There Are Many Cliffs
Where is that cliff? Is it in front or in back of us?
According to the media, there is only one cliff. That is the one, the so called fiscal cliff, looming in front of us. Do not back up, however, because there is a steeper, deeper, and more deadly chasm close to the back wheels.
The media currently has us going forward in high gear and high speed. Regardless of what happens at the last possible minute at the lip of the fiscal cliff, President Obama will be declared the winner.
After all, the President has offered a compromise. He no longer harangues about making the rich pay their fair share. He talks, instead, about “revenue enhancement” by raising the top income tax rate to 39%. Sunday, he indicated through Treasury Secretary Geithner that he will not consider any rate below 39%, even just a point or two.
If the Congress will just grant that request, he might agree with some budget reductions. But wait a minute! To get a consideration of those reductions, Congress will also have to allow more stimulus spending, agree to another extension of unemployment benefits, give up its ability to put a cap on budget deficits, and, oh yes, wait unit next year to talk about budget cuts.
In other words, there has to be an agreement to kick the can down the road one more time. Anyone who thinks that the class warriors will give up any of their vote buying programs after the turn of a new year has been drinking too much Kool Aid.
If Republicans agree to this scam, they will have agreed to raise enough new revenue to run the government for about six days. Simultaneously, they will have agreed to spend more money on programs that are not working and to push the national debt ever higher. Maybe they can do something about that debt crushing future generations later in 2013. Or maybe they cannot.
So for the time being, they will have agreed with President Obama to take the foot off the accelerator for a short period as he digs the pit deeper under the cliff.
The media is so engaged with applause for the President’s deft end run around the Republicans, that it has lost sight of the rapidly growing crisis behind him. His belief that just being weak and congenial in foreign relations will make everyone our staunch friends has frayed as badly as many experts have warned.
Iran continues its drive for functioning nuclear weapons, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is moving to install a dictator that may be a lot more inimical to our interests than the previous dictator we helped overthrow and send to prison, Syria continues to burn toward being a puppet of Iran while we fiddle, and a vast majority of the members of the UN thumbed their collective noses at us and voted Palestine a notch higher toward statehood.
All of this is coalescing around the radical Ayatollah, Immams, and President in Teheran who repeatedly threaten to wipe Israel off the face of the earth
President Obama is not worried, however. After all, he killed bin Laden. That, supposedly, decimated al Qaeda.
Historically, to decimate meant reducing by one tenth. In modern terms, it has come to mean to destroy a large part of something. Whatever the meaning, the al Qaeda hydra has a lot more than just a few heads.
The Fort Hood massacre, the continuing guerrilla attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan, and, most recently, the coordinated murderous attacks on U.S. personnel in Benghazi prove that al Qaeda is alive, well, and healthy.
So what is the President elect doing about any of this? Nothing!!! Well that is not exactly true.
He is considering appointing Susan Rice Secretary of State to replace retiring Secretary Hillary Clinton.
Rice is a super rich functionary of Obama who must be paying her fair share of taxes because she is being considered for the highest appointed office in the government. Republican senators who questioned her in sessions closed to the public have branded her as unqualified for the position. These senators claim that she lied to the American public on TV and to them personally on matters that were plainly covered on national TV.
The president, however, is insisting that Rice is the best available candidate because he likes her and those Republicans just will not compromise on anything.
So here’s the perspective.
Major crises are looming. President Obama’s response to each is, “It will be fixed my way or no way!” Anyone who suggests that there might be better solutions to the problems is branded a troublemaker who will not compromise on anything.
Has Obama ever compromised on anything? Has he been right with any of his “solutions?”
Watch out for those cliffs surrounding us.
enough
