small part because you fucked it all up, too. You got what you wanted. You wanted Barack Obama and you got him.

That’s not Barack Obama’s fault.

The phrase “In a democracy, we get the government we deserve” has never been so true as it has been the last 17 years or so.  We’ve now had three Presidents from the Baby Boomer generation in charge of this country, and they all have come from broken homes and/or have Daddy Issues.  Clinton was a moral reprobate that got lucky enough to preside during the dot.com bubble; Bush was a “compassionate conservative” whose party had to get its ass whomped in 2006 before he felt compelled to pull out the veto pen; and Obama is President Pretty, Pretty Princess who acts more like Veruca Salt than the leader of the most powerful country in the history of the planet.

And Dennis is right---it’s not Clinton’s fault or Bush’s fault or Obama’s fault that they were put in office and subsequently crapped all over the dignity that it’s supposed to hold.  It’s ours--at least, it’s our society’s.  In an age where two-to-two and a half generations of kids have now been raised largely in homes marked by divorce, single parenthood, and little fundamental stability in the family unit, we aren’t looking for someone to give it to us straight and be blunt with us about what our country requires to stay strong and stable.  We want a national “mommy” to kiss our boo-boos, tell us everything is going to be okay, and give us ice cream afterwards.  Obama is merely the latest step in this generational phenomenon, and barring some monumental event where Gen-X and the Echo Boomers are forced to make a fundamental, foundational change in the way they view the role of the President and society, it likely will not get better.  We have mediocre leaders because we have a mediocre citizenry, plain and simple.

Walt Kelly’s “We have met the enemy, and he is us” was never so appropriate as it is right now.