Not to be depressing, but if recent media headlines come to represent the general sentiment of the United States, we're headed for a disaster.  As I've commented on the show recently, reading Barack Obama's budget proposal for 2012 makes you feel as though you've been with Alice to Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter.

In the midst of the most serious deficit and debt concerns in our nation's history, the man in the Oval Office calls for more of both.  Literally.  His budget is a $3.7 trillion spending spree that will run a deficit of over $1 trillion.  In ONE YEAR.

The President's "budget cuts" that he frames as "tough choices" amount to spittle in the ocean.  The scalpel he is taking to the budget, as he proudly touts, is chipping off the bark of a 200 foot radius Cedar tree.

Obviously that is unacceptable.  Obviously that is madness.  Want to see something worse?

In Obama's home state of Illinois, the Herald's sub-headline intoned, "Obama's big budget has some big cuts within it."

 

While the Herald at least admitted that its former state senator's proposed budget is "big," the Star-Telegram made the fatuous assertion that "Obama plan aims to rein in deficits" with only $90 billion in cuts to federal spending.

 

The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Daily Herald, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the DC Express, couched the administration's massive budget as a fiscally responsible plan that makes "deep" and "big" cuts to "rein in deficits.".

 

"Obama budget makes deep cuts, cautious trades," trumpeted the Post's A-1 headline, even though the federal government is expected to run a $1.1 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2012.

 

The Globe echoed the Post with an above-the-fold headline that could have been ripped out of a White House press release: "Deep cuts, chance of gains for state in Obama budget."

Let's put this bluntly: if Americans come to feel as though the meaningless cuts Obama has proposed are "deep" or "big," we have no hope of righting our ship.  If these proposed cuts are all we're willing to stomach, we are headed for a calamity far worse than the Great Depression.

We need a leader in the White House now more than ever.