Thursday, March 24, 2011
Present, Still
Barack Obama has served as a Community Organizer, State Senator, US Senator and president. His roll call votes indicate that he voted "present" more often than anything else.
Voting present is not a sign of leadership. It is punting. It forces other people to take up the slack for your indecisiveness. My ex-wife used to get mad at me whenever she asked me what I wanted to eat or to do and I would say, whatever you want. She wanted me to make a decision and I deferred back to her. I voted present. It actually did help my marriage last a bit longer but that is not the way to truly get anything done.
I have never aspired to a leadership capacity partly because it has been my nature to not make a decision until I really, really had to make it. For a year or two I was in a management role in my office but it only led to increased alcohol input to alleviate the strain on my psyche for having to make decisions that I felt uncomfortable making. I demoted myself from that role and was able to kick the drinking dependency.
But I am a lowly peon in our society. I am not the leader of the free world, nor would I ever want to be so. Mr. Obama, however, did everything he could do to get that position. He talked a good talk on the campaign trail and he ran his campaign smartly to overtake the predicted front runner in his party, Hillary Clinton, and on to easily defeat John McCain to win his coveted title and position. He said all the right things, I guess, to get himself elected.
Then he started off with a bang, declaring Guantanamo to be closed within one year and helping push nearly a trillion dollars of Democrats wet dreams into reality. He went on a worldwide public speaking tour criticizing America for her past sins and resetting relations with the world.
Then he started voting present again. And he is still voting present.
Yes, I know, he doesn't vote anymore. Doesn't matter, he's having the same effect. Let someone else start off on a subject and then he will come along and criticize them. He said last year he would test Republicans about slashing government spending but when it came time for him to propose his budget for next year, it was actually larger than ever. No cuts. More spending, nothing about Social Security, Medicare or anything relevant to the discussion.
That is voting present.
Watching him dithering about sending more troops to Afghanistan his first year in office was painful. It took him 3 months to decide to give the generals what they asked for and what he had said on the campaign trail that he would do there. But when he announced the surge, he immediately followed that up by saying the troop draw down would begin in 2011. Some surge.
That is voting present.
His comments about Tunisia and Egypt were from both sides of his mouth as well. On Lybia, I have never seen or heard so much indecisiveness from one administration ever.
What exactly is our mission there? Who's in charge? Why did Bush need 17 UN resolutions and approval from both branches of Congress to go into Iraq while Obama only needs verbal support from organizations we don't even know (who are the rebels in Lybia?) and a vague list of countries with no fire power and the Arab League, who immediately criticized the very no-fly zone enforcement that they had requested.
Ghaddafi must go! No, maybe he can stay. I'm not really sure what we want him to do. This foreign politics stuff is really irritating me. Guess we'll lob a few Tomahawks at them and then consider our mission complete.
That is voting present.
The longer this man is in office the more nervous about our future I become. My greatest fear is that somehow things will turn around for his popularity and complacent, uninformed people will put him back in office for another four years.
I don't think this country can survive another four years of this man in the White House. Voting present.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Obama just plays golf and basketball while the world burns.
And he is present, still. Dammit.
OH
Voting present is not a sign of leadership. It is punting. It forces other people to take up the slack for your indecisiveness. My ex-wife used to get mad at me whenever she asked me what I wanted to eat or to do and I would say, whatever you want. She wanted me to make a decision and I deferred back to her. I voted present. It actually did help my marriage last a bit longer but that is not the way to truly get anything done.
I have never aspired to a leadership capacity partly because it has been my nature to not make a decision until I really, really had to make it. For a year or two I was in a management role in my office but it only led to increased alcohol input to alleviate the strain on my psyche for having to make decisions that I felt uncomfortable making. I demoted myself from that role and was able to kick the drinking dependency.
But I am a lowly peon in our society. I am not the leader of the free world, nor would I ever want to be so. Mr. Obama, however, did everything he could do to get that position. He talked a good talk on the campaign trail and he ran his campaign smartly to overtake the predicted front runner in his party, Hillary Clinton, and on to easily defeat John McCain to win his coveted title and position. He said all the right things, I guess, to get himself elected.
Then he started off with a bang, declaring Guantanamo to be closed within one year and helping push nearly a trillion dollars of Democrats wet dreams into reality. He went on a worldwide public speaking tour criticizing America for her past sins and resetting relations with the world.
Then he started voting present again. And he is still voting present.
Yes, I know, he doesn't vote anymore. Doesn't matter, he's having the same effect. Let someone else start off on a subject and then he will come along and criticize them. He said last year he would test Republicans about slashing government spending but when it came time for him to propose his budget for next year, it was actually larger than ever. No cuts. More spending, nothing about Social Security, Medicare or anything relevant to the discussion.
That is voting present.
Watching him dithering about sending more troops to Afghanistan his first year in office was painful. It took him 3 months to decide to give the generals what they asked for and what he had said on the campaign trail that he would do there. But when he announced the surge, he immediately followed that up by saying the troop draw down would begin in 2011. Some surge.
That is voting present.
His comments about Tunisia and Egypt were from both sides of his mouth as well. On Lybia, I have never seen or heard so much indecisiveness from one administration ever.
What exactly is our mission there? Who's in charge? Why did Bush need 17 UN resolutions and approval from both branches of Congress to go into Iraq while Obama only needs verbal support from organizations we don't even know (who are the rebels in Lybia?) and a vague list of countries with no fire power and the Arab League, who immediately criticized the very no-fly zone enforcement that they had requested.
Ghaddafi must go! No, maybe he can stay. I'm not really sure what we want him to do. This foreign politics stuff is really irritating me. Guess we'll lob a few Tomahawks at them and then consider our mission complete.
That is voting present.
The longer this man is in office the more nervous about our future I become. My greatest fear is that somehow things will turn around for his popularity and complacent, uninformed people will put him back in office for another four years.
I don't think this country can survive another four years of this man in the White House. Voting present.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Obama just plays golf and basketball while the world burns.
And he is present, still. Dammit.
OH
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
High Profile Idiots
Another celebrity rich guy mouths off about how the rich don't pay enough in taxes. This time it's Stephen King, one of my favorite authors. I will read him no longer.
King has joined many other high profile rich people who think Americans, especially "the rich" should be taxed at higher rates. Warren Buffet complained that his secretary was taxed at a higher rate than he was. Duh, differences between capital gains and earned income.
Bill Gates and his father spearheaded efforts last year to increase taxes on the rich in their home state of Washington, saying the rich can afford more taxes and should be paying more taxes. The effort failed.
Michael Moore stupidly spouts that their isn't a money problem in America, we have plenty of money here, it just isn't in the control of the government. Wow.
All high profile idiots demonstrating their lack of knowledge of America, our country. If any one of these high profile idiots really, truly wanted to pay more taxes to the government, they are perfectly free to do so. The government will most certainly accept their check, no questions asked.
But they will never do that simple thing. I don't know why, but these folks feel that they must drag everybody else into the discussion and force higher taxes on us all. Misery loves company, that's true, but these people don't act miserable. I see it as kind of a holier-than-thou attitude so perverse in elitist circles which is where rich liberal people hang out.
Stuff it! Put up or shut up and leave the criticisms out of it. Mr, Gates and his kind should immediately write very large checks to the federal government to show others how it is done. Warren Buffet should buy out Government Motors and funnel any and all profit he may get out of the business to the imperial federal government as well.
Stephen King should just shut up. At least Charlie Sheen has been very good at making an ass out of himself on a grand scale. That's entertainment. Will he ever complain that he isn't taxed enough?
The people who are so loaded with money they don't know how to spend it or invest it fast enough to satisfy themselves have no business lecturing us on the need for them to pay higher taxes. Just f...ing pay higher taxes and STFU. We don't need to preached to by the likes of people like you.
I have had a lot of respect for these people at times in my life for the things they have done and accomplished with, often times, very daunting circumstances in front of them. They have changed the world in many wonderful profound ways. However, to listen to some of them later in life, it's as if they have learned nothing about how the world works or how they got to the positions that they are now in.
Making a lot of money does not make you any wiser. In many cases it has just the opposite effect. But it isn't the money that does it. It's the power. Money buys power and power is corrupting, in many ways.
High Profile Idiots believe they have avoided that corruption and can speak for everyone.
They don't speak for me.
OH
King has joined many other high profile rich people who think Americans, especially "the rich" should be taxed at higher rates. Warren Buffet complained that his secretary was taxed at a higher rate than he was. Duh, differences between capital gains and earned income.
Bill Gates and his father spearheaded efforts last year to increase taxes on the rich in their home state of Washington, saying the rich can afford more taxes and should be paying more taxes. The effort failed.
Michael Moore stupidly spouts that their isn't a money problem in America, we have plenty of money here, it just isn't in the control of the government. Wow.
All high profile idiots demonstrating their lack of knowledge of America, our country. If any one of these high profile idiots really, truly wanted to pay more taxes to the government, they are perfectly free to do so. The government will most certainly accept their check, no questions asked.
But they will never do that simple thing. I don't know why, but these folks feel that they must drag everybody else into the discussion and force higher taxes on us all. Misery loves company, that's true, but these people don't act miserable. I see it as kind of a holier-than-thou attitude so perverse in elitist circles which is where rich liberal people hang out.
Stuff it! Put up or shut up and leave the criticisms out of it. Mr, Gates and his kind should immediately write very large checks to the federal government to show others how it is done. Warren Buffet should buy out Government Motors and funnel any and all profit he may get out of the business to the imperial federal government as well.
Stephen King should just shut up. At least Charlie Sheen has been very good at making an ass out of himself on a grand scale. That's entertainment. Will he ever complain that he isn't taxed enough?
The people who are so loaded with money they don't know how to spend it or invest it fast enough to satisfy themselves have no business lecturing us on the need for them to pay higher taxes. Just f...ing pay higher taxes and STFU. We don't need to preached to by the likes of people like you.
I have had a lot of respect for these people at times in my life for the things they have done and accomplished with, often times, very daunting circumstances in front of them. They have changed the world in many wonderful profound ways. However, to listen to some of them later in life, it's as if they have learned nothing about how the world works or how they got to the positions that they are now in.
Making a lot of money does not make you any wiser. In many cases it has just the opposite effect. But it isn't the money that does it. It's the power. Money buys power and power is corrupting, in many ways.
High Profile Idiots believe they have avoided that corruption and can speak for everyone.
They don't speak for me.
OH
