O Lights Another Exploding Cigar - Granite Grok

O Lights Another Exploding Cigar

The cunning charlatan-in-chief has once again outdone and outsmarted someone… himself.

Just last month, one of O’s schemes exploded in the faces of his voters as if they were attending an exploding cigar festival and he was the one doling out the stogies.  O promised not to raise taxes on families making under $250,000. Then, with his keen focus and acute brinksmanship, he solidified the “Bush tax cuts” for 99% percent of the people that pay income taxes (yeah, Boehner got snookered; keep telling yourself that) . That sounds good, right?  Well, wait. There’s more.  While he solidified those cuts, he simultaneously allowed taxes to go up on net to families that make under $250K, thus detonating yet another promise with the same sly agility as Wile E. Coyote.

The ashy fallout from this particular detonation is quite amusing, as it’s charred some of his voters directly. The O voters bought the bovine scat he was slinging, and those that actually get paychecks only realized what they voted for when they got their paycheck: less take home pay.

That must have been a funny sight. I wish I could have watched the brow furrow into a quizzical, confused look on the faces of the O voters when they got their paycheck and it dawned on them that they had been had. I mean, most of us are paying more, but at least those of us who didn’t vote for him knew what to expect. The O voters didn’t! That’s gotta burn a bit.

Now, another cigar lit a while back is finally about to go “bang”. This time, the ash from the exploding cigar he’s lit is going to mark O’s mug too. It looks like the sequestration cuts have a good chance of becoming reality, and for a guy that doesn’t think we have a spending problem, because he likes to spend other peoples money on nonsense more than Paris Hilton on a bender, the cuts coming with sequestration must sting. He must be scratching his head and thinking to himself in an incredulous Homer Simpson voice, “Wait a minute… we’re cutting spending? Who signed this legislation into law?….Doh!”

He’s already trying to snuff out the cigar by blaming the other side and claiming it was their idea, and that they said it wouldn’t happen. However, reports say the idea came from his administration, including Jack Lew, the current Treasury Secretary nominee and the then White House Office of Management Director. Doh!

Regardless of where and by whom it originated, Obama signed it into law. If he didn’t think it should be law and wouldn’t happen, he shouldn’t have signed it. That would have been the responsible thing to do. But as is evidenced by this roaring economy that just contracted last quarter and the endless contention in D.C., he’s not responsible, at least not in any fiscal way, and he doesn’t know how to bring people together to accomplish something responsibly.

Now, is the sequestration a good thing? My view is yes and no.

I think it’s good in that it’ll cut some spending. And given the national bottom line with the average yearly deficits exceeding $1,000,000,000,000 a year for four consecutive years, we need to do that.

But no, in that it’s just a dumb way to do it. Tossing essential programs and services into the same bin as the non-essential and non-functional and then pulverizing the bin is just plain stupid.

But hey, I didn’t sign it into law. He did, and now he’s trying to maneuver out of it by scaring everyone that essential programs and services will be cut and doom will follow.  I personally don’t believe that, but let’s take him at his word.  If those are the results of the law, why did he sign it in the first place and risk catastrophe?

He and his defenders answer that as he had to make that deal because that’s the only way to get the congress to act in a way he wants.  I say exactly.  His inability to lead and persuade results in really ineffective and overly contentious government that passes really stupid legislation.  He signed a law that he didn’t want or like because of his inability to get anything else.  It’s that simple.  That is failure of leadership, and pretending otherwise is wishful thinking at best, delusional partisanship at worst. He willfully engaged in this buffoonery and we’ll all pay. Him too. Here, have a cigar.

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