Will Republicants Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory ?

     Two mutually exclusive data bits have existed this week in tandem with each other, allowing the main stream media and the Democrats to deny the existence of one and commit to stone the other. The two bits of data are that the American public overwhelmingly blames Republicants for the partial shutdown of the federal government, and Barack Obama's approval rating is at its lowest point, thirty seven percent, since his term as president commenced almost five years ago. Of course anyone who understands statistics knows these two "facts" can not both be true. Especially since the President's approval rating has seen a four percentage point drop since the "shutdown" began, twelve days ago.
     I am going to go out on the proverbial limb and say that the latter statistic, the President's plummeting approval rating, is the accurate one. I do not say this for partisan reasons, although it makes the partisan in me satisfied to see the American people finally waking up to the Obama train wreck presidency, but because of President Obama's reaction in the last two days. He has softened his "I will not talk until the Republicants surrender unconditionally to the power that is me" stance, and met with Speaker Boehner and other Republicant leaders on Thursday at the White House. And although there was no outcome from the meeting other than the meeting itself, it is a sign that the White House's internal polling may be showing that they are losing the shutdown battle in the minds of the voters.
     My previous analysis not withstanding, I am not foolish enough to ever under estimate the ability of John Boehner and House Republicants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And these "negotiations" with Mr. Obama may be a well disguised surrender plan by Republicants. I will consider it so if the debt limit ceiling is increased, even for six weeks, with only a promise from President Obama to negotiate on the other issues at some time in the future. Because as we all know, and the Speaker should be painfully aware, the President will conveniently lose his tongue to talk about anything once he is allowed to take the country further into debt.
     The idea that the United States would default on its financial obligations if the debt limit is not increased is a fallacy that even one of the largest credit ratings agencies in the world, Moody's, dispelled this week in the Wall Street Journal. The federal government confiscates 230 billion dollars in taxes from the private economy every month, the interest on the outstanding debt is 18 billion dollars a month. I am not quite sure how anyone can create a default out of that situation, unless Barrack Obama deliberately decides not to pay the interest on the nation's debt, almost half of which he is responsible for in the last five years. These are indeed perilous times in which we live, made even more so by a President who is hell bent on burying future generations of Americans under a mountain of debt, and an opposition party that appears not to fully understand the meaning of that term.

The Rope-A-Dope Of Sequester

     In August of 2011, while the Republicant House of Representatives negotiated with itself for a deal that would raise the debt limit on the national credit card, President Obama and Senate Democrats cooked up a big pot of sequester stew. Republicants, so hungry for approval from the President and the national media, scarfed down the stew and during the recent fiscal cliff negotiations asked for a second helping.
     The Sequester, from a purely political standpoint, was a masterfully executed rope-a-dope scheme that gave Barack Obama the ability to escape blame for being the only President to presided over a U.S. credit downgrade, increase the debt that caused it, allow the country to wallow in an anemic economy and get re-elected. Of course I don't know how masterful he had to be to pull one over on John "Bonehead" Boehner. I would love to play poker with this guy because he folds every hand. In fact, using the poker analogy, Mr. Boehner "negotiating" with the President would be analogous to someone who gives all their money to their fellow players before the game even starts.
     The same deal that created the Sequester (mandatory cuts in defense and domestic programs) also created the Super Committee made up of six Republicants and six Democrats. The job of the Super Committee was to come to an agreement on a trillion dollars in responsible budget cuts to avoid the "indiscriminate" cuts of the sequester. It mattered little that the very formation of the Super Committee was an admission by Congress that they found their job too difficult and relieved themselves of the responsibility of their sacred trust by outsourcing it to the Super Committee. To make matters worse, the much smaller Super Committee found it impossible to agree and disbanded, setting up the automatic cuts of the Sequester. Congress' inability to cut the unsustainable spending by the federal government is a little like someone watching a loved one drown and not being able to decide which of the many life preservers available to throw them to save their life.
     I say, "Bring on the Sequester." Even the cuts in defense are not real cuts but reductions in the rate of anticipated growth. And besides, they only amount to 50 billion dollars a year. Put into perspective, the Federal Reserve is spending 85 billion dollars a month buying U.S. bonds in order to keep interest rates historically low and drive investor money into stocks for the purpose of pulling the President's fat out of the fire.
     In the final analysis, we need real cuts to the federal budget which would require spending less money not more but just less than we expected to spend. The penny plan, or something like it, would be a common sense way to balance the budget and set this country on the road to paying off our debt. The plan requires that spending levels be frozen and one penny get cut from every dollar that the federal government spends each year. This one penny of cutting, along with freezing spending would balance the budget within five years and pay off the debt in a relatively short time after that. But common sense is in short supply in Washington, and where common sense is not voluntarily applied the cold reality of numbers eventually will take command. And God help us all when that happens.

President One Trick Pony

     Love him or hate him, the one thing that can not be denied about our newly re-elected President is that he is a very one dimensional person. In fact he is so singularly shallow that one can predict with pinpoint accuracy what he is going to say before he even opens his mouth to speak. This was the case at President Obama's press briefing yesterday, although it was less of a briefing and more like a continuation of the recent Presidential campaign, which was a continuation of the rhetoric from his first term, which was a continuation of the 2008 Presidential campaign and on and on and on ad infinitum.
     But I digress. President Obama's press conference yesterday can be summed up in one succinct statement, "I won, the Republicants lost and I will continue to expand the Federal government in order to take from the evil producers and give to the down trodden non-producers." There was no mention of solving this nations fiscal problems that he and his party have created over the last four years. In fact, he had the audacity to suggest that Republicants should increase the limit on the nation's credit card and expect nothing in return with respect to meaningful cuts to an egregiously bloated Federal budget. At one point in the press conference, President Obama compared the Federal debt to a restaurant bill for food that the Republicants ate but now don't want to pay for. But a better analogy would be that the Republicants ordered burgers and fries and the President ordered fillet mignon, lobster, smoked salmon, oysters, caviar, strawberries Arnuad and a $168,000.00 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon by Penfold to top off the meal, and the President now says he left his wallet in his other pants.
     President Obama thinks that his narrow re-election with less support than he received in 2008, means that the whole country is supportive of his economically destructive policies. He forgets that the same electorate that returned him to the Oval Office also returned control of the House of Representatives to the Republicant majority. I'm sure that John Boehner and the other Republicants in Congress were peeing their pants with fear at the prospect of having to negotiate the debt ceiling with Mr. Obama. But they should use their powerful position to impose the will of sanity on this One Trick Pony President, before his one trick precipitates him vanishing from office and leaving future generations stuck with the bill for his expensive tastes.