Quite frankly, it is very, very difficult not to have to strong feelings of animosity and loathing towards Barack Obama and the Democrats especially, along with the Democrats’ liberal allies in the media, and to a lesser degree, Republicans in Congress. The recent…discussion?...over the sequester indicates the utter contempt Obama has for the American people and their intelligence (to be honest, some of his contempt is, I suppose, justified, because the people re-elected the guy). To say that the sequester would bring automatic cuts that would harm the people, that would take away necessary services, that would create pain and hardship is cynical to the "nth" degree. Well, "cynical" is a nice word. It’s a downright lie, is what it is, and how can anybody have respect for liars?
Here is a small list—a very small list—of things Congress has wasted American tax dollars on in recent years. You tell me these things are "essential"?? This can’t be cut without doing permanent, irreparable damage to the United States of America? Read and weep, and in some cases, laugh, and try to rein in your temper:
--$60,000 for Belgian endive research for the University of Massachusetts;
--$107,000 to study the sex life of Japanese quail;
--$4.3 million for a privately owned museum in Johnstown, PA;
--$3.1 million to convert a ferry boat into a crab restaurant in Baltimore;
--$11 million for a private pleasure boat harbor in Cleveland;
--$150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud;
--$320,000 to purchase President McKinley’s mother-in-law’s home;
--$84,000 to find out why people fall in love;
--$1 million to study why people don’t ride bikes to work;
--$19 million to examine gas emissions from cow flatulence;
--$144,000 to see if pigeons follow human economic laws….
I’m not making this up, folks. Your tax dollars at work. Here are some more:
--$219,000 to teach college students how to watch television;
--$500,000 to build a replica of the Great Pyramid of Egypt in Indiana;
--$2 million to construct an ancient Hawaiian canoe;
--$350,000 to renovate the House Beauty Salon;
--$20 million for a demonstration project to build wooden bridges;
--$6 million to upgrade the two-block long Senate subway;
--$160,000 to study if you can hex an opponent by drawing an "X" on his chest;
--$800,000 for a restroom on Mt. McKinley;
--$100,000 to study how to avoid falling spacecraft;
--$16,000 to study the operation of the komungo, a Korean stringed instrument;
--$6,000 for a document on Worcestershire sauce;
--$1 million to preserve a Trenton, New Jersey, sewer as a historic monument;
--$10,000 to study the effect of naval communications on a bull’s potency;
And here is one of my favorites: $57,000 spent by the Executive Branch for gold-embossed playing cards on Air Force Two…$57,000 of taxpayer money for a deck of cards for the Vice-President!! (To be fair, I believe this was spent under a Republican administration.)
Every bit of that, of course, can be found in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, the powers given to Congress…….(I’m being sarcastic, just in case there are Obama voters reading this….)
19 million dollars to study cow farts…….but there is no place to cut the budget.
In his own day, Thomas Jefferson complained of federal politicians who seemed "at a loss for objects whereon to throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury." It obviously hasn’t gotten any better in 200 years, even worse, because much of this money is borrowed and will have to be paid back—or defaulted on—by the next generation of American taxpayers.
Loathing? Obama and his liberal, big government, anti-god allies really, really test my Christianity. My brother and wife tell me I should just ignore them because I can’t do anything about it, and they are right. It’s not worth losing my soul over.
But, I’m a teacher and an educator, so I guess my nature is to do something, regardless of how futile.
To end this, here is another great quote from Thomas Sowell, in his most recent article, "Budget Politics":
"Back in my teaching days…one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do?
The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place."
To Obama, the purpose of "sequestration" was not to cut the government budget and help the American people, but to create panic and expand government spending. As Sowell says later in the article, "Democrats prefer to get the political benefits from handing out goodies, while Republicans can be blamed for not subsequently raising enough taxes to pay for the Democrats' spending spree." He is exactly right.
And that is why "loathing" is perhaps too gentle a word…