One of the most powerful cultural metaphors we possess is the image of the frog in the kettle. But there is one problem with the metaphor. We know when the frog entered the kettle, he was still alive. We also know that when the water rose to a boil the frog was dead. The problem is this: the moment of death is difficult to determine. Unless a competent coroner - and boy are they expensive - continuously examines the frog, the moment of death remains a mystery. The further problem is that this fact of uncertainty gives false hope that the frog will somehow find it in his strength to jump out.

Many Americans are standing squarely on this false hope today. As disappointed as they may be in "hope and change," as foolishly committed as they are to standing by watching the most extraordinary country in human history be "fundamentally transformed," many Americans still believe the Obama administration is "not all that bad."

They may not want to "change horses in mid-stream" or they may not be thrilled with Mitt Romney, so maybe they will just sit this one out. The problem is that America will continue its death march under a second Obama administration, one that will continue to undermine our freedoms and remove our leadership position in the world. Lech Walesa's cry, "Where is American leadership?," will go unanswered.

Remember, Barack Obama told us what he would do and now he has set about doing it. The result is an increasingly unrecognizable country and a federal takeover of more and more of our daily lives. (Did you see that under Obamacare you will now be required to submit a yearly health status form to the federal government?)

What many do not realize is that it is going to get a lot worse under an Obama second term, for several reasons. First, many of the more painful changes of Obamacare were timed to start after the president is re-elected, if that happens. Funny how that works. Did you notice that the more benign aspects of it like pre-existing conditions and children up to age 26 being covered under their parents' plan kicked in first? Why did President Obama inadvertently disclose his "greater flexibility after the election" to President Medvedev? Because he will not have to face the electorate ever again. This should shake every American to the core. The beginnings of change will yield to the heavy hand of implementation. Reversing this decline will be nearly impossible.

Please remember. We have before us the least vetted president in American history. The media has never exposed him for who he really is. Today in the Benghazi killings, we have one of the worst presidential scandals since Watergate. And we leave it to Jay Leno to talk about it? An accountable presidency has been replaced by personality cult, driven home by messages equating fornication with voting for him. But there is more. Once President Obama is re-elected or defeated, all the things we never knew about him are going to come out. If I mentioned them, you would think they were lies; so conditioned we have become by the mainstream media to look away from the man behind the curtain. Many of those people who voted for him will wring their hands and say "If I had only known!" But you see, that is the way the president's handlers have set things up. You will not know until it doesn't matter anymore. By the time you want to free the frog, he is already dead.

What we don't realize is that we can only know the frog is dead after the fact. The truth is our country had a fighting chance in 2008. By 2016, much that was alive will be irreversibly dead. The only way we can reverse it is to reach in and remove the frog now before it is too late. Don't call me a year or two from now and say you didn't know. Things are about to get a lot worse, unless you act to stop it. What you do with that knowledge is up to you. But don't call me down the road and tell me you didn't know.

Jay Haug is author of Beyond the Flaming Sword available from Amazon.com. You may contact him at cjcwguy@gmail.com