Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Where Is The Leadership? Where Is Common Sense?


Dicking Up Things For 18 Years, With More To Come

Yes, it's been awhile. I've been busy with other things that don't involve anything. Honestly, I've just been lazy and have not found a lot to laugh about in the past few weeks.

I have to ask; What the hell is going on?

And I don't mean just lately. You really never see societal change coming and I guess that's why we have not noticed that our political "leaders" have become anything but leaders. Sure, we have always had angry disagreements in politics, but now, we don't seem to  have any mutual respect. We fail to compromise for fear that we will look weak. I believe this has slowly evolved in us and has been handed down from the extreme activists in our politics. Nobody can stand to lose anymore. Everyone HAS to be right and wants to destroy, discredit, and dishearten those who are not like minded.

The past three presidential administrations have had good points and bad. But, they have all caused (or are causing) big problems for our country in favor of catering to big business, extremists, their party, their re-election, their legacy, short term success, and their inability to admit a mistake and change course.

Clinton (and I'll just use the presidents names instead of specifically pointing out the exploits of their underlings) insisted on mortgage lenders that they make so many loans available to those who would usually get turned down. Those who were questionable in their ability to afford a home. Well, that's not a bad idea in theory, but you can't set a percentage or what have you on how many loans are given. Everything should have been case by case. That was a situation that was never corrected and we wound up having to bail out mortgage companies and helped usher in our current recession. That was just plain irresponsible.

Bush, promised tax relief and we got it. Hooray!!! Great idea. We got attacked and the president did a good job of leadership in the aftermath. But, then we got ourselves into a situation we were poorly prepared for in Iraq. We had wars on two fronts. That's expensive. So, do we stop tax relief at that point to be resumed later? No, Bush continued to cut taxes, while trying to pay for two wars. Not to mention, he never met a spending bill that he would veto. He was a tax cut and spend Republican. A rare breed. And don't even get me going on the halt of federal funding for stem cell research. So, we started running budget deficits, after Clinton accomplished a surplus. I'm all for lower taxes, but additional cuts should not have been made after the first round.  

Now, Obama wants to continue down the path of throwing logic out the window. His administration is spending like a 22 year old lottery winner in Amsterdam. We are on pace to have a deficit larger than our economy. Our government is now in the banking and auto business. The man has played golf seven times since the BP oil catastrophe happened. Until recently, Obama had gone almost a year without having a full blown news conference. So much for governmental transparency and having one press conference every month, like he suggested while campaigning. I'll throw in that the Bush tax cuts will expire and there is a looming "credit crunch" coming. People are going deeper and deeper into debt, trying to survive by using their credit cards like Miley Cyrus buying short shorts on Rodeo Drive. Having taxes go back up will probably hurt the economy, but hopefully increase revenue that could help with all the government initiatives that Obama is rolling out.

Currently, we have millions of barrels of oil pouring into the gulf and nobody at the top took it seriously for six weeks. Louisiana is suing the federal government. The federal government is suing Arizona. Al Franken is a friggin' US senator. Sarah Palin is considered a serious candidate for president. The debt is sky rocketing. Military management is openly criticizing the current administration in the press. Lady Gaga is popular (and I still don't know who that is). Those states at the bottom of the economic and education rung have been there for a long time, with little hope of upward progress. Catholic priests are abusing kids and getting away with it. The media acts in concert with the politicians to spoon feed us what THEY think we need to know, instead of just presenting the truth. And Ryan Seacrest still gets work.

Our leaders are putting the screws to us.  We need a third and/or fourth party that is strong........in a bad way. But, the powers that be have done and will do all they can to keep that from happening. We will pay the penalty for having incompetent and careless leadership until we quit treating each other like enemies over political beliefs. We need compromise. We need leadership that will act according to the best interest of our nation and not just cater to his or her party, in hopes of acquiring more power.

Like it or not, we are being taken for the "proverbial ride", as Maude Lebowski would say. It's time that we have more movements like the "Tea Party" and even like the hippies in the 60's. We need change. I don't really believe we are going to find it in the Republican or Democrat parties. We elected change and it's been more of the same.

Turn out the lights the party's over they say that all good things must end
Let's call it a night the party's over and
tomorrow starts the same old thing again
Willie Nelson