bracket buster

Many conservative news pundits, who began slinging crap and labels like 'socialist' even before the new administration took office, seem to be disappointed in every thing the administration does these days. Sadly, if you listen to many of them, they seem to be saying the same things that liberals were saying about the Bush administration just a few short months ago. The administration is lying. The administration's plan for solving the war can't and won't work. We'll be mired in the Middle East for decades. There isn't enough money to do the needed tasks.

Last evenings White House news conference proved that it's generally a slow transition from running for office to governance. Running for office, especially if one can cast themselves as an outsider, is often no more difficult than separating oneself from the competition and making the vague promises that voters want and need to hear. If you make anything more than vague promises during an election cycle, you're wasting time and likely unelectable. Governance, however, is much more difficult, if only because more folks are involved in the decision-making process. The new budget process illustrates this quite well.

The Obama administration can offer a road to balanced budgets all it wants, but ultimately Congress has to pass it. And the Congressional process, with its reliance on K street lobbyists and endless re-election financing is still ripe for pillaging the American dream. Everyone hates pork, unless it happens to be in their own district, and then it is a needed infrastructure enhancement.



There a saying in recovery, 'you didn't get in this mess overnight, so don't expect to get out of it overnight.' And it works on many levels. Personal and/or family relationships and/or hardships. The point being is don't expect this administration to solve our problems in the first 100 days. Hell, they'll be lucky if during the first few months of this administration they correctly identify the root cause of our problems and some reasonable approaches on how to solve them.