Love is Blind ................ for a while

On the eve of the non-event of the year in London to which Obama and his family were not invited and on the day after the “proof” that Obama is indeed mortal what do we talk about?

Why: Polls of course!

For a start, can you come up with a good reason why Obama would now choose to produce his long-demanded birth certificate? There can be only one reason and that is because the polls said the suspicions were gaining traction. And the traction was not just among those who wouldn’t vote for his reelection in a million years but among those who voted for him in 2008.

So having posted a blurry copy which will satisfy not one doubter, Obama declared that he had spent too much time away from the business of the people. Then he climbed onto Air Force One to fly to tape the May 2 edition of the Oprah show and to attend 3 fund-raisers in Chicago.

Besotted lovers will stand for almost anything and will deny even the obvious but look out when reality begins to dawn.

And it is beginning to dawn even with Obama’s cheerleaders in the mainstream media as the pundits start to hedge their bets about 2012. Check these out!

In the Bush years, poll results that showed the American people losing confidence in their president were featured routinely on the front page of major newspapers like “The Washington Post.” But when the Post discovers that Obama's ratings are collapsing, you usually need a search party to find where inside the paper they're buried.

On April 26, the Post offered three stories on polls, each with bad news for Obama. The only one mentioned on the front page (in the very bottom right-hand corner) was a Post/ABC poll showing "rising gas prices are leading Americans to drive less, and hurting the president's popularity." From there, the reader would have to travel to page A-12.

"Hurting" is an understatement. Only 39 percent of those who called gas prices a "serious financial hardship" approve of Obama's performance as president. Among independents who found hardship, 67 percent disapprove of Obama. Ouch.

The Post said this hardship could "slow Obama's reelection campaign." Again, that's putting it mildly. Sixty percent of independents feeling the pain of gas prices said they would definitely not vote for Obama. In a match-up with Mitt Romney in that bracket, Romney wins by 24 points.

Turn the page backward, and on page A-10, there's another story. More Americans disapprove of Obama's management of the war in Afghanistan than support it: 44 percent approved, 49 percent disapproved. Once again, just focus on the independents: 53 percent disapproved of Obama's handling of Afghanistan.

Remember the daily barrage of George W. Bush (lack of) approval stories during the Iraq war? Where are those same "reporters" now? Turn the page backward one more time, and on page A-8, there's perhaps the most shocking poll story: Egyptians still disapprove of America. This poll came from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, created in 2002 by liberals at Pew to underline global dissatisfaction with Bush. Last spring, they announced with great fanfare -- this is their own press release headline -- "Obama More Popular Abroad than at Home, Global Image of U.S. Continues To Benefit."

Whoops. What they're finding now is that when Pew sampled Egyptians to see if they had a favorable or unfavorable view of the United States, just 20 percent of Egyptians have a favorable view of the United States, compared to 79 percent unfavorable.

How could this be, after our media hailed Obama's "historic" speech in Cairo in 2009, bowing deeply to what "the holy Koran tells us," telling how he loved as a child to hear "the call of the azan at the break of dawn," and playing up "civilization's debt to Islam"?

Pew asked specifically whether Egyptians had confidence in Obama. Perhaps they loathed America but liked Obama? Nope. The breakdown was still slanted to the negative: 35 percent had confidence, while almost double that number, 64 percent, disagreed. By contrast, fully 75 percent of those surveyed had a favorable view of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Remember MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and other Obama fans trying to credit Obama's Cairo speech for the Egyptian revolution? The Pew pollsters also asked if Egyptians thought the U.S. response to the Tahrir Square protests had a positive or negative impact on the current situation in Egypt. Almost twice as many picked "negative" impact (39 percent) as "positive" (22 percent).

This is certainly not the reception that media liberals and Pew pundits expected. They couldn't imagine that perhaps people in other countries just have an anti-American animus regardless of the president. We elected a pandering leftist who apologizes for America and insists in Cairo that "this cycle of suspicion and discord must end," and disapproval of America in Muslim countries barely budged.

So where is the rest of the Pew poll? Inside this report, they reported polling in 23 countries around the world in their Spring 2011 survey, but there are no results yet as to how popular Obama is among our allies now. Days before the 2008 election, NBC touted a Pew poll, and from Istanbul, correspondent Dawna Friesen concluded, "If the world had a vote, Barack Obama would win in a landslide. ... Regardless of who wins, the world is clamoring for a new America in 2009."

All that media hyperbole about the historically charismatic Obama healing those global wounds inflicted by the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives has crashed and burned. But the media pushing that discredited narrative now need to acknowledge that Obama can't work miracles, especially when half the time he waits around for someone else to make the miracle. He cannot be honestly portrayed any longer as an inspirational leader -- not here, not anywhere.


It also occurs to me that it's probably for the best that the Obamas were not invited to the wedding. Can you imagine having to explain to Michelle that she and the Anointed One were not going to be the center of attention?


Ouch!


Off with their heads!

"No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth." -- John F. Kennedy

Sometimes, some people remember that quotation and attribute it correctly while others with slightly longer memories, me included, think of Josef Goebbels. Surely the greater likelihood though is that it predates both of these and that millions of politicians have borrowed the strategy, if not the actual words, from “Democrates the Mendacious” or some such obscure Athenian.

The sad truth of the matter is that most Americans don't pay much attention to politics and those that do often just parrot doctrine instead of investigating issues with an open mind. This allows lies, myths, and dubious assertions to live on long after they should have shriveled and died in the light of day. Here are just a few of those diseased assertions that have continued to circulate in the body politic long after they should have been put to bed once and for all.

1) Affirmative Action is a pro-black policy. Sure, there are a few black Americans who are helped by Affirmative Action, but the cost of the policy is enormous.

For one thing, no matter how talented or deserving a black American may be, Affirmative Action casts a shadow over his accomplishments. Did she get into the college because she deserved it or because of Affirmative Action? Did he get the promotion because he earned it or because he is black? White Americans often think this privately and it causes even black Americans who oppose Affirmative Action to question the worth of their achievements.

If you want something more concrete than that, here's Thomas Sowell giving a real world example of how Affirmative Action leads to black college students failing to graduate from college.

“In other words, where the racial preferences in admissions are not as great, the differences in graduation rates are not as great. The critics of affirmative action were right: Racial preferences reduce the prospects of black students graduating. Other data tell the same story.

Compare racial preferences in Colorado, for example. At the flagship University of Colorado at Boulder, test score differences between black and white students have been more than 200 points -- and only 39 percent of the black students graduated, compared to 72 percent of white students. Meanwhile, at the University of Colorado at Denver, where the SAT score difference was a negligible 30 points, there was also a negligible difference in graduation rates -- 50 percent for blacks and 48 percent for whites.”

How many millions of black Americans could have graduated from college, but didn't because Affirmative Action "helped" them get into a college they weren't ready to attend?

2) Being for Illegal immigration is a pro-Hispanic policy. It's intriguing that being pro-illegal immigration is supposed to be the key way to appeal to Hispanic Americans because they're being hurt much worse than the average American by illegal immigration.

Because illegal immigrants often don't buy health care, don’t pay for auto insurance and cheat on their income taxes, they can afford to work for much lower wages than American citizens. There are no "jobs Americans won't do," although there may be jobs they won't do at the same price as an illegal alien who doesn’t have to pay the same bills.

This is a particularly big issue for Hispanic Americans because they're more likely than other Americans to end up directly competing with illegals. Take a look at the industries that are dominated by Hispanic workers.

Hispanic workers are the backbone of industries like meat-packing, food service, construction, agriculture, and domestic services. Hispanic workers land two out of every three new construction jobs.

Then there are the industries that are swarming with illegals.

According to the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement, as of March 2006 almost twenty four percent of all construction workers in the country were foreign born. Most of the immigrant construction workers are Hispanic, although not all Hispanic construction workers are immigrants, of course. In March 2006 a little over twenty-four percent of the construction workforce was Hispanic, compared to approximately six percent in 1980. Seventy percent of the 1.4 million Hispanic construction workers in the U.S. in 2000 were born outside the United States, and fifty-seven percent were not U.S. citizens.

Farmers likewise stress that access to migrant labor is critical for agriculture. There are about 1.6 million full-time farm workers in the US. About 80 per cent of those workers are foreign born and nearly seven out of 10 are working illegally.

There are still roughly 11 million illegal aliens in this country. If they weren't here, the Hispanic unemployment rate, which is at 12.5 percent, would probably be much closer -- or perhaps even better than the white unemployment rate of 8 percent.

3) We can fix our deficit problems by taxing the rich. This has become the de facto position of the Democrat Party. Forget spending cuts! We don't need 'em! We'll just tax the rich until the budget is balanced and we've paid off our debt.

There's one huge problem with that: It won't work, it can't be done, it's impossible. No matter how you massage it, the math won't add up.

Even if we took all the profits, all the salaries, all of the assets, all of the expenses, all of the revenues and holdings of the rich and we liquidated them we’d pay of the interest on our national debt for that one year. Then what ……………?

Put another way, if we were to pull a "full Stalin" and take everything "the rich" in this country makes and owns, it would pay off the interest on our debt for a single year. Then, when the next year rolls around, we would have another trillion dollar plus deficit on the way, but with no tax revenue from the rich, no one who could invest in new businesses, and no entrepreneurs willing to bust their behind to make money the government would confiscate from them. Hello, new Depression. Hello, Doom.

We can discuss whether the rich should pay higher taxes, but what you can't truthfully argue is that the government can get spending under control without dramatic spending cuts.

4) The more money we put into education, the better our schools will perform. We see the exact same scenario repeated again and again in this country. We hear claims that education is underfunded and it's causing our schools to perform poorly. We respond by ramping up spending dramatically. There's no improvement in performance. A few years later, the cycle repeats.

Of course, if money were really the problem, we'd already have at least the second best schools in the world.

According to the most recent OECD figures (2007), the Koreans spent $5,437 per primary-school pupil; we spent $10,229. For education as a whole, the Koreans spent $7,325 per pupil; we spent $14,269. They not only “outpace our kids in math and science”; they do it by only spending half as much. ....We spend more than anyone but the Swiss on education, and by any rational measure at least half of it is entirely wasted.

So what do we get for the second highest spending level on planet earth? It's not so impressive.

The three-yearly OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year- olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

We can debate the reasons why our public schools do such a mediocre job until the cows come home and then we can spend twice as long trying to figure out how to fix it, but what we can't rationally do anymore is blame it on our schools being underfunded.

5) Being tough on crime is a racist policy. It is true that percentage wise, black Americans are arrested and go to jail at a higher rate than other ethnic groups. So, some people look at that and declare that being tough on crime obviously must be racist.

However, they're missing the all-important other half of the equation. Black criminals are, for the most part, preying on other black Americans.

Blacks are only 13% of the population, but over 40% of the murder victims. Ninety-Three percent of those black victims are killed by other black people.

In other words, nobody benefits more from a black criminal going to jail than other black Americans. The same goes for keeping black criminals in jail.

About 43 percent of prisoners who were let out in 2004 were sent back to prison by 2007, either for a new crime or for violating the conditions of their release, the study found.

If racists really were in charge of our justice system, being soft on crime would be one of the most effective ways that they could hurt black Americans.

Gotta lie you wish were true? Get a job at MSNBC or the New York Times and knock yourself out!

Render Unto Caesar

This coming Sunday is Easter, surely the most important day of the year for Christians around the world for without the events that it celebrates, there is no Christianity. Relatively few, especially in this country, will concern themselves with things spiritual but will concentrate instead on temporal fripperies such as chocolate eggs and baby rabbits, which, a week or two from now will find themselves discarded to find their own way to survive.

Something else though happens this coming Sunday morning unless my first grade arithmetic has deserted me.

This country runs out of money or, perhaps more accurately, it runs out of credit.

Early last Tuesday morning I resisted the temptation to take a smart person to task. He contended that we must, as a nation, attend to the debt limit. I said that we must attend to the debt. Well that too he agreed but we must increase the debt limit first.

I was in someone else’s house, it was the owner’s son who proposed this “bassackward” approach to economic reality, and so I kept my peace. But how I wanted to propose this scenario ……………

Let's say a guy has a good job and has a delightful wife and a couple of kids. Through his bank and his credit union he has a line of credit worth a million dollars while on the other side of the ledger, he owes $500,000 in mortgage, car loans etc.

One day, the delightful wife and he decide that they should rearrange things so that they can retire some of their debt and so they sell one of their cars and cut out a planned expenditure on a camper. Because of these efforts, they reduce their debt by $50,000.

Where then is the justification or the need to go to their bank and apply for an increase in their credit line?

Where then is the justification for the US to go to our bankers around the world if we are serious about reducing our deficit?

The answer is that the Democrats are not. Why else would Obama announce his budget with GOP leaders in the front row including Paul Ryan and castigate them as ideologues? Well, the answer is that Obama’s resume tells you who and what he is which is more than you can say about his birth certificate wherever that is.

He is a Chicago community activist, which is Midway liberal-speak for a street thug.

Not that he’s necessarily the enforcer in person. After all, Capone didn't always wield the baseball bat himself. Sometimes he sent a czar or, in the case of Standard and Poor’s, Obama sent Timmy Geithner. You remember him? He is the "genius' we couldn't manage without but yet this "wunderkind" found Turbo Tax too complicated and is now the Treasury Secretary.

For once, in a very long time, this White House was rattled when that reporting agency proposed to downgrade their assessment of US bonds to a negative. The White House huffed and puffed but S&P, to their credit, did not budge. Nor should they because their credibility is on the line with governments and corporations around the world.

So why would a highly intelligent and well educated man such as the straw-man I cited hold the views he does? Why would he discount the Tea Party as “weirdoes” and “sickoes”?

He’s a liberal. He’s a lifelong Democrat. He depends on his union. And, he’s scared. And so he should be but the remedy he seeks will not be found where he's looking.

The Not-So-Special Relationship

I was in England not too long before the 2008 election and at least twice since then. And I did not visit just as a tourist, even though I may have felt like one. Instead, I actually talked to people, most of which were voters.

Back in 2008, many Brits gazed upon Obama with the same Messianic adoration we saw here. However, not anymore. There was a shift almost immediately after his occupation of the White House but 3 weeks ago I felt a sea change and this is seen in the article that follows from The London Daily Telegraph Editor On Foreign Relations.

"Let me be clear: I'm not normally in favor of boycotts, and I love the American people. I holiday in their country regularly, and hate the tedious snobby sneers against the United States . But the American people chose to elect an idiot who seems hell bent on insulting their allies, and something must be done to stop Obama's reckless foreign policy, before he does the dirty on his allies on every issue."

One of the most poorly kept secrets in Washington is President Obama's animosity toward Great Britain , presumably because of what he regards as its sins while ruling Kenya (1895-1963).

One of Barack Hussein Obama's first acts as president was to return to Britain a bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office since 9/11. He followed this up by denying Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on his first state visit, the usual joint press conference with flags.

The president was "too tired" to grant the leader of America 's closest ally a proper welcome, his aides told British journalists.

Mr. Obama followed this up with cheesy gifts for Mr. Brown and the Queen. Columnist Ian Martin described his behavior as "rudeness personified." There was more rudeness in store for Mr. Brown at the opening session of the United Nations in September. "The prime minister was forced to dash through the kitchens of the UN in New York to secure five minutes of face time with President Obama after five requests for a sit down meeting were rejected by the White House," said London Telegraph columnist David Hughes. Mr. Obama's "churlishness is unforgivable," Mr. Hughes said.

The administration went beyond snubs and slights last week when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsed the demand of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, a Hugo Chavez ally, for mediation of Argentina 's specious claim to the Falkland Islands , a British dependency since 1833. The people who live in the Falklands, who speak English, want nothing to do with Argentina. When, in 1982, an earlier Argentine dictatorship tried to seize the Falklands by force, the British -- with strong support from President Ronald Reagan -- expelled them.

"It is truly shocking that Barack Obama has decided to disregard our shared history," wrote Telegraph columnist Toby Young. "Does Britain 's friendship really mean so little to him?" One could ask, does the friendship of anyone in the entire world mean anything to him?

"I recently asked several senior administration officials, separately, to name a foreign leader with whom Barack Obama has forged a strong personal relationship during his first year in office," wrote Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, on Monday. " A lot of hemming and hawing ensued." One official named French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but his contempt for Mr. Obama is an open secret. Another named German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But, said Mr. Diehl, "Merkel too has been conspicuously cool toward Obama."

Mr. Obama certainly doesn't care about the Poles and Czechs, whom he has betrayed on missile defense. Honduras and Israel also can attest that he's been an unreliable ally and an unfaithful friend. Ironically, our relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have never been worse. Russia has offered nothing in exchange for Mr. Obama's abandonment of missile defense. Russia and China won't support serious sanctions on Iran . Syria 's support for terrorism has not diminished despite efforts to normalize diplomatic relations. The reclusive military dictatorship that runs Burma has responded to our efforts at "engagement" by deepening its ties to North Korea .

And the Chinese make little effort to disguise their contempt for him.

For the first time in a long time, the President of the United States is actually distrusted by its allies and not in the least feared by its adversaries. Nor is Mr. Obama now respected by the majority of Americans. Understandably focused on the dismal economy and Mr. Obama's relentless efforts to nationalize and socialize health care, Americans apparently have yet to notice his dismal performance and lack of respect in the world community.
They soon will.

--London Daily Telegraph editor -- Alex Singleton

How's that hope and change working for you?

The Case of the Autumn Crocus

I know this sounds like a Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie title but it’s not. For a start it’s a sneaky way to explain the absence of many posts since my return from Europe because I’ve been sick and I’m still not close to 100%.

It’s also a way to get into a topic that presents a graphic example of Government’s involvement in the healthcare business.

Over the years I’ve been supportive of and sympathetic to the pharmaceutical industry’s much criticized pricing policies. The companies spend years trying to develop new medications and treatments. Sometimes that research does result in a product but more often than not it doesn’t because it doesn’t work as hoped or because it’s too toxic or because some competitor has beaten them to it.

Which brings me to the main topic which was forcibly thrust down my throat as an all too graphic example of government involvement in healthcare. Since the first century of the Common Era, practitioners have used an extract from a plant called Colchicum Autumnale, the Autumn Crocus for the treatment of conditions as varied as gout and familial Mediterranean fever.

Now those early practitioners may not have understood the chemistry or the pharmacology of the product we know today as colchicine but they knew it worked and they knew all about dosages, side effects and possible toxicity. In our time it was produced by several manufacturers at an average cost per pill of 9 cents. I know because I’ve been prescribed it in the past.

Because of its long history, it was one of a substantial list of so-called “orphan drugs” and now we come to the part which can be paraphrased by the oft-used phrase, “I’m from the Government and I'm here to help.”

As a drug predating the FDA, colchicine was sold as a generic in the United States for many years. Then in 2009, the FDA approved a brand name called Colcrys and awarded its manufacturer a three-year term of market exclusivity in return for government-approved testing. Now some people might think that being handed a 3 year monopoly might be enough but they’d be wrong for, in addition to exclusivity, the FDA prohibited existing manufacturers from continuing generic sales.

And to top it all, the sole anointed company gained approval to up the price from 9 cents to $4.85 per pill, a 54-fold increase. 54-fold note, not 54%.

Thus it was that my co-pay went from $5 to $106. And that's after Government approved prescription insurance.

Now, yesterday, while everyone else was focused on Obama bashing Paul Ryan, I was still concentrating on government healthcare and I noticed that he took full ownership of death panels yesterday. Naturally, Obama did not call them death panels. He called them “an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers.” But his description hits dead on with what his death panels will do.

According to Obama yesterday, the death panels “will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services seniors need.”

We already know what they’ll recommend as “the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending”. Obama’s own advisers have told us. They will prioritize giving health care to healthier people and let sicker people die. At end of life, they will deny people life sustaining treatment because, after all, they’re going to die anyway. Note his phrasing: “protecting access to the services seniors need.” 


Dying people, according to Obama’s advisers, need hospice not hope. They certainly do not need expensive treatments that may buy them time to see the birth of a new grandchild or other reasons.

“We will change the way we pay for health care – not by procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results. . . . If we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare,” Obama said. At a time Democrats are saying Republicans want to starve old people to death, Democrats are intent on embracing a cost savings model for Medicare that incentivizes doctors to encourage people to die and, when all else fails, gives a death panel “the authority to make additional savings by” ensuring the dying elderly die quickly.

“Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself,” Obama said. Really? The only way that will happen is by rationing. You may not like the use of the phrase “death panel,” but make no mistake about it — at the end of your life, in Obama’s America, his death panel will throw you under the bus in a way much closer to reality than metaphor.

My travelling companion in the UK was appalled to hear a BBC radio report that a woman local to where we were had been denied a treatment for her terminal cancer. Even more poignant was the revelation that if she’d lived 15 miles away in the jurisdiction of another “death panel”, the treatment would have been approved. It seems that once we simply had to choose to live in an area that afforded us the best schools. 


Now we have to factor in the benevolence of the local "death panel."

Me? I’m going to tend my crocuses!

What if we held a war and nobody came?

I do not know what the countdown clock says now about Armageddon which in “Liberal Speak” is a shutdown of the Federal Government.

Two years after an historic election, Americans asked for a refund. Unfortunately, the dramatic reversal we witnessed in November merely presented the opportunity for a refund. It was the first victory in a long war for the heart and soul of both our country and the Republican Party.

During the first two years of his presidency, Barack Obama spent more than the first four years of the Reagan administration. It took from our nation’s founding until 1991 to rack up as much cumulative debt as we have in the last two years. Americans expect these newly elected Members of Congress, and those that rode the powerful conservative wave into positions of enormous power, to begin issuing their refund.

Republicans in the House have done an admirable job navigating these unpredictable waters. They swiftly sent a full repeal of Obamacare to the Senate, promptly voted down by a Democrat majority determined to ignore the Constitution and the will of the American people.

House Republicans also passed a seven-month continuing resolution that cut $61 billion in spending and blocked funding for a host of terrible policies, including Obamacare. Most conservatives wanted more, and in fairness, so did most of those lawmakers who ultimately voted yes. But, it was a good first step.

This spending measure is only necessary because the previous Congress failed to even try and pass a budget. They made absolutely no progress on appropriation measures. There was no effort by the Democrat-dominated Congress to govern. They simply wanted to pass big-ticket items - Obamacare, cap-and-trade, financial overall, stimulus, etc.

When the results of November became clear, the political strategists advised the Democrats to continue abdicating their responsibility. The political strategists - who were already looking toward the 2012 elections - wanted to make life difficult for the new Republican House. They knew forcing them to handle last year’s business would complicate their agenda and potentially force a government shutdown.

Let me repeat that again: since last November, Democrats and their political strategists have been trying to force Republicans into a government shutdown. It is the Democrats – for political reasons – who are hoping and strategizing for a shutdown.

Think about how this year would have been different if Congress had actually passed a budget and their appropriation measures last year. The continuing resolution skirmish, which has dominated Washington for the past six weeks, would not have occurred. House Republicans would have been free to pursue a full governing agenda, which spending reductions would have obviously been a part of. All without the angst of a government shutdown.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a less than ideal situation because of the Left's politically motivated obstructionism. However, it is also an opportunity that Congress must seize, especially if it is to repair its relationship with the American people.

Americans understand that Democrats control the Senate, and Majority Leader Harry Reid is not only a big-government liberal, but also a partisan political animal who will stop at nothing to ensure Republicans fail.

Americans also understand President Obama has been entirely absent from the debate. As his press secretary said, “it's a hard job.” Sure, we get that. But he was elected because he said he could do the hard things. Americans now understand he cannot even do the little things. His own party is asking him to "engage" on budgetary issues. When 32 Senators from your own party ask you to engage, you have problems.

The President's dereliction of duty is carefully planned though, and most certainly politically motivated. He's biding his time, filling out his NCAA bracket, and waiting for his Senate colleagues to force a shutdown. Then, President Obama will re-emerge and play the role of Washington peacemaker. He'll offend his base by offering some small cuts, he'll bring the "non-fringe" elements of Washington together and declare victory. The President's advisors remember how his popularity grew after the December tax deal, and they are doing their best to replicate that success.

For Senate Democrats and this President, partisan politics is the name of the game.

President Obama and his crew are betting misguided Republican fear over a government shutdown will cause Democrats to win on the politics and the policy. That would be a disastrous turn of events.

What are conservatives and Republicans to do? This week, they need to tell their constituents that the time (if there ever was one) for short-term funding measures has passed. Then, they need to make sure their constituents understand that President Obama and Harry Reid are totally absent from a debate that will shape the country we leave to our grandchildren. By and large, Americans understand Democrats are not acting in good faith. In fact, they're acting in bad faith – and we shouldn't be afraid to say it.

As for me, wouldn’t it be fun if the Government shut down and nobody noticed? But some people will notice. The congressmen and senators will be paid but our brave men and women in uniform will not. And the reason that the military will not be paid is that their Commander-in-Chief fobbed off a bill to do just that as a “distraction.”

But yet, that same person is happy to promise to veto any legislation to limit federally-funded abortions.

Why am I not surprised?

Mr. Dithers Goes to Washington

Perhaps it was because I was 5000 miles away from this desk or perhaps because of jet lag on the way, I hadn’t been sleeping well. Therefore, I did some thinking during those ungodly wakeful hours.

As I have confessed before, my travelling partner was and is a “recovering Obama voter.” By that I mean that she voted for Obama in 2008 but is very discouraged by his long list of broken promises since. Not that we argue about this stuff, because we don’t, but sometimes we get closer than others.

At a quiet dinner, I was asked if the man (Obama) had done, or could do, anything right. I paused, and not for any dramatic effect, because I needed to think. Try as I might, I could not come up with anything. Mentally, I raced through transparent government, Gitmo closure, civil trials for terrorists, abolition of the “Patriot Act,” and the end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Well, we all know what happened to those promises and so I said that I could not come up with one accomplishment but that I was open to listen to suggestions. I was tempted to mention his Nobel Peace Prize and the worthiness of the award considering his attacks on Libya but I demurred. I also thought to myself that if the Libyans want a new Muslim leader why not send ‘em ours. Would solve two problems in one. But in the interests of harmony, I kept all these thoughts to myself and we agreed to settle on sharing a dessert and coffee.

Now make no mistake, the lady is exceptionally bright and very well read and informed. However, she is a lifelong Democrat and old habits die only with difficulty.

There are several benefits to foreign travel including the opportunity to see how others spend their lives. And if one is prepared to listen, a tourist may learn how he or she is regarded by the world at large. Thus it was interesting to listen to the British talk about Obama as they perceive him now compared to the hype of the election and just after.

Now it’s true that Obama seems to have gone out of his way to piss off the Brits by such thoughtless and petty actions as returning a gift of a bust of Churchill and awarding the Queen an iPod loaded with Obama’s speeches. But these trivialities aside, the overwhelming perception on that side of the Atlantic is that the man cannot make a decision and seems to be obsessed with how the opinion polls will view him.

At one point during this conversation, I opined that Obama’s inability for decisive action was purely a result of his lack of experience and ability. Alternatively, I asked whether it was because he feels he has to consult the hordes of advisers with which he has surrounded himself, all of which seem to hail from the senior common rooms of Ivy-League academia and none of which have any real-world experience. In other words, everything becomes a subject for learned debate.

Then returning to this country I was gratified to hear a congressional Democrat actually say about his fearless leader that, “it was important to listen to what he says and not how just how he says it”.

It was also very telling that in the first of the Obama reelection ads, the great man did not speak but left it up to nameless, one presumes, actors to do his talking for him which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.  

All this leads me to have hope that he is far from invulnerable next year provided the GOP can find a worthy spokesman and it ain’t Newt.