15 and counting.

15 and counting. No, no the age of one of my teens. And no, not the amount of beers consumed in one night. Though my boss did once proclaim, "God bless the 30 can case," claiming that downing 15 beers, thus half the load, was easily a goal for one night of drinking. Nor is the Group of 15, The Summit Level Group of Developing Countries, still growing. 15 is the number given to us by PolitiFact.com, whose conservative standard peg that as the number of broken promises by none other than our very own man of impeccable integrity, President Barack Obama.

Used to be, all you had to do was look no further than the name Clinton to find a democrat who made a career out of telling the lemmings, excuse me, voters all they needed to hear to win their favor. The Clinton Handbook for conning voters relies on one basic principle: say whatever, do whatever it takes during an election year, and the country will give you a free pass once you are in office. The problem with the last election was, in effect, that Obama played the handbook better than the Clinton's did.

Let's recount a few, shall we? Why not. Let's start with televising health-care negotiations on C-SPAN. I guess the network programmers had other ideas. He rebuffed by saying coverage would have been hard to arrange because the negotiations occurred in several locations. Ahem. So C-Span only has one camera? And if it was so hard to arrange, then it is obvious that he didn't do any homework before he made his promise. And therein lies the rub. On the campaign trail, (for which he really never left) one doesn't have time to pee, let alone research a bogus promise.

Fiscal responsibility was another. As in spending less, but getting more. A spending freeze he touts only affects 12.5% of the budget, doesn't take effect 'til 2011, and is offset by funding for his pet projects. The budget forecast for 2011 is already $3.8 trillion, compared with 2010's $3.6 trillion. If you mean to reduce spending, you don't actually raise it. Legislation signed by the Prez increased domestic discretionary spending 84%. But what about promises to reduce the interests of lobbyists? Or to refrain from raising taxes on households making less than $250,000? Cutting earmarks to 1994 levels? Reigning in executive power and the "state secrets" privilege? Closing Gitmo by last month? Ending raids on medical marijuana distributors? Public review of bills before being signed? Recognizing Armenian genocide? All promises made and broken in that order. Made to get you vote, broken to confirm reality. People need to stop drinking the grape Kool-Aid during the election year, take the blinders off, and use some common sense. Vote for results, not promises. But being a freshman senator and all, that's all he had were promises. Maybe he should have stayed in that job a little longer to actually produce some results.

So the math conscience out there have added that up and it doesn't come to 15. If I spent more time listing and discussing them all you would have stopped reading 2 paragraphs ago. It just re-emphasises my point the Obama is just another in a long line of career politicians with big ideas on how to win an election, not on how to run an office. Or in this case a Country. The Clinton Handbook is dead. Long live the Obama Handbook.