What we have wrought
Sitting here with hindsight glasses, I can see clearly the arrogance in President Obama that I saw first with his comment to then presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary”. Now the scary Congress led by House Speaker Pelosi and Senate majority leader Reid has carte blanche to go nuts. President “My Way or the Highway” Obama is in sync with this Congress. Ask if Republicans got to add any amendments, or even have them debated, to the latest ‘economic stimulus’ bill. One person was asked, and one person answered for 435 people. Speaker Pelosi said, we wrote the bill, we won the election, and Republicans had no ideas. Based on 25 years political awareness and common sense, I think we can be sure that she meant no ideas that she liked.
Rahm Emmanual had the essence correct when he said we should never let a serious crisis go to waste. He meant it in a partisan leftist kind of way. More like a ‘ram it down the Republican’s throats and push lefty agenda items through fear’ way than a ‘let’s analyze the root of the problem, and work to repair the damage caused’ kind of way. How did approximately 20% of 300 billion dollars of loans turn into the whole economy crashing?
Partisans in each party point to the other party. The third parties point to the Democrats and Republicans. The government currently is blaming greed in the private sector. I think there is blame to share. Instant gratification has infected our society. If the US stands for any value overall, it is “What have you done for me lately?”. or “Solve my problems right now!”.
We spent four years telling the masses that we are just about in a recession. Almost there, we will surely crash. Now that it has happened, and people decided they did not ‘need’ to have a new car every other year. People decided the did not need a new this or that, my old one is working just fine. If you kill consumer confidence, you kill the economy. 71% of our economy is/was based on consumer sales. Some how, and it is far above my pay grade to figure it out, consumer confidence collapsed.
We certainly have rewarded the Democrats for successfully isolating the previous president from the American public. Demonizing him, taking presidential policies that are disagreed with and turning them into crimes worthy of trials reminiscent of the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials of Nazi War Criminals. Now all the lefties who mobilized millions of votes for President Obama expects President Bush and his administration to be brought up on war crimes charges. I read their blogs. They believe change means radical change. Why would they believe that?