Birds Big and Small

            Every morning at breakfast I am entertained by birds feeding outside my window. Most go to the feeder strung up high to keep squirrels away (or so I thought). Others, like doves and thrashers, won't fly up to the feeder, so they feed on the seed I toss on the ground for them.

            But the other day I witnessed an extraordinary scene.

            A brown bird that I had never seen before sat on the ground shivering its feathers and calling open-mouthed like a nestling demanding to be fed. Before long a tiny sparrow, a quarter the size of the brown bird, began to pick seeds off the ground and pop them into the larger bird's gaping mouth. This went on for several minutes until the sparrow finally flew away. Thereupon the larger bird stopped shivering its feathers and began to feed itself from the seed on the ground.

            I couldn't help thinking that I had witnessed a perfect metaphor for the way out nanny state operates. Here was a large bird demanding to be fed while it was quite capable of feeding itself. Instead, it accepted food from a hard-working cousin with a sense of compassion and social responsibility.

            It has been said that our democracy will founder when more than half our citizens depend on the government for some form of sustenance. Aren't we there already? A shrinking labor base no longer capable of financing Social Security benefits for a growing number of retirees; a Medicare program facing exploding costs that will bankrupt the system before the end of the decade; Medicaid rolls that will increase by 30 million when Obamacare is fully implemented; Food Stamps now handed out to 1 of every 7 people.

            Last year President Obama knew he had a looming debt crisis when he appointed a bi-partisan commission, familiarly known as Simpson-Bowles, to look into reforming the system. The commission did a commendable job of recommending, among other things, tax reform and sensible ways to control runaway entitlement costs. So what did the president do with the commission's report? He trashed it.

            And the mess got worse. We got the debt ceiling crisis, the S&P downgrade, and the panic on Wall Street, not to mention the housing collapse and persistent unemployment.

            What will our anointed leader do for us next? He promises to tell us after Labor Day. Why wait? He could start right now by telling us he plans to stop feeding the birds who are quite capable of feeding themselves.

            But don't hold your breath. Those birds are now in the majority. And they vote.

Etched in My Memory

            The tawdry spectacle is over.

            Sounds of the disgusting battle in Washington over the debt ceiling have been muted. But for me, three things are etched in my memory.

            1. Corporate jets. They became the prime symbol on the banner under which President Obama waged his class warfare against the rich. Yet, the president never once mentioned the biggest and most expensive corporate jet of them all: Air Force One. His private conveyance to speeches, rallies, and fund raisers all over the country costs the American taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars each time he pulls it out of the hangar. And let's not forget the trip to New York to attend a Broadway show with the First Lady, or her vacations to Mexico, Spain, and South Africa. The royal couple's hypocrisy knows no bounds.

            2. Life on the planet. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said that failing to solve our debt ceiling crisis would end life on the planet as we know it. Has there ever been a more wild-eyed exaggeration than this?  Is the sense of self-importance more bloated anywhere than in the halls of Congress? Al Gore is right about global warming. It is indeed being caused by mankind. Not the burning of fossil fuels, though. It's the hot air spouting from our capital.

            3. Terrorists. One statement in the heat of battle was even more astounding to me than Pelosi's apocalypse. And that was Vice-President Biden calling the tea partiers terrorists. Imagine the man one heartbeat away from the presidency equating American citizens who want to control spending in Washington with the madmen who bombed us on 9/11 and who dress their children in explosive vests and send them off on suicide missions. Is there a more morbid symptom of the depravity of our leaders than this?

            Yes, the sights and sounds of the battle have faded. But let us not forget.