I guess it should have been predictable. Disagree with Barack about anything and he sics his attack dogs on you.
How presidential.
First it was the Republicans in Congress _ the party of "no," as he described them. All because they voted with their consciences not to spend the country into bankruptcy. They simply thought the bill should have been debated first, let alone read, before it was voted on.
How dare they?
Maybe it was because they didn't fall for the repeated doom-and-gloom message he loves to preach to convince everyone we are on the brink of something catastrophic and then use his "Trust me, we'll work out the details later" explanation.
So what has he accomplished so far? After the trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill filled with pork, which isn't going to stimulate anything except the special-interest groups that were being paid back, he has moved on to a $410 billion (loaded with pork again) spending bill and is proposing a $3.6 trillion budget.
This final little item, by itself, spends more as a percent of gross domestic product than any period since World War II. As Tony Blankley, a columnist, points out, "it's higher than any year during the Bush administration, despite the full costs of 9/11, the Iraq and Afghan wars and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina."
However, Obama is just getting warmed up. He is now using his "Chicken Little, The Sky is Falling" speech to propose disastrous changes in health care, education, energy and tax policy.
I forgot to mention the abolishing of the secret vote process in unionization elections. It's the same old, "If we don't act now, it will be the end of the world as we know it."
Maybe he didn't have the fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" read to him as he was growing up. Maybe someone should read it to him now.
Anyway, I think members of his own party are getting a little tired of his worn-out mantra. We can only hope there are some sane members of his party on the other side of the aisle.
Most recently, we have the most ridiculous action yet. We have the most powerful person on the face of the Earth worried about a talk-show host. Here is a guy who allows his ego to be bruised so easily, and we let him have his hands on the nuclear suitcase. That's a comforting picture.
What Rush Limbaugh did was simply state that he wanted Barack to fail and listed his reasons.
Sure enough, Barack and his minions heard (or wanted to hear) only the first part and then pretended to get all indignant. I guess it makes for some good prime-time viewing, but all it did was make Barack look foolish and Rush's popularity grow even more.
Congratulations, Barack. You have done more to generate excitement and hope among the Republicans' conservative base than George Bush and John McCain could ever hope to achieve.
But I too want to see you fail, Barack. You're taking this country down a Big-Brother, big-government, socialistic path that will lead to the destruction of this great country.
You lie about so many things, I don't think you realize you are doing it any longer. Or you do, but think you are simply above all the rules set for us normal people.
You promised the highest level of ethics in your administration and then appoint criminal after criminal to key positions. You say you don't believe in big government but then go on the biggest spending spree in history. You say you will not sign bills that have any pork in them and then go right ahead and do so.
Has anyone said, "Mental health check," yet?
The most deceitful one, however, is taken from the Bill Clinton "How to Lie Convincingly" handbook.
You said in your major speech to the American people how you were going line-by-line through the federal budget to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs.
You stated, "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade." One of your senior officials had to back off that lie on your behalf when confronted by a reporter.
The aide said that rather than there being $2 trillion in spending cuts, the figure actually was Obama's efforts at deficit reduction. One trillion of that total represented future tax increases.
The official also said, "It also includes hundreds of billions of dollars saved by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq."
So, a tax hike represents a spending reduction? Billy C. would be proud.
So yes, Barack, for the good of the future of my country, I want you to fail and fail miserably.
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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.
