Okay, I admit it: I didn’t watch the state of the union address. I haven’t seen one in years. I can’t stand to watch presidents stand up there and announce all the good things Washington will do for us in the next year by spending more of our tax dollars. If a president ever walks to the podium and says, “I’ve reviewed the Constitution and the writings of The Founders and I’ve concluded that the best thing I can do for America is to repeal 90 percent of our laws, cut the federal government in half, then get the hell out of the way,” I’ll start watching again.
But I did check the news stories. Here are some quotes in italics, with my comments.
President Obama called on Congress Wednesday to pass a new jobs-creation bill, saying the economy will be his “number one” priority in 2010.
Lovely. Congress can’t create jobs. It can only transfer them from one sector of the economy to another, or from one generation to another. Every job “created” by government is a job that wasn’t actually needed — or it would’ve already existed — that comes at the expense of a job that will no longer exist, since the employer who would have created it no longer has the money to pay for it.
After having campaigned for the White House by promising to expand government help for struggling segments of the population, Obama reversed course Wednesday night. He called for a total freeze for three years, beginning in 2011, on all government spending other than national security and public insurance programs that are mandated by law - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Okay, I get it … we’re going to freeze government spending while creating all those new jobs. That’ll be a neat trick.
Obama was calling for Americans to wage a battle on “a deficit of trust” in U.S. society that has crippled the government’s ability to address its deficit of dollars.
Let’s review: The Federal Reserve produces a crash by monkeying with the money supply and interest rates, Congress voids contracts with investors so the unions can take over G.M., then spends nearly a trillion in bailouts for big banks and big insurance companies, then spends another trillion in “stimulus” money that just happens to go largely to groups that support the Democrats in elections. Add it all up and the answer is: the real problem is a lack of trust. I’d say lack of trust is the sign of a functioning brain.
The president defended his performance against opinion surveys showing popular dismay with the country’s economic picture. He stood by his economic stimulus plan, which he said had made progress without raising taxes.
Well, that’s sort of true. He spent an extra trillion dollars and didn’t raise taxes. That means my kids will pay the taxes, and so will their kids.
But he acknowledged that progress had been slow and said it would require the collective will of the American people to bring about true change. “We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit” he said. “In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency, that embodies their strength.”
Actually, Mr. President, I wish you would quit. Americans are perfectly capable of reviving the economy and bringing about true change, but we don’t need government to do it. America’s had plenty of deep recessions in the past. Most of them lasted a few years or less. But the really big one, the one that lasted more than a decade and ended up with the name The Great Depression, was the one government tried to fix. The first year of the recession of 1920-1921 was worse than the first year of The Great Depression. All the federal government did was cut taxes and reduce spending. It was all over in 18 months.
Decrying outsize corporate influence on elections, Obama called on Congress to pass legislation to blunt the Supreme Court’s ruling last week allowing corporations to spend directly on campaigns, saying, “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities.”
Pretty interesting idea coming from a guy who received a gazillion dollars in Internet credit-card contributions from overseas, and whose party took illegal contributions from the Chinese. And by the way, the problem isn’t too much money in politics; it’s too much power in politics. Take away the power, and the money will go away too. No corporation offers a bribe to a politician who can’t jigger the rules in the corporation’s favor.
Defending his approach to the economic crisis, Obama on Wednesday said his administration acted “immediately and aggressively” to stave off a “second depression,” but said the “devastation” remains.
FDR acted immediately and aggressively too. That’s why the Great Depression lasted another 10 years.
“One year later, the worst of the storm has passed. But the devastation remains. One in 10 Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined,” Obama said.
Let me see if I understand here: the wild inflation in home prices was a good thing? People spending 50 percent of their incomes on mortgage payments was a good thing? The decline in home prices isn’t “devastation”; it’s a return to reality. That’s good news for people planning to buy a home.
Obama also proposed a major increase in federal spending on education, by as much as $4 billion, in an effort to revamp the No Child Left Behind law enacted under President George W. Bush.
Ah yes, because that’s the real problem in education: not enough federal spending. We spend more per student than any country in the world, but it’s clearly not doing the job. Perhaps we should just offer schoolkids a $10,000 reward for each A on the report card. It would probably be cheaper. And didn’t I just read something about a freeze in federal spending a few paragraphs ago?
And he called on Congress to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting gays from serving openly in the military. “It’s the right thing to do,” Obama said.
Okay, I agree with him for once. If you can do the job — cop, firefighter, pilot, surgeon, soldier, sailor, whatever — I don’t really care about your gender or gender preference. Besides, anyone willing to tell a bunch of fellow marines he’s gay is probably one tough son of a bitch.
Entries (RSS)
Obama and the other yahoos in government remind me of a saying about the head of a company I used to deal with. Others in the same business would say..” You can tell he’s lying, his lips are moving”
I am getting disgusted by the lies being told, the information that is NOT given, and the spin on EVERYTHING they say.
So you can imagine my reaction when the guy I was debating online about global warming proclaimed government documents to be near the top of the credibility list.
I didn’t watch it either Tom. I can’t handle being lied to and I knew all I’d hear anyway was “blah, blah, blah - whua, whua, whua, whuaaa.” *Charlie Brown adult speak* When my baloney meter goes off my mind just tunes it all out.
As for education in this country. I believe we have some fine teachers trying to do a good job. But I think the authority they need to do that job properly has been stripped from them. I home school my kids because I want them to no only get a great education, but to learn respect and discipline - something too many schools seem no longer be able to teach. It’s rather sad.
My mom was a teacher, and my sister still is. I respect the profession. But the teaching is now being controlled from Washington, and the mediocre and incompetent teachers are protected by the union. Neither is helping.
Yes, well, we watched part of it; after Obama said they were going to start doing all the things the Clinton administration did (??) to make sure the economy got healthy - oh, in 2011, don’t you know; we certainly don’t want to stop spending all the money the Chinese keep lending us NOW - I went and took a shower.
When I came out, my husband said, “Hey - I know how to watch the State of the Union address now - switch back forth between it and Larry the Cable Guy. That way, what the President says almost makes sense, and Larry almost seems funny.”
I like your husband’s idea. Clinton had about as much to do with the healthy economy as he had to do with the success of the Atlanta Braves during his terms.
The biggest problem in education, as I see it, is that people who are NOT educators are the ones making all the decisions. Politicians have no clue. They “consult” with teachers or college professors or “educational experts” up in their ivory towers, but they ignore the solid, real advice. I’m constantly amazed at how governments at the various levels create ridiculous things for me to do instead of letting me teach my students and help them learn.
I would really like to homeschool my future kids for that very reason. My students can choose the “best” answer when given four choices, and spend most of their time figuring out how to avoid doing any work. I want my children to know how to think. I try to help my students with that, but time and curriculum restraints tie my hands somewhat.
I never watch the State of the Union. Politicians give me heartburn.
The farther the decision-makers are from the source, the worse the decisions tend to be. Having Washington set rules for a school in Alabama or Maine is just nuts.
Jobs-creation bill???!!! It’s all about giving jobs, at our expense to interest groups, that are predisposed to supporting the democrats in the first place. This sort of thing drives me nuts.
Dan
Yup. Nothing like creating a whole class of loyal voters.
Here here!
People continuously fail to learn from history. What made Roosevelt’s “recession” severe in the first place was his extensive bag of “reform” programs that froze business investments as business people sorted out what all the new laws meant to them. At about the time they figured out the “New Deal” rules, and the economy started to show improvement, he switched gears from involving corporate America in the recovery process and ushered in the “2nd New Deal” and switched gears to corporate bashing anti-trust polices. By changing the rules of the game (again) he turned a recession into a Great Depression.
Does any of this sound familiar? I am a business person and work everyday with hundreds of independent business people. I can tell you that we are ALL waiting to see what is going to happen. We have survived the last two years and many of us are poised for growth, but we aren’t spending our nickles until we see what all these new rules mean.
Now we have more new rules? But we have to wait another year to see what they are? My only hope is that his honeymoon is over and people really are hearing from him what they are so used to hearing in these back slapping addresses, as Amy so elegantly stated, “blah, blah, blah - whua, whua, whua, whuaaa.”
Governments can’t create jobs. They can and often do destroy them. The best they can do is get the hell out of our way and let us create jobs. Why is that so hard to understand?
Someday when people want real change maybe the media will at least be forced to give Bob Barr enough air time so people might see what real change might look like. And “I” wasted my vote by not voting for Obama or McCain?
That’s exactly it. Businesses were frozen into inaction, unsure what FDR would do next. People think WWII pulled us out of the Depression, and it did in a sense, but largely because FDR recognized the need for industries to do what they do best — produce the products — and finally got the hell out of the way.