The ship of state is drifting

Barack Obama has been president for just over two years. For all but a few weeks of that time, Obama had the cooperation of a Congress that was totally controlled by his party. So it seems to me that now is a fair time to see where Obama and the obamacrats have the USA heading. Let's look at the issues:

The first issue has to be the economy. Obama began with the stimulus package which has now run its course. He continued with massive spending increases. He finished the two years with continuation of the tax rates set during the Bush years. Right now, however, there remains staggeringly high unemployment in the country. While we are technically not in a recession, the lives of tens of millions of our countrymen are stricken with the disaster of lost opportunity and lost income. We are at a point where every previous recession since the great depression had recovered all the jobs lost during the downturn. For the Obama recession, we have about seven million more jobs to go before we even get back to even with the levels before the recession began.

So what is the Obama plan for the economy? By this I do not mean what did the president say during the state of the union speech or in his latest political excursion to Ohio or Michigan. I mean what I said: what is Obama's real plan for the economy? The truth is that I really do not know the answer. I am unclear whether or not Obama will work with the GOP to bring down government spending and rein in the entitlements. I do not know if Obama is going to stick to a plan for continued massive spending with the resulting threat of a government shut down. I just do not know what Obama is planning to do.

The second issue is energy and the environment. Obama has promoted wind and solar energy while he speaks of the need for energy independence. Obama has also stopped a big chunk of the drilling for oil in the USA and its territorial waters. There was also an attempt, rejected by Congress, to put into place a cap and trade system that would raise energy prices in order to try to reduce carbon emissions that may lead to global warming. Obama is now trying to create that same type of system through administrative activity by the EPA.

So what is the plan going forward? Most of the actions taken by the president are contradictory. One cannot have energy independence if the USA cannot drill for oil within its own borders. Raising the cost of producing energy with coal will not clean up the environment unless there is a viable alternative, something that wind and solar have not yet become. Instead, pushing up the price for energy from fossil fuels only undermines the economy without reducing pollution in any significant manner. I have listened hard to hear a coherent plan from the obamacrats as to what they will do to promote energy independence. I have heard nothing so far. We are just limping along dealing with problems on an ad hoc basis but with no clear goal in sight.

The third issue is dealing with Islamic terrorism. Obama completed Bush's plan for Iraq, that war of choice based upon lies. Obama substantially upped the ante in Afghanistan by trying to use the same strategy employed by Bush in Iraq against the Taliban. So far, the jury is out on whether or not the Afghan strategy has succeeded. Iran has felt the mighty sting of Obama's weak sanctions and weaker language. Obama did not even endorse the democracy movement that erupted in Teheran after the mullahs stole th elast election for their candidate. Now we are pushing hard for change in Egypt even though no one has identified what that change will mean. Things have gotten so topsy-turvy for the Obamacrats that they are now trying to rehabilitate the Moslem Brotherhood, the original jihadist society of the Arab world.

What is our plan moving forward? Once again, I do not know. Nothing is the way it was promised. Guantanamo is open and will stay that way. Trials will be in federal court or in military tribunals, a decision that obama will make some day, maybe. We are/are not closely allied with the new government of Pakistan. We have not found osama Bin Laden even though Obama promised to focus on his capture as first priority. I guess it was harder than he thought. We are pulling out of Afghanistan soon, but only symbolically.

Fourth, there is the rest of the world. Do you know our policy towards North Korea? If you do, you are probebly the only one who does. Are we allies or enemies of China? Your guess is as good as mine. Are we ever going to take steps to close the border with Mexico? I mean real steps not just some symbolic posting of national guard troops to do paperwork. No one knows. The problem is that we really do not know the policy of the administration.

I could go on with many other issues, but you certainly must get the point. Barack Obama is probably the president who has given the most speeches in his first two years in office. He talks and talks and talks some more. But what has he told us? Not how to fix the economy. Not how to deal with the deficit. Not how to deal with the threat of the Islamic terrorists. Not how to deal with North Korea or the Chinese.

The sad truth is that the ship of state is drifting in a world that is filled with shoals. No one seems to be steering. Indeed, we cannot debare the proper course, since no one is telling us upon what course the country is set.

Let's hope that we can survive the next two years without too much additional damage.