Back to Work...

 

 

"Okay kids, play time is over and it is back to work..."

 

Yesterday was a great holiday. It is always good to celebrate our Independence Day. We had friends over, sat outside with drinks and snacks and then had a barbecue. As much fun as yesterday was (and it was fun), today it is time to get back to work on critical things which need to be done. Not for me -  I am retired. I was talking about the people we (collectively) hired to take care of our nation's business.

 

Let me first start off by saying this - if I was the nation's HR manager, I would probably fire everyone in Washington based on the performance I have seen so far the year. So lets recap on where exactly we are right now.

 

Obama Care - Wow! What a bombshell dropped on the nation right before a very long holiday weekend! This thing is a mess and getting messier all the time. We are now going to defer the employer mandate for a year and keep the individual mandate in place for this October. We will tax the hell out of young and healthy people to help pay for the freebies. As one article I read stated, "The individual mandate will only work if young people are stupid." Congress wants to start looking into this surprise deferral on Monday - they better.

 

Immigration - Hey, it got through the Senate with almost 70 votes. No sweat G.I.! Well, hold on just a second. This bill, like so many others these days, is longer than War and Peace and more complicated than the Theory of Relativity. It is loaded with pork to buy Senatorial votes and has more trap doors than a Houdini show. The Speaker said this bill will not see the light of day in the House - they will come up with their own bill. Will any adults please step forward and fix this mess - please? BTW - NO AMNESTY!!!

 

Scandals - Where do I start? I need to be careful because I have a rule about making my posts short and sweet. What I will say is this - fix the oldest first. For the sake of Brian Terry, let the truth come out about Fast and Furious. Trust me, there is much, much more to that story. Then Benghazi, then the AP spying, then the IRS intrusions, then the NSA domestic snooping. There are so many, we should be having hearings on at least one a week! The American people deserve better.

 

Middle East - Well this week the "hot mess" over there seemed to get quite a bit hotter. Egypt, it seems, had a wee bit of "buyer's remorse" with the Muslim Brotherhood. And we backed the wrong horse in that race. Our fine ambassador, Anne Patterson got caught in the middle of the storm. In particular, she made a huge misstep when she resisted opportunities to criticize the Morsy government as it implemented increasingly authoritarian policies. That did not go well with the millions protesting in the street. So besides the mess in Egypt, the death toll in Syria is over 100,000 and Libya is still unsettled. And all that WMD? Still MIA. By the way, Iran is still working on the bomb and Iraq is again sinking back into sectarian violence. Arab Spring, anyone?

Economy - Our phony baloney, good time rock and roll economy continues to hum. Well, part of it at least. Thanks to the Fed blowing our money supply up like a helium balloon, our Dow is over 15,000 and growing. Never mind the metrics tell and different story. Our GDP is anemic, our U6 unemployment is still sky high, and many of the new jobs being created are not "living wage" jobs. The housing market is still sick and our energy policy is a mess. But so what? Buy high and sell low - or something like that.

We need to demand better from those we have hired. Summer is now half over and we are heading full speed into the next debt ceiling with a raft of issues left unsettled. Will the adults please come forward and drive this car? It seems the kids who have been learning to drive have gotten us lost - very, very lost.