OBs (Obama And O'Brien) Share Delusions Of Grandeur

Neither diehard Republcans nor diehard Democrats will be happy with this posting, but hey, the truth always hurts, and my goal has never been to comfort the diehards.

We have an abundance of proof this week that President Barack Obama and New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien have more in common that just the OB at the start of their last names.

Both are evincing not only to usual hubris but rampant delusions of grandeur in their attempts, hopefully unsuccessful in both cases, to hold on to their jobs.

Republicans will undoubtedly decry--and rightly so--Obama's comments this week that his economy program has been a success.  The demagogue in chief appears to have taken total leave of his senses.  He's living in a world void of reality, but then so too is O'Brien who has already been assailed--and rightly so--for his inane comments on New Hampshire Public Radio earlier in the week.

Mind you, I never listen to NPR (perhaps it goes back to the days when I was living in Berlin, Germany and came to dislike the only two English broadcasts I could pull in on a regular basis--NPR from Armed Forces Radio--and the BBC--I swore off both of them when I returned to the land of American English).

Thus, the only thing I know about O'Brien's ridiculous comments are what I've heard from friends or read in the media or in other blogs, but that's not going to stop me from noting how O'Brien seems to rival Obama in taking leave of his senses.

O'Brien had the utter gall to contend, against all evidence, that the cigarette tax cut did not cos the stat revenues.  I can't imagine even Republicans (if they choose to be honest rather than hacks) on Ways and Means saying such an outrageous thing.  Facts are facts; they aren't tricky things, these facts.  They tell us the truth, and the facts tell us that the 10 cent per pack cut cost us between $10 million and $12 million.  We can argue which of those numbers is closer to reality, but only someone who has taken leave of his senses would continue to spin the big lie, that the tax cut didn't result in a loss of revenue.

As with Obama, O'Brien merely erodes any shred of credibility he still has when he tries to defend the indefensible.

Perhaps even worse than he cigarette tax lie is his the tortured logic he needed to employ to claim that the advent of gay marriage is costing the state money, made ironically enough on the same day that a study in New York revealed that that state has seen an increase of a couple hundred million dollars since gay marriage took effect.

We certainly don't have that many gay marriages here, but the state gets a cut of every marriage license applied for (it's something like $50).  O'Brien somehow contends (it's on the NPR site) that gay marriage is costing society by destroying families.  Just the opposite is true.  People who are married take care of each other when necessary.  Rather than relying on government as a crutch, married people help each other, so if anything, gay marriage is reducing costs to the state.

For O'Brien to say otherwise makes as much sense as for Obama to contend that his economic program has been a success.

Come on folks.  Isn't it time to put the lie to leaders whether they come at us from the left or from he right; whether they be Republicans or Democrats.

O'Brien seems to be mimicking Obama in two other areas these days. Republicans contend--and rightly so-- that Obama is doing too much by executive order, thus bypassing the founders' insistence that the legislative role be paramount in certain areas.  However, you don't hear many Republicans for criticizing the Speaker/Tyrant who can't help but meddle into non-legislative matters whether it be nepotism in the Department of Employment Security, clearly an executive function, or looking into what happened to liquor supplies, another executive function.

We should not be surprised that O'Brien is ferreting out areas to meddle into beyond what the founders intended for the Legislature.  His delusions of grandeur are unsurpassed except perhaps by the delusional man who sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Then there's the treatment of the media.  Obama has Fox News to beat up on (although he hasn't tried to ban its reporters from his press conferences); O'Brien has the Concord Monitor.

O'Brien and Republicans should heed the words of Thomas Jefferson.

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

The best of all possible worlds is what we very well might achieve this year, a government without both Barack Obama and Bill O'Brien.

I suspect Republicans will believe half of that; Democrats will believe half of it.

We need to all concur on both halves.  Despotism must be eradicated at both the national and state level.  It's time to throw out those with delusions of grandeur, those who spin with such outrageous falsehoods that spins can only be termed lies.

There's more than OB that these two leaders share. 

Out, out, damn OBs, from both our houses.



Comments

[Joshua]

Well said. But I don't think that Lady Macbeth ever did rid herself of that spot.