The Age of Incompetence Chapter XXVIII

Capt. Smith and Capt. Obama: two of a kind
January 21, 2010

During the day of the night the Titanic was sunk it was warned by other ships just ahead of it no less than seven times of the danger of icebergs dead ahead. But the radio warnings were ignored; it was full speed ahead by Capt. Edward J. Smith. Thus Capt. Smith reserved a place for himself as one the biggest screw ups in modern history.

Now Capt. Smith can give up his position as one of history's greatest screw ups to Barrack Obama. Like Smith, Obama ignored warning after warning of political icebergs dead ahead, but it was steady as she goes for Capt. Obama. Then the iceberg named Massachusetts stuck.

I must humbly report that I was one of the first to warn of Obama's dumb ass, incompetent navigation through the political seas. It began with his whimpy, rope-a-dope performance in the debates with John McCain. McCain kept leading with his chin and Obama kept refusing to knock him on his butt.

But the main stream inside the beltway guys told me, give the guy a break, the guy has a plan, he's a brilliant thinker.

Then there was the dumb ass, incompetent nomination of Republican Judd Gregg to be Commerce Secretary. I wrote on January 31, 2009 in a blog titled Wanted: One Tough Hombre, the following: "America needs a hombre to lead it safely out of the wilderness. A tough savvy hombre who knows the lay of the land and knows the cutthroats we are up against, both foreign and domestic. The times do not call for an Ivy League president but a hombre."

But even after Sen. Judd rejected the nomination, the main stream hacks didn't call it a dumb ass move by Obama, but if they wrote about it at all, praised Obama for reaching out to the enemy in a gesture of magnanimity, as if it was a brilliant move. I always thought when one political party had for eight years raped and pillaged and lied and embezzled and shit on the Constitution they should be put down like a mad dog with rabies to protect the public.

But I was told I didn't understand by the main stream guys inside the beltway, Obama had a plan, that he was brilliant thinker.

I didn't buy it. I wrote on March 7, 2009 in a blog titled, The New Untouchables: "It is looking more and more like what we need most is not a president from Chicago but an Eliot Ness from Chicago. For it seems there is a permanent class of untouchables in Washington and elsewhere and weeding them out takes a man with more grit than merely having studied law at Harvard. Where are you Eliot Ness when America needs you?"

Now even after the Titanic-like dumb ass, blind as a bat, head on collision with an iceberg in Massachusetts the main stream inside the beltway guys are saying it was because Obama moved too far to the left in his agenda when all the facts point to just the opposite reality, he tacked too far to the right.

Here are some numbers to crunch taken while the cadaver was still warm Tuesday night in Massachusetts' special election.

By a margin of three-to-two former Obama voters who voted for Republican winner Scott Brown said the health care bill "doesn't go far enough." By a six to one former Obama voters who stayed home agreed.

And here is the zinger, 80% of all voters want the choice of a public option in a healthcare bill.

The poll also revealed a plurality of voters who switched, 48, or didn't vote, 43, said they opposed the Senate health care bill, but when they were asked a follow up question why they opposed the Senate bill, among the Brown voters 23% thought it went too far but 36% thought it didn't go far enough and 41% said they weren't sure why they opposed it. These know nothings were probably the tea baggers.

Among voters who stayed home and opposed health care, 53% said they were against the Senate bill because it didn't go far enough, 39% weren't sure and 8% didn't know why.

Of 500 voters who sat out the election 86% said they favored a public option. Thus Capt. Obama's gutless, wimpy, handling of the health care bill wasn't because he was steering his ship too hard to the left but because he was too hard right. It completely turned off his base of supporters and even incredibly turned some of them into Republican voters. Brilliant strategy.

Capt. Obama did what was seemingly impossible just one year ago. The Republican Party was dead. Yet he almost single handedly revived it and brought it back to life. During the health care debate he went AWOL and turned it over to the likes of reptilian Ben Nelson from Nebraska, and the most obnoxious man alive, Joe Lieberman.

No politician in American history has done what Obama has done in such a short time. He has pushed his own supporters over the cliff and brought back the opposition from the dead. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Obama is all brains and no balls and everybody, friend and foe, now knows it.

Comedian Jon Stewart captured perfectly what the Massachusetts debacle revealed about Obama and the Democrats: "It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers

and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs."

Statistically one American dies every 12 minutes because of a lack of health insurance. That's about 40,000 deaths a year. So we're suffering a Titanic type loss about every ten days. Americans voted for Obama because he promised change and would stop the health care slaughter. They trusted him. His betrayal pushed them over the edge.

I read one voter's cry in the wilderness sent to The New York Times last summer: "I haven't simply given up on Obama, I have given up on America. Our government has become an extension of corporations. Our people behave as if they were in an Orwellian novel. There is no way to make change anymore. Isn't it sad, all that hope, all that work, and in the end it didn't make any difference." - Mandy, Folsom, CA

The truth is I could have quoted from thousands of messages in that exact same tone of despair in The New York Times and other places of public record. But somehow the brilliant people inside the beltway couldn't read them. Like Capt. Smith of the Titanic they had a sense they were unsinkable.

George W. Bush was one of those moral degenerates who was unfit to be president. Katrina exposed him and so did his comment, "Poor Americans can always get their health care at the emergency room."

Barack Obama has been exposed as morally unfit to be president too because this Harvard educated intellectual knew all too well you can't expect the moral degenerates to stop the health care slaughter of Americans. If Obama had been leading the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and not Dr. King, then no doubt he would have invited Bull Connors over for lunch to chat about segregation. And the Selma march that galvanized America's outrage would never have taken place.

Historic changes happen only when men are bold enough to get out front and lead. It requires more than brains. Upon this historic moment real lives hung in the balance: if it succeeded, countless Americans would live, if it failed, countless Americans would perish. For Obama to leave it in the hands in the likes of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, known operatives of the insurance companies, was not merely derelict but cowardly. Now despite all the happy talk inside the beltway the historic moment has passed. Only the delusional still believe in Obama, no one fears him. Real health care reform will wither and die without a leader.

If Obama has been the historical agent to kill a dysfunctional Democratic party so that something new could be born to finally give voice and hope to America's hopeless masses, then he would have served some purpose. But no doubt since he has come so far, so fast on nothing more than a smile and syrupy speeches, the reality hasn't sunk in to him and his coterie of hangers on that he is now nothing more than a tragic page in history in the same way the Titanic and Capt Smith speaks to us from the depths of the cold Atlantic.