It's starting to remind me of the old joke about two fellows who went into the roadside tomato business.  Every morning they would drive down to the farm and fill their pickup with tomato's at a dollar a pound, and every afternoon they would set up on the highway along where the city folk drove home to sell their tomato's for, you guessed it, a dollar a pound!

Every evening they sold out their stock, and impressed with the success they were having, did it again every day for a week.  By Friday , all they had to show for their efforts was a couple of dirty t-shirts, sore backs, and empty tank of gas in the truck.

"What are we doing wrong" said the first rocket scientist to the other?  "we've worked our cans off all week and haven't got ten cents to show for it"!  After some long hard thinking the answer came to them like a bolt from the blue. " We need a bigger truck"!

This old joke from my Dad would still bring a chuckle to my face were it's implications and logic not so eerily familiar in our Washington body politic today. 

To suggest that the Tea Party has somehow brought us to the brink of this political and financial black hole in just the 7 months they've held a key to the congressional bathroom, is a little like suggesting that the coming of the British was all Paul Revere's fault simply because he got on his horse.  No.  The fix we are in has everything to do with politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, thinking that stepping on the spending accelerator till the pedal went to the floor board would through some Einstein like time warp, bring us back to the beginning of this great Chutes and Ladders board game they call Government.

On some level (power), I can understand nearly a hundred Senators and 400+ Congressmen ( I have excluded the few lone wolves in the pack) remaining completely blind to the mood of the nation, yet the facts and depth of the problem we are in has to strike them like a pair of cardiac paddles in an emergency room, it is apparent however that their ideology will drag them, along with the rest of us, right over the recovery cliff.

What's truly amazing, is that with all the bickering, fighting, name calling, and juvenile delinquency being demonstrated by our elected federal officials, all little Johnny President had to do was step up to the plate, and bunt the ball to third to be the winner in this debate.  

Some say he is still too self absorbed, others, that he is prevented by his constituency from acting, but if you ask me, the man frankly looks defeated and that's why with no one playing the field, and the ball on a tee in front of him, he struck out! 

My friends, whether you recognize it or not, the paralysis at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue represents more than just an extension of our fiscal crises, but one of overall leadership that given the mood of the country, and the apparent abdication of Presidential guts, could bring to these shores more pressing matters than just overwhelming debt.

I'll share more with you in a few days, but for now; for those of you who forgot or were just too young to remember, the video below should give you just a small taste of what true leadership in a crisis used to look like before it became politically incorrect to love this country.

Marty Mabe