SEEKING ANOTHER GEORGE WASHINGTON

Authored by William Robert Barber

There is an instinctive veracity that defines and distinctly identifies a leader. A leader, in the interest of attaining sustainable consensus, utilizes the persuasive qualities of prudence; a leader diligently administers the doctrine of good sense principles; a leader applies an assertive enunciation of deductive analysis; a leader so to articulate the solution, is forthright in discernment.

Where there is no leader(s) to rise above the chaos, to stand, separate, and distinguishable, as in the case of the current congress, followers tend to dilly-tally; they, as if a leave that falls from a branch, oscillate until the stronger wind vectors the descend. Followers devoid of a leader believe in short-cuts. If challenged to pronounce their bearings, they willfully concede to the effectual of the prevailing opinion. They have a tendency to huddle while espousing, with timidity, some populist fancy believing that if they just bandy words about, style and grace will suffice. Well, the contrivances of the leaderless are imaginatively multi-faceted. But for sure without a leader in congress good sense is eroded and displaced by fickleness, the governing process becomes an amoral corruptive normative; eventually, the constancy of legislative compromise deletes the meaningfulness of principles, precedence substitute’s the need for decision making, and bureaucracy impairs innovation.

Today the governing from Washington is renowned for the dilution of individual responsibility. The elected defer their individual responsibilities within the opaque decision-making enigma of governing by committee. The imaginative attorney, the harbinger-economist, and the deflector qualities of a rhetorically enhanced politician all add additional buffers so that an individual politician rarely needs to accept personal responsibility. Maybe history has been so distorted by the victor or pitifully dramatized by the loser, that even the idea of leadership is now nothing but a faint memory. Certainly, many of our politicians, in all levels and sorts have forgotten that the highest priority of public service is to serve the public good. Not to raise capital for the next campaign, create personal wealth-prestige, faithfully serve their political party, and have popular celebrities as friends.

In order to be declared a leader one requires followers; surely, not the most profound of deductions. In the early days, leaders were not difficult to measure. In other words, leaders were in front. The follower’s sensed the up close and personal sighting, hearing, intuitional and intuitive smell of a leader’s prudent tenacity. The leader’s identity was behavior-apparent; courage palpable.

In today’s world a political leader is distanced in the physical being, although technology has its (contrasting to the days of old) enhancements, the apparatus of government and the operating of governing are ambiguous, aloof, and disconcerting. The leader is no longer in front. There is no obligatory to demonstrate independence, sovereignty, and spontaneity. The pseudo-leader(s) of today are required to raise funds so to attain or retain office, look like GQ models, and speak with stylistic elocution.

Nevertheless, in the days of old as with the present, genuine leadership is recognized by one intrinsic absolute: A leader’s judgment must effectuate a positive consequence. This result, this requirement, this one distinctive-discernible-obligatory, this steadfast definitive must-do of a leader is success, achievement, and or victory.

Despite conduct and mannerisms seemingly to the contrary, Americans, traditionally are a result oriented society. Granted, in America, an increasingly heterogeneous nation but with deep and vibrate homogeneous instincts exceptions are a constant. Nevertheless in the majority respectful of nuances and subtleties that are commingled with intermediate causative expressions of anxious withdrawal, Americans will not tolerate failure. Nor will its citizens accept the sophist blend of speciousness and deception. There is no substitute for success. Withstanding the efforts of liberal progressive ideals and the nanny state influences on this country’s laws and culture America is not a: Pathetic, victimized, and aggrieved culture.

The conservative movement needs and requires a stalwart congressional brand of leadership, one that leads from the front. America necessitates a leadership of dynamic vision, leader(s) with the wherewithal to stand confident and sovereign; possessing a willful personality coupled with an inner sense of purposefulness, leadership that persuades others, leadership that establishes a political consensus of common rationale. Leadership that can defeat President Obama…

OBAMA! GOVERNING OR CAMPAIGNING?

Authored by William Robert Barber

Have we Americans become so disconnected from the plain, simple, and obvious, the logical and deductive, that we can be influenced into believing that President Obama’s $447 billion jobs-stimulus bill is genuinely a presidential effort to promote job growth? Or is it that the Obama administration’s focus is on his reelection and the jobs bill is a tactical ruse, a means to a political end? Is it possible that this president, the superb elocutionist, after the results of his personally guided and endorsed legislative actions are measured; wherein the meaningfulness of such a measurement indicates anemic economic growth and high unemployment… Is this president going to win over the American people with his rhetorical sleight-of-hand? The president’s recent words, policies, and self-touting performances, inclusively mimicked by his progressive ducklings, are undeniably the dealings of a man and office striving for reelection. This looks and sounds like a man who conceitedly believes everything his vice-president and publicist convey.

The opening scene on the Obama campaign for reelection melodrama is a picture of all cheering his carte du jour of scurrilous slander, lies, deceitful exaggerations, and other such banal accusations. He is always choreographed standing with and encircled by the usual suspects that composite the Obama entourage: Public union bosses, their employees, progressive-ideologically inclined benefactors, civil servant bureaucrats, and empathic elected officials of the liberal progressive Democratic persuasion.

The president is professionally staged to be viewed by the populous as a leader wholesomely propagating the righteousness of his cause. He induces a call-to-arms (the repetitive Obama rant) attacking Republicans, specifically by name, to “straighten-up and fly-right,” and pass my jobs bill.

This is the very same ‘job bill’ defeated in the Senate by members of his own party.

Herein is the conundrum for Obama and his liberal progressives: Socialism whether European, Cuban, N. Korean, Venezuelan, or the current American style does not work. Aside from a nation fully committed to a war of survival, a nation therefore, willingly ceding constitutional guarantees for the perceived safety of martial law, the idea that the wise and the expert can accurately central plan the workings of a diverse domestic economy is a fantasy; a Wizard of Oz scenario that has been played out many times to the same failed result. The concept that the taxpayer funding of government largeness will inspire, catalysis, spawn, and electrify a substantial growth of private enterprise is absurd. Indeed funding government such as the Bush stimulus, TARP, or the Obama stimulus, an act ostensibly designed to stimulate the private economy, resulted instead, in supporting unions, sustaining the excessive cost of governing, aided and assisted in the corrupting of original intent, encouraged wastefulness, and enabled the status quo.

Not only is President Obama arrogantly disingenuous when promoting his jobs bill; he is in unison, ignorantly dismissing the palpable: The social and entitlement justice that complements the Obama ideal of how to engineer the American economy is not only impossible to profitably put into practice, the norms required for implementation is directly contrary to the required fiscal, cultural, and statutory environment to maintain a robust American style capitalistic system.

Prompted by the three branches of government, the feds, by means legal and extralegal, are operating beyond and outside of well-defined constitutional limits, the very premeditated concerns of the Founders have come into being, the pillars that established the legal basis of a nation of laws not of men is now, once again, in jeopardy. Liberal progressives manipulate, trounce, envelope, and ignore the meaningfulness of the words and spirit of the U.S. Constitution; regretfully, such contrivances are not limited to the Democratic Party, nevertheless, President Obama and his confederates have exponentially exemplified the discernible meaning of a liberal-progressive social justice conscious entitlement enriching government.

It is time get these buggers out of office…

BEWARE OF THE FEDS – THEY ARE ARMED AND DANGEROUS!

Authored by William Robert Barber

Noting the maxim (of my originate) that wisdom can only be measured in arrears, history has validated that those Americans that congregated in Philadelphia for the purpose of forming a more perfect union were very wise. They were not simply wise men for their time but wise men since their time as well as into the technologically enriched present.

Their legacy for wisdom is so dominate that the mainstream political parties of the present era each insist that the Founders’ ideals of liberty and freedom are their very own raison d’être. Interestingly, each party considers the Constitution of 1789 the very basis for their exceedingly diverse ideologically enhanced political manifestations.

Although it is also understood that there has been, is now, and more than likely will always be impediments, constitutional usurpers, disfigurements, and exceptions that work, for reasons purposeful, as well as unintended to diminish, abate, or subtract all together the Founders’ original ideals.

Regardless, the legacy of those Founders is so profound that the conceptual given amongst most Americans is that our government functions as a democratic-republic. Americans believe this conceptual given even if there is evidence to the contrary. The myth of America being the “land of the free and home of the brave” is so overwhelming that when the republic is seriously challenged, as for instance by the Obama administration’s most recent corruptive embarrassments, or when the meaningfulness of individual liberty and freedom are abated by statute, the populous prompted by a disengaged media, turns their attention to other less threatening concerns such as the corrupting influence of special interest — or whether a particular poll favors or disfavors some sort of popular ideal.

Humankind’s propensity for dysfunctional behavior is witnessed daily; history has documented such identical behavior for thousands of years. Either by purposeful design or by the naivety that prompts unintended consequences, people, possibly encouraged by a cause delusional and manufactured, or by some unrequited perception seeking restitution, will behave badly, even at the price of their detriment.

It is people that make up the pieces and parts that create, establish, and manage government. But then in my view, people have the right to self-destruct, it is equally understood that people will violate the law. But the government, although made up of people, must rise above the commonness of human failings, of personal regard; government must service the ideal that this country is a land of law not of man.

Our Founders understood the meaningfulness of such issues and concerns; therefore, in the interest of individual liberty and freedom, they founded a constitutional government. The Founders created a government of limited means, a government of checks and balances, a divided government wherein State sovereignty was a functioning part of keeping the central government in a place of restriction and constraint.

Well, less a few remaining vestiges, there is no limit to the power of the federal government. If the Supreme Court rules ObamaCare constitutional the populous can no longer pretend that there are any limits to the authority of the federal government.

In today’s news we have the Attorney General circumventing the truth before the House of Representatives, we have cause to believe that the Department of Energy, in cahoots with the Executive, breached the covenants of a contractual agreement so to service an ideological affiliation that should have been distanced by more than just protocol. Indeed, prudence suggests that when private enterprise is funded with taxpayer monies, politically motivated encouragement should have been deemed wholly inappropriate at inception.

The bequeath of a republic by the Founders to the people of the United States was and is a solid beginning; however, this history-making beginning cannot stand alone. The Constitution of this nation will always be under the siege of interpretation and implementation. The by-word for citizens when surveying and monitoring the workings of government is askance.

Remember, it was — until President Obama — the most liberal of progressives, Franklin Delano Roosevelt that by executive order locked up Americans of Japanese descent for the duration of WWII; he confiscated all their real property, denied them the right to vote, but not to die, fighting for the very nation that violated their rights as American citizens. Beware of governments, their power and prestige… all governments are lethal and they will bite…

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CONCEPT OF LIMITED GOVERNMENT?

Authored by William Robert Barber

Contrary to popular and media insistence, neither government nor its leadership creates private sector employment. The why-fore of this readily believable stratagem that government can mandate or the sanguinely sage could legislate (private sector employment) is to believe a Navajo rain dance will bring about a deluge.

In the first cause, how in the world did the federal government position itself to suppose that it could create private sector employment? Well, to the detriment of a capitalistic economy, the steady, ever determined encroachment of central government power over what was once the sacrosanct concept of limited government is a great part of the answer. The federal government has taken on as principles of its own the liberal progressive manifesto that government is obligated to take from the mainstream of the self creating and financially sufficient worker bees and give these proceeds to the “needy.” In the process of ceding to those progressive principles government expansiveness has grown gargantuan in scope and substance. Correspondingly, taxes and fees of all descriptive have risen, divided, and multiplied; and so far there is no real end in sight to the federal government’s policy of ever-increasing taxation.

The American government of 1789 unambiguously divided power within its charter; it enumerated in Article 1 Section 8 the endowed authority of the central government. Withstanding, this definitive affirmation (of limited powers) when measured against the day-to-day utilization of federal governing over the last hundred years one must ask, “Does the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers had envisioned still endure?”

Respectful of constitutional tradition and the cultural heritage of dynamic-individualism, there are those — particularly the fiscal, social, and politically disposed liberal progressive populace — that whole-heartedly believe that the States and the individual cannot be trusted with the right of sovereign respect. Instead it is the central government that is rightfully positioned to encapsulate the disposition of the judicious and trustful arbitrator. Therefore, in the interest of propagating, such fancifulness progressives have created the concept of a living, breathing, and relatively flexible interpretation of the Constitution. Within the context of that interpretive, a constitutional dictum such as the ‘Commerce Clause’ is exampled for expansive interpretation and engineered to fit into what progressives would call the modern era.

The justification for such redrafting of the Framers’ original is also prompted by some great malady, a crisis of stupendous magnitude, or the contrivance thereof. Usually the basis for alternating common practice in form or by statutory means is the discovery of some grave social or fiscal unfairness. The typical unfairness is always populous in style and scant in substance. Nevertheless, the unfairness is one that should have been attended to long ago. As the story goes, the nearly evil, opaquely defined, purposefully intended special interest, probably aligned with the wealthy, are actively working against the common welfare of the community so to enrich themselves or their baneful corporations.

Herein steps Obama the populist armed with promises of “change we can believe in.” Obama defines his political Krieg as between his acolytes, the moral positive, represented as the never politically motivated good-guys always working in the best interest of the common good contested against those of the immoral negative, representing the vilest and base of human instincts. The president has described these counter-to-Obama forces as the greedy and wealthy, oil and financial corporations, Republicans, and certainly, those far right radical Tea Party members.

All the documented evidence that government has some intrinsic sense of or for good judgment, business acumen, or even the sanity of consistent judiciousness points to the contrary. George the III imposed the Mercantile System, Napoleon the Blocus Continental, and of course this country’s trade tariffs, attempts at price controls, and the dogged determination of some presidential administrations and congresses to pervert the natural order of the capitalistic marketplace with protectionist embargos. All of these ‘government inspired schemes failed.

Recently, the Obama administration’s efforts to pick winners within the marketplace cost taxpayers at the very least multi-millions. Excessive taxation, burdensome regulation, and spending taxpayer monies with such blatant disdain is not an economic stimulus it is silly, disregarding of the facts, and seriously detrimental to the economic welfare of this nation.

I do wish I could simply blame the Democrats but the blame extends deep into the Republican ranks as well. I just do not understand this persistent inclination by those in power to always error on the side of big government.

THE OBAMA BELIEVABILITY CRISIS

Authored by William R. Barber

President Obama’s most recent rendition or brand of progressive socialism intended for injection into the American system of governess is not gaining popularity amongst the electorate. Specifically, he needs to convince the so called “swayable ideologically pliable independents” to accept this half-a-stimulus as the solution to this country’s economic malaise. In order to gain such acceptance he will need to enhance his present economic jobs policy with Republican principles. But he just cannot force his left hand to grasp that notion into affirmation.

I believe Obama is in the throes of a self-made dilemma; no matter which direction he turns the effect will have the same result.

Nevertheless and respectful of his failures as president, in relationship to the 2012 elections, the Republicans must get through the primary without drawing more blood from the faithful. Accusations delivered by fellow conservatives that bring into play social or religious issues, only arsenals, bullets, and grenades to the Obama camp; if such collateral to the central issues of tax reform, national GDP growth, cutting the deficit, and substantially reducing government spending does not take center stage the Republican candidate that will NOT decisively trounce Obama.

There is a strong conservative principled wind building up in this nation state; the young, the old, the naïve, and the hip, all are sobering up. All are recognizing this nation’s fiscal fix as a huge issue, a monstrous problem that must be firmly addressed. Everyone but the dire hearted progressives believe that government action is not the answer when the question is how to stimulate jobs and provide prudent fiscal responsibility. Indeed, Ronald Regan’s “government is the problem” has resonated anew as a validated political truth.

The Democrats’ policy mantras since FDR have always been the repetitive: tax and spend, overwhelm private enterprise with administrative-bureaucratic nonsense, regulate-regulate, at every opportunity scoff the very people that are financially successful, and scurrilously attack private corporations for making too much money as if such was a moral crime.

Lenin would be very pleased to hear the president’s bombastic endorsement and day-to-day critic of America’s obvious and prevalent unfairness. In the mind of the liberal progressive, Obama being the hero-protagonist, America has by purposeful neglect (turning a blind eye) and a willful tax-policy of enriching the rich enacted a tiered inequitable playing field that results in the enabling of social injustice. The Obama domestic doctrine is founded on class warfare and in the name of enabling fairness and social justice he wages this war with weapons of income redistribution schemes and in effect pro-union affirmative action.

Interestingly, according to Obama it is not the American people that are to blame for all of these detriments to society; factually, Obama suggests, even the Republican Party is only in part responsible. The blame for America’s societal disregard is squared directly on the Tea Party activists. Progressives want to believe that these Tea Party provocateurs of social injustice have signed a secret alliance with the far-right and neo-fascists ideologues. The mission of this hypothetical alliance is to rid the country of all welfare programs, social security, Medicare, government designed fiscal safety nets, and unions. The motivation of this alliance is racist in scope, Christian evangelistic exclusive, and xenophobic in character.

Well, I left out some blame set aside for former President Bush; of course Obama does realize that without Bush and the Arizona Senator there would be no Obama presidency.

I wonder how Obama’s and Biden’s investment in green energy is doing???

THE GREAT PRETENDER

Authored by WIlliam Robert Barber

The liberal progressive assumes that bigger government is better government. Likewise, all tangibles and intangibles that sustain and embellish the bigger in order to originate the presumptive better, progressives endorse; conversely, any and all ideas, legalities, or regulations that limit, restrict, shrink, or retrograde from governmental empowerment, the progressive is against. President Obama is the ideal of the modern progressive.

Obama and his acolytes within the liberal progressive movement have discerned, after vigorous erudition, consultations with Socrates and Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi that their socio-economic-political philosophy is morally righteous. As a consequence, progressives have developed an innate, determined, and focused iteration of preconceived notions that do not require principles of deduction. Nor does their ideological perspective demand comparative analysis, the circumspect of contrary evidence, or doubt; their notions only require faithful adherence. In sum, their determination to fit their ideal of square into the round of the real is commensurate with ideologically prompted behavioral dysfunction.

President Obama has a diminished view of any political, economic, or societal counterview other than his own. His professional image has oscillated from the professorially induced naïve Senator from Illinois with charming ideas of change one can believe in to an arrogant, condescending, and most egregious of distasteful traits: President Obama is a pretentiously insincere politician.

His most recent address to the nation was simply a reelection speech; it was blatantly hypercritical, patronizing, deceitful, and by his own admission wanting of the details of how to and by what means. One can fool a part of the people all the time; but not all of the people part of the time; right now he is fooling less than a majority of the people. Obama has run his course; spirited style, a youthful smile, hopeful promises, and pretty phrases do not build substance, statesmanlike objectiveness, or good sense.

Respective of the pull and push of liberal progressives since and probably before Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to mold America and Americans into benign socialist or in today’s context into a European model; the effort has fallen short of pure attainment.

Government is not to be trusted. How many times do we citizens need to relearn this political constant? Unions and government will never create a job other than by utilizing the charge of nepotism. Only private enterprise will create jobs… it’s that simple.

THE REPUBLICANS WHO WANT TO BE

Authored by William Robert Barber

Where, oh where is the real conservative deal — or should I say candidate? I cannot find the evidence wherein the conservative principles presently expounded by Romney, in the present match up to his governing record much less his past policies and documented positions. My inclination is to believe that he really wants to be president and he goes about the tasks of attaining the office as if it was a corporate marketing endeavor. Therein his campaign strives to increase market share by appealing to popular sentiments rather than ideals that come from their candidate’s soul conviction. In other words, I have a hard time believing he is an ideologically sound conservative. Now of course he is Redwood trees taller, better, stronger, and much more integral to my governing values than Obama; so if that is the choice, the choice is easy.

I assume this is the situation where the bone eats the dog; in order to win an election the appeal must be wider/broader than a politician’s core political ideology. Presumptively that in real terms must mean lying, deceiving, and generally dancing about one’s core beliefs are the voter expectation of a politician. Only in vague generalities does the voter come to understand the inner mindset of the candidates’ particulars. When it comes to actually governing, well, voters have been influenced to understand that there are way too many factors and unanticipated influences to predict a politician’s ideological sway. My response to such nonsense is Gobbledygook…

I am inclined to support Perry over Romney because he blunders about with his truthfulness; his hyperbole, even his inaccurate and misinformation, come from his heart. He does not read from a TelePrompTer; he actually addresses the question asked… I find that amazing. He is a glad handier. He is a populous stirrer upper but he does so, even when he is wrong, from conviction. He knows what it is like to be poor. Hell, he even knows what it is like to be a Democrat.

Admittedly, he will have a tougher rough beating Obama because he may not appeal to a wide enough ideological swath of independents; but in this situation, the freshman senator from Florida would be extremely helpful as Perry’s VP.

When it comes to governing, we the people always get what we deserve. Although I have a special disregard for the contributions of certain boneheaded ever-electable representatives of congress, all the liberal progressives who in the interest of forcing a governess that simply does not work, and those attorneys in staff that really distort the meaning of governess by the people, one must remember and emphasis that the goal of us conservatives is to win a 60-plus majority of the Senate, maintain the majority in the House, and oust Obama from the White House. I do believe America is counting on such an election outcome.

ARGUMENTATIVE GOVERNMENT BY DESIGN

Authored by William Robert Barber

Obviously, the goal of the fathers (of this republic) was to design a governing body founded on the principle that competing political elements expressed in variant policies, ideologies, and personalities, (often articulated by intense bickering) could find a forum for unfettered discourse. In the interest of achieving such a goal they created a republic that allowed and reflected, within the confines of the constitution, the means and inspiration for competing political ideals.

The principle of stimulating competing ideas is the essence of freedom and individual liberty. The governing of the republic was inextricably tethered to democratic values and such are wholly dependent on the right of discourse. The laws of this republic armed the people directly, and through their elected representatives, indirectly, in the pursuit of consensus with the efficacy of persuasion. In other words, the effectiveness of citizenry persuasion is the merit that prompts consensus; knowing, by design, that without consensus persuasion has no practical application. So to insure tolerance for and of another’s perspective the founders took into account a lawful process that permits multiple “bites at the apple” whereby failing to harness the required consensus is not necessarily fatal.

This lawful process was integrated within the constitution wherein the binding arbitrator is regular elections. In addition to elections and as a stand-by supplement to abate populous agitation there are petitions, referendums, and the specific right to recall an elected official. Matter of factually; there is a real, within the grasps, reasonable alternative for redress from the losing side of a debate for a particular consensus. Elections vent frustration, discombobulate the empowered, and empower the electorate… well, that’s the intent.

There are many differences of approach between this nation’s political parties; but the one commonality that both political parties have promoted is the expansion of the federal government. Proportional; some would evidence as disproportional to governmental expansion, is the coercive means that government has at its disposal to willfully impose it power upon the people. The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice are only two examples of very intimidating governmental agencies. Since the administration of John Adams the executive branch has by means within the constitution and by means contrary to the constitution the underlying result as always been the unyielding growth of the federal government. The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 were passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress to weaken the Democratic-Republican Party by restricting speech. No citizen could express in any form a scurrilous accusation against the president or congressional members; interestingly, the Vice President (Thomas Jefferson of the opposing party) was fair game. By 1802 the act was repealed or allowed to expire at term. The point being that politician(s) are not to be trusted with power; they will betray the meaningfulness of the constitution is it suits their perception of need.

For years the conduct of government was to spend more than it receives in revenue. Only through other than GAPP accounting did the Clinton administration demonstrate a surplus.

So now this run-away-with-the-people’s-cash government has run out of allotted funds. Naturally, this has happened over and over before. Indeed, each time the elected would use the forum to spat out accusatory accusations at the party in power for increasing the national debt. This phony nonsensical disingenuous plays well in the capital; that is until spending extended over 14 Trillion. Now the political parties are requiring an additional 2 trillion; that served up some attention.

The concept of competing ideas has run into a brick wall; the idea of compromise has evolved into political steadfastness. The Democrats want to find the money to keep their entitlements alive by increasing taxes; the Republicans say the problem is not one of taxing to little but spending too much. The progressives want a European style governing entity while the conservative want limited government. Legislatively there is a very real impasse. This impasse can only be settled by the 2012 election until then the party that controls one-third of government must negotiate with the party that controls two-thirds of government. Both parties have worked very hard to put this nation’s finance in its current placement; hopefully, the conservatives will get as much as possible in spending cuts with no increase in taxes. The progressives believe that fighting entitlement reform and enabling class warfare will help them in the next election… indeed, it just might.

PRESUMPTIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS

Authored by William Robert Barber

There is this Marine Corps saying, “Presumptions and assumptions gets you killed in combat.” The accurate transference to civilian life of this saying is attained by merely substituting the action word “killed” with expressions such as: A waste of time and money, a distortion of original intent, the replacement of the tenets honesty and truthfulness with immoral or amoral.

Our United States of America has over the last century (or more) developed and in the main established a government whose process of operational scope is not of the people, by the people, nor for the people; indeed, there is evidence that the 1789 constitutional intent has perished from reality. We the people can no longer presume or assume that our representative republic is in fact representative, that our federal system of power sharing between the government of central and state is intact, or that our republic functions within the lawfulness of the constitution.

We citizens have been bewitched into what cognitive scientists have described as “existence bias;” which is the persistent suggestion that the status quo is so prevalent in thought acceptance that its continuance cannot be denied. Interestingly, while believing in the power of incumbent thought citizens act on the razor’s edge of disingenuousness. They will entertain almost any antithesis of the status quo. Even when details are omitted…a declaration by any politician of an alternative to the prevailing has popular appeal.

A perfect example is the election of President Obama. Obama’s message was viciously anti-Bush. With complicit aid of the national media and the entire Democratic leadership President Bush was bludgeoned by personal attacks. Obama’s most pronounced antagonisms were for Bush’s foreign and domestic policies. Now after holding office for more than two years Obama has mimicked more of Bush’s policies than not. We now know that President Obama is evermore the status quo politician. We now understand that his battle cry of “Change we can believe in,” was nothing less than words empty of belief.

Possibly the continuance of the status quo was a more accurate descriptive of Obama’s administration after all, it was Obama who declared the simple answer to an ancient riddle of politics when he noted that if the ingredients stay the same how could we citizens expect a difference result. He pledged different! Well, his actions proved him to be the same; the same as any other politician seeking to achieve and now sustain power.

If that is so how is it that so many Americans still maintain a positive sentiment for his presidency? Often our eyes deny us clarity. We discount the actual with the utility of self-serving contrivance. The same occurs on what we hear or read. We have sentiments that can with some artful prompting discombobulate the meaningfulness of the palpable and evidentiary.

Besides the effective of self-serving contrivances, there are certain words, subjects, and phrases that mindlessly spin the minds of the normally rational and reasonable into a metaphoric array of self-determined illusions. These certainties that prompt one’s mind into the illusionary are disjointed from sensibility but not from effect.

Let me name a few of these certain words, education, fairness, level playing field, and social justice. For example let’s take education. A very powerful stand-alone word that entails passionate conjectures, even some facts, but do bridge to other descriptions such as teachers’ unions, school bonds, subjects taught, parental influence, sin and property taxes. Who in their right mind would be against education? But of course the real question is more of a definition along cost benefit analysis then the generalities of education on a per se basis.

Assumptions and presumptions are dangerous means…illusions of blissfulness and wisdom are not automatically encased behind a pretty face or beautiful words. And without a doubt assumption, and presumption gets one killed in combat.

letter from a WASHINGTON POST staffer

Dear Bill,

I write today about the ever increasing pressure to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. A vote last week drove home the point that this is becoming more and more of a contentious issue. In a bill that was expected to fail by a longshot, the vote actually came to a close failure vote of 215-204, with 26 Republicans joining in the effort with all but eight of the Democrats. This was a significant step for the Democrats to step out against the President in opposition to his public stance. This bill essentially called for the Obama Administration to establish a plan this summer to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and to pursue a negotiated settlement with “all interested parties”.

This is a substantial shift as just one year ago Congressman McGovern suffered a much greater defeat with 98 Democrats going against a similar piece of legislation. After the heightened coverage surrounding Bin Laden’s death, Americans are more aware that as Congressman Hoyer observed, “Many of the terrorists against whom we are fighting are no longer located in Afghanistan but are in disparate locations, from Yemen to Somalia to Southeast Asia.” This is one factual point that has provided a basis for the sentiment that the U.S. troop’s ongoing mission in Afghanistan is in part a futile waste of U.S. time and resources.

Although the situation in Afghanistan is complicated and may be hard for those without military experience much less inside intelligence information to fully understand or appreciate, there are a few basic observations that can be made. First, there multiple obstacles preventing the U.S. from making progress as intended. Second, Obama has failed to present a clear strategy that people, even those within his own party, can unify behind. For any issue in politics, messaging is always key to rallying support. The problem is that the Administration has not determined a clear exit strategy and therefore, they are unable to communicate a vision of a withdrawal method to the taxpayers who are funding these efforts. It is natural for Americans to grow anxious about an exit strategy when it is clear our troops are not making significant progress in regards to the stated purposes of the mission, namely “nation building”. The white elephant in the room is the fact that the U.S. Government is conceivably not revealing the true purpose for remaining in Afghanistan. This of course is the geographic proximity to a growing threat to the U.S., Pakistan. This is a country in which the core leadership of al-Qaeda is now located in addition to their develop nuclear weapons. The U.S. would not want to vocalize this purpose as it would further strain the delicate relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan. However, there is logic in positioning ourselves in the region in a way that prevents the terrorist groups from growing in size and power. Since this purpose is still only hypothetical, I will just address the current challenges the U.S. faces in Afghanistan which are delaying an immediate exit.

Fist, the U.S. has stated that our troops would be withdrawn when Afghanistan has a permanently stable and well-resourced government. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Bush Administration made the decision to try to rebuild a relatively strong central government and to assist Afghanistan’s economy. Even at the January 28, 2010 “London Conference” and the July 20, 2010 “Kabul Conference”, two international conferences on Afghanistan, the focus was still on expanding and reforming the Afghan convernance.The problem with using this measurement as a prerequisite to exiting, is the fact that Afghanistan may never meet this objective. Current President Hamid Karzai’s failure to forcefully confront corruption within the government has caused a great loss of support by the people. The rife corruption has caused the Afghan citizens to even resent the Karzai government; completely undermining any faith they may have held that America could be trusted in their strategy of rebuilding stable governance. The two more recent corruption stories were that involving the Kabul Bank, and the U.S. sanctions imposed on the money trading firm New Ansari Money Exchange on February 18, 2011. In response to this, the Obama Administration and Congress have begun strategically urging Kazai to publicly confront government corruption. Karzai has in turn resisted these efforts and has become more suspicious of the U.S. motivations.

Secondly, there are several factions of conflicting governance currently controlling this country in various regions and capacities. Amidst the more organized, legitimate bodies, there are also individual “warlords”, local strongmen who wield personal militias and functionally destabilize the progress between the U.S. and Afghan officials. In newly released Defense Department reports in May 2011, they recognized the fact that our security efforts are being challenged by multiple armed groups. Until the U.S.-led offensives launched in 2009, the Karzai government was estimated to control about 30% of the country, insurgent’s controlled 4% officially and were considered to heavily influence or operate in another 30%, and finally local tribes and groups controlled the remainder. As of 2009, the Taliban had named shadow governors in 33 of 34 Afghan provinces. It is incredibly difficult for the U.S. to make progress when the citizens have such varied and divided loyalties to difference governing bodies. Certain regions continue to be potential safe havens for al-Qaeda forces, and therefore General Patraeus has stated the U.S. will not leave these areas. These threatening areas include Kandahar and Helman in the South and Kunar and Paktika in the East, along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, he U.S. has stated it would hand-over security responsibilities to Afghan Security Forces for seven areas of the country in July, even though there is no apparent solidified Security Force to hand off the baton to. The U.S. has failed to strengthen a central governing body that the citizens could coalesce behind. Unless a strategy to accomplish this is formed, the U.S. progress will continue at a sluggish pace at best.

Thirdly, there is the instability that is created by way of their drug creation and distribution, an issue that gets little media coverage. However, some consider the narcotics trafficking to be a core impediment to the U.S. missions. The trafficking of narcotics undermines the rule of law and provides large sums of money to the insurgency, which often times goes untraced. The Taliban makes between $70-$100 million per year off the trafficking of poppy or opium. As the Obama Administration has focused on developing and promoting alternative agricultural crops, the Afghans have turned away from the U.S. and instead to the Taliban for protection of their ability to earn income in what is one of the top industries for Afghans. This counter-narcotics approach has severely back-fired on the U.S. and given the Taliban more control among the locals.

The stated U.S. policy thus far has been to ensure that Afghanistan will not again become a base for terrorist attacks against the United States. The Obama Administration has asserted that it is pursuing a well-resourced and integrated military civilian strategy intended to pave the way for a gradual transition to Afghan leadership that is to be completed by 2014. To support this mission, an additional 51,000 U.S. forces were authorized in 2009 reviews to increase U.S. troop levels to 99,000. However, Obama has also said we intended to have a relationship with Afghanistan that will include military involvement long after 2014, an indication that the administration sees no foreseeable end to our presence.

Amidst the tension over this issue, is the continual increase in Government funding for expanded efforts. The House Appropriations Defense subcommittee just released their Pentagon budget bill for FY 2012 which contained $119 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. government continues to spend a substantial portion of our defense budget in a country where there is a lack of clear vision for efforts moving forward. It is now time for the Administration to communicate their intentions to the American people, in a way that is nonthreatening to our security. At some point we will have to determine whether it is worth the billions of dollars and other resources spent to remain in a region when we continue to take one step forward, two steps back.

Sincerely,

Hill Observer