“Measure Twice, Cut Once” has been the mantra of knowledgeable woodworkers since time immemorial. I’d be willing to wager that phrase was one of the first things that Joseph taught Jesus when he was a boy.

Obviously, our “smartest-guy-in-the-room” president was never tutored by a carpenter. I’d be willing to believe that he might be the only person in America who has never watched Norm Abrams making sawdust on PBS either.

Why do I say such things? Well, it might have something to do with the way Obama keeps cutting at the Affordable Care Act. Had he “measured twice” before he signed the law, he might have noticed the potential pitfalls that all his unconstitutional executive orders were intended to fix. Sadly, the original document, with its “typos” and “speak-o’s” was already flawed, and additional “fixes” have only made something that came up short in its original form has come up shorter and shorter as Obama has tried to fix it.

Thinking about it, though, it seems apparent that our phenomenal president has never had any sort of exposure to manual labor. If he had, he would have realized that the rule-of-thumb adage “measure twice, cut once” applies to everything that he and his cronies in Congress are trying to do and keep screwing up. Had he been exposed to the proper use of an idiot-stick (for those of you with similar linguistic deprivation, an idiot-stick is a stick with a shovel at one end and an idiot at the other), he might have learned another useful adage: “When the top of the hole you’re digging is above your head, stop digging. You’re just making it worse!”

Can you hear me down there, Barry?

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller, a two-tour Vietnam veteran and writes frequently about political idiocy, business and economic idiocy and American cultural idiocy. Jim also blogs at http://jimyardley.wordpress.com/, and can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com