And the Great Republican Trump Slayer Is…

 

First, let us review a few overly obvious insights. The Republican hierarchy does not particularly like President Trump. This is especially true of the New England, Country Club Republican moneyed people such as the Bush’s. They find him marginally better than Hillary Clinton. Trump did not belong to the Skull and Bones or attend Harvard or Yale. His college did not have ivy covered buildings or even one vine of ivy. He has a rough and tumble styled personality with little if any refinement. He doesn’t even hold his pinkie out when sipping tea and he has never even sipped tea, what a barbarian. Trump is uncouth, surprise, surprise. He is insulting and very rough on a refined ear. Never mind that these oh so refined Republicans, much like their Democrat cousins, have family histories steeped in criminal or marginally legal acts through which their fortunes were built. They now set the standard that those who desire to reach the heights of power must, at the very least, pretend to value and toe their line. They are the “old money” and they turn their noses up at the upstarts such as the Trump family along with others whose dirty dealings brought them into money less than four generations back. They really want somebody else to represent their pure and refined Republican Party and have no space for those popularists who appeal to those “flyover people” who hold the coasts apart.

 

One need understand that the elite Republicans and elite Democrats who run the United States are two sides of the same coin and are the problem. They both fear Trump because he could expose their monopoly on power over the last hundred years plus and how they have played the American people with their ruse of there being any difference between the two parties. The political spectrum presented to the American people places the Democrats at the far left edge, or there abouts, and places the Republicans at the far right edge, or there abouts. This is what is drilled into the little heads of mush from the very first lesson given in grade school and the left edge is treated as the center and the natural order of things while the right is to be feared as exclusionary. They never bother to tell you that both groups are exclusionary and being exclusionary is not necessarily an evil thing. We are taught to be exclusionary when choosing friends and to avoid those bad people, who are defined differently depending on where you are raised. The reality is that both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party are both together slightly left of center and sliding ever more to the left while the United States Constitution is quite a bit to the right of both parties and they have slid far from the founding positions and are moving ever more away (see diagram below). What you also notice, if you are actually paying attention, is that where the top has the edges defined as right and left, the bottom has them as Statism and Individualism. This is due to another little lie you were taught, that the Communists were on the left, meaning good, and the Nazis were on the right, meaning bad, and this was taught so true conservatives being equated with Nazism made perfect sense as both were defined as on the right. The truth is Nazism and Communism are two varieties of the same socio-political construct, Socialism. The difference between the two comes down to a single word as the Nazis are National Socialists and the Communists are International Socialists. Their only real difference was the Nazis desired everybody to be German Socialists where the state directed all production and ownership without actually owning them and the Communists wanted to do away with the concept of statehood and sell themselves as the party of the people when in reality they would become the party of the people who were at the top of the government. The Nazis took over the decisions of production while allowing the original owners to continue running the particulars to reach the desired goals allowing those who knew how to manage and get results in place while the Communists removed the owners of the companies and land owners and executed them as villains of the people and then placed their friends in charge of everything and could not figure out why production suffered with people who knew nothing about running a company now running the companies and those who had never grown even a potted plant now becoming the farmers.

 

 

Both forms of Socialism have their problems as does any form of government, the most challenging of all is keeping government from growing and stifling freedom and productivity with too many laws and regulations, of which regulations are the more sinister as they are put in place by bureaucrats who are not elected and usually cannot be fired or even identified. Perhaps a good idea would be for everyone who is in a meeting that approves a new regulation be required to sign their names along with the person who originated the regulation signing it in letters the size of John Hancock when signing the Declaration of Independence. Why not have them put their good old John Hancock on the regulations they design, factory workers are required to sign off on items they worked on defining their parts and job requirements so if it fails down at testing, the company knows who is doing their job incorrectly and can retrain them or replace them. The same should apply to government regulations. This would be an idea that President Trump would likely really find of interest, perhaps somebody could show him this idea for us, and please give us the due credit.

 

We should get back to the subject at hand. Perhaps we should start with a slow build-up though most of you already know who it is the Republicans have chosen to replace President Trump on the 2020 ballot. He is really no stranger to us and has run for President and lost before. He is about to become a carpetbagger and be elected to the United States Senate in a state in which he may have a legal residence but has never represented before in his political life. In many ways, he will be the reverse Hillary. Hillary Clinton went from being from Arkansas to the Senator from New York and this individual will be going from Governor of Massachusetts to the Senator from Utah. She went from flyover country to the big East Coast and he is going from the big East Coast to flyover country. Yes, you guessed it; we are talking about Mitt Romney. Are all the Republicans cheering and excited about not voting for Mitt Romney again? Just think, if Hillary Clinton were to steal the nomination in 2020 and Mitt Romney steals the nomination in 2020, the United States could have the worst turnout at the polls in its history as both parties refuse to support their candidates. It would be such fun to watch nobody really care which one wins, as it would make no difference.

 

We would like to close by counting down some of the most important accomplishments President Trump has performed almost single-handedly and with minimal recognition from the establishment. The reason is it has been the establishment and its tentacles which President Trump has revealed. The media has been laid bare for all to see and their complicity in manipulating the information rather than reporting the information is now understood by all. He has completely blown the lid off there being any real difference between the hardline Republicans and hard line Democrats where the differences are minimal and they actually all but work as one unit. He has made obvious that the real problem is exactly as Ronald Reagan stated those many years ago, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” (see video below) President Trump wrote an executive order to the executive branch employees and managers in particular that for every new regulation any department writes, they need to retire two older regulations. We will grant that every department has many hundreds if not thousands of regulations which are not enforced. Some selections of these are not enforced for a reason, as they are part of the plan for totalitarian government control in the near future. The idea, which is a tried and true concept used by governments throughout history, is to make all the laws and regulations necessary for the government to assume complete control over the entirety of production and limit all freedoms curtailing even free travel without government approval. These are not provisions for an emergency; they are fully enforceable regulations lying basically dormant. When the time came and the wrong person was in the White House and their party controlled Congress, then all the dormant regulations would come from their sleepy folders and be enforced all at once. What happens is you wake one morning and all of a sudden, you find your personal vehicle impounded and every inch of your life is being turned upside-down. You have new people running your workplace and many people you know disappear never to be seen again unless you run into them by accident. Should you run into them, they are no longer the same, as they appear to have suffered something so traumatic that their minds are as if they were wiped clean and they have been turned into simpletons incapable of free thought.

 

 

By the time you see these people in this state, you will have been conditioned sufficiently yourself to know to simply walk away and accept the loss and say nothing. By then you would have learned to master your facial emotiveness and eradicated all visible signs of caring or being offended by anything. That would come under the definition of survival in this Brave New World where your former workmate now sips their tea with the pinkie held out while murmuring, “I love Big Brother.” How does the United States avoid falling into that trap? That, my friends, is an excellent question. Thus far the only governments to have avoided such or similar fate are those still progressing to that point. Progressing to that point is an appropriate label as it will be the Progressives (also have been called Leftists, Liberals, forward-looking, radicals, revolutionaries, Democrats, Republicans or Socialists) who take the country there. What all these political labels have in common is they are Statists and believe that government can solve every problem and when their government solution causes new problems, the government can solve those just as adequately. The people who are guaranteed to take the nation, any nation, to this point have a title and an occupation, they are called politicians. Politicians are in the business of being in your business. They truly believe their life’s raison d’être is to assure that everybody lives a perfect life and they are going to define exactly what that perfect life should be in the name of individual freedom. They accomplish this over the long haul, as you cannot impinge on people to that great an extent overnight without first conditioning them over most of their lives. How do you condition people to take such a threat to their own free choice? Easy, you teach them to accept all authority, work only in groups where no one person is given recognition though it is expected for the group to carry their weakest members (often they make up the majority in the team and live off other’s efforts), be weak finding offense easily and then reacting as if all is lost and they then go to those who define offenses to receive calming and other therapies. These therapies often include warm blankets, puppies or kittens, coloring books, soft insipid music and therapists or psychologists. They raise a population of what are currently called snowflakes and are actually more like sheep in waiting for their assigned ram to follow everywhere and to define their actions. The rams are bred separately by the politicians and are often their children whom they believe will be assigned by them to rule the New World Order. The world will likely be split into three large groups, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia (see map below). They will have a reason for their New World Order to be divided, this way they gain additional control as they stage wars between the three factions. One will be your ally and the other your enemy and then at some point they change around to the opposite. This provides a means for rationing and every sort of political heavy-handedness. Control will be the watchword and the world will resemble a combination of George Orwell’s 1984 and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with a heavy dose of Albert Camus.

 

World at War from 1984 by George Orwell

 

Again, let us return to Mitt Romney and his presumed primary challenge to Donald Trump in 2020. Should Romney succeed and defeat Trump to represent the Republican Party in 2020, we can expect whomever the Democrat Party nominates to win. The truth is, unless the Democrat Party selects Keith Ellison, Mitt Romney would probably lose once more as he cannot get much of the Republican base out to vote in the required swing states which Trump won. His only chance is to get the Democrats to nominate somebody who can be made to appear so controversial and outside the American mainstream, that Romney becomes a life preserver for those people. This was President Trump’s magic ticket; he was the not-Hillary candidate. Had the Democrat Party nominated Bernie Sanders, then Trump very likely would have lost, as the youth vote added to the Democrat base would have won the election for “Bernie” just as they did for President Obama, twice. Either party can still win an election if they can find a sizeable sector and produce for them a solid reason to get out and vote. The Presidency is still about getting your base excited and out to vote. The coming midterm elections will have a very active leftist Democrats voting plus their standard base of voters which could cause problems for the Republican candidates. They are going to have the uphill battle in swing states and will need to give their base reasons to get to the voting booths.

 

This will not be a problem which Mitt Romney will face in Utah as he does have a residence there, he is a member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, attended Brigham Young University (BYU) as did his fiancée, and his mother was a native of Logan, Utah. Much of his political life was spent as United States Senator and Governor for the state of Massachusetts as well as saving the failing Winter Olympic Games of 2002 held in Salt Lake City, Utah by assuming the role of President of the Organizing Committee. Should Mitt Romney prevail, which all signs claim he shall, this would be his first political position for the state of Utah. His previous life in Utah and working for the Salt Lake City Olympics do make him far less of a carpetbagger than was Hillary Clinton when she ran for the Senate seat for the state of New York. Still, Mitt Romney is a very competent manager and leader and would serve as an adequate, if not excellent, President if only he could be electable. The other point which needs making is that by forcing the Republican Party in Utah to give Mitt Romney their Senate seat is preventing the advancement of other likely presentable and decent candidates. There have also been rumors that the Republican leadership plans to appoint Mitt Romney a plum position of prominence such as Chairman of National Republican Senatorial Committee or talk of him replacing Mitch McConnell and becoming the Republican Senatorial Leader and possibly Majority Leader should the Republicans hold the Senate. All of these speculations point to grooming of Mitt Romney and keeping his name prominently in the news. He is a known critic of President Trump which he moderated while he pleaded his case to be Secretary of State but resumed attacking the President even taking a swipe when announcing his run for the Utah Senate seat. We can expect Mitt Romney to run the Republican #Never Trump wing of the party taking opposing views and blocking a goodly amount of President Trump’s initiatives. This could become an ugly conflict fought out in full public view with President Trump utilizing his Twitter Account while Mitt Romney will utilize and ever eager media which will feed on anything he states which can be turned against the President no matter the intent by Romney. The media will use Romney to fuel their war on President Trump. The difficulty Mitt Romney will face is the lack of honesty perceived to exist, or the lack thereof, in the media being so strong that his message, no matter how it is presented, will be ignored or simply not believed to be valid as reported. This will mean that Romney will need a secondary means for getting his message heard. This is where President Trump has proven effective, using the media as his own tool to wield while still getting his message out. The only problem is sifting through the noise to find the nuggets of actual message and intent, not just ridicule. What will a nation decide if they need to choose between Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and will the people’s choice even matter or will the game be fixed as per the Democrats selecting Hillary Clinton. If the Republicans are perceived to have put in the fix to nominate Mitt Romney, then we would not give a plug nickel of a chance for his winning the Presidency. His age precludes his being patient and we doubt he has given up on getting the gold ring and winning the biggest prize, the Oval Office.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Hopes and Ponderings Concerning Aftermath of American Elections

Let us start with Congress with the presumption that the Republicans will control the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. The Republican leadership, in particular the establishment mainstream Republicans, will very likely misread the opportunity and expectations of them by the American public and especially their base voters and spend all their energies and debates in attempts to bring down President Obama whether through directly attempting to impeach him and failing or by endless hearings against President Obama himself and other members past and present of his administration. There is a definite probability that they would attempt to bring former Attorney General Eric Holder, assuming he ever is replaced which nobody appears to be in any great hurry to find a replacement. Between Fast and Furious and the rest of the litany of assumed misdeeds the Republicans could spend most of the last two years of President Obama’s terms simply holding hearings on Holder and Benghazi, their two favorite subjects for attacking the President. Such a scenario would be the greatest waste of time and missing of opportunity in the history of politics.

 

The Republicans, should they control both houses but not have sufficient numbers to override Presidential vetoes, they should still pass the bills which the American people would see as taking responsible approaches to actually get the government out of the way of the economic engine allowing it to adjust to the situation as it exists and slowly rev up and begin to produce jobs and economic activities which have been moribund for the past six years plus back to the last year and a half of the George W. Bush Presidency. They should not bother trying to repeal or modify the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) as such would be a waste of their efforts and not actually showcase their agenda should they ever gain the kind of situation which President Obama enjoyed and squandered; the complete control over the entirety of government with the White House and majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives plus their Senate majority was filibuster proof as they held over sixty seats. The Republicans should have debates to display their agenda for two to three weeks on each grand piece of legislation which would make the core of a government where they were allowed to freely pass their agenda. By having open hearings and discussions they might also be able to get the media to cover these legislative deliberations, even should they attempt to portray them in a negative light, thus placing them before the American public. Granted such a plan depends on the ability and desire of the American public to care about the workings of the Congress and actually see through any slant in the media. Unfortunately, we are more likely to witness the Republicans waste their opportunity and as a result the Democrats might be able to win back the Senate and maybe even the House of Representatives as well as retaining the White House as a result of the 2016 elections, but more on this later.

 

President Obama after the election will have even less reason to remain even slightly limited by the Constitution. The President has already shown complete contempt for the Republican controlled House of Representatives and even to ignore the will of the Democratic controlled Senate. This disregard for any convention or limitation will permit President Obama to work on completing the rest of his promises to fundamentally change the United States of America. His intent to mold the United States in his image is just another reflection of his narcissism which knows no boundaries and once the final election which might have any effect upon his ability to rule and rule absolutely, President Obama will finally be cut loose to enact the edicts by Presidential use of a pen and the phone to those minions who he can rely upon to take to the streets if necessary and cause sufficient disturbance to allow him to continue writing executive order after order as he intends. The areas where President Obama would have the greatest influence should he choose is in the makeup of the General staffs of the military since he can request the resignation of any General at his pleasure. He could then replace them with people from within the military who would be more accepting to his desires to limit the use of the military outside of the United States and with no regard to consequences or treaty start redeploying all the military personnel either back home or someplace where their capabilities are least necessary such as the deployment to West Africa to presumably assist with the fight against Ebola. Exactly how combat troops are supposed to engage and fight microscopic targets is beyond my meager ability to figure, but I am sure the President gave them orders which would address such difficulties. But the military is the least of the areas where President Obama could enforce his will.

 

There is the possibility that should the Democrats lose their majority in the Senate that during the current Senate’s lame duck session that Senate Majority Leader Reid could call them back to Washington for an emergency session because a number of Supreme Court Justices had retired such as Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg who is of advanced age and suffers from cancer. Then President Obama could send candidates for ratification and as Senator Harry Reid used the nuclear option which now allows for confirmation of Presidential appointees to only require a majority decision for cloture, thus ending any chance for filibuster, which forces an immediate confirmation vote. President Obama and such a session of the Senate could very easily place as many new and young very leftist Justices onto the Supreme Court as Justices retired allowing such appointments. President Obama could really let loose the Environmental Protection Agency and other Cabinet posts and departments to enact regulations using even the flimsiest of authorizations from actual laws. We might even become aware of other surprises ensconced within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mega-legislative effort. Remember former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment that we had to pass the bill to find out what was in the bill. What else might be hidden in the language of the over two thousand pages of the legislation now law that would allow for more malfeasance.

 

The real problem that arises is, with a compliant Attorney General willing to simply cover up for anything the President or members of his Cabinet or other appointees placed throughout government as well as those willing to act in accordance with the instructions of those who will be tasked with carrying out any edicts or regulatory enactments which originate with the White House and relayed down a pipeline of favorable and willing and dependable government employees, all of whom will have sufficient time in service, this allows all to be completely safe from consequences while performing and enacting new regulations. This is an area where President Obama and his appointees making up his administration including the various Secretaries in the Cabinet as well as the numerous Czars which were not reviewed nor approved by Senate confirmation remaining un-vetted yet holding great power and sway with some even having more influence than the Cabinet Secretaries who presumably held the sole supervisory over their departments thus allowing the President to rewrite regulations almost at will. Exactly how far President Obama is willing and planning to go in remaking the United States is an unknown that will be revealed over the remaining two years of his Presidency with the first hints coming early next year and possibly a little earlier, all depending on election results and how willing the President might be and how far he would risk going. Whatever the coming events, it will prove to be interesting and the only actual unknown is how exciting and challenging these coming events will prove. As the ancient Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times,” and we certainly do live in such times.

 

While we are predicting the future let’s peek into my crystal ball and see who might end up as the Democrat candidate for President in the 2016 election cycle. I might try to also include the Republican candidate but with so many unannounced and almost ready to runs, that prediction is going to have to wait until the field has been decided though I can predict which politicians will not be the republican candidate. A quick rundown of the Republicans who will not appear on the 2016 final ballot are Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Speaker of the House John Boehner for starters. Now on to the Democrat candidates and the somewhat controversial prediction. Almost everybody has placed their chips on Hillary Clinton and with her latest appearance and her apparent new improved look, they have good reason to choose her. The problem is the voice and the speeches are still Hillary Clinton who was initially tainted by some claiming she only married Bill to ride his coattails to prominence and this was only reinforced by her run for Senate in New York, a state where she had barely taken up residence. Then Hillary Clinton has also been tainted by her inept performance at Secretary of State and especially the Benghazi slaughter of four Americans including Ambassador Stevens and his aid as well as two security personnel and former seals who put up a heroic fight while waiting for the cavalry to come over the hilltop in the nick of time. That cavalry never was permitted to even mount up let alone ride to the rescue. The echo of, “What did you do during the Benghazi nightmare and why was there not more security since you knew there were potential problems and a definitive threat of an attack?” Because of the obvious candidacy of Hillary Clinton and the reputation of the Clintons for not appreciating those who choose to oppose them, just ask the Obamas, there will be few Democrats rushing to compete with Hillary Clinton. There is one exception and she is a candidate whose history depicts a woman who is not easily cowed and is bold enough to have made obviously fictitious claims in order to gain scholarship and more and now sits as United States Senator for Massachusetts. As you have likely guessed or know, the person I believe will win the Democrat nomination for President is Elizabeth Warren, Native American deriving her family having Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage, listed herself as a minority in professional directories. Yet she questionably denied that she ever tried to gain a professional advantage through her lineage. Still, Elizabeth Warren has the near perfect liberal progressive credentials and presents herself well and has a similar experience to President Obama when he first sought the White House against Hillary Clinton as well. Further, the United States low information voters and some easily swayed voters who simply desire to be a part of the majority and will follow a sweeping trend just to be considered in with their peer groups will vote for a good story line repeated in the media and popular culture spots such as social media and comedy news reports. This may prove to be a part of the Presidential election cycle should either party, particularly if it is the Democrats, should place a woman at the top of their ticket, then they may tap into the desire of the American public to crash and break down all of the remaining barriers they perceive to remain in their societal history. Despite the seeming problems which have accompanied President Obama, there will be those more than willing to place a woman in the White House; and not only a woman, but a Native American woman making Elizabeth Warren potentially the first self-proclaimed Native American President and the first woman President. How can that combination possibly lose? My only request is please do not kill the messenger if this message proves incorrect; I tried and took the chance and now wait for the dice to stop spinning.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Our Sequestration Outage

Over the past few days all of our schedules here at BTC have been disrupted by a series of high intensity meetings and brain storming sessions all having to do with how we might be able to adjust to the state of things post sequestration with the serious cuts being made in all government programs, especially those which will affect the most numbers of Americans not part of the higher echelons of government, you know, Congrescriters, their staffers, the President, members of his family, and all attached to the Administration.  There had been numerous warning, actually more like threats, of how the sequestration cuts would be the end of life as we know it with the government forced to make draconian cuts to so many vital programs and this was the concern we addressed in our meetings. We went over our budget numerous times, it took so little time we thought we should do it repeatedly until it seemed larger than life, we never attained such levels. Then we reviewed the funding we receive from the government and that caused us great distress. Hard as it may believe, but our government subsidy was less of our budget than anyone could imagine. We checked and rechecked and even double-rechecked and to our complete surprise we were unable to track down one red cent we receive from the government at any level. We even contacted others we know who might be facing difficulties resulting from the sequestration budget cuts and all our fellow private enterprises also were having little problems with these cuts as they, surprise, surprise, also do not receive any funding from government sources. Empowered with this information we decided to review some of the warnings, or threats, your choice, as to which services would likely be curtailed or cut back due to sequestration. The results were nothing short of amazing.

 

Some of the services we found that were to be cut were absolutely astonishing. The TSA might not have sufficient numbers of screeners and security personnel on all shifts to facilitate safe travel conditions. The concierge services at Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport who provide services for Congressional and Presidential staffers and high government officials would remain at full staffing, after all, only the best for our best, or something like that. Another small inconvenience for travelers by air would be a possible deficiency in the number of Air Traffic Controllers to handle the full load of flights. There were some reports that as some locations receive Federal funding for some of their Police, Fire and Rescue personnel that in such areas there may be a reduction in force in order to meet the cuts. Don’t get too worried, security personnel and the Federal and Capital police will remain at their fully funded levels providing nothing but the best for our elected officials and their staff members.

 

Fortunately we did some further research and things will be far less dire than the predictions from the let’s shock the life out of the public newscasters and press personnel releasing these reports to the newswires in order to paint a picture of apocalyptic events being just on the horizon if the sequestration was allowed to befall the United States. Most of the cuts would amount to a small percentage of the Federal workforce having to take one day a week or even every two weeks furlough. This means they may use their personal leave and still be paid or they may simply forgo that one day of pay in the immediate future until a budget is finally formed. After a budget is approved, if these furloughs are treated as every previous furlough, these employees who were forced to take time off will receive back pay to cover every hour they missed of work. Yes, that’s right, at the end the furloughed employees will receive pay for the time they stayed home and did absolutely no work and may have even received pay as they took leave. So, if a furloughed Federal employee chooses to use leave time to receive pay for the furlough days, once the budget is passed they will be paid for those days a second time and still not have worked those hours. So, at a minimum, any Federal worker who does not receive any furlough days has to work those extra days while their coworkers stay home and in the end the ones who got to stay home will get as much if not more pay for the same period. The ones who take leave to cover furloughed days will be paid both leave and regular pay for taking a day off. Who wouldn’t want that deal? But there is a small catch.

 

That might be a problem as there has never been a budget passed since President Obama was first sworn in January of 2009. That year they finished out on the final budget approved and signed by President Bush but since then President Obama has never signed a single budget. Even during his first two years he did not sign an annual budget by only signing continuing resolutions and partial budgets for certain departments or programs. The theory behind this ploy was the President was able to push through numerous budgetary increases by using numerous continuing resolutions and including increases with each and every one leading to an annual increase larger than had one yearly budget been passed. The end result was by the end of eighteen months, a year and a half; President Obama had increased the baseline budget for numerous of his favored entitlement programs allotting significant new funds in order to greatly expand their benefit roles. One of the more notorious of these was the Food Stamp Program which has seen the most massive increase in enrollees in its history. Should the sequestration force spending cuts, it still will not force President Obama to actually sign a real budget. Of course when the President or his spokespeople are questioned as to why he has not signed any budget for a full year, they all answer with he has not received a budget from the Congress for him to sign.

 

Needless to point out, but the usual reason is he has never received a budget from the Republican Congress. This little bit of information is almost universally reported verbatim as if it were the gospel truth. The honest truth is that the Democrat controlled Senate, half of the Congress but who’s counting, has refused to even schedule the numerous House of Representatives passed budgets for committee hearings or a floor vote or debate. Senate Majority Leader Reid has announced from day one after the 2010 elections that no budget the House of Representatives would send to the Senate deserved even a minute of debate and were dead on arrival. This refusal to even debate and to never, ever, ever allow a vote on a full budget is actually a service provided by the Democrat Party to their Democrat President to relieve him of ever being held responsible for the budget and to have a ready-made excuse to beat like a drum whenever he is questioned by the press or anyone else. With Senate Majority Leader Reid following the President’s actual words given in countless speeches where he has said what amounted to the denial that President Obama was standing ready to sign any bipartisan and proper budget that the Congress could agree upon and send to his desk, oh, and he is waiting anxiously. Then comes the whispers from the White House into Senator Reid’s ear, no budget must ever pass the Senate without White House giving prior approval. Then the only budgets approved and sent to the President are kick the can down the road continuing resolutions. But why let such a trifling matter spoil a good thing. Eventually a budget or possibly one of the myriad of continuing resolutions that gets passed will include the back-pay for the furloughed workers and it will be excused as necessary as the unfortunate Federal workers who were furloughed cannot be made to suffer because the Republican Congress would not do their job and send a responsible budget to the President in time to avoid the sequestration. Also, you do realize that the whole idea for sequestration was a Republican one and the President had nothing to do with the idea, well, other than proposing it, defining it, demanding it, and then complaining how the Republicans forced it on the country. Oh to have an echo chamber anywhere as faithful and loyal as the fifth estate is to their leader, President Obama.

 

Beyond the Cusp