Over 2300 years ago, birth was given to a myth which in time became a powerful metaphor that has served us well through the ages when addressing seemingly impossible or intricate challenges. Halfway through the current Obama Presidency we face a moment when reaching back for an ancient Greek analogy has become self evidently appropriate.
Legend tells us that Alexander The Great fulfilled a prophecy by bringing a creative solution to the Gordian Knot – he sliced the complex knot with his sword, thereby showing himself capable of thinking outside the box. Gordian, the mythological king of the Phrygians had tied his oxcart to a palace as an offering to Zeus, and an oracle had foretold that whoever untied the knot would conquer Asia. Although he died at the young age of 31, Alexander’s conquest of a continent started with a bold decision.
History has provided ample debate on the event of Alexander’s controversial “solution,” and whether it was actually any solution at all, however, Alexander’s omen, has remained a favorite metaphor.
The present moment in history finds a society struggling with overwhelming unemployment, as well as a worrisome personal and national level of debt. Productive employment is critical to sustenance of a vibrant society, and it is through that employment that the costs of all of society’s “structural and functioning” needs get paid. A majority of Americans also understand that it is business and industry, large and small, that create employment, and the basis for all other employment. Without such employment, government doesn’t get paid. While this should be abundantly obvious, the American taxpayer is being led by an Administration that seems not to understand.
America went to the poles during the midterm elections and emphatically voiced its displeasure with the way the Administration and Congress were treating its most serious and urgent concerns. America is looking for leadership capable of making bold decisions.
This week, Obama is facing his archetypal Gordian Knot, IMHO. The current debate over the maintenance of the Bush tax cut has been worthwhile, and pushes economic discussion to the fore, which serves to educate. The solution to America’s economic woes however, does not rest with an extension of the Bush tax cut. The solution rests in the aggressive stimulation of job creation, and leadership that will-not-sleep-until unemployment numbers have been halved.
On Wednesday we were treated to novel expressions from an American President such as this one uttered by Obama to 20 CEOs in a session held yesterday with the Administration, “I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success.”
The fact that his grammar is questionable matters less than the fact that he would have to say anything remotely close to an attempt at denying he has and will continue to “inhibit” the success of all businesses. His actions precede him, so his words appear to come from a distant corner of the twilight zone. It is not in his DNA to either stimulate economic growth, or care what the fat cats (his own rhetoric) of corporate America need to see from their government in Washington. He does not understand, and cannot understand.
The MSM is even posting articles about “détente” between this Administration and business. Détente? As in, “he’s at war?” Who would have thought this concept remotely possible in twenty first century America? In the middle of an extended recession, who would have expected a question posed to a sitting President such as the one asked by CNBC’s John Harwood, “Mr. President, can you repair your relationship with business?”
Pretend all he wants at “dispelling,” Obama is incapable of providing a solution to his Gordian Knot, because he does not comprehend the most significant problem facing the country over which he presides.
Crossposted from The Pacific Gate Post
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.
Aqua: I turned down the opportunity to go to OCS after boot camp and ITR. I consider that to be one of the biggest mistakes of a series of mistakes during my life. I even passed the mental and physical tests to fly and I turned it all down. Now I am overweight and nearly deaf. Life is like that.
SKOOKUM, LIFE IS REALY LIKE A BIG COMPLICATE KNOT THAT WE MAKE TO TIED OUR BEST IN LIFE, SO TO PRESERVE ONLY THE GOOD OF IT,AND IT CANNOT BE UNTIED.
BYE
Alexander’s mentor was Aristotle. Obama’s was a domestic terrorist (a modern day Elphiates). Alexander conquered his enemies in foreign lands with force and then pacified them with Hellenic exceptionalism, culture and language. Obama becomes leader voting present, enjoys beer summits in his garden, is regularly pu**y-whipped by his wife and bows in the general direction of all our foes.
It takes courage to think outside the square.
Obama is gutless.. don’t hold your breath now.
Arms control treaty ratification,DADT repeal.Seems Repubs more agreeable in lame duck Congress.Who knew?Still a few days left.
I’m pretty friggin common and I’m mad as hell about having to *REDUCE* my coverages and still *PAY MORE* for Health Insurance this year…which my broker (in confidentiality of course) told me is directly a result of the Obamacare bullcrap — plus he flat out told me that “grandfathering” and other supposed protections are simply short-term lies.
Everything you were warned about this “Healthcare Reform” is basically true. Of course we will never hear about all the people who are going to die because Obama lied…
Malize, the left usually isn’t capable of seeing the consequences of their actions. Even if you point out the damage they have done, they blame others and propose even more of the same. You also get the “good intentions” line.
Malize Where I come from brokers can leave you broke and are often not purveyors of the straight skinny.I’m REAL happy with my V.A. care.
“Obama lied people will die” How original.
H.R. Who’s blaming others? See above
My suggestion after 66 years of great health. EXERCISE REGULARLY.
Semper Fi Merry Christmas to all.
Well Rich, we’ve worked with this broker for years. You enjoy that V.A. care, how’s that working out for your FAMILY? I have 3 kids and a wife dependent on the quality of healthcare I can obtain and pay for being a self-employed business owner.
Don’t try to fed me crap and tell me it’s a damn cinnabon.
hey rich my dog henry could out poll obummer. get off the koolaid.
also rich(that’s rich) to tell someone to exercise regularly in answer to their health care concerns is stupid, souless, irrelevant, arrogant, and so totally inconsequential, i find you to be a pathetic example of all that is liberal sad to say. and before you start the “typical” liberal bs about my being a right wing nut, keep in mind i am a registered independent who voted for hillary. and if i feel this way many others do to. we are your worst nightmare, that is if you dream.
Stogie As a Marine Corps Officer I learned early in life fitness is the key to good health.You don’t believe it that’s your problem.Obviously got nothing to do with politics.To so suggest is just plain stupid.Stick with Hillary. she rolls Sarah in 2016.I sleep well and have beautiful dreans.Thanks for asking.
Sarah Palin, commenting on Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign:
Parents are obviously doing just fine, without any intrusive diet and exercise suggestions from the First Lady. From the Let’s Move website:
So what you are saying Greg is that the government needs to step in and tell the parents how to raise their children? You are in favor of giving the government that much power?
Michelle Obama is so disingenuous.
She has to know that it is because we live a long time that Americans become likely to get heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and asthma.
I recall her desire to build supermarkets in inner cities.
LOL!
A study she conveniently forgot to cite showed that poorer people live closer to their closest supermarket than people who are not poor.
Yet somehow people who care about their health manage to get good food on the table while some poor people (at those same supermarkets) choose unhealthy things like ramen-full-of-sodium, the fattiest-cuts-of-beef, turkey-tails (also full of fat).
Should we be given ”RATION BOOKS?”
That might be the only way to keep poor people from picking the foods that are the very worst for them.
But look at how Food Stamp recipients cheat the system we now have.
They’d find ways around anything Michelle could cook up, too.
Nan G. and anticsrocks, I think the Obama position is rather simple. With crop insurance, export subsidies, duties on foreign sugars, FDA rules, price supports, food stamps, and school lunches, government is heavily involved in influencing what kind of food is put into our stomachs. If government is to be so involved (an no GOPer con is calling for elimination of school lunch programs or price supports, since Red States are heavy users of both government subsidies), at least government should encourage our increasingly fat populace to eat more healthy foods and get more exercise.
The reflexive con opposition to anything Obama supports was shown the other day concerning Michelle’s “Let’s Move” speech about the military. In short, a recent Pentagon study showed that a smaller and smaller percentage of high schoolers were physically fit enough to join the military, causing the kind of national security concern that sparked the Presidents’s Council on Physical Fitness and the post-Sputnik math and science improvements. The con poo poo response: “This is not really a national security issue because some people join the military to get into good physical shape.” What?
Just like global warming, they spent years filling our children’s heads with that “cause.” The Let’s Move and dietary controls they are implimenting will be suplemented with a healthy dose of healthcare propaganda, in a few years these little “educated” voters will be campaigning and voting for government healthcare.
One step at a time, one step at a time.
@ Greg
Greg, I’m sure this is true. When I was a kid, I was outside playing all the time. We could do that then. I rode my bike everywhere, played baseball from sun-up to sun-down. Our kids can’t do that any longer.
When I was younger, the whole neighborhood watched out for kids. If one was acting up, it wasn’t unheard of for a neighborhood mom to take a switch to the kids legs, call the parents, and then the parents would do it again when the kid got home. That doesn’t happen any longer. Neighbors look the other way because no one wants to get sued by some jack-a$$ parent that thinks their kid walks on water.
As a result, kids are vulnerable to some of the lowest life forms on the planet. With out neighborhood involvement, perverts are free to do as they please. No one wants to let their kids outside any longer.
@Aqua:
Hubby and I watched Sand Lot last night, action, drama, suspense, comedy, our kind of movie.
Another problem, television and videos are now the babysitter starting from a very tender age, kids aren’t getting out. My granddaughter lives in an apartment, bought one of those little trampolines for our 3 year old great-grandson, he burns up a lot of energy on that thing. She also limits his TV time, reads to him and they do lots of art. I have a few of his pieces on display.
It would be one thing to do these things as a public service issue, but signing it into law and adding billions to the deficit is rediculous.
Our PE classes have been cut back, recess and lunch playtime in the elementary schools is so regulated the kids were hardly allowed to move for fear of lawsuits should they get hurt.
Remember dodgeball….it’s now just a memory, so are the monkey bars. We would spend our whole recess hanging from those plain old metal bar monkey bars… without the benefits of helmets. 😉
We grew up in a neighborhood like yours, and also didn’t dare get in trouble in school. Our principal had a “board of education” with air holes in it, never figured out why it had the holes, never experienced it either. Hubby was spanked by his first grade teacher, she just used her hand. Never mess with Mrs. Carlson. 😉
“The neighborhood isn’t safe so the kids have to stay inside snacking and playing video games.We have to watch them from our big comfy sofa.Pass the chips junior.”
This mind set isn’t nescessary.It’s got nothing to do with politics.It’s laziness.Move it or lose it.You are NEVER too old or infirm to exercise.Set a good example for the kids.
Semper Fi Happy New Year
Missy, I believe the air holes were to decrease the surface area the impact was spread over and increase the pain. 😯
I think my generation was the last one to face paddling in school without parental notification.
NanG You crticize her clothes shopping,her concern for children’s obesity,her desire to build supermarkets in inner cities.Tell us what you really think about Mrs.Obama.
Does she not have two beautiful, well behaved little girls? Is she a bad mom?
MISSY; hi, this is my CUE to tell another one of me: WHEN my both parents where dead, we 4girls end up in an orphanage whit NUNS, AND WHERE ALL SEPARATED INTO DIFFRENT LOCALS IN THAT UGE BUILDING, I was 4 and missing my sisters, and the nuns like me ,they even
made up a nun dress and veil and parade me around, and one day THE teacher was angry at something I done, and send me to the ALMIGHTY SUPERIOR; I was waiting outside her office scared, and when she came, she ask me in, and ask me what I done and I was saying something to my defense to save me from the punishment, and she was so serious, freaking me with her look, I was expecting the worse and then, SHE took a CHRISTMAS CANDY CANE AND HANDED TO ME and send me back ; I was astonish and trying to comprehend that punishment
I LEARNED TO LOVE CANDY CANE, and I buy some every CHRISTMAS,
BYE, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL THE FLOOPING ACES ,YES YOU ARE MY ACES
@ilovebeeswarzone:
What a sweet story Beezy, bet you made an adorable little nun, Mother Superior probably couldn’t bear to punish you, she apparently felt what you did was not so naughty, bet the habit helped a bit too. 😉
Going to hang a candy cane on my tree and will wish you well everytime I look at it!
Got to go pick up my goodies for tomorrow, last trip out in the hectic mess and then back home to finish the baking. Merry, Merry Christmas to you and all in our FA family!
MISSY,I think you would like to know what I did, but I am so ashamed of it,
I was disrupting the class with my loud laugh, and made them laugh too,
nobody could cure me of that fault, the trauma of the punishment either,
I was caught at work disrupting my fellow workers too, and here I am disrupting FA
and they let me get away with it, that is my candy cane, best to you
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Humiliation was a method used by some teachers from our days in school, most teachers today look for possitive attributes in the students and build on them. Every class has a child with infectious giggles, teachers will gently tease and then bring the class back in order and poof, it’s over.
Beezy, the trauma was losing your parents and then being ripped from your sisters, you were seeking much needed attention, some of your teachers handled it all wrong. My friends that went to Catholic schools all have stories to tell about the legendary nuns that were a bit rigid or smack happy with the ruler. The nuns that made you the habit and the “Almighty Superior” were on the right track. 😉
MISSY, hi, thank’s for your understanding, yes, that was the problem for me:
funny how it goes in life, we don’t always notice that we are constantly between
positive and or negative thinking humans, what one does to help other feel good the other seek to demolish the spirit, and I SUPPOSE THATit is the right balance for kids to grow up and build their judgement, as long as they decide to side in with the positive and reconnyse it,
for what they are, with all the added attributes to each one, it is not easy to discern it
bye MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOUR LOVES ONES