Returning from a congressional town hall meeting in Pryor Creek, Oklahoma last Tuesday, one of three town hall meetings held that day by our \u201cblue dog\u201d Democrat congressman, Dan Boren, I couldn\u2019t help but notice a long deep gouge cut into the pavement of Sam\u2019s Corner Road, near our home. And as I rounded the next bend in the road I could see what had cause the damage to the road. Parked off to the right side of the road was a large red septic tank truck, a \u201choney wagon,\u201d with all of its left rear wheels missing.
\nAfter what we had just witnessed in the filled-to-capacity Expo Center at Pryor Creek\u2019s Mid-America Industrial Park, I couldn\u2019t help but see the broken-down truck as a metaphor for the Obama presidency. Just as a heavy load of raw sewage had caused the wheels to come off the septic tank pumper, causing its driver to have a very bad day, the wheels are slowly but surely coming off the political \u201choney wagon\u201d that is the Obama Administration, causing its driver to have a very bad year.
\nAs matters now stand, the Obama presidency may well be over before it really begins, saddling the American people with the first three-year lame duck presidency in history.
\nIn his march to the White House, Obama campaigned on three primary themes. He would:
\n\u00b7\tCreate \u201ceconomic justice\u201d for the poor and less-fortunate, bring \u201cfairness\u201d to our tax system, stem the outflow of jobs to overseas markets, restructure the mortgage lending industry, and bring stability to financial markets.
\n\u00b7\tDevelop clean, renewable sources of energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and create millions of new \u201cgreen\u201d jobs.
\n\u00b7\tReform our overly expensive healthcare system while making healthcare and healthcare insurance available to all\u2026 legal and illegal residents alike.<\/p>\n
Obama\u2019s first initiative upon taking office was an economic \u201cstimulus\u201d package, supposedly a quick fix to create millions of new jobs and reverse a deepening economic recession. Democrats in Congress approved a $787 billion stimulus package to fund what were billed as \u201cshovel-ready\u201d projects. However, after more than six months, only about ten percent of the appropriated funds have been spent\u2026 most on pork barrel projects to benefit Democratic special interests\u2026 and attendees at town hall meetings are beginning to press the Congress to stop the spending spree and leave the remaining ninety percent in the hands of the Chinese lenders. <\/p>\n
On the subject of taxes, Obama said, over and over again, \u201cI can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.\u201d
\nThat pledge was found to be just so much hot air when the Congress took up Obama\u2019s \u201ccap-and-trade\u201d proposal. Obama soon found that the American people are not nearly as dumb as he and congressional Democrats think they are. Taxpayers very quickly came to the conclusion that the extra $3,000 that American families would have to spend on motor fuels and electricity each year may not have been, by definition, a tax, but if it was money out of their pockets it came under the heading of a \u201crose by any other name.\u201d
\nAs the American people came to understand that Obama was serious when he said he would \u201cbankrupt coal-burning power plants and drive electricity costs through the ceiling,\u201d cap-and-trade quickly became a very hot potato and was shoved to the back burner so that Obama could take up the even larger problem of healthcare reform.
\nInstead of writing a bill and sending it off to Congress for action, as the Clintons did in 1993, Obama simply dropped back ten yards and punted the ball to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Henry Waxman. After all, if there was a chance that Obamacare would suffer the same fate as Hillarycare, he didn\u2019t want his fingerprints on it. Unfortunately, the task of writing the bill was turned over to some of the most radical leftists in Congress and they happily produced something called the Healthcare Choices Act of 2009, a 1,019-page monstrosity that Obama did not write, but which he is now forced to defend.
\nPriced at well over a trillion dollars, Obama has promised that the bill would be \u201crevenue neutral\u201d and would not increase the federal deficit. To accomplish this great feat of magic, the bill\u2019s supporters expect to fund it by rooting out waste and corruption in Medicare and Medicaid, by cutbacks in Medicare reimbursements, and by imposing oppressive new taxes on the rich. In terms of quality and availability, Obama continues to insist that he can provide healthcare to 47 million additional people\u2026 without increasing the number of doctors and hospitals needed to provide the service.
\nThere was a time, just a few short months ago, when these campaign themes all existed separate and apart from each other\u2026 but no more. When Obama assembled the $787 billion stimulus package and taxpayers came to recognize it as a blatant payoff to Democratic constituencies, he dropped a few cc\u2019s of poison into the political well. Then, when he tried to push cap-and-trade legislation, based on nothing more than junk science, he dumped a cup of poison into the well. And finally, when he tried to push what the people see as a radical government takeover of our healthcare system, he dumped a bucketful of poison into the well.
\nThe end result is that he is unlikely to get any sort of meaningful healthcare reform because a majority of Americans simply do not trust him any longer. And since he has so thoroughly poisoned the well of political discourse\u2026 his own White House deputy Chief of Staff called on union goons to \u201cpush back twice as hard\u201d against angry senior citizens, the Democratic Speaker of the House referred to Americans exercising their right of free speech as \u201cNazis,\u201d and the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate called town hall meeting attendees \u201cevil-mongers\u201d\u2026 he can\u2019t go back to cap-and-trade or to tax reform and pick up where he left off.
\nIn a May 20, 2009 article for American Thinker, titled \u201cRevolution \u2013 Which Side Is Going To Win The War?\u201d the former Vice Chairman of the CIA\u2019s National Intelligence Council, Herbert E. Meyer, brings us face to face with a stark reality that every American should ponder in the Age of Obama. He tells us that \u201cwhat defines a \u2018revolution\u2019 is that, when it\u2019s over, a country has changed not only its leaders and its laws, but its operating system.\u201d
\nMeyer reminds us that \u201cwe Americans have been so politically divided that some of us have called this left-right, liberal-conservative split a \u2018culture war,\u2019 or even a \u2018second Civil War.\u2019 \u201d But these descriptions are no longer accurate. Instead, he argues, \u201cThe precise, technical word for what is happening in the United States today is \u2018revolution.\u2019 \u201d
\nMeyer explains that, just as computers may operate either on an Apple or a Microsoft operating system, countries have a choice of operating systems, as well \u2013 one political and the other economic. Politically, countries can be either a democracy or a dictatorship, while economically they can have either a free market or a command economy.
\nHe explains, \u201cWhen politics in a democracy is normal the political parties will agree to preserve the operating system while they compete to improve it\u2026 Honorable people often will disagree about what to do \u2013 sometime quite strongly\u2026 But in normal politics the outer limits of all these disagreements are marked by a shared commitment to preserving and improving the operating system.\u201d
\nBut here\u2019s the scary part. Meyer goes on to say that, \u201cIn abnormal politics, the objective of one party isn\u2019t to improve the operating system, but to overthrow it.\u201d
\nThat is precisely what describes American politics today, and for at least the past seventy-five years. While conservatives and Republicans have worked steadfastly to preserve and improve our democracy and our free market system, liberals and Democrats have worked tirelessly to replace our political system with an authoritarian socialist system and our free market economy with a managed economy, controlled by politicians and government bureaucrats.
\nAs Meyer suggests, liberals and Democrats could never admit to their true goals and objectives. Instead, they have worked covertly, pretending to support democracy and the free market while working diligently to undermine both.
\nThe people who filled the Expo Center in Pryor Creek, Oklahoma last Tuesday\u2026 most of them lifelong Democrats who\u2019ve suddenly awakened to the dangers of Obama and what the Democrat Party is all about\u2026 are in full revolt against Obama, Pelosi, and Reid and their entire program. They are living proof that, while Obama is leading a revolution against the American system of government, there is also a massive revolution extant within the Democratic Party. With each passing day, Obama and the Democrats lose more and more of the senior vote\u2026 people highly concerned about their healthcare\u2026 and more and more of the white middle class\u2026 people concerned about the kind of world that Obama and the Democrats are creating for their children and grandchildren.
\nAs I see the wheels coming off the Obama Express I keep thinking back to that big red \u201choney wagon\u201d parked along Sam\u2019s Corner Road in Mayes County, Oklahoma with all of its left rear wheels missing. In order to make it a fitting symbol of the Obama Administration, I\u2019ve been tempted to pay a visit to the truck in the middle of the night to paint the word \u201cObama\u201d just above the words \u201cSeptic Tank Pumping\u201d in large white letters\u2026 but my wife won\u2019t let me. Darn!<\/p>\n
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Returning from a congressional town hall meeting in Pryor Creek, Oklahoma last Tuesday, one of three town hall meetings held that day by our \u201cblue dog\u201d Democrat congressman, Dan Boren, I couldn\u2019t help but notice a long deep gouge cut … Continue reading