A few days ago, I received my President George Washington’s Birthday card from the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, and it is proudly displayed.  There was a president. Too bad that this country evolved to the point where his birthday became expendable and was lumped into the generic “Presidents’ Day.” Interestingly, the day is designated as “Washington’s Birthday,” in the United States Code which specifies federal holidays for federal employees. The way these holidays are going, the nation could one day end up with more holidays than workdays. 

Anyway, on to the question of this article – just who is it that we have in the People’s House on this Presidents’ Day?  What is he about? What are his successes and failures? President Obama promised “hope and change.” Has he delivered? It depends on the meaning of the word “hope” and the word “change.” Thank you President Bill Clinton for those valuable lessons on morality and parsing of the English language!

Do we have another George Washington in the People’s House? No. It would not be fair to compare the present occupant and the first occupant. The challenges that faced George Washington, especially as Commander of the Revolutionary Army, although more physical in nature, were also of the cerebral type. He triumphed. George Washington was a special man. No other could have done his job.

The Founding Fathers had this vision, which they brought to fruition, of a democratic republic, with minimal intrusion of the federal government in the affairs of “we the people.” The minimalism thing has incrementally and increasingly been tossed out of the window. Sometimes it seems as if the only unregulated aspect of our lives is the number of beats our hearts take in order to keep us alive. But, if Obamacare gets out of its own hospital of legal briefs, court rulings and decisions, the so-called “death panels,” will take care of those heartbeats!

President Obama recently referred himself as the gipper. Both on this occasion and others, including a Time Magazine article, that reference or comparison refers back to President Ronald Reagan. I don’t see the comparison to either the original George Gipper or the Ronald Reagan “gipper.” I was curious and looked up the word. As usual, many times, a word begins with one meaning and somehow gets conscripted sometimes into a meaning way off the original. Urban Dictionary had a few meanings, including the following:

a word to describe a person always making a fool of themselves, or one who acts retarded, a quick fire reflex word when u cant think of a more offensive swear word.

I think that I am going to have to move along from “gippergate.” If the current president cannot be judged on his gipper bona fides, what other yardsticks are available? The US economy has been certainly trying “to win one for the gipper,” and not doing that great. If many key world leaders and money experts have their way, the "almighty dollar" , which is becoming all too mortal, will be replaced as world currency.  How did the US dollar become so “volatile”? Could it be this situation where US debt now equals total US economy?  Is this like going to work and having one’s gross salary being turned over to creditors?

I read and heard about all of these trillions, including the projection by the president that the “gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year,” and I am in danger of overloading my workable brain cells! 2011 “will see the biggest one-year jump in debt history,” and “Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit”? Is this how it works in the private sector, and the debtor could raise its own debt ceiling? I somehow don’t think so. 

No wonder President Obama inadvertently dropped the S-bomb at his own press conference in trying to talk about “lowest share.” The mind is a wonderful thing. It sometimes takes over and states what the mere human really wanted to say! Can it be that the president in his role as president, really wanted to discuss lowest share, but the man really meant the other word, to indicate that what president was saying was indeed cow patties? Was the president being coached by the vice president, in the employment of “colorful” language?

Can this jury of one give the president a passing grade on the economy? After all, Wall Street is doing gangbusters. The Federal Reserve money printing press has not broken down. Congress may even raise the debt ceiling. China is apparently satisfied – for now – with a fancy state dinner, and not being called the usual names regarding its human rights issues, so will not call the US on its debt to China. As an extra added bonus, Voice of America’s China broadcast has been canceled.  And for a really, really extra bonus, “Beijing is expanding its propaganda operations in the United States and around the world.”

Even with all of that “progress,” until those unemployment numbers  improve by being lowered, and those housing foreclosures improve by not being so prevalent, no passing grade can be given on the US economy.  The “change” that it underwent as part of that “hope and change” package, is not acceptable.  Neither is the cost of Obamacare with its price of $359 million for new IRS employees in 2012. However, closing in on one thousand, is the number of waivers granted to favored companies to exempt them from that panacea for health care ills. If Obamacare is such a wonderful plan, why are these exemptions being granted?  “Some animals are more equal than others”?  Maybe in the end, those who are faced with the “death panels” could have the better deal.

Here is another example of change – from LBJ to BHO. CNS News lays out the case of change from bloat to exceedingly bloated. Where is some political Alka Seltzer when one needs it?  One department in the Obama administration is bigger than the entire government of Lyndon Baines Johnson? I am beginning to be wary of presidents who are known by their three letter names. FDR was the beginning of the bloat?  Dan Mitchell's analysis does not provide comfort about government spending. He outlines a “forest” of expense in the trillions. There is no cutting up that federal government credit card any time soon.

The news gets more desperate. I had no idea that Federal programs could be categorized as worst run.  I am so naïve. Here I was thinking that the more trillions spent, the more functions taken on by government, the better the results. I see a pattern here. The more the agency is designed to protect us from making our own decisions, is the worst run they are? Maybe DHS/TSA should spend less time on "enhanced pat downs"  of travelers, and learn to caress the department’s budget. Then again, why be bothered with such tedious stuff as managing money? The ATMs (American Taxpayer Machines) can always be relied upon to supply more money – and some of them are still having children, future taxpayers.

Maybe the president can be given credit for living up to the promise for which he received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. I believe that was the first time in the history of the Award that a recipient was given the prize for being, and not for achieving.  Although “peace” has not broken out, “change” has come to the Middle East in the form of the “pieces” into which it is being split – violently.  Coincidentally, or maybe not, the pieces falling out of place, are countries considered allies of the US.  

I think that I stumbled onto a positive as far as allies are concerned. Prime Minister Harper of Canada and President Obama have a shared vision for “perimeter security and economic competitiveness.” Translation: “We will drop the pretense of sovereign borders and head straight for the North American Union, modeled after the European Union”? Has this “shared vision” been caused by an overindulgence in Jalapeno peppers?

In the meantime, on the southern border, where actually there is no border as,”su casa es mi casa” (your house is my house), or more specifically, your country is my country, the Mexican Military possibly made an incursion onto US territory? This “your country is my country” is not a two way street. Americans cannot just move into Mexico as millions of Mexican citizens have apparently moved into the US – some $18 billion in yearly remittances from the US to Mexico attest to the lure of El Norte. Into which other country can natives of another country, move into, without benefit of papers, get jobs, housing, food and money to send to contribute to the economy of the home country – at the expense of the “host” country? I wonder what kind of dent would that $18 billion make in the US debt?

Debt…what debt? The largess of the US continues with its “real return on our tax dollars” of financially supporting the United Nations.  I am so happy to see that the “stability” provided by those 192 countries coming together, is extending to the Middle East. Speaking of stability and the Middle East, this Examiner.com report paints a picture that is not reassuring – to the US. There goes that name “Muslim Brotherhood” again – not in Egypt but right here in the US. I am beginning to see that President Obama should be given credit for implementing change, not only in the US, but worldwide? Any more “change” and there will not be a world left.

Presidents Day, 2011, what is the state of the presidency? What is the state of the Union? Rep. Tim Scott is not bringing out the champagne in celebration of the second anniversary of the $819 billion fiscal stimulus package.  Financial gurus Ken and Daria Dolan give a laundry list of “outrageous taxes.” There go my plans to indulge in a “sin, card, nudity, tanning, candy, haunted house, and bagel” binge! However, I had better keep my wits about me. I may have to defend “my country of choice.”

Apparently, the same Muslim cleric who previously had visions of the crescent star pinned atop the People’s House, is now going to lead a protest “calling for Muslims to ‘rise up and establish Islamic state in America.’”  He thinks that America is ready for “the Sharia”? Good luck with that. We may have a president whom the Iranian president feels “doesn’t even know how to spell his name properly,” and who “can’t even control his own emotions.” But, if comes down to defending this US president and the People’s House, the Iranian president and those who think like him, may be in for a rude surprise.

“We the people,” even those of us not physically born here, as in the case of yours truly, come from the psychical stock of President George Washington, he who observed:

 “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

On this anniversary of your birth, President Washington, we still have a significant reservoir of your fighting spirit. This country will not be given up with a whimper.  In Revolutionary Times, muskets and other weapons were employed. In these tech times, we have more “sophisticated” weapons. I just used mine to complete this article. The pen or keyboard “is mightier than the sword.”