Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Our Inept President

If this wasn't real, it would be funny. Remember back in August when Obama said that he had a plan that was going to get the economy going again so people would have jobs, and how he was going to release the plan right after he came back from vacation? And how he wanted a joint session of Congress to announce the plan, and that they were trying to be cute and schedule it over the top of the Republican Debates? And how they tried to make Boehner look like a partisan for pushing it back a day?  A day longer to wait for helping America get out of this economic mess, how dare he!
I missed the speech because I was traveling to Helena at the time, but the snapshot review was all about how many times he said "Pass this bill!" Just one problem: There wasn't a bill. Nothing to be introduced by any member of Congress to be considered. Nothing to be scored by the CBO. Nothing at all. But that didn't stop Obama from hitting the campaign trail to demand that the Republicans pass his bill, the "American Jobs Act of 2011." He headed off to Ohio to campaign in Boehner's back yard, telling everyone to make the Republicans do their job and Pass! The! Bill!  And still there was no bill.
But in an interesting display of bipartisanship, Texas Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican decided that he needed to introduce the American Jobs Act of 2011 on his own. Now his bill calls for reducing the corporate tax rate to 0%, and do away with the Alternative Minimum Tax. Just imagine Obama having to veto the American Jobs Act of 2011 that he called for the Republicans to pass.
Some may say that this is just a cynical political game, and they would probably be right, but it is no less of a game than what Obama is doing in demanding the passage of a bill that hasn't been introduced yet. And the only reason that Obama hasn't introduced the bill is because it doesn't exist. It is simply a political prop that he thinks is a trap that he set for the Republican Congress. But he has been too clever by half, and too lazy to do anything to follow through. His lack of writing from his college days and his tenure at Harvard Review has carried on to his Presidency, where speechifying is used as a substitute for, well, you know, work. I am sure that someone in the White House had to ask the question about what should be presented. But maybe they fell for the myth about Obama being a genius, and no one would tell him that there was more work to do. If that's the case, we have a White House populated by people who cannot seem to see that the Emperor has no clothes, or ability to do anything but campaign.

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