Just Biden time

Doubtless you believe yourself to have just returned from summer break. You have answered the questions posed time after time: “How was your summer? What did you do?” You are currently saddened by your lack of free time, the amount of homework you now have and, in all probability, the return of this column. However, you need complain no longer because, if we are to trust our government officials, the summer is yet to come.

It is a well-known fact that Vice President Joe Biden does not lie. Therefore, in light of his announcement that this summer would be one characterized by a sense of recovery and revitalization, I am forced to conclude that I have dreamt up the last few months. Recovery is usually characterized by change from a worse state to a better one; by any interpretation it implies a change of some kind.

This has certainly not been the case over the last few months. Obama-care has not become popular. The housing market continues to stagnate while consumer confidence remains low and the stock market staggers along. The Louisiana economy remains at its post-Katarina slump and the American debt problem persists. American international affairs seem equally unrecovered.

Despite great hopes and many handshakes, America’s abandonment of Israel has failed to produce peace in the Middle East. Terrorism has not been cured; instead, it seems to have been one of the discoveries of the Discovery channel.

It is possible that I misunderstood Vice President Biden. The comments above were made with the assumption that he was speaking about America in general rather than the inhabitants of the White House. By all accounts the President and his First Lady were both revived and refreshed over the summer. They each recovered from the year’s toils in style. After all, the summer is supposed to be a time for vacation and the rest of the government happily followed its leader’s example, allowing the vacation months to make history only in their unprecedented inactivity.

However, time did not stop entirely this summer. The German government decided it wanted recovery without regard to season. It instituted the cold policy of denying stimulus packages to its failing economy with the strange result that the economy actually began to recover.  In Iraq the surge that could never work seems to have been strangely successful. The BP oil crisis was finally stopped without assistance from the government.

Thus, although summer has not made an appearance, the holidays certainly have. While the tourist trade suffers in America, all the benefits and promises for the United States seem to have flown overseas and forgotten to buy a return ticket. Summer has not been eradicated, but merely postponed. The summer of recovery has been postponed to November. Summer is Biden its time.