Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Happy birthday, Mr. President. Welcome to the 50 plus club.

You must be pleased. You have, in a very short period of time, made a great deal of progress toward achieving your transformational goals.

I admit that I underestimated you (and George Soros). When you first came to office, I was underwhelmed by your achievements. No legislative accomplishments. No academic accomplishments. No business accomplishments. Just the an exotic background and the ability to deliver a silky smooth speech. You made them oooh and aaaah.

But you took over the steering wheel during a crisis---the most formidable financial crisis in a couple of generations. America was arrogant, you said. You believed in American exceptionalism, you said.....just like everyone else believes in their country's exceptionalism. America couldn't go it alone anymore. It needed to "spread it around," you said. In other words, become more like Europe.

Happy birthday. You must be pleased. In 2 1/2 years, you've gotten us there. Yesterday, our financial standing was downgraded from our pristine AAA rating, largely as a result of your accelleration of spending from 20 to 25% of GDP. You waged a war (ignoring the War Powers Act) against a tin pot dictator--a war by committee with your European allies. "Leading from behind," I think your staff called it. Months later, the tin pot dictator is still in power and your committee doesn't know what to do next. How European. And you took THE signature project of America, the single crowning achievement that demonstrated that government could do something right, a source of pride of a couple generations- manned space flight--and killed it like one would step on a bug. Instead of exploring new vistas and creatively thinking of new goals for NASA, you made multiculturalism a part of NASA's mission. Celebrate the math and science achievements of Islam, you said (notwithstanding the fact that Islam hasn't given us much of note since algebra).

No, President Obama. I did not think that you were capable of accomplishing so much in such a short period of time. Destroy America's credit rating. Demostrate collective impotence in warmaking. Turn one of America's most successful projects into a bureaucratic department of multicultural excellence.

The country that put man on the moon, turned back Hitler, stood up to Communism, that beacon of freedom, rugged individualism, where if one worked hard, showed initiative and got a little lucky could get rich is disappearing on your watch.

You will, no doubt, blame the Tea Party. "Intransigent," "Unsophisticated," "Irresponsible," "Jihadist," "Hostage Takers," is what the folks in your party called them.

They had the audacity to try to stop this runaway train. Perhaps they're too late.

We're now right there with Belgium.

Hope you and George enjoyed your cake.