Fox is reporting on a new poll that finds that a full 56% of Americans have no confidence in the President. 48% of Americans disapprove of the President’s job performance, while only 42% approve.  The numbers for Congress are even more drastic, with 80% disapproving of Congress’s job performance.

So how did we get to this point where a majority of Americans dislike at least two out of three branches of government?  The way I see it, it’s taken decades of mismanagement, greed, and incompetence to destroy the relationship between the electorate and the elected.  Cronyism, revolving doors into the lobbying industry, and just plain stupidity have made a lot of people so cynical that they just choose to not participate.

For me, it’s been watching over a decade of manipulation of numbers, torturing of the truth, and bending of stated principals by members of both parties that have driven me into the “vote them out, vote them all out” camp.  I’ve always said that Americans crave leadership, not management. It’s been a very long time since the last statesman was replaced by a politician.

So where do we go from here?  Next year, the President, the Vice-President, all of the members of the cabinet, all of the members of the House of Representatives, and 1/3 of the Senators are up for contract renewal, and to be honest, I think we should outsource all of them.  I’m sure that a wholesale firing of the entire elected portion of the Executive branch and over half of the Legislative branch would cause a few good people to be swept out along with the dirtbags, but I honestly don’t know how to separate the sheep from the goats.  My hunch is that we are more likely to have a net gain in intelligence with a complete crop of new people than we are to by replacing the current field of weeds in ones and two’s.

So I say again:  Vote them out.  Vote them all out.  If you can’t hold your nose and vote for the candidate from the opposing party, vote third party.  Take time to educate your fellow citizens about the iniquity of Congress and the President.  Encourage them to do their own research and to decide whether or not we can trust the people who put us in the ditch to get us out.

Next year, just vote “No Mas”.

A commission sponsored by Freedom Works has come out with a government austerity plan that would slash over 9 trillion dollars from the federal budget over the next decade.  They axe entire cabinet departments, get rid of Obamacare, and cut the pay for Congress if the budget is not balanced.

Sounds familiar.  I’ll await a call from the commission.

Energy Secretary Chu testified yesterday that although he did his best to make sure that Solyndra was a rock solid company, he doesn’t expect to see much of the half a billion dollars he loaned to the company.  Apparently, it’s more important that the speculators who invested in the solar smoke-and-mirrors company deserve to get more of their money back before the taxpayers.  He also denied that political considerations made a difference in his decision.  I haven’t seen pictures or film of his testimony, but the image I have in my mind is him testifying while wearing a Solyndra tee shirt and drinking coffee from an “I Heart Democratic Donors” coffee mug.

You know, it’s sad that I’m not surprised by this kind of thing anymore. Both parties have been handing out money like they didn’t earn it for decades.  Wait a minute, never mind, they in fact did not earn it.  Anyway, the business plan for a lot of companies seems to be:

Step 1:  Give some money to politicians
Step 2:  Get a metric ton of money from politicians
Step 3:  Profit!
Step 4:  Golden Parachute!

Now y’all excuse me while I go try to figure out how I’m going to afford to pay the new taxes it’s going to take to pay off the debt we went into in order to give money to Solyndra and every other snake-oil salesman who could squawk “Green Energy” for the past few years.