As I sit here, the Obama administration is less than a month old and, quite honestly, it’s really no worse than I imagined it would be. But please keep in mind that I wagered it would be even worse than the one Jimmy Carter presided over, and so far I have no reason to switch my bet.
What does surprise me is the fact that so many people continue to be delusional about the president. Even if we overlook the fact that he promised that all of his appointees would be squeaky clean and honorable, and wound up, instead, being a pack of tax cheats, lobbyists and Clinton re-treads, I would have expected his disciples to have rubbed the sleep out of their eyes and seen him for the con artist he obviously is. Frankly, I think he makes Bernard Madoff look like an amateur.
Take the stimulus package, or, in the words of Joe Biden, “the so-called stimulus package.” Obama goes on TV and tells us that it’s the only thing that will keep us from winding up in Hoovervilles, selling apples on the street and becoming a nation of hobos. Furthermore, this messenger of hope tells us, with a straight face, no less, that there isn’t a single earmark to be found in it. That’s like pointing at an enormous hog and saying there isn’t a single link sausage or slice of bacon in it. There’s no need for earmarks when the whole damn thing is nothing but pork! Obama didn’t even have to stay up late to put the package together. That was done by Pelosi and Reid, Washington’s answer to Hormel and Oscar Meyer. Obama was simply the snake oil salesman who was sent out on the road to sell it to the rubes.
Speaking, as I was, of Joe Biden, I couldn’t help wondering how he felt when, at Obama’s first press conference, in response to a reporter’s asking him what the Vice-President meant when he said that the stimulus package had a 30% chance of failing, Obama suggested that, as usual, he had no idea what the man he personally chose to be a heartbeat from the Oval Office was talking about. How odd that for once I understood Joe Biden just fine. He meant that the trillion dollar package upon which the president was betting his administration and America’s future had, at best, only a 70% chance of success.
But, still, my heart went out to old Joe. It can’t be much fun being dismissed as this administration’s Monica Lewinsky, the resident bimbo.
On the subject of bimbos, I’ll believe the GOP has finally quit trying to give bi-partisanship a bad name when Michael Steele does everything he can to keep Arlen Specter, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, from receiving even a nickel in campaign funds the next time they run. I say, let them go ask Howard Dean for money. He’s the one who owes them a favor.
A friend of mine, Dick Heatherton, suggested that, in spite of the stimulus package being shoved down our throats, conservatives have a couple of things to be happy about these days. One of them was airline pilot Sully Sullenberger, the man who orchestrated the miracle of the Hudson River. While I don’t know Sully’s politics, I agree with Heatherton that he is the personification of what we on the right like to think of as an American hero. He is a seemingly ordinary fellow, a modest, soft-spoken husband and father who, when circumstances demand it, is capable of performing extraordinary deeds. There are more Sullenbergers around than you might think, and they’re pretty easy to spot. You’ll usually find them standing right behind a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart or a Congressional Medal of Honor.
The other cause for glee is a motion picture called “Taken.” It’s a movie about an ex-CIA agent, Bryan Mills, who, for once, isn’t looking to start World War III, kill the president or pull off a multi-million dollar drug deal. All he’s trying to do is rescue his daughter from a group of white slavers who have kidnapped her. What makes it such a treat, aside from its action-packed 94 minutes, is that the bad guys aren’t the usual well-spoken Euro-trash or conservative politicians that Hollywood generally employs as arch villains. Instead, these guys are Albanian Muslims delivering young women to old sheikhs.
Along those same lines, I’ll share a letter to the editor I recently sent to the L.A. Times. “If Leon Panetta,” I wrote, “honestly believes that ‘Our greatest weapon is our moral authority,’ he should step aside and allow a rabbi, a priest or a minister, to head up the CIA. If, on the other hand, he believes, as I do, that the Agency’s primary mission is to keep America safe from Islamic terrorists, he should stop talking like a very naïve and fatuous social worker.”