HYPOTHETICAL NEWS FLASH: President Obama to Congress: “I Screwed Up. Now I’m Busy Fixing It”

[A Hypothetical Encounter Somewhere in the Nation’s capital]

14 NOVEMBER 2013

WASHINGTON, D.C.: In a Surprise, Imaginary Visit to the Capitol yesterday afternoon in the midst of an ongoing crisis over the Affordable Care Act Web site, President Barack Obama delivered the following address to a joint session of Congress:

“Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, and thank you for meeting here with me, to hear my unequivocal, public apology about the ongoing situation at healthcare-dot-gov.

“First of all, let me say it straight out: I screwed up. Now I’m busy fixing it.

“No question about it. It was my job to get this website up and running, so that millions of Americans can finally get access to the kind of healthcare insurance that Obamacare makes available. This was my job. We had an opening date of October first. The site wasn’t ready. It’s in better shape now, but it’s still not what it should be. It’s my fault. I deserve all of the blame. I screwed up.

“I’m sorry. I apologize. Words cannot convey how bad and embarrassed I feel that this happened, to my signature achievement, so deep into my watch.

“In addition to a fix, I owe you a full accounting. I intend to make sure that you get that accounting. I promise that you will have that accounting, as soon as this ACA start-up work is complete.

____________________

“But For right now—

“Hey! It’s only a website.

“And as the ‘face’ of Obamacare, with my name on it, it’s an important website.

“But still. It’s only the face. It’s not the insurance programs themselves.

“The important thing is to get the insurance policies up and running.

“Getting Obamacare up and running: that’s what my people are working on right now. Even as we speak.

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“Now, we only have four more months left to do it. Only four more months, if we’re to see this thing through on time.

“And just about a month left, for people to get those first policies, that start January 1, 2014.

“Now, I realize it’s tempting, to spend a lot of time right now, figuring out how to blame the guy responsible. It’s tempting to call some people out on the carpet, and to see some heads roll. Right now!

“But we are busy right now! We have to get Obamacare up and running as soon as possible. We want millions of Americans get the solid healthcare coverage they are entitled to.

“And we still need to make that happen on time.

“When you’re aboard a ship that’s sprung a leak, you have two options:

“First, you can work to fix the leak, and keep the ship moving forward while you’re doing it.

“The second option is to sit around talking about how bad the leak is, and who caused it. Maybe make them walk the plank.

“So while you in Congress sit around, and hold hearings, and subpoena witnesses to assign blame (and we know that the blame falls on me), my people are going to keep working on patching the leak in the boat. We will keep busy, bailing and paddling. Moving the Obamacare forward.

___________________

“Hopefully, we can agree that we all want the best outcome for the American people. So in every thing we do, in the White House and here in the Capitol, blame has to come second. Because what comes first is working for the people. We are all here for one thing: to bring the American people the best outcomes possible.

“In that regard, my people and I have important work to do. We have a leaky website to fix. And then we have to make sure a bunch of insurance policies get to a bunch of our people.

____________________

“So if you’ll excuse me for the time being, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have important work to do. And right now, I’m going to get back to work.

“Thank you for your interest in the progress of the Affordable Care Act, and especially in the terrible website we put together.

 “It’s still ‘All Obama’s fault.’ I can’t really tell you sorry I am about that.

“God bless America.”

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0097

 19 May 2013

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WHITEWATER: What did Obama know and when did he know it? Republicans vow to reopen investigation. Scandalous, non-scandal list continues.
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Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0022

16 November 2012

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“I voted for socialism, and all I got was Obama.”

—posted by Jack Arnott on Slate(comment to William Saletan, “The Real Romney,” 11/15/2012)

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Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

American “Entitlement” or “Self-Made” in America:

We Americans—Right, Left, or Center—harbor a sense of entitlement: we feel entitled to a share of the sum total of what “we, the people” have built together over the past 216 years. But the Right’s sense of entitlement is unusual:

The Right would have us believe that what makes America great is something that just lies here. As if our condition of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were something that we just find here, lying on the ground, free for us to pick up and use, to enrich ourselves independent of anything that anyone else contributes around us.

Of course, this is foolishness: the idea that any of us manage to create our great wealth entirely by the sweat of our own brow is absurd.

America’s greatness derives from what we have cobbled together here, and from how we maintain it. Our greatness also derives from the extent that we continue making  access to the resources of America available to all, so that any among us may realize the American Dream.

The following reaction to the Republican candidates’ speeches at last week’s political convention was posted to a “Comments” page of  The Washington Post. Absent our ability to contact the author for permission, it is posted in its entirety.
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Another Warmly Human Person and Self-Made Businessman:

by Bill Weston (8/31/2012 5:22 PM CDT)

My mother and father loved me too. Unfortunately, they couldn’t raise me with the absence of insecurity Romney enjoyed because I was a Depression baby.

At first my father, a “catcher” on a steel rolling mill, kept us going by often working 16 hours straight, but he was injured when a runaway strip of hot steel cooked a stripe on his back (there was no Republican-despised OSHA in the early Thirties).

Then the mill was shut down, and he worked at odd jobs; my mother took in laundry. A furniture merchant brought the sheriff to repossess our furniture, as if we were conservative gun-lovers, but all that happened was that my mother cried.

We didn’t lose our house because Roosevelt’s WPA gave my father steady work at $48 a month. Then World War II opened the steel mill with jobs.

But catching up with debt is slow, and conservative-despised Social Security couldn’t pay for me as it did for Paul Ryan until he was 18 years old.

So when I was twelve, I began working every other evening 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. at a drug store as a dish washer, furnace stoker, prescription drug deliverer, soda jerk, sweeper and mopper. I shed no Boehner tears about that, and until I retired at 63, I was never unemployed.

At sixteen, I had to leave high school to work at a bank, where I rose from check sorter to bookkeeper to the city’s youngest teller. After three years, I quit to make $60 a month more as a laborer in the steel mill. I hated every workday, so I was not sorry the Korean War drew me into the Air Force for four years. I learned a lot, especially on Guam’s bomber base, where I served as a Staff Sergeant and Special Assistant to a Group Commander. 

Then I entered the University of Illinois with $110 a month from the GI Bill, $36 a month for Air Force Reserve service and pay for working 20 hours a week.

In 2 ½ years, I was graduated as the top student in my class. With my journalism degree I got a position as a copywriter for large accounts at a large agency. After five years, I was writing both print ads and high-budget television commercials, which I also produced.

After 18 years, I had won 500 international awards and held the unusual position of Sr. VP, Account Director & Creative Director for several large accounts. Even so, I continued writing and producing television commercials, corporate films and multi-media presentations.

To do more of that I started my own communications company, which I headed as President and Chief Creative Officer. Then I was lured to one of America’s top five ad agencies by the position of VP/Associate Creative Director for Marlboro cigarettes. And until my retirement, I held that position for several other large accounts such as McDonald’s. 

What I didn’t do was consider my rise from the working class, the way Romney and Ryan do as they strive to deceive the middle class, a top qualification to be president or vice president. 

Should they? Should you?

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 The above essay is taken in full from the “comments” pages of Conservative Washington Post columnist, Kathleen Parker’s essay, “Romney and Ryan, Running Against Themselves,” following last week’s Republican convention in Florida.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

CONGRESS TO GIVE PRESIDENT POWER OVER SOLAR ECLIPSES:

“MOON WILL DISAPPEAR OVER NEXT TWO WEEKS” WARN CRITICS:

12 MARCH 2012

Right Now, with gasoline prices rising once again, the high gas prices are President Barack Obama’s fault. Back in the summer of 2008, the high gas prices were President George W. Bush’s fault.

So Long as the Majority of the American people continue to blame the wrong people for the wrong things, we will continue to have the “wrong” quality of government, which we, the people, choose.

In Ye Olden Days, our presidents would have been blamed for the solar eclipse. Has anyone else noticed that the moon, which was full just four days ago, seems to be shrinking? What will we do if the moon shrinks away entirely? Can this, too, be President Obama’s fault?

The Good Thing about Democracy is that we get the government we deserve.

The Bad Thing about Democracy is that we get the government we deserve.

Regards,
(($;- )}
Gozo!