Political commentary, opinion & insight into the state of the United States of America.

President Obama may be totally ineffective in solving the big problems the country faces but he prides himself on being cool. Calm, unruffled, and hip. The epitome of a good husband and father. A leader who plays a mean basketball game and what appears to be a golf game no one would want. Despite all the time spent on the golf course.  A Hollywood dude. A guy who invites a cop he trashed with the race card down for beer in the Rose Garden. Someone who you would talk with across the fence if he was your neighbor. All of which adds up to the high likability rating he gets from the public.

He’s starting his second term like a pit bull with rabies. Every public speech is a snarling attack against those damned republicans who are keeping him from doing what he wants to do. Bush is long gone, unemployment is not. Someone has to take the blame and it won’t be this president. Maybe that explains the difference between his basketball and his golf. In golf you can’t blame the other guy. Flop and claim you were fouled when you throw up a brick. And, you are not supposed to cheat. If you do, you play a lot by yourself, which Obama seems to do.

It’s really hard to understand the level of nastiness this president is serving up as he starts his second term. Is he trying to wipe out the republican party as his legacy? Or, is he still finding scapegoats, knowing his legacy looks grim? One thing is for sure, if he keeps this up for four years he will not be seen as a potential desirable neighbor. As the hair gets gray and the man begins to look more like a grandfather than a hip young father, the attacks and the lack of progress will be harder to hide.

We knew he was arrogant. We saw that in the first term. We knew he was narcissistic. He makes zero speeches without using the “I” many, many times. We knew he abandoned many who helped him win his first term.  Many books were written documenting this. Ask Oprah. We watched as he campaigned for four years in the first term, attacking like campaigners do. We saw him get reelected despite his record. Those of us who voted against him because of the record hoped his legacy might mean more to him in the second term. We hoped the gray hair might bring wisdom not constipation. Perhaps this man might learn what every leader learns, it’s important to build a constituency with the naysayers to get progress. Only dictators need not do that.

It would appear this president, who may have zero friends across the aisle and not that many in his own ranks, is out to top that record. He’s throwing brickbats when none are needed. He has raised his level of attack on republicans like a man campaigning against a whole party since he has no one person to campaign against. He’s bringing it and most of the country is wondering why. Who’s he mad at to cause him to go off so hard and so often?

Maybe it is just constipation and a little adjustment in the diet or laxative will fix this.  If not, Brickbat Barack for four years is going to give the whole country constipation.

Not the BCS Championship game with Notre Dame vs. Alabama. Not the Super Bowl in February. I’m talking about the game we just witnessed in Washington DC.

The Asses vs. the Pachyderms. Donkeys and Elephants, Democrats and Republicans. The one that went into overtime and resulted in a 2-0 win by the Democrats.

The game that kept the media on pins and needles for days. The game that kept the league commissioner, Barack Obama, on TV hourly. The respective coaches, Harry Reid and John Boehner talking trash day after day. The game where everyone who bought a ticket should get a refund. For them and those of us who watched on TV, here’s the result.

The great game the Commissioner promised us when he campaigned for the job resulted in this. Taxes were increased on the rich, not as much as the Commissioner promised, but some. The result will raise enough revenue to run the government for one week. Got it one week. That’s what $50 billion buys you these days. And, if New York and New Jersey get the money they need for almost Hurricane Sandy, poof, it’s all gone.

That’s what this game meant. One week. Mating elephants, a lot of noise and activity, but nothing to show for it for two years. The debt clock keeps ticking and the ceiling must be raised. That’s the next big game. The Commissioner is already touting this one. He says the awful Pachyderms want the debt to go down, but he and the Asses want to spend more. He hasn’t given us his goal, but it looks like it might be in the neighborhood of $20 trillion when he retires as Commissioner.

Here’s the sad part. If you think $20 trillion is a game, you better have a reality check. You better get a whistle and a striped shirt and get on the field. It’s no game even if the Commissioner, the Pachyderms and the Asses, and the Broadcast media have convinced most of us it is. Romney was right. When over 50% of the public get free tickets and the minority have to pay to have the game played, it’s over. The fix is in. The Commissioner will always be an Ass, and the Pachyderms will always have their assess kicked, and the minority who pay to have the game played won’t be able to finance a bigger and better game every year. Ask the Greeks and Romans. It’s like those games in the ancient Colosseum, it’s rigged. No human can withstand a raging lion of spending.

What happened to that Roman Empire?

Don’t worry, be happy. Despite what the media tells you, what the politicians are ranting about, and what you’ve convinced yourself, the so-called fiscal cliff is no big deal.

Many years ago, in the frat house, the most popular TV show was the Roadrunner. I don’t think I’ve seen a Roadrunner cartoon from start to finish since, but I can still recall the main theme. Wile E. Coyote was going to go off a cliff. Sure, he was going to get blown up, hit by heavy Acme products, like a safe, and other means of brutality created by his efforts to catch a bird. But, Wile E. always survived and so did the bird. This country is like Wile E. and the bird. It gets hit hard, drops off cliffs, gets blown up(Pearl Harbor), but has always survived. We will survive the fiscal cliff ,whether we go off it ,or whether our ignorant media-loving politicians dream up something worse at the 11th hour.

Just keep in mind it’s all about $90 billion, not $13 trillion. The president got reelected by promising to extract $90 billion a year from the folks making over $250K a year. This amount of money wouldn’t save Detroit from it’s ultimate fate. Detroit went off the cliff 20 years ago and it is just going to hit ground in the next year or so. Boehner and his tribe are stupid for letting themselves get destroyed over $90 billion. Obama has painted them into a corner and it’s not worth the cost of the paint to be in that corner.

The real cliff, like Detroit’s cliff, is way down the road. So, don’t worry. Let your grand kids worry. When America becomes Detroit 20 or 30 years from now some nurse will be feeding Boehner and Obama by spoon and most of us will be long gone. So this is not a real cliff, just a long ramp leading up to the cliff.