Mountains out of molehills

Seems to be a big deal in the media over Rush Limbaugh saying in his speech to CPAC last week that he would like to see Obama fail. I understand him perfectly. He said he hopes the president's socialist policies fail. So calm down all you liberals, it wasn't a personal attack.

And it seems that Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, didn't really understand the question he was asked about this. First of all, everyone has been taking Rush's comments out of context, and second, Rush Limbaugh doesn't really make Republican policy. He may be a powerful influence over it, but he doesn't write the platform.

Nice diversion, though, when the only other thing to think about is the USA collapsing.

Really strange.... I watched Rush's speech. And only hours before, I'd been on the internet and came across a little political poll. One of the questions on the poll was: Do you want to see the President fail? You had to answer yes or no.

I thought about this for a long time. I don't want to see the president fail, not on a personal level. In an odd way, I feel sorry for him. I think he got pushed into office -- who else did the Democrats have? -- before he was ready to take on the job. And he's not going to get another chance after this one. Too bad.

Think I mentioned before, being a resident of Illinois, I may have become aware of Barack Obama a little ahead of non-Illinoisans. He's very charismatic, extremely likable. I've been a political activist -- but not anymore -- and recognized within him immediately a really viable political candidate. And he's always been a Democrat, and I am not (not a Republican, either), so I've never agreed with his views. He's just extremely personable. You want to like him.

However, I think the Democrats have wasted Obama. He's too inexperienced. He should have spent a little more time in the Senate. That might have helped. But from the moment he was elected to the Senate, he was out on the campaign trail. And he's young. I believe he was just testing the waters in 2008, with a plan to really go after the presidential nomination in 2012. But who else did the Democrats have? And Obama is so very affable.

The very fact that he believes he can simply carry on with his own agenda in the face of a national disaster is evidence of his inexperience and even naivete. He's not black so much as he's green.

George W. Bush didn't go to the White House hoping to get into a nightmarish tangle with a bunch of crazy islamic terrorists -- no matter what the loonies on the left say. I think "W" was hoping to contribute something more positive to the nation.

But then catastrophe intervened. I had been at an international trade show at McCormick Place, Chicago, for four days prior to 9/11. That Tuesday morning, I didn't have to go down there again, so I slept in a bit. When I got up, I put on a pot of coffee, sat down in the living room, and switched on the TV.

What flickered across the screen was a pair of talking heads with this screen behind them. I thought they were reviewing an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. A building on fire.

I changed the channel. Hmmmm... same damn thing. The networks are such a bunch of buttheads. They run news at the same time, sports at the same time, ads at the same time....

I put on Court TV (now RealTV or something like that), and here's two more talking heads with the screen behind them with a building on fire.

What the hell?

So I turned up the sound and listened. They were speculating that a private plane had veered w-a-a-a-y off course somehow... And then:

"Oh my God, a second plane has just flown into the other tower...." And people looking like they wanted to cry.

I cried. I cried for days. All I could think about was being on that plane, going to California for a wedding or something, vacation, maybe Disneyland. Then here you are, way too low, following the course of the river, like being in a canyon, Jersey on the right, Manhattan on the left. Then this huge glass and steel structure looming up....

Well, contrary to some crackpots, I doubt "W" was behind that. I don't think he could foresee it. I think it drew him up short. He was talking to a grammar school class when he was notified, and if you look at his face, you see something like disbelief, then real pain that hardens into resolve. Yet he didn't skip a beat with the kids.

And on that morning, after it sunk in that, yeah, this was really happening, I called a friend of mine, and the first thing we both said to each other was, "I'm so damn glad Bush is president instead of Al Gore." It was just instinctive, but I'm still so damn glad Bush was president instead of Al Gore.

Bush loved America for whatever it is. Perhaps he lacked Gore's imagination, but Bush wasn't trying to turn the USA into his personal vision of Utopia. He valued the nation's strengths, accepted its failings, and wouldn't let anyone hurt us if he could help it. I got a very different vibe from Al Gore, like maybe he'd sell us out and sign the Kyoto Treaty so he'd be regarded as a mover-and-shaker on the relatively clueless and predatory international scene.

Anyway, Bush applied himself to the problem, gave it his full attention, and even if you don't agree with his response to it, at least he confronted it as an inescapable reality and tried to work through it.

Obama couldn't have foreseen the crash of the US economy. A few people did see it coming, but who believed them?

And Obama apparently still doesn't believe the crash is real, doesn't understand that the fate of the stock market has quite a bit to do with the fate of the nation, seems to think he can go on his merry way, spending non-existent money willy-nilly for heaven only knows what purpose.

He's not looking at reality.

I talked about the economy as a pie a few blogs ago. About how socialists try to divide the pie, etc etc.

Hey, you know what? There's only about half as much pie now as there was six months ago. We've lost 25% of the pie since the end of January.

No productivity + no trade + no credit + no jobs = no pie.

So Obama apparently is going to try to borrow a pie from someone else so that he has something to divide up.

Somehow, dividing the pie is not a really relevant concern when there's no damn pie.

So... Do you want the president to fail?

Not particularly. I just don't want his policies, which guarantee that I'll probably lose through "redistribution" whatever I've managed to save for myself -- from a lifetime of work. And he doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to regard me or my concerns as worth his consideration. I'm just a number in a ledger that owes the government taxes. He seems to be preoccupied with some fantasyland vision of free-flowing milk and honey and thousands of happy people on a hillside, holding hands and singing in unison.

So, yeah, I hope the president fails -- if what he wants to do is nudge the nation (my country) into a ditch. Of course, I don't have a lot more confidence in Joe Biden, and God forbid, Nancy Pelosi is lost in space... I'd say with this bunch, from the president on down, the nation hasn't got a prayer.

Or maybe a prayer is all we've got.

Jeez, I forgot. I promised to write something positive. Here it is: My cat really loves me. He may regard me as a "sofa with thumbs," according to one veterinarian, but that's OK. At least he's honest about it.