Embattled

No doubt there will be push back on my words as my brain goes into gear but, as you know, I keep a pretty close tab on world events, try / seek to remain middle-of-the-road on matters of politics and especially watch the initiatives of the POTUS regardless of who occupies the chair.  The first thing I saw this morning as I opened my computer was about the Obama presidency at the two-thirds point of his tenure, he is "embattled" by all the issues dogging his White House. My question, frankly, was, why shouldn't he feel embattled?

 

This latest in the long line of battles is about the debacle at the VA. That battle is of such a grand atrocious scale that it should anger anyone that has ever even known a veteran.  The politicians wave the flag, tear up at ceremonies, seek the VFW, American Legion, other veteran groups favor via, of course, political contributions but then when the meat hits the grinder, everyone is surprised by the lack of intense medical and psychological support these men and women need and deserve. 

 

There will be a few thrown under the bus at the VA, as we have already seen, but this President will defend Shenseki. I even read a WSJ blogger pontificating that she believes Obama has created a whole new way of quelling (placating is my term) poor performance by not firing but just taking the heat until the fire dies down with the next debacle and then quietly accepting the accountable leader's resignation or retirement. So you can know, I believe in absolute accountablity and when something as major as VA being ill-managed as surely this VA is, when four Americans are killed in Libya with little to no rescue attempted and we are still waiting for reconciliation of the matter, when we read now almost daily of the auto recalls of epic proportion from a company that provide a tax-funded lifeline while bonuses continued to be paid and the core business structure remained wrongly in place, why should anyone be amazed at the recalls?

 

Some will read this as anti-Obama listing which is not the case at all.  Battles erupt when the roots of poor leadership are not erased early or sooner.  Apologizing to world leaders at the beginning of a Presidency was an omen of things to come I believe history will record.  The horror stories abound on ObamaCare with people forced to walk away from their medical policies or seeing their premiums go higher in orders of magnitude. I will just stop with the list for each is a battle a weak, ineffective POTUS has created for himself from my perch in NE Ohio.  Again I highly suggest spending time watching the political legislative process unfold in real time on CSPAN and then  one would not be surprised to see that the presidency is on the same scale of ineffectiveness as Congress.

 

As I sit here watching two of my grand daughters just getting up, one age four and the other age 8, I ponder what their world will be in the next twenty years as their adult lives, families, jobs become a reality. To this day I still hear people talk about the problems this POTUS has is due to what he inherited from George W. Bush.  In my life I have never seen such a spectacle of a sitting president still pointing fingers of blame at his predecessor six years into his time.  In the business world that would unacceptable on any scale and grounds for removal. There comes a point when you  embrace what you have and manage yourself through it, PERIOD! I still do not see this Administration having done that and the die-hards loyal to the Party will still embrace that as a solid defense in casting blame is simply amazing to me.

 

On this Memorial Day celebration weekend, I guess I am especially disgusted with the elongated litany of issues that should never have seen the light of day.  The VA issue is the last straw for it affects hundreds of millions of Americans in so many ways when our veterans are not given what they so richly and rightly deserve.  I want to respect this president and his band around him, czars and all (never hear much from or about the czars do we?) but I see next to nothing that causes me to fully embrace his policies.  We are a great nation but we have been greater. We are a nation to be feared but we are less feared than any time in my lifetime it seems.  Watch Putin!  Putin is feared internally and more and more feared externally. Watch Putin! America is the only power on earth capable of stopping this raw aggression but we will not instead bearing olive branches hoping he decides to stop; Europe in the late 1930s all over again as I view it.