"Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"
Last night, President Barack H. Obama delivered his second “State of the Union” address. He strode into the House Chamber to greet the combined Congress, Supreme Court justices, Joint Chiefs of the Military, and other luminaries with his usual poise and nonchalance. Once the introductions were over, and he stood at the podium flanked by the next two in line for the Presidency, he got down to the tricky business of trying to convince us that he does not deserve immediate impeachment and conviction for Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Regardless of my judgement of his policies and his political record, I must acknowledge his ability to come off with confidence, compassion, and candor. This is part of what makes him so dangerous to the Free World. This charisma, which he has in spades, has been enough to sway a lot of very smart people – who should know better – to get behind him.
I pride myself on my ability to admire Obama’s eloquence while simultaneously engaging my logical circuits and training them on his long train of misleading and contradictory rhetoric. As a Libertarian, I think I am in a strong position to call bullshit on his lies. I have been practicing for decades – on Democrats … on Republicans. Obama and the “Blue” Team lie about how government helps us by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and by creating jobs that do nothing but soak up more tax money. Bush and the “Red” Team lied about how they believed in smaller government and cutting spending. So transparent.
I got excited momentarily when the President suggested that we stop giving subsidies to oil companies, but then he had the gall to declare that we (a.k.a. Government) ought to support clean energy – with subsidies, no doubt! I think that’s called a shell game.
He acknowledged that we have a need to end our foreign (military) commitments, and he threw in some warm and fuzzy compliments. Well-timed plugs for the military allowed the ovation-addicted crowd to stand up a couple of more times. But then, Obama had the temerity to talk of his plans to continue his globe-hopping crusade to secure trade agreements and alliances.
The Constitution of the United States of America states nothing about the executive right to partake in these activities. The President has no such authority. To be fair, Obama is not the first president to illegitimately claim this power. Every predecessor for at least a century has done so.
The President confirmed his fuzzy logic when he made a strong recommendation that Congress cut corporate taxes, and that they do so without increasing the deficit. Possible, but extremely unlikely. Later, he stated that he could not stand by and allow the permanent tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans continue.
I guess he relies on the ability of his smile and smooth delivery to misdirect our attention and our memories. He enchants many with his demagoguery without their realizing it, and he was obviously successful enough to get elected. The question is, when will more people see that all he is really saying is: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
Other examples of his verbal prestidigitation? Well, he wants bipartisan moves to strengthen Social Security … without “slashing benefits” for retirees. He stated that we can’t just confine our spending cuts to domestic spending. We must make cuts across the board … including Medicare and Medicaid. Then, he follows up that Tea Party-esque point with a but-remember-I’m-the-great-black-hope offsetting remark of, “Let’s make sure our spending cuts aren’t on the backs of our most vulnerable.” Yes, Obama is a master of the bait and switch.
How about his boldly anti-Free Market statement that he is not willing to allow insurance companies to decline coverage to somebody due to a pre-existing condition? Yes, his statist-socialist agenda couldn’t stay bottled up all night. As somebody who has two pre-existing conditions myself, I condemn the President’s stance. Of course insurance companies have the right to refuse me service, and, to those of us who love freedom, this right is sacred.
Here and there, he joked. He smiled. He threw a bone to Small Businesses – so that they could see how magnanimous he is prepared to be … “to correct a bookkeeping error.” But then, in his patented ability to look right and throw left, he said something like, “Let’s not go back and argue about the shortcomings of the health care bill … let’s fix what needs to be fixed and move forward!”
My favorite part of his speech was when he said he would veto any (future) bill that contained any earmarks. I haven’t checked with the Las Vegas bookmakers yet, but I imagine that’s a 1000 to 1 long-shot. The other one was a point in which he rightly criticized the bureaucracy of our federal government in the way it has so many agencies working at cross-purposes. One agency, he remarked, regulates salmon when they’re in fresh water, and a different agency handles them when they get to saltwater. “I wonder which one handles them when they’re smoked!” Yes, I chuckled.
As the address drew to a close, President Obama received applause ranging from the polite to the zealous. He must have been successful in his primary objective, for nobody stepped forward to put him in handcuffs. In a rational society, he would never have been elected in the first place. I suppose it is wishful thinking on my part to imagine that the same electorate would suddenly wake up and drag the treasonous bastard to jail.
Oh well … I’ll try to get over it.
Pretty strong opinions, but I agree with some of them. Treason? Really?!
Hi Ray,
Thanks for visiting the site. Yes, my opinions are strong, and I do my best to support them. Treason – a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state; the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.
Really.
Outstanding response to BHO’s “The State of the Union”. You should have given the televised Libertarian response in place of those two Republican clowns; i.e. the crazy female tea-bagger from MN and the wimpy male pro-war statist from WI. Would you have ended your response to GWB’s “TSotU” addresses with; “… the same electorate would suddenly wake up and drag the treasonous bastard to jail.”?
Hi Tazio,
Thanks for your comments. Yep, I think I would have ended my post very similarly after a Bush State of the Union … only I probably would have changed a few adjectives. I would have called him an illiterate, war-mongering, statist, lying bastard. And, I reckon that he was guilty of treason as well.
When Kennedy called for the moon shot, it was like a call to arms because the Soviets were about to go there first. Had we not instituted one of the largest socialist machines (NASA) to get there, it is quite possible that our society would be quite different, given such a loss to communists. Was the moon shot a bad idea or was it a legitimate national security issue?
Given where China is with advancements in technology, we will likely face a similar national security issue soon. The race to clean and affordable energy is probably more important than any national security issue I can think of and equal to the need our society had to be on the moon first.
China is subsidizing their race just like the Soviets subsidized their space race. The difference is that this time, China is subsidizing their race with our debt!!! OUCH!!!
What say you, free market? No way, the free market doesn’t exist. Freedom is for corporations, or so the Supreme’s say. One doesn’t even have to be a cynic anymore to understand the verity that corporate lobbyists control the market through their politicians. Should this change? Sure, and we know most Americans agree, however, changing the Washington culture may take a generation. Point is, we don’t have the time now. In the meantime, either promote clean tech like we promoted the moon shot or enroll in a good basic Chinese class;-)
Hey PAR,
First of all, thanks for your readership and your thoughtful comments!
I think it’s more accurate to label NASA a large-scale, subsidized, fast-tracked, pet project of government. Given the insanity and the very real mystery of Cold War and Iron Curtain fears … and risks (literally thousands of H-bombs pointed at us), I think the USA’s entrant in the Space Race – NASA – was mildly justifiable.
Of course, a saner approach would have been the Libertarian approach (i.e. Founding Fathers approach) of getting our big, fat, imperial noses out of all the foreign pies that we cooked or helped to cook … illegitimate meddling that included the bastard creation of ISRAEL among 100 other idiotic and completely off-base objectives.
We should have unilaterally disarmed all nukes – as we ought to today, and installed 100 – 200 super bad-ass conventional, blow-the-Russkies-to-Kingdom-Come warheads. [Yes, conventional weapons can melt and obliterate just fine, thank you. See the Fire-bombing of Dresden.] This would have been a far more moral approach. It also would have eased the need to adopt a statist approach to space exploration. I say all this now, with lots of (nearly) 20-20 hindsight. But the fact is, I LOVE NASA! At least, what it was from 1960 – 1975. It should have been privatized by now though.
Clean tech is, of course, a direction we ought and must go in, but it is massively more amorphous and nebulous as to its extent than the extremely specific challenge JFK gave the nation. How would we know if and when we were successful? Ultimately, all that is irrelevant. The HIGH ROAD answer – the only MORAL answer – is to confine Government to its job: protecting property. Period. ALL other actions on Earth are private affairs of individual men and women. This will always be the truth, regardless of the number of smoke-filled board rooms full of fat cat “incahootists” and Trilateral Power Elite hubs of global market-fixers. If Uncle Sam stayed focus on his job, there would at least be a slight chance of catching these bastards at their games. Meanwhile, the Free Market will enable the transformation to Clean, Green Tech and Energy better than any President’s Cabinet or Board of Supervisors.
PROOF: look at the umpteen clusterfucks produced by Uncle Sam when he is NOT kept to his primary purpose: Education, Insurance, Transportation, Drug War, Housing (Fannie & Freddie), Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Federal Reserve, TARP, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
NASA is the model for the clean tech race and I do believe it is every bit as worthy as the NASA socialist experiment which, by the way, worked and Americans loved it. We will know we have won the clean tech race once we have advanced energy storage technology to the point that only a relatively small amount of solar panels will be needed to power the planet OR advanced hydrogen technology so that sea water can produce all the worlds energy. I can’t imagine those goals are any less achievable than placing a man on the moon. In fact, it sounds much easier to me!
I believe the reason NASA worked as compared to the agencies government is because it employed scientists to do science and paid them pretty well as scientists. Additionally, there was a goal in mind. If I were president, I’d take the still popular NASA and redirect its mission from space to earth, give them new goals that will benefit all humanity, and broaden freedom for the people of earth and the earth itself.
PS – Can you imagine if getting to the moon was left to the free market? Heck, the free market is still dreaming about putting folks in sub orbit…….and the price of a ticket….yikes! The free market does not do big things because the risk is always too great compared to the price.
There is nothing more effective than a common enemy when it comes to uniting people for a cause. Hitler was wonderfully evil, and he brought together many oppositional nations, as well as antagonistic parties within nations (like ours). The foe was real. We rose to the occasion.
When Sputnik was heard by earth-based radar, it terrified the crap out of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the President, and all the thousands of teachers who had been leading their kids in “Duck and cover” exercises. NASA was an army of slide-rule wielding scientists and engineers who were united in a real fight for our lives … or so they thought. Plus, scientists and engineers – especially ones who have the chance to show off in something so glorious as space exploration – tend to be more scrupulous than the average citizen. They worked for relative peanuts.
The Government will always be able to out-risk the private sector (and thus out-invest it with far more money) as long as they have a charismatic administration talking them into it … preferably for a “real” reason – the Security of the Nation.
In the name of national security, we need a moon shot for clean energy the private sector cannot risk.
3-2-1-Blast off!