Your Government Atwerk - Updated

Lovely, just lovely.

The games politicians play: Barack Obama is having a lot of fun using the government shutdown to squeeze the public in imaginative ways.

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.

“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

It should be noted that this is the direct result of Harry Reid's obstructionism. This shutdown is owned wholly by the Democrats, not the Republicans. Anyone who tells you different doesn't know what they're talking about.

UPDATE! - Here's a list of the  unnecessary shutdowns - Link  to Breitbart.

UP-UPDATE!! - The Pentagon is withholding the Death Gratuity to families, falsely blames Tea Party.

Congress passed the bill paying the military, and Obama signed it. Yet the Pentagon is interpreting this to deny the families the benefit, and telling the families it is because of Congress. This is beyond obscene, a part of a continuing attack on the military to diminish and divide.

h/t Drudge Report

Obama's Debt Depicted as a Road Trip

Good video. Re-posting it here from AoSHQ to help spread the word.

The level of debt that Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are directly responsible for should be criminal. What we should be seeing from the GOP (who control the national purse strings in the House of Representatives) is an immediate return to 2006 budgetary levels at a bare minimum.

Budget Battle BS

After watching and hearing the wrangling over the budget battle from afar, I’m not optimistic that conservatism will win this round. What I’ve heard and seen has been so far removed from reality that it’s starting to resemble a circus. Not that Washington politics has ever been rooted in reality, but this is getting ridiculous.

As a bullshitter par excellence myself, I must say I’ve never heard so many lies of commission and omission in my life.

Never.

Let’s start with a few facts, shall we? Our esteemed President’s favorite sport, right after golf, is blaming his predecessor George Bush for each and every little thing that’s currently wrong with our economy, from the debt, to inflation, skyrocketing gasoline prices, to post-nasal drip and painful rectal itch. It’s what he does.

Well, that may have worked for a while, but two and a half years into his term, that just doesn’t cut it anymore. One thing is very clear: Obama owns this economy, lock, stock, and rotting barrel.

I’ve been wanting to run this graph for a while, since everyone else in the blogosphere has. I know, me, Alabama, slow, etc.

We Who Follow These Things So You Don’t Have To know that Congress was taken over by the Democrats following the little fit the American voters had in 2006 when they tossed Republicans out in a grand display of displeasure with their spendthrift ways. They had controlled Congress and the White House and yet had failed to rein in spending.

Granted, we were in two wars, which always tend to be rather expensive affairs, but the economy was still roaring along. If you remember, the Mainstream Media looked upon any downturn in what we’d all gladly return to today as signs of the Coming Apocalypse. I’m sure y’all remember when the talking heads claimed DOOM! (Hi, Monty!) when the unemployment number figure rose a mortifying two tenths of one percentage point.

President Bush was an economic terrorist! Soon, dogs and cats would be sleeping together, there would be a river of evil slime running through New York sewers, oh, wait, that was a movie, never mind.

Still, I think today, everyone in the country would gladly go back in time to the days of essentially full employment and nonexistent inflation.

And just so everyone remembers, here are a few numbers from those days that the MSM said were so horrible: Unemployment was dreadfully high at 4.6% Gasoline was an unthinkable $2.25/gal. (Click on the History tab)

The horror.

As the chart above clearly shows, this debt crisis didn’t start until the Dems controlled Congress and Obama became President. Bush’s TARP was just the beginning of federal spending, soon to be followed by the Stimulus, a debacle of near-Biblical proportion that did a great deal to add to the deficit and nothing to solve our economic problems. Next up was ObamaCare, then the Dodd-Frank takeover of Wall Street, the bailouts of GM and Chrysler, Cash 4 Clunkers, the student loan takeover, an avalanche of new environmental regulations, Obama’s illegal oil drilling moratoriums in the Gulf, the list goes on. At the same time that the Pelosi-Reid Congress was spending the country into ruin, President Obama was busy putting the clamps on the private sector, resulting in the lowest amount of federal revenue since 1950.

My point is that the very same Democrats who got us into this mess are the ones currently striving with all their might to keep us in it.

One would think that Republicans would have a large cache of rhetorical ammunition in the way of facts to launch against the Dems in this battle, and one would be quite correct. But have they used any of it? No. They. Haven't.

Why this is is a wonderment to me, as I’m sure it is to you. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi clearly started this mess and are now blaming the Republicans for it. But, hey, it’s what they do. If you want just a taste of what the Dems are saying, you need look no further than this quote by DNC ChairThing, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

“Aren’t we at the point where the closer we get to chaos, the more concern that there should be about coming to the table and compromising with Democrats?” Wasserman Schultz asked. “This is not leadership. This is almost like dictatorship. I know they want to force the outcome that … their extremists would like to impose. But they are getting ready to spark panic and chaos, and they seem to be OK with that. And it’s just really disappointing, and potentially devastating.”

So, let me see if I have this straight: We’re the extremists for wanting Washington to act in a fiscally responsible way, just like we do in our lives? WTF? On what planet do you live, darlin’, where this makes any kind of sense?

Another thing, Debbie, your psychological projection is showing: it was President Obama who recently stated that he finds the idea of being a dictator “tempting” in a speech last week before the radical racist Mexican supremacist group La Raza.

I have a few questions for the GOP: why haven’t you called the Dems’ bluff yet? Why haven’t you guys used the word “obstructionist” to characterize the Senate Democrats repeated threats to squash any bill that comes out of the House? Or even used that term for the Presidents’ same threats? That’s a game anyone can play.

Why haven’t you pointed out that all this wild spending started when the Dems took over congress in 2007? And that Obama said it was only temporary? And that he also said he wanted to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office? You could even use a little bit of snark by saying you only want to help him fulfill his promise.

What are you guys waiting for? You’re clearly losing the public relations battle and yet you seem stricken by Bush’s Disease: you refuse to defend yourself with even a few simple facts that a lot of Americans already know. Facts that would work in your favor if only you'd say them out loud. Facts that would expose the Dems for the tax-and-spend radicals that they are.

You guys could be winning this and enjoying a much-needed boost in your popularity, and yet you seem reluctant to do so. I mean, hell, if I can do it, certainly you can too. It’s not rocket surgery.

You guys can’t even defend the concept of a free market economy nor point out how this administration is twisting it into something unrecognizable. All you’re doing is giving ammunition to those who wildly claim that capitalism doesn’t work. How can it, under these circumstances, when those we’ve elected to act in our place don’t understand even the basics of how our economy is supposed to work and pat themselves on the back for placing mountains of restrictions on it?

Mr. Boehner, why don’t you realize that you will be attacked for anything you do or say? You might as well be criticized for stating the truth. Doing that will strike a chord with the nation. You could step up to the podium armed with facts, yet you refuse to do so.

You can be cordial and biting at the same time without appearing to be whatever it is that you’re trying to avoid. We know you’re trying to be the adult in the room and you’re almost there. Almost.

If you were to try to appeal to the vast majority of hard working Americans who understand what it will take to get the country out of the Obama Depression, you’d find your own and congressional Republicans’ poll numbers would start climbing, thereby preparing the ground for the 2012 elections, which the GOP stands poised to win.

Your reluctance to embrace a truly smaller government makes the rest of us who are rooting for you question whether you really want that or if you are just another big government bureaucrat in disguise. Please stop acting as if last November’s elections didn’t mean anything and that Congressional Republicans don’t have a clear mandate to stop this Marxist/Socialist administration from further crippling our country’s economy.

It’s up to you, Mr. Speaker. An anxious country is waiting for you to tell us the truth and counter the lies and propaganda coming from the radical, leftist Alinskyites who have infested Washington.

It’s time to get your own ass in line.

America Knows How To Fix the Budget – Why Doesn’t Washington?

It’s Monday morning and time for some arsenic in your coffee. You’re welcome.

As of this writing, the budget talks between Congress and the White House have collapsed. Thankfully, the Republicans stood their ground for a semi-sane solution to the impending deadline of August 2nd. This is the date that the Obama administration has deemed the point past which the oceans will stop receding, or something.

Oh wait, that’s when we’ll default on our massive debt obligations to our most favored trading nation, Communist China. But from what I can gather, this date is merely the one on which Obama can start his newest assault on House Republican for failing to approve his budget with $2T, yes, that’s a T, of tax increases.

We have plenty of revenue coming in to service these payments to our fine financial friends, but you’d never know it, especially if you relied on the Mainstream Media to keep you informed. Timmy “Turbo Tax” Geithner was interviewed on two MSM political talk shows yesterday, yet was never asked the one very simple question that might have calmed concerns in the markets: Do we have enough money coming in to pay our obligations? Click here to hear Geithner’s prefabricated, blame-the-Republicans interviews.

If that date passes without a budget, there will be repercussions, but if they are handled properly, this could force the bloated Obama administration to finally start living within its means, as the overwhelming majority of Americans want them to. We don’t want the debt ceiling raised, especially when there are cuts that can keep us under the present one.

Here’s the deal: we are constitutionally bound to pay these debts, as we should be. You may have seen this story on the Drudge Report where some Progressives, in a staggering reversal of their traditional ignorance of our Constitution, recently found within it an “obscure” provision that permits President Obama to sidestep Congress and proceed with his budget. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned,” is cited as their justification for usurping what has been for the past oh, 235 years or so, the sole power of Congress to control America’s purse strings.

As you may have guessed, that’s not exactly true. Or close to true. Or even in the same room with the truth. Or the same building. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Only by the most tortured of definitions could this even be considered as an excuse by Obama to increase our already staggering debt. It’s that pesky “authorized by law” thingy. Only Congress can generate the law, since that’s where all laws originate according to the Constitution. See, that was easy.

Apparently, it’s so simple, that the Soros-funded, radical, far-left Obama think tank Center for American Progress can’t understand it. But then again, we’re dealing pretty much in plain English here, so their apparent confusion is to be expected.

But I’m digressing all over the place.

What this means is that our debt obligations will take priority over other expenditures. We’ll pay our good buddies, the ChiComs, first. After that money is spent, then the rest of Washington’s vast richness of departments, like the Department of Showing African Men How to Clean Their Genitals After Sex, might just be forced to get by with a little less money for a while.

If, and that’s a big if, House Republicans do it just right, they can start to reduce the drastic amount of spending that Obama said was only temporary. After all, that’s what we sent them there to do in the Great Shellacking of 2010. They have a clear mandate, one of the clearest in a generation. What this administration is doing with regard to the budget is bordering on can abuse.
They could claim that all these cuts were the direct result of Obama’s refusal to recognize fiscal reality, because they’d be right. They could just say that they’re helping Obama do what he said he’d do, namely cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Remember that?

They’d just be doing it in a slightly different way, the way you and I would do it with our household budgets, by cutting unnecessary spending. You know, the right way, with no smoke or mirrors and no class warfare.

Cut the EPA’s budget? Done. Ditto with the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, and all the other departments that are duplicated by the states.

And here’s the biggie: Defense. I’m not really sure we should be cutting the Pentagon’s budget, what with Obama’s habit of engaging us in a new kinetic military action against regimes that don’t pose an imminent threat to us every six months or so.

Wouldn’t be prudent. If you want to cut defense, make damn sure it’s the waste that we’ve all heard so much about, not body armor for our troops.

Rick Santelli, the CNBC correspondent who is largely responsible for the current Tea Party movement, puts it best:

The answer is easy: spend less. . . .


Stop spending. Live within your means. I think what we need to do is live within the revenue intake, . . . end of story and do not ask taxpayers for more money or increase the debt ceiling until you give us a budget. . . .

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything, especially in Washington. We’re seeing the dismal results of doing it wrong for two and a half years now.

It’s time to start doing something right for a change.



Oh, and remember that chart I was going to create that showed the correlation between increased spending and the increase in unemployment? Someone beat me to it. It also shows the dropoff of the rate at the end of 99 weeks, just as it should.

GOP wins this Budget Battle, Sort of

A national crisis has been averted. Last Friday’s down-to-the-wire agreement by Obama, Reid, and Boehner kept the Federal government open. Thankfully, our troops got paid, The Washington Monument stayed open and all the non-essential workers stayed on the job. Grandmothers were spared untold horrors, as were countless puppies and kittens.

And the spending spree in Washington continued unabated.

While the argument over spending had been simmering for a few weeks as Republicans did what the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress refused to do, (as was their Constitutional duty) namely to submit an operating budget for fiscal year 2011. The pot had begun to boil over, fueled mostly by the typical doomsday rhetoric from the progressives on the far-left side of the political aisle who think that the world cannot rotate without money from Washington.

And the amount of cuts to programs was miniscule compared to the amount of money this administration spends. With a record-high peacetime deficit in the trillions, and Washington spending more than $50B in one week, this budget that cuts only $38B for a short time is like bailing out a dingy with a thimble while under a waterfall. It just isn’t enough.

But, we’ll take our victories where we can find them. I found one tiny ray of real hope in all this: we started to change the mindset in Washington from ever-increasing levels of spending to one of actually considering cuts in funding, something this Boy never thought he’d see.

The usual suspects on the left attempted to lay blame (once again) on the dread Tea Party as though this was a replay of the last showdown back in the mid-nineties where the GOP was the party that wanted to kill Granny. And children. And puppies. And kittens.

The nation knows better. Had the government been shut down, the blame would have fallen directly upon the dainty shoulders of Reid and Obama. They knew it. Nothing else explains the President’s rush to take credit for the “biggest cuts in history.” Never mind that he had pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, and sat by idly as the Pelosi and Reid-led Congress created the most extreme debt our country has ever seen.

Yeah, Chuck Schumer, what was extreme was the unprecedented run-up of debt that you helped create, not Republican efforts to trim it. And when, exactly, did wanting to reduce the nation’s historic and potentially devastating deficits become extreme?

We’re waiting, Chuckles.

Dems can make all the excuses they want for adding more to America’s debt than all the previous administrations before it combined. The Stimulus has not only failed, it has failed in spectacular fashion. We are now much worse off than had we been if nothing had been done. The $787B that was spent did nothing to lift our economy from the worst recession in recent memory; I maintain that it did the exact opposite, on purpose.

But, we had to try it your way. We had to see what didn’t work before we, as a nation, suddenly realized what we already knew. There is no way to spend our way out of a recession, as Slow Joe Biden proclaimed. His Gump-like solution sounded like the perfect antidote to our ailing economy to everyone except those of us who could count. Maybe, we thought at the time, there was some sort of magical formula, known only to those inside the Beltway, which would prove to be the solution to the negative effects of a large and overweening government presence in the free market: even more government intervention.

After the massive failure of this administrations’ misguided economic policies, American’s eyes no longer glaze over at the mention of deficit numbers. As this battle has proceeded, the public is hearing more accurate facts and figures concerning the budget, and it doesn’t like what it has been hearing. Or seeing. Too many of us know too many of us who have been unemployed for years, or have lost their home or business, or had to move in with relatives as a result of this, the Obama Depression.

So, we can claim a small but not insignificant victory, one that is tactical instead of strategic: it’s time to reduce the size and scope of the Federal government and the negative impact that it has on our economy.

Last Friday’s compromise that actually cut spending was only the first step in changing the national dialogue from one of how much we spend to the more sensible notion of cutting real spending.

GOP the Party of No? Think Again.

This post kind of follows yesterday's, being as how it's about perception vs reality. Today, let's take a good look at how the GOP has been painted by the Democrats.

First, it's important to gage the success of the Obama administration's policies and legislation so far. TARP, the Stimulus bill, Cash 4 Clunkers, the healthcare bill, the financial regulation bill were all passed with the promise of reducing the massive debt. Never mind that the deficit has been engineered by the Democrats in Congress during their nearly four year old control of that august body. Have their policies worked? The White House Budget Office said no in a report released last Friday. If that isn't an accidental indictment of failure, I don't know what is.

Next, let's look at how the Democrats want you to view the Republicans. They've painted the GOP as the "party of no." They want you to see the Republicans as the main enemy of the Obama agenda. Never mind that Republicans have a decided minority in Congress. They are so few in number that they are essentially irrelevant when it comes to passing legislation. The Democrats hold solid majorities in both the House and the Senate, enough that they have virtually unlimited power to pass any bill at any time, without regard or even acknowledgement of the Republicans.

But that doesn't stop them from needing a villain. Any opposition to their policies will do. Numbers and majorities don't matter. It's always those evil Rethuglicans who are standing in the way of progress. Unfortunately, it seems to work, because there are a lot of otherwise intelligent Americans who think that the GOP still controls Congress. Thanks a lot, Mainstream Media.

But, back to reality.

We're still a people who value results. Real, tangible results. And we don't see them. In fact, we're seeing the opposite from the Democrats in Congress and the White House. The economy is in the doldrums, the national unemployment rate remains roughly twice what it was during the Bush administration, and businesses are in a holding pattern, circling the airport, waiting for any break in the clouds that would allow a landing to refuel.

When it comes to the things that truly matter to the country, Democrats are the real party of "no." Their policies say, in essence, "no" to prosperity and growth, "no" to the aspirations of the American people, "no" to innovation, "no" to the entrepreneurial spirit that is ingrained into the nations' DNA.

No, you can't start your own business.

No, you can't provide for your family.

No, you can't chart your own destiny in the greatest country in the worlds' history.

No, you can't have the American Dream.

No, you can't break free of needless, unnecessary regulation and miles of red tape.

No, you can't set your thermostat at 72 degrees.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Mama Mia! Let me go!

Which is the better message? Yes, you can or No, you cannot? Which is more in line with the human spirit, freedom or slavery? Granted, there are many subtle shades of both, but in the final analysis, it's either one or the other.

Psychologically speaking, control over others necessarily involves restrictions. While this is required for children, it's anathema to the mature adult. Time and experience, along with our conscience, show us what to do and what not to do. We won't always succeed and will occasionally veer from the proper path in life, but most of us regain our own footing. The odd disaster will even serve a purpose, too. At least we can learn what not to do.

And we are learning some very painful lessons from our collective political decisions.

A Lesson in Backwardsness - Steny Hoyer's Op-ed

One of the reasons I began this blog was to highlight the contradictions that seem to be everywhere on the Left. I believe I have found the motherlode of contradictions in this op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Steny Hoyer.

Just about everything in this piece is wrong, innacurate, false, or a Democrat talking point. In other words, instead of the truth, we get everything but.

Let the dissection begin!

Americans may be wondering whether the Greek financial crisis could happen here.

Actually, that statement's accurate.

There's a myth that our budget deficit mess sprang into existence at the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009. But in truth, more than 90% of the projected deficit we will face over the next decade is the result of President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rescue of the financial sector he began in the last few months of his presidency, and lower revenues from the recession.

Um, no Steny, that's not a myth. Take a look at this chart and understand that the deficit was coming down under Bush despite the attacks of 9-11 and two wars.

As this shows, the explosion in debt actually began with the Obama inauguration. You convenently omitted the $787B Stimulus and the muti-trillion dollar Health care bill, just to name two.

Voters are demanding that Washington take fiscal responsibility seriously.

You're trying, you really are, Steny. Perhaps you finally looked out your window and saw a Tea Party rally.

It's along about here that Steny begins to confuse the issue of deficit spending and private sector spending. I think he's talking about the massive new costs incurred in the takeover of the private healthcare industry, but that's not entirely clear.

Health-care costs, as I noted, are one of our main challenges. According to the Congressional Budget Office the health-care bill will put us on a path to bring down those costs, incorporating many of the best ideas from both Republicans and Democrats.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those health care costs a direct result of your recently passed Health care bill? Weren't those costs previously borne by the private sector? And weren't Republicans shut out of any negotiations?

It gets better.

On a host of other issues, President Barack Obama also showed his seriousness about fiscal restraint. Oh, really? See the chart above. His budget freezes nonsecurity discretionary spending and cuts our deficit by more than half by 2013, and more than $1.3 trillion over the next decade. You mean the budget is frozen at this historically high level of spending? He signed a bill to reform weapons acquisition and target cost overruns at the Pentagon. Do you mean cancelling the F-22 and the space based Laser Defense system, leaving us vulnerable to this? And he joined me and others in the successful push to return to the pay-as-you-go law that requires Congress to find a dollar of savings for every extra dollar it spends on entitlements or tax cuts, except for legislation responding to a legitimate emergency. That same law you've broken numerous times since Obama took office?

Mr. Hoyer, you and the Obama administration have vastly increased the national debt all by yourselves. Yet you continue to blame President Bush as though he held the strings of Washington's purse. Perhaps you're counting on the American people thinking that the president controls spending, when actually that's the responsibility of you and your fellow Congress members. This dangerous level of spending falls directly upon your shoulders, as will the responsibility of any negative consequences that result from it.

You are responsible, Mr. Hoyer, not George Bush.

But wait! There's more! Bend over and get ready, America.

On the other side of the equation, nobody likes raising revenue—but sometimes it's necessary.

It's only necessary because you and your progressive cohorts in Congress, along with the Obama administration, are hell-bent on spending us into third-world status against our will.

You somehow think that money grows on trees. I, and many other Americans can assure you that this is not the case, Steny. You can either begin to cut the size and scope of our government and reduce the deficit without raising taxes, or we can vote you out of office in favor of someone who will.

The Debt Bomb and How to Disarm It

There's a real, live bomb about to explode in Washington. The destruction will be more devastating than you can imagine. It will bring the entire country to its' knees. It was constructed by our enemies in full view of everyone over the past year. We know where it is and know the code to disarm it, but no one has the strength to actually do what needs to be done to save the country from destruction.

Sounds like this season of 24? We should be so lucky to have someone like Jack Bauer on our side in this instance.

No, this is real life. This bomb has money at its core. And if this thing goes off, we won't see an explosion, we'll see an implosion of the American economy on a scale that'll make the Depression look like the good ol' days.

There hasn't been much talk of the results of the irresponsible spending by Congress since Barack Obama was elected. It seemed somehow inconceivable to many that a president would run up a debt that literally endangers the country's financial future, but that is precisely what has happened. Aided by the corrupt progressives in this Congress, we're just now finding out that the breathtaking amount of red ink that Washington is treading will come with a steep price.

Here are the Fox News All-Stars discussing the issue:

Noticeably absent in this discussion is the simple solution to this problem: stop spending. I mean, come on, people, this isn't rocket science. There is no difference between the accounting methods in Washington and balancing your checkbook except the number of zeros behind their numbers. In order to stop this bomb from detonating, all we have to do is reduce the size of our government.

Just as easily as the debt has been run up, it can be reduced. All it takes is the right people in Congress who understand the threat and will take concrete steps to avert the disaster that surely awaits us if this debt isn't brought under control quickly.

In the business world (a foreign land to most of the Obama administration) there's an axiom that if your costs are higher than your competitor, your competitor will sell more of his product because his product will cost less than yours. This is called "pricing yourself out of the market". It's been a widely held belief that because there's no competition for a government, the cost of government could rise without consequence. We're seeing that this is no longer the case. We've been skating on the edge of fiscal responsibilty for several years, but now the warnings are too dire and numerous to ignore. Our government has grown far too large and unwieldy and has now become a great drain on our economy.

If this sound vaguely familiar to those from the Woodstock generation, it should. It's a radical, left-wing strategy designed to destroy an institution, in this case, American society. It's called the Clowawrd-Piven Strategy. If you're not familiar with it and its history, use this link as a starting point and learn what your enemies already know. Google the term, for there is much to know to counter the corrupt progressives in Congress who want nothing less than the downfall of the country and are doing their dead-level best to insure that this bomb goes off as scheduled.

Where is Jack Bauer when we really need him?

Our Disconnected President Reveals His Fantastic Budget

It's becoming an effort just to keep up with the daily barrage of news coming from Washington. Perhaps it wouldn't be so difficult if what we heard every day didn't fly in the face of logic and common sense.

Obama's budget is today's example. $3,800,000,000,000.00. For a moment, allow the awe of seeing so many zeros in a row wash over you. Marvel at them. Seemingly empty and full at the same time.

Empty of restraint, of responsibility, of concern for the effects such a large number has on an already struggling country in the midst of an economic crisis. Full of hubris, of largess, of misguided priorities about the role of government in the lives of a free people.

We've learned a great deal about the vaporous man who now inhabits our White House, and in turn, a great deal about the people we trusted to run America in our stead, most of it bad. Taken alone, would you expect such a large budget from someone who says this:

We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences. As if waste doesn’t matter. As if the hard earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.

You'd also expect that same person to be grounded in fiscal reality when he proposes a spending freeze instead of this:

h/t Flopping Aces

Given just these two examples, you can't help but wonder at the chasm that separates Obama's words from his actions. Sure, he sounds concerned, but his actions and results show a disturbing disconnect with reality.

In politics, there is an axiom that "Perception is reality." Many Americans rightfully percieve that those running our country, those that we entrust to operate our country in a responsible and adult fashion, have no idea what they're doing.

A Drop in a Bucket, or Obama's Tiny Scalpel

Politics is great theatre. The entire range of the human condition is on stage, enhanced for a large audience. Drama, comedy, satire, it's all there.

Occasionally, political theatre becomes a farce. The upcoming Presidential State of the Union Address is a prime example. The buzz on Capitol Hill has President Obama proposing a spending freeze to combat his record federal deficit.

Obama used the financial crisis as the main excuse for a massive increase in spending, resulting in a correspondingly massive deficit. So, in theory, there should be a lot to cut. A lot. Lots and lots. Whole bunches of cuts. As-far-as-the-eye-can-see cuts. Right? RIGHT??

President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have increased the deficit from $161 billion to $1.75 trillion in two years! The "cut" is to $1.17 trillion in 2010. The panic of 2008-2009 required one-time expenditures to arrest the fear, but the Democrats used the crisis as an excuse to print billions and billions of dollars. And they refuse to stop.

Hmmm, that's not much of a cut, is it? $1.75T down to a paltry $1.17T. Up from $161B. You'd have to add up George Bush's final-year deficit over ten times just to get to Obama's starting figure.

Does that sound like a sane fiscal policy to you? Would you suddenly start spending ten times what you make without a corresponding increase in income? Could you? Possibly, but not for very long.

If you think that massive federal spending has no effect on the economic climate of the country, you're pretty much alone in your delusion. Many people, some with access to calculators, don't think it's a good thing. Our own Congressional Budget Office predicts sluggish growth due to the imbalance between GDP and the debt.

The farcical aspect of this is that Obama thinks this is the way to operate a country and that everything is hunky-dory. He's also not alone. He's been aided by economic illiterates in Congress who have proposed their own little spending agendas over and above Obama's. It's like a play where the King of a once-prosperous country decides to take a vacation to a distant land for several months and allows the court jester to run it, just for giggles. A court jester with third-stage syphillis, where large parts of the brain just aren't there any more.

It would be a laugh riot on stage, where it belongs. In real life, not so much.