Monday, September 10, 2012

Empty Promises

 

Lately, I've been thinking a bunch about the "empty chair" speech given by Clint Eastwood at the Republican National Convention. It's not because of the inundation of media attention or the trend in "Eastwooding" on the web, but rather because of deeper, political feelings conjured up by looking back at President Obama's last 3 1/2 years in office and his campaign up to the 2008 election. I reflect back on the scores, perhaps hundreds, of empty promises made by this President, ranging from the mundane to the Constitutionally critical.

What that empty chair represents to me are all of the citizens who were blindly led by false... empty hope.

It represents, to me, the empty... pointless... baseless faith that hundreds of thousands of voters had in thinking that one man could fundamentally (and erroneously) change a nation by will (or force).

It represents, to me, the hollowness in promises made to do such simple things as making all bills viewable to the public for 5 days before receiving a Presidential signature (that has happened zero times in the last 45 months).

It represents, to me, the void in intellectual, honest debate about important issues.

It represents, to me, the vacated notion that America was a great nation because of hard work and diligence as opposed to government subsidies and nationalized programs of various nature.

It represents, to me, that we... as a nation... have lost our past. We no longer understand (or even care, in some instances) how or why this nation was founded, the Constitutional foundation of our law system or the checks and balances construction of our tiered federal government.

It represents, to me, our future unless we can return to Constitutional rule of law, balance (and reduce) our federal budget and stop pointless bickering over issues like race and sex and basic Constitutional freedoms.

It also represents, to me, the hope that we may abandon the divisive ideas that have brought us to this point. That our current President and his notions are soon gone from our government. That citizens will rise up, get off their rear ends and work hard to putting this nation back together.

Friday, August 31, 2012

This Seat's Taken


Last night, following Clint Eastwood's RNC speech, President Obama tweeted the picture below, with the words "This seat's taken."



While that may be a nice, cutesy reply from the Community Organizer in Chief, what I wonder is... how often that seat's actually occupied. It could be that he's sitting in it for 3 1/2 years while the Senate refuses to pass a budget. It could be that he's sitting there instead of meeting with his Jobs Council, or counting the days until he closes Gitmo. He could be sitting there adding up his score cards from the golf course, or coordinating travel for his and Michelle's next trip (on separate airplanes, of course) to Hawaii.

Reality is, however, that this "sitting" President has, as of March, 2012, attended 191 fundraisers outside of Washington, D.C. -- (by comparison, George Bush totaled 167 and Bill Clinton totaled 173 for their ENTIRE reelection cycle). Since March, according to his own, posted travel calendar President Obama has been out of D.C., thus out of his chair, an additional SCHEDULED 80 days. That's almost 3 months of additional vacancy.

My guess is, that if you turn that chair around, it'll look more like this:


Here's to the HOPE that, after November, he only has a brief period of time to sit in that chair.