🚀 go-pugleaf

�What I will concede is that we were looking and the Republicans 
were looking for a trigger around which to build a mechanism to 
get us out of default possibility and the sequester was one of 
the ideas put forward, yes by the president's team.�

-- White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on �Special Report 
with Bret Baier� on Tuesday talking about automatic, across-the-
board cuts to federal spending enacted as part of a 2011 debt-
limit deal.

President Obama heads to Georgia today to again pitch his 
proposal for a new federal program that would begin guaranteed 
public education at age four instead of age five.

This is a long-sought goal for Obama, who proposed something 
similar in his first address to a joint session of Congress four 
years ago, and for two generations of American liberals.

�Cradle-to-career� education appeals to the left not just 
because it is widely believed by Democrats that earlier 
government intervention will help children of low-income 
families do better in school but also because it favors the most 
important part of the party�s base: government worker unions.

Obama Democrats say that the price of increasing the number of 
four year olds in taxpayer-funded schools from the current level 
of just over a quarter to something more like the 90 percent 
rate for other school-aged children is a worthwhile investment. 
They believe that earlier intervention will make for better 
students, healthier children and, eventually, a better 
workforce. The billions spent today would be recouped in later 
generations, goes the argument.

Maybe so, maybe not. Conservatives argue that earlier government 
intervention doesn�t lead to more successful students and that a 
more robust economy and less government dependency can better 
address the most important factor in determining the educational 
and economic fates of children: the strength and wealth of one�s 
family.

It makes for an interesting panel discussion at a think tank, 
but why is a president presiding over what is arguably the most 
dysfunctional government since the years before the Civil War 
out on the campaign trail talking about such a thing?

A government that can�t produce a budget for the current year 
and stands ever on the brink of partial shutdown doesn�t seem 
like a very good candidate for enacting a long-sought, sweeping, 
expensive liberal program.

In fact, the government is only 15 days away from the next 
fiscal crisis in which automatic spending cuts agreed to as part 
of a 2011 deal to avert an earlier fiscal crisis will go into 
effect. The so-called �sequester� is universally agreed to be a 
bad thing, since it cuts military spending indiscriminately.

In his State of the Union address, Obama denounced the practice 
of drifting from one �manufactured crisis to the next.� But it 
was his team that manufactured this one, offering the automatic 
cuts up as a guarantee to distrustful Republicans that the cuts 
promised in the 2011 deal would actually occur.

The cuts, of course, did not occur since a bipartisan panel 
appointed to recommend more palatable cuts, of course, failed in 
its work. The convoluted, three-step process looked destined to 
fail from the start, but at least offered a way out of the 
crisis of that moment.

So the president now denounces the imposition of the penalty his 
team created, warning of the direst of consequences to the cuts 
� something like $120 billion a year out of annual federal 
outlays of about $4 trillion � and demands that Republicans 
defuse the bomb by agreeing to his call for additional tax 
increases on top earners.

That dead-on-arrival proposal having been tendered, Obama is 
back to the business of building the future society of his 
dreams. These current troubles are beneath the scope of Obama�s 
ambitions for a transformative second term.

Such detachment may be a coping mechanism for a president who is 
facing down a second term that promises endless fiscal warfare, 
a continually weak economy and his own fast-approaching status 
as a lame duck.

If a man were behind four months on his mortgage and was talking 
to you about his plans to build an addition on his home you 
would think him daft and delusional. But in Washington, ignoring 
a current crisis to discuss grand dreams is called �boldness� 
and �vision.�

Obama is also watching his second-term cabinet appointments 
languish, and has fallen far behind the pace of his recent two-
term predecessors in getting a new team together. He may also 
blame this on Republicans, but it does not change the reality.

The essence of the president�s strategy for dealing with his 
current woes is to mostly ignore them, believing that the 
consequences will mostly fall on Republicans and will return to 
him full Democratic control of Congress in next year�s elections.

Meantime, Obama will assign blame for the problems, citing 
unreasonable Republicans, and talk about what the country ought 
to be doing, if only it could be governed. If only Congress were 
all Democratic again. If only lawmakers agreed that the key to 
lower deficits later were higher deficits now.

Democrats thrilled and Republicans panicked when Obama rolled 
out his new bold brand for a second term. His re-election still 
fresh in the mind of the political class, Obama�s plan to drive 
his enemies to ruin on the current crises and then transform the 
nation sounded plausible.

But it�s increasingly looking like Obama 2.0 has the same glitch 
as Obama 1.0: An inability or disinterest in the humdrum work of 
governance and grubby deal making.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/14/obama-cant-outrun-
culture-crisis-helped-create-523665467/?intcmp=obinsite

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed 
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the 
outlaw Obama administration?

No.  Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in 
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a 
controlled rate of aimed fire.  ����

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