Well here we are on the brink and if any of us are wondering how we arrived at this precipice of financial ruin, we might want to look in the mirror and then at our voting record. If you are one of the 80 percent of this country's voting population that never wanted to be bothered with your obligation to this nation to elect responsible and ethical leaders, then let me be the first to congratulate you for helping us arrive at this point.

We have an administration that doesn't let facts get in the way of their agendas and a Congress which does the same. As I listened and read President Barack Obama's continual threats to withhold Social Security and pay to veterans in order to extort from Congress an open check to raise the debt ceiling while further polarizing this nation which are both not necessarily true by the way, I cannot help but contrast this with Presidents of the past. Democratic Presidents of the past.While many of us are too young to remember some of these people, let's try a thought experiment with what we know about our past Presidents. Do you believe that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would go on television when faced with this crisis and blame the other party and threaten them by siccing the public on them using half truths? I doubt it.How about John F. Kennedy? Would Kennedy browbeat seniors and refuse to be accountable for his actions? I doubt it. In fact even though Kennedy was a Democrat, I cannot believe he would be overly tolerant of the nanny state this nation has become. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", was the catch phrase of his administration. It is a joke in this entitlement society we have created which itself is a slap in the face of this man's legacy.A favorite jab is the lack of credibility President Bush had by the end of his administration. Well, this administration has just as little. Obama's first chief of staff was quoted using crises as opportunities to advance their agenda, and Obama has created plenty of them. First there was the impending disaster of this country's second misguided stimulus package was passed, and nothing happened. Then there was Obamacare, his grand attempt to plunge us faster into bankruptcy. The Democrats under his leadership threatened and bullied its way into passage under the threats of dire circumstances if it was not passed.Now we have this financial crisis with this arbitrary date of August 2nd just three days away in which the world would collapse if Obama doesn't get his way. What's funny is when the Democrats provide a plan which is favorable to the President's point of view, then the deadline all of a sudden is malleable. Senator Harry Reid's plan which insulates the President coincidentally until after the next Presidential election all of a sudden is doable even though it is nowhere near fleshed out and doesn't cut much of anything. All it does is use double-talk to raise our spending and the debt ceiling even further.The $1 trillion in cuts which the Senator cites is based on a budget that is already laid out over the next seven years with a SEVEN PERCENT INCREASE in spending each year. The cuts are back loaded into this plan and the cuts they will make will not offset the increase already built into the budget. The result of this deceit is that we will have 7 to 9 more trillion dollars in debt when Harry Reid is through with us.Most of you probably chuckled when you read previous columns in which I pointed out how deceitful and uncaring these legislators can be and now when this country needs them the most, they are still playing games with our future. There is no tomorrow now. If you care about this country then it is time to do something. Call your congressman daily. Remind them they can be unelected. Tell them to fight for us. Tell them to live within their means. There is one way out of this mess. Our leaders have to risk their careers to cut this government down to size and eliminate this deficit. Don't let them kid you. The money is going somewhere and it can be stopped. They just don't have the guts to do it. It's up to us to remind them they are as expendable as these cuts and we will just keep voting them out of office until they do what we want.The time is up. If each of you reading this column don't start raising hell and getting your neighbors to do likewise, we might as well turn out the lights and call it the end of the American Dream because that is what this will be.It's up to you.