Failure… the New Measure for Success!

Author John L. Mason wrote a book back in 2006 called “An Enemy Called Average”, and more recently a follow up called “Conquering An Enemy Called Average.” In both books he deals with this “just get through it” “C average” mentality and launches an all-out attack against mediocrity. I think the mantra of many on the left is, “just get by” and if that doesn’t work, lie!

In years gone by, I have had a California’s contractor’s license, my pilot’s license, and been a real estate agent. In preparing for each, the instructors repeatedly told us the bare minimum number of questions we had to get correct to get the license. There was no push to be top in my class. No push to be better than the next person. I passed all three with no real excitement about any of them and no real feeling of accomplishment.

Until recently, California schools taught “to the test” that all California students are required to pass in order to graduate. They weren’t taught “past the test”, nor “to be the best”, but simply “to get by” and just pass it.

This is frightening!

President Obama seems to subscribe to this same kind of thinking. He has surrounded himself with people who think, like him, that average, mis-speaking (lying), and just getting by (or “getting away with it”) is excellence.

Timothy Geithner, former Secretary of the Treasury, didn’t know he had cheated on his taxes. He called it a “software” issue and never worked to fix it until he was slated to become part of the administration. Sounds like an Obama Success Story to me!

Kathleen Sebelius, did such a great job as Governor of Kansas that she had to suspend tax refunds by the state because of a lack of revenue. She proposed raising sales, property, and income taxes but was eventually pressured to make deep and uncomfortable spending cuts to get the state back on track.

She is now your Health and Human Services Secretary. Sebelius is very pro-abortion, receiving considerable sums from abortion doctors, even to the point of erroneously reporting monies received from Dr. George Tiller who was said to have performed over 60,000 abortions. She paid fines for “under-reporting” those receipts.

Sebelius also ignored warnings by the FDA and ordered the morning after pill to be made available over the counter to children under the age of 17 who felt they needed it. Thankfully, a judge with a brain struck this down.

Now, with debilitating glitches in the Obamacare rollout, Secretary Sebelius refuses to come answer questions directly to Congress, the body that she is charged with answering to. Yet another Obama Success Story!

And let’s not forget Lois Lerner, former Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations division, who purposely targeted freedom groups like the Tea Party and any group with suspicious words like freedom, Constitution, liberty, and patriot in their names. She also mis-spoke (lied) and blamed it on two rogue agents in Ohio. When everything started to unravel, she finally came before Congress, assures us of her innocence, and then promptly pleads the 5th Amendment.

Then, former IRS Commissioner, Doug Shulman, mis-spoke (lied) when he testified that his 118 visits to the White House were for non-business things like the Easter Egg Roll. Just let that sink in for a moment.

Sarah Hall Ingram, another IRS Commissioner who headed up the division that targeted the above groups, showed emails proving that information was shared (against the law) to White House officials about these groups for direction.
And with all that going, on Congressman Gerry Connolly, Democrat from Virginia said it was all just a joke and a misunderstanding!
To steal a phrase from Uncle Joe Biden, “What a bunch of malarkey!”

Every one of these, and many, more were, and continue to be, failures. No corrections will be made to behavior or changes in personnel because, to this administration, failure is success.

The president says that his $600 million failure of a healthcare website (outsourced to a Canadian firm – another US failure!) was just minor glitches and likened it to Apple Corp. recent iPhone software issue.

Apple makes money. You don’t. Apple lives within their budget. You don’t. Apple immediately stops products from failing by canning them or revamping them. You don’t.

Mr. President, with all due respect, your ignorance and lack of experience is showing. You believe that YOU are creating jobs. Congratulations, you are! PART-TIME jobs. All the while losing full-time jobs! 88% of the jobs created last year were part-time, while many full-time jobs simply went away.

You are definitely keeping your promise to fundamentally change this country. It’s rapidly changing from a country of success and promise to a country of failure and hopelessness, and to a country where words no longer have meaning and failure will be the new success.

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Joe Messina

Joe is a no-nonsense, conservative realist. He is not interested in “what if?” or “we could have!” He is interested in hearing both sides and has no problem taking on taboo issues with real questions looking for real answers. Racism, religion, and politics are all open season for topics, and he’s happy to offer up his opinion in the process! Joe is an engaging speaker mixing a healthy dose of sarcasm with the cold, hard facts, interacting with the audience, taking questions, and often playing “devil’s advocate”… just to make you to think! Actively engaged in community, church, and politics for well over a decade, Joe enjoys the reputation of being a man of integrity and ethics. He has had several successful businesses and held several executive positions with various Fortune 1000 companies. He is often sought after to teach classes his “black and white breakdown” of business ethics. If you like to “stir the pot” a little and you don’t want to hear any more political correctness, Joe is your guy! Just name a topic… politics, religion, racism, or most any current event. Joe can be heard daily across the airwaves and over the internet on several stations.

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One Comment

  1. Joe, your take on ‘average’ came straight from my heart. It seems that ‘on the whole’ as a nation, we have become to quick to ‘accept’ anything other than blatant failure. Of course, our acceptance eliminates all chances of excellence…I lost my father when I was but nine,but he left a lesson that has stayed for over 70 years. “Even if you’ve done well, ask yourself if there was more you could do. Remember ‘anyone’ can be average.”…In a literary class I read that “average is an insidious monster inflicted on society by ignorance” It was from a 15th centuary Italian poet whose name I never could pronounce or remember, yet it stuck with me. Excellence does not come to you…you must go to excellence.

    I pray that in 2014 & 2016 that our vetting will reach this this level We may not reach perfect, but we won’t know if we don’t try. We must not ‘stay home’ because ‘our’ candidate isn’t on a ballot’
    If we want ‘qualified’ people, we have to ‘seek & find’…fyi Timmy’s father worked with Barry’s mother

    And, honestly, I think Barry is doing a great job of destroying our Grand Nation by following Valerie Jarrett’s instruction to the letter 1 YIKES!!

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