No, I Will Not ‘Be Exceedingly Careful’

Robert Gibbs is the one who needs to “be exceedingly careful” with what he says. Press Secretaries are supposed to answer questions on behalf of the White House not give ultimatums to critics of White House policy, judicial appointments or anything else. His outrageous comment today is intimidation politics of the worst kind, and something that is becoming all too familiar in this White House and by Democrats in general over the last 20 years. When they don’t like what their opponent is saying (or might say) the strategy they employ is to make the opponent look like a radical or worse to marginalize their view point. Don’t believe me; Miss California was absolutely crucified for having the exact same view point as BARRACK OBAMA!

Now Mr. Gibbs advises those opposed to Judge Sotomayor’s appointment to “Be exceedingly careful”. We’re sorry Mr. Gibbs, but part of the process of being nominated for the cabinet, the federal bench and certainly for the Supreme Court is that you get grilled in every conceivable way. Sometimes that process isn’t pretty or politically correct, and if Gibbs and this White House don’t realize that, they are even less experienced than we thought.

These appointments are for life, and the 9 people on that bench literally hold the country’s future in their hands. If Judge Sotomayor isn’t up to that challenge then she had better do us all a favor and withdraw right now. If she is up to it, then Robert Gibbs should shut up, read the news, and let the political process run its course.

NOT ANOTHER ONE!!!

If you didn’t happen to catch this Washington Times article on Thursday, you are probably going to find this incredibly hard to believe. President Obama has somehow managed to nominate ANOTHER criminal for a key position in his cabinet. This latest criminal, Ronald Sims, was found by the Washington State Supreme Court to have intentionally withheld critical financial documents from the taxpayers of Seattle. Where does Mr. Obama find these people? Are there no law-abiding citizens available to work in this administration? I’m told there are several million people out of work these days; surely a handful of them must have clean criminal records.

Mr. Obama nominated Mr. Sims as the top deputy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just three weeks after the court’s ruling, which harshly and repeatedly criticized Mr. Sims’ office for its conduct during a 12-year legal fight.

If confirmed, Mr. Sims would help manage billions of federal dollars set aside for building, maintaining and operating public housing inside a government agency with a history of misspending and corruption. A Senate committee last week forwarded Mr. Sims’ nomination to the full Senate without asking the nominee a single question.

Three weeks after the Supreme Court of Washington clearly delineates Mr. Sims lack of character and judgement, President Obama decides he’s a great choice for a key administration position. Nope, no arrogance here. Another crook in Washington is not, in and of itself a story; after all, it’s practically a prerequisite to gain residence in our capitol city, but the realization that the Obama administration can not seem to nominate anyone who isn’t a criminal is starting to become a little disturbing.

The Campaign Is Over Mr. President

This week the White House began airing a TV commercial trying to pressure Congress into enacting the President’s irresponsible budget. This follows a door knocking campaign last weekend by Obama’s post-election, grassroots lobbying group, Organizing for America.

On a side note, if the sitting President, with HUGE majorities in both houses of Congress, has to lobby this hard to get his agenda through, the American people really ought to ask themselves why!!!

Of course, it’s not unheard of for a President to campaign for a policy change he believes in; Presidents have been doing it for decades now. But, campaigning has always meant making speeches either around the country or, if the issue is a high enough priority, going on television to make his case.  The hope being that the people will respond positively and put pressure on their representatives in Washington to support the policy.

That’s politics. However, these recent actions take the country in a dangerous direction.  One in which the campaigning never stops and the divisions in our society that crop up every four years never heal over.  In our system, people are of course free to campaign for what they believe in. Our country was founded by citizens campaigning for their beliefs, but when the President is sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue directing foot soldiers (make no mistake they consider this a war) to knock on your door and tell you what you should think… Well, that’s a slippery slope if ever there’s been one.

Excuses, Excuses

Our nation faces a crucial time in its history and our President keeps making excuses. He seems more concerned with protecting himself from blame and/or lowering expectations for what he and his administration will accomplish than he is with actually solving the dilemma. His two favorite excuses are that he inherited the current situation and that he has been in office for such a short period of time.  I’m sorry but neither of these excuses hold water.

I’m making a rule; effective immediately, no politician is ever again allowed to blame his or her predecessor for the present situation.  What gives me the authority to institute this rule?  Absolutely nothing except that I am a citizen and a taxpayer and as such I’m tired of my time and money being wasted by this useless exercise.  Every time a new administration takes over or a new party takes control of the Congress they spend the first couple years of their tenure blaming everything that goes wrong on their predecessor.  How does this help the American people?  The truth is that it’s never this simple either, but they count on the lack of Common Sense of the average voter and they know they can fool a lot of people with this drivel.

But back to the present situation… Mr. Obama would like to blame his predecessor for our present set of circumstances.  Does Mr. Bush share some of the responsibility?  Of course.  But the causes of the current economic situation go back DECADES covering at least 5 Presidential administrations and 16 sessions of Congress.  Democrats were in charge, Republicans were in charge, but to blame any one politician or even one party is juvenile and the President knows it.  He does it anyway because there are enough senseless people out there who will swallow it hook, line and sinker and will even ignorantly regurgitate it when their friend or co-worker dares to question Mr. Obama.

Bottom line, I don’t care who is to blame – not right now and not as it relates to how the American people should judge the performance of this White House.  President Obama ran a campaign of ludicrous over-the-top promises (as most politicians do today) claiming he was going to solve our problems – remember “Hope and Change”?  So, you promised Mr. President, time for you to deliver and I really don’t care what you inherited.  See, that’s the job.  Maybe you didn’t realize that due to your much over-looked utter inexperience, but President of the United States is where the buck stops!

The second excuse, that of how short a time he’s been in office, is even more outrageous than the first and extremely disingenuous.  President Obama was a U.S. Senator for the last 4 years, remember (you better, that was the grand total of his experience before becoming leader of the free world).  His run for President started more than two years ago and he had a responsibility while running for office to stay abreast of the issues.  After all, he was running for the job of handling these issues, was he not?  Lastly and perhaps most important for everyone to remember, the transition from the Bush to the Obama administration was the most transparent and inclusive in history.  The Obama team has had a “seat at the table” since mid-November.

Put down the excuses, Mr. President, and get to work.  You’ll succeed or you’ll fail, but stop trying to set the stage in case things don’t go your way.  America doesn’t have any time for that.

Funny Math – Not So Funny

Numbers are funny things. They don’t lie per se, but they can be manipulated to say almost anything. And this week when President Obama released his proposal to, “cut the federal deficit in half in four years”, some numbers were manipulated to say some pretty funny things. Although I’m not sure any of us will be doing any laughing when it is all said and done.

Prior to this year’s monstrous projected deficit of $1,300,000,000,000 (man, that’s a big number) the largest single year deficit in U.S. history was $455 Billion in fiscal year 2008.  Yes, you read that right, our 2009 deficit will be three times the previous record! By the way, half of $1.3 Trillion is $650 Billion.  Did you catch it?  Look at those numbers again.  When Mr. Obama promises to cut the federal deficit in half over the next 4 years, what he’s really promising you is that he will run the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th largest deficits in U.S. history behind only this year – and that’s if everything goes according to plan.  Gee, thanks Mr. President!

This would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic.  I noted this detail within 30 seconds of hearing his speech and waited for someone in the press to act like a journalist and comment on this point, but nothing.  Instead they lauded the President with praise for “reigning in spending”, “making the tough decisions”, etc. etc.  Well, there’s just one problem.  The President isn’t reigning in spending.  Instead spending is going to increase every single year under his budget as this chart indicates.

So, we are going to spend more than we’ve ever spent, run bigger deficits than we’ve ever run and every thing will get better?  That sounds like a great plan.  But it gets even sketchier folks!  Look closely at this chart, the administration expects tax revenues to grow $2 Trillion in the next 10 years.  Every dollar short of these revenue projections will be another dollar of debt, because we already know that Congress has no idea how to restrain themselves when it comes to spending.

This truly is some funny math. But it’s not so funny!