The Audacity of Indecisiveness

Indecisiveness born of ignorance.

On the trail, Candidate Hopenchange said all the right things, made all the right gestures. He ruthlessly condemned every action of the former administration and his opponents. He vowed to end the war in Iraq, to close Gitmo, to bring transparency to the federal government, and to ban lobbyists from his cabinet. He would restore our standing in the world and make our enemies love us. Promises are funny things...they can come back to haunt a guy.

In the White House, President Doomngloom is turning it all upside down. His cabinet is stuffed with lobbyists. His vows to end earmarks have changed nothing - nearly 9,000 earmarks were jammed into the budget he signed into law. We are no nearer withdrawal from Iraq than we would have been under President Bush, but violence there is ticking up alarmingly. The five days of public comment we were promised before he would sign any bill? Gone before they began. The $3,000 tax credit he promised to businesses for creating jobs? Just a memory. Recognizing the Armenian genocide? What genocide?

He did sign a resolution to close Gitmo. But once he floated down from his ivory tower and learned the true state of Gitmo, he found himself with a bit of a dilemma. No country on the planet will agree to take the monsters held there - the worst of the worst, true killing machines. As an alternative, he floated the idea of releasing them in America, and giving them welfare, no less...an idea which has been met with outrage by those of us who still value our lives. Now he's stuck with these animals, and has no idea in the world what to do with them. Military tribunals, those same tribunals that he condemned during the campaign and even halted early in his reign, are starting to look like a pretty good idea. The latest? He's considering detaining them indefinitely, in a prison on U.S. soil, without trial. That's showing 'em, Obama!

He proposed prosecuting officials of the former administration for torture. Then he said he wouldn't. Then he said he might. Then someone whispered in his ear that such an act would guarantee that no intelligent person with an ounce of self-preservation instinct would ever again advise him if he opened that Pandora's box of liability, so he went strangely quiet on the subject. But he still said he would release the photos of alleged CIA torture of detainees...until he changed his mind. Once again, someone explained to him the consequences such an action would bring, and he realized the error of his plans.

His charm and personality netted him zero additional combat troops from our NATO allies for Afghanistan (remember...we were going to persuade our friends to finish that war for us...hope there's a Plan B!). His hypnotic force convinced Europe to commit to nothing, zero dollars, to "fix" the global economy. He has made a series of repugnant addresses around the world, painting the nation he was elected to serve and protect as arrogant, uncaring and undeserving of respect, even while he expects those who would harm us to instead adore us. He has insulted allies and embraced enemies, and, next week, is expected to throw Israel under the bus in favor of improved relations with the lunatics in Iran - the same lunatics who seek a state of ultimate misery for their own Muslim people that is required for the return of their fabled twelfth Imam. A tip, Barry...it's tough to get guys who seek ultimate suffering for their own people to play nicely with a nation they believe should be wiped from the face of the earth. Give it up, guy...their religious zealotry will trump your four year term, guaranteed. Just nuke the bastards and be done with it.

Faced with an economy that is rotten, at best, a Medicare system that is already paying out more than it is taking in and a Social Security system that will also be running at a loss in a few years, he has already run up a deficit that is four times as large as last year's all time record high deficit. Sorry, libs, you can't blame it on Bush - only $350 billion of the spending happened on his watch. Wanna blame the economic meltdown on Bush? There's some responsibility there, but the housing meltdown is owned by the Democrats. Commitments that have already been made for entitlements, left in their current state, will exceed then entire tax revenues of the federal government in just a few years. The interest alone on the debt that he is increasing at a record pace will, before the end of this century, exceed the entire tax revenues of the federal government. And all he can think about is more government spending for nationalized health care and cap and trade (that's a plan to combat "global warming," for the estimated 76% of you who apparently don't read, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. The price tag for that one is expected to be $3000 per family, per year. Still think we need to "save the planet"?).

Given his track record to date, I probably shouldn't be too concerned about these plans. If he stays true to form, he will flip and flop and spin up a storm and change his mind a few dozen times on them, too. Reality sucks, doesn't it, Barry? It's just a damned shame there isn't enough money on the whole damned planet to pay for all the socialist bullshit you would like to thrust on the good citizens of the U.S.A. Keep trying, though. It's entertaining for those of us who live in the real world to watch your cute little dreams in unicorn and fairy land come crashing back to earth.