Cleared for Take Off

As the Democratic convention in Charlotte gets ready to take off, one will be amazed at how often the question will be put to Obama surrogates, "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

The answer is, hell yes.

Four years ago, if the U.S. were an airplane and George Bush the captain...

But,  four years ago the captain of our flight was Barack Obama. Passengers boarded with an  air of optimism, perhaps greater than the occasion called for, but most were so relieved to be deplaning from the ruinous, bizarre flight they had just endured that they felt nothing could be worse, and therefore things would be better immediately upon takeoff. There weren't enough little bottles of booze on the planet, let alone the plane, to make the previous flight tolerable.

Sure, Captain Bush had filed incorrect flight plans, there'd be no time for a maintenance check, a lot of people had died, but everybody in First Class was having a grand time and the people in Coach had plans and needed to get where they were going. So as he was leaving, Captain Bush kind of winked and tossed the new guy the keys and said "she's all yours, fuel gauge is acting up  little, don't worry about it." Then, strangely, he kissed the ground.

As the plane lifted off, some of the passengers looked at snapshots from the earlier leg of the journey. Here's the day the terrorists attacked, and some were glad Captain Bush was at the helm. Just after that one was taken multitudes of IRANIANS flooded the streets of Tehran in a candlelight vigil of support for the U.S. in it's hour of tragedy. Why did the Captain label that very picture "Axis of Evil"?

Here's a few shots of the nineteen hijackers who boarded planes that day to mount the attack. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, so we knew then that the super-size can of Industrial-Strength Woop Ass would soon be directed at Saudi Arabia. But here's another photo of George W. kissing a prince from Saudi Arabia, must be like a Godfather kiss, right? Funny story, the whole Woop Ass thing with Saudi Arabia got trumped by an older black and white picture of W's dad getting threatened by Saddam Hussein. Since none of the hijackers came from Iraq you might think they'd be sort of in the clear, but their pictures are also labeled "Axis of Evil".

Here's an old one of Dick Cheney when he named himself vice president, written on the back, "no one else was qualified". Here's another titled "energy task force", but it's just a picture of a closed door, I don't remember what that's about.

Here's one of Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida on the night of the 2000 election, that one's got "inside job" written on the back, but it's crossed out and instead it looks like it's just got numbers "5-4" written instead.

Somebody from First Class by way of a stewardess, sent a note back to Coach that said, "you all are living in the past, looking at all those old pictures. And besides, Captain W and Dick the co-pilot gave us a great flight."

Maybe it's not good to dwell on the past, but so many of the happy memories of the Bush years continue to influence what we're doing today, and the cost of two wars, one against the wrong enemy, continues to weigh down our economy. The special treatment of the people up in First Class has cut into the amenities of us back here in Coach.  Captain Bush's tax cuts along with the wars, drove us nearly Five Trillion dollars further into debt. Obama's debt has been high too but you don't quibble about the price of water when the house, or plane, is on fire.

Back to the friendly skies for a moment. The reason I think things are better now than four years ago is that the economy, like a plane, was crashing then. It was crashing under the ruinous policies of Bush. While Obama has stabilized it and we've actually seen job growth for over two years. Under Bush jobs were disappearing at the rate of 700,000 per month.

Continuing on the airplane metaphor for just a moment longer, recall the Twilight Zone episode of the wild flight William Shatner had. He looked out the window to see a demon tampering with the engines to make the plane crash. When Obama looks out the airplane window he sees the beady, bespeckled eyes of the senior senator from Kentucky, the odious Mitch McConnell, working feverishly to bring truth to his traitorous pledge to make Obama a one term president.

Yes, it's been a rough flight under Captain Obama. We all wish we had made better progress on the journey. I for one, wish we had picked up single-payer health coverage in the gift shop. But Obama did end the war in Iraq. He did make some progress toward universal health coverage. Against an intransigent Republican party he has tried, but admittedly failed, to return tax policy to the time of budget surpluses. The sacrosanct job-creators, pampered by ten years of favored treatment, have thus far failed to deliver on their eponymous long suit. Instead they wait, we are told, for another plane.

Me? I'll stay on Captain Obama's flight.