That Dog Won't Hunt

The Wisdom of Idioms

Among the many advantages of being raised in the South is the wisdom imparted from the extravagance of the agrarian axioms that are as indigenous to the southern culture as are the accents of the region – for example, “Root hog or die”, “Two bricks short of a load”, “Going to talk to a man about a cow”, “Rode hard and put up wet”, “Scarce as hen's teeth”, and a couple “A guilty dog barks the loudest” and “Plant a tater, you get a tater” seem particularly appropriate to the current administration.

There is a wonderfully incisive southern expression that bears an ineluctable truth about the character and behavior of President Obama………”That dog won’t hunt”, a natural metaphor representing a person or plan that simply won’t work. A little more on this remarkably apt description of our President can be found in the analogous field trial, a competitive event where hunting dogs compete against one another in a series of tests. Field trials require a higher degree of training with more complexity and distance involved than hunt tests. Field trial dogs must be “finished” in order to enter. Now we’ve got an “unfinished” dog in the field trial and that dog won’t hunt.

The Short and Winding Road

It’s difficult to imagine a less propitious nine months journeyed by Obama and his band of merry pranksters, but sadly this administration is not a prank but one that is on a deadly serious mission to inalterably change the nation’s government for the decidedly worse. A campaign that parlayed the simplistic and hackneyed nostrum of hope and change, with the attendant manufactured refulgent aura of destiny, is now a dim candle flicker close to being doused, and for good reason.

This short and winding road is littered with the flotsam and jetsam of a leadership that revels in converting challenges into crisis after crisis, by an administration whose center of gravity is radical left, while arrogantly governing against the will of the American people.

Recent weeks have been replete with more of the same:
– Obama saying the stated objective in Afghanistan is not victory,
- The initial development of the Obama youth indoctrination speech encouraged kids to write the President on how they could help their President (the public outrage was so great that the school speech was bowdlerized to a platitudinous lecture on personal responsibility, ironically the antithesis of the President’s agenda)
- The resignation of green jobs czar Van Jones, avowed communist and 9/11 truther (belief that 9/11 was orchestrated by the White House) with no comment by the Obama administration.

The cumulative effect of this Presidency has left Obama as the naked emperor strutting and fretting his hour on stage in this extended nightmare of Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, where fawning devotees like Peggy Noonan are shaking their school girl fixation on this nightmare of a blind date, as has much of the nation. Mrs. Noonan belatedly bemoans BHO as being cold.....” He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool”. That’s right Peggy, Obama is neither cool nor hip, just a weak and empty vessel propped up by teleprompters, a state media, and a grotesque gaggle of extremist czars and cabinet members.

With his popularity and approval rating plummeting like the job market, Obama has put his Presidency’s efficacy on the line by calling a Joint Session of Congress to make his case, yet again, for a national health care plan. In what appears as a desperate move, since Obama has made over 100 speeches on the subject since he has been in office, but alas this speech according to the President will answer every major question about the health care plan. This is the President’s field trial.

His Hour upon the Stage

Much as expected, the President overextended himself in his usual perorated delivery which extended the promised 30 minute speech to 45 minutes, “……a walking shadow, a poor player”. The content, to put it politely strained the bounds of credulity, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing ”.

Speaking for myself and hopefully representing the opinion of tens of millions, Obama delivered a highly partisan speech that represented a grossly distorted version of House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009, the only heath care bill voted on in Congress. Reducing the President’s rhetoric to violations of basic arithmetic and economics – BHO promised 1.) Lower cost 2.) Add 30 M newly covered insured, and 3.) Not raise the debt; need I mention the only 5% Obama said will choose the government option or the $900 B savings from the elimination of waste and inefficiency in Medicaid and Medicare. Which is it with BHO, prevarication or ignorance? Of course the CBO has consistently disagreed with all Obama healthcare cost and debt numbers.

The question now becomes what strategy the President will use to push this colossal transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government and cornerstone of socialism through Congress.

Oh, the field trial results – that dog won’t hunt!