The decision to close 18 Virginia interstate rest areas will mean more sleepy truck and automobile drivers careening down our highways. Since the only thing keeping many of these unfortunates awake will be a painfully full bladder, the rest of us may have to choose between being run over on the highway or trampled at the door to the restroom.
In a very short time, our highways may exhibit the same thought processes and lack of concern for innocent bystanders that already characterize the sleep–deprived zombies stumbling the halls of the Obama White House.
According to the Post, “In a city where work can border on obsession, the Obama staffers stand out. They are not quite the walking dead, but their eyes are frequently ringed with the bags that accompany exhaustion.”
This type of hey–watch–me–suffer story is common at the beginning of a new administration as the latest shipment of Democrat junior messiahs occupy the White House.
Obama cultists make a fetish of baggy eyes, lack of sleep, no time for exercise because they’ve got to save the planet from the unworthy and the unwashed.
This sounds like you are really getting your tax dollar’s worth, until you realize that studies show sleep deprivation can have the same effects on mental and physical performance as being drunk.
At best, according to the National Sleep Foundation, people who work more than 60 hours a week make almost 10 percent more mistakes on the job than people who work less. All these examples are bad enough when Roscoe is driving a forklift, but potentially disastrous when Chloe’s thoughts are driving U.S. foreign policy.
There is always a sense of urgency surrounding the lack–of–sleep devotees who are running the country. As the Post reporter wrote, “the Obama team has had a particularly frenetic start, the result of inheriting the worse (sic) economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
I will give the WH staff credit for not denying the obvious. When you stop the average redneck drunk at a DUI checkpoint and ask if they’ve been drinking the reply is always, “two beers.” And a liberal will only admit to “a glass of Pinot Noir at dinner,” but somehow both always manage to blow over .08 on the Alco–sensor.
In the White House they are described as having “a palpable sense of pride…that treaties are negotiated, complex legislation is crafted and banks are bailed out — all on very little sleep.” Of course any drunk worth his cirrhosis claims to be able to hold his liquor and drive.
Frankly, I could care less if these sufferers from indispensability syndrome shorten their lives through lack of sleep; but their mistakes have real consequences that live on after them.
The Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez oil spill were the result of lack of sleep and worker exhaustion. And those are just sudden catastrophes; leaving out slow–motion disasters like cap–and–trade; the Iran mullah vote of confidence and Government Motors.
They even drag out Gene Sperling, a Clintonista now working for Treasury Secretary Geithner, for a quote on working conditions. Sperling will always be famous in my mind for boasting to the National Association of Manufacturers that during Clinton One he was so busy his mother had to rent him a place to stay, otherwise he'd be sleeping on a grate outside the West Wing.
Another case of someone in his condition who wouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery, cheerfully grasping the levers of power.
Right now the only thing keeping the country out of the ditch are a few lonely conservatives in the Senate acting as human rumble–strips, creating enough noise and vibration to temporarily wake the administration when the country veers too near the precipice.
Meanwhile, I have a suggestion for the next administration: instead of filling the White House with sleep–deprived acolytes that function like drunks; let’s try actual drunks. There will be no drop off in decision–making quality and a real drunk isn’t so self–righteous.
Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic, entertaining and funny keynote speaker for corporate, non–profit and governmental organizations.
