OBAMA Where Art Thou?

Sooooo...it is March and we are about to begin March Madness and two months into Barack Obama’s America. If I listen to the news (which i have stopped doing) I know I would hear that Barack has not fixed the banking system and has not restored confidence. If I listen to Fox he is running us down the road to socialism, running up a huge bill we cannot pay and that Rush Limbaugh wishes he would fail (like that was even worth talking about?). If I listen to the liberal talking heads we are doing just what we need to and Republicans need to stop being so obstructionist.

That is all one load of bullshit. I am beginning a disappointment with our new president but only beginning and he has plenty of time to bring me back home. Am I disappointed for any of the reasons cited by the Republican opposition? Yes, two of them. One is that he has not curtailed pork and earmarks at all in this new budget and two, he has not curtailed lobbying as the way to get things done in Washington.

It is depressing for me. I feel right now like I am looking at the other side of the Bush coin, and it is the same coin. There is nothing transformative about what is happening is Washington other then we are having the other side of an ideological, we are right, they wrong, mentality which I had incorrectly ascribed to the nasty, hateful Bushies. Now I am seeing the same thing but from the opposite side. It is making me sick. Not because the policies are so wrong. I have no idea whether the policies are wrong or not. It is the attitude of exclusion. It is the business as usual. It makes me sick.

Obama still has a chance to be transformative. He can call us out to a higher standard, a higher purpose. Our Judeo-Christian (and perhaps even Muslim but I do not know enough about the faith to even comment) heritage has an awesome history of higher values. Somehow in my life, we lost our way. We confuse success with money and things. Our grandparents and to some extent our parents main goal was to improve the life of the children so they could have a “better” life. We have become concerned (like a publicly traded company sacrificing the future and making high stakes bets) with immediate gratification and having more and better then everyone else. he can call on us all as individuals to be brave, show compassion, pick up our brothers and do more for others rather then our recent culture of getting everything I want...NOW!

The Republicans cannot lead us there. They are bankrupt of ideas and take no responsibility for our current predicament being the natural result of Gordon Gecko “greed is good” capitalism. Capitalism is awesome. It has a tremendous power to transform economies and people in a good way. But when we glorify nothing but dollars at the expense of long range sustainability and the value of the people we employ, capitalism becomes the snake that eats itself. The current Beatification of Ronald Reagan is the best example of the parties myopic view of the past and it’s very limited “get me and my friends more money now” view of the future. The greed heads with continue to partner with the pro life groups so that there can be no middle ground on anything.

I do not know what our President is waiting for. He needs to make a formal request to the Republicans that their leadership step down. He needs to use his authority to force the Pelosi/Reed/Barney Frank contingent to also step down. They are to agenda-ized and politicized to be part of any serious change. These people on the left are just as guilty, now that they in power as the Republicans used to be. There is no compromise for the group. They must have everything that is abhorrent to the right and damn the consequences and they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

America is the greatest country on the earth. If we are lead by admirable people we will continue for the next generation in that role. If we are divided, hateful, small minded and unwilling to every acknowledge that there might be good people with good idea on the other side of the aisle we are well and truly screwed.. So stand up Mr. President. Call your own party to account first. Hack the pork. Save your social agenda for 2011. Get rid of your own small minded leaders and then call the Republicans to account on the other side. Then and only then can you come to the people, come to me and lead us on to a greatness that might embarrass Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”.

We are tired of government making us afraid and expecting nothing from us but the worst. We are tired of government being corrupt, bought and sold and rife with special interests (business and social interests) which most of us in the middle are sick of hearing about. We are ready. Get off your ass and lead us. It was not the far left that you rode into office.