That anxiousness you’re feeling is healthy.
Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on KTBB AM & FM, Friday, Apr. 15, 2011.
Imagine that you are in need of counseling. Your marriage is in trouble. You’re fighting depression. You’ve recently lost a dearly loved relative. Your career is in the ditch and you’re frightened about it. For whatever reason, life is stacking up on you and you need some help.
Based only on the recommendation of a casual friend and without having done any research on your own, you find yourself in the office of a man who, by all outward appearances, is a very competent psychologist with the requisite education and certifications.
He is personally charming and his manner is reassuring and confident. He assures you that by working with him and following his recommendations, things will get better for you.
You put your trust in him as you pour out your heart and invest huge amounts of psychic capital, certain that your time with him will help. Initially, all appears to be going well. His words and his way of speaking them are almost magical. Every moment in this man’s presence makes you feel better.
But as the months go by you notice that your initial positive feelings have begun to fade. Enough time has passed that try as you might, you can no longer ignore the fact that the problems that sent you to this counselor in the first place have actually gotten worse.
Then you notice that no matter what happened in the time since your last session; no matter how much worse your underlying condition has become, he’s still saying the same things that he said months ago in your very first sessions.
For a while you try to ignore the doubt that is beginning to gnaw at you. You say to yourself that progress seldom follows a straight line. ‘We’ll be back on track soon,’ you tell yourself.
But then one day after weeks or months of creeping doubt, this counselor into whom you have invested so much says something that snaps you to attention. In one blinding flash of insight it hits you.
This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing!
Not only is he not helping me, he can’t help me because he doesn’t know how.
So it must seem to many so-called independents who supported Barack Obama and who made the critical difference in getting him elected.
His speech at George Washington University on Wednesday in which he outlined what he called a plan for dealing with the country’s alarming financial condition should have been, for those that needed it, that moment in the quack psychologist’s office when the beleaguered patient realizes that the practitioner in whom he has placed so much trust is simply not competent.
So massive is the country’s financial predicament and so inadequate is the president’s response to it that the people who elected this president should sue for malpractice.
It is a terrible thing to realize that your trust has been misplaced. It is frightening to realize that someone you were counting on for leadership in a difficult time is, in fact, more lost than you are.
So we find ourselves as we confront looming economic catastrophe so epochal in scale that scholars will study this time in American history down to the last generation.
If you’re suffering anxiety disorder, it’s no disorder at all. It’s a sign of your sanity.
Let’s make a note to discuss this in group.
Paul,
I’m afraid your comment that “It is a terrible thing to realize that your trust has been misplaced” also applies to the Republican House of Representatives, today.
I called Louie Gohmert’s Washington office at 5:13 PM this evening to discover that he did not vote on the budget due to a scheduling conflict. His office scheduler explained to me that she had made a mistake on the extension of the voting time and Louie didn’t make it on time to vote. He was going to vote against it. Good intentions, I guess.
I then proceeded to express my concern to the staffer that the Republicans were not willing to shut down the government (only a partial actually happens) on these serious issues that face the nation. I was astounded to hear from her that the shutdown would cost the government money and that a compromise had to be considered to avoid a shutdown.
Paul, I don’t know if Louie shares this sentiment but I am now convinced that “so called Conservatives” are unwilling to “go to the mat” to rescue this country from the hemorrhage of our national wealth that Obama has started. It is clear that we are going to get 80-90% of what the Socialist Democrats want from these WEAK Boehner Republicans. They simply don’t believe that this Marxist President is on a path to destroy the free market economy of the United States (that still survives).
Our only hope is that the TEA party can eradicate the RHINO Republicans from the party. The RHINOs continue to hide their true beliefs. Actions are believable, not words. They have been co-opted by the ruling class in Washington.
Evidence: US Annual Budget Deficits
-127,274 2001
157,791 2002
377,139 2003
766,582 2004
318,746 2005
248,199 2006
161,527 2007
454,796 2008
2,357,506 Total Bush Deficit in 8 Years
1,415,725 2009
1,294,204 2010
1,650,000 2011
1,650,000 2012
6,009,929 Total Obama Deficit in 4 Years (Projected)
The table I submitted is in $Millions. Sorry for the oversight.
Paul,
Please understand that I don’t think Representative Louie Gohmert is a RHINO. He is a wonderful, full blooded, Conservative.
My point is that our genuine Conservative Representatives seem confused about the legitimate methods that can and should be used to stop the juggernaut of Obama to use unnecessary government spending to sink this country into a sea of debt and bankruptcy to bring about his Marxist goals (redistribution of the wealth).
A country in desperate financial straits becomes a prime target for social upheaval and Obama’s version of fundamental HOPE and CHANGE – federalized Socialism/Marxism.
I also talked with the Washington office of Representative Jeb Hensarling, another great north Texas Conservative. He voted to APPROVE the Boehner-Obama budget compromise. This was also a big disappointment. I then heard an interview with Sam Johnson, another strong Conservative from north Texas. He simply repeated the Boehner propaganda that the Republicans were only 1/2 of the House which was only 1/3rd of the government and that this was the best deal that could be achieved.
If the best the Conservative Republican House of Representatives can do is approve $3.6 trillion out of the $3.7 trillion Obama originally requested for fiscal year 2011 (from his previous Democrat House that never passed a budget for 2011), then something is seriously WRONG. That is why I included the Deficit Table in my previous comments. The Republican House is allowing the trillion dollar boost in deficit government spending to continue from 2009, unabated. Our rate of plunge into national bankruptcy has not changed and Obama continues to win. The Washington ruling class has effectively scared the sap out of the Republicans, so far.
Not only can you tell Obama’s lying when his lips are moving, but also when he is waving to the crowd.
We hear daily from the politicians on both sides about their proposals. This one wants to do this, this one wants to do that. We’re going to offer this, we’re going to offer that.
Seems to me that they are all going in circles around the deficit issues.Are they scared to make a decision? Are there any leaders out there or are they all followers?
It’s way past time to start cutting the deficit so who is going to do anything.
I’ll be glad when 2012 gets here.