Promises, promises, promises. Platitudes, platitudes, platitudes. Cliche after cliche after cliche. Who could possibly oppose an expanded middle class? Who could possibly oppose bringing our troops home from Afghanistan? Who could possibly oppose ending the carnage that occurred in Aurora, Newtown or now, Los Angeles and San Bernardino County? Who would possibly not want bipartisanship in the House and in the Senate? The problem is that bipartisanship to Barack Obama is a demand that republicans abandon their principles and vote with him. The only other problem is that the proposals this man offers will not do a thing to help the economy or the American citizen. Instead, his policies hurt the people they are designed to protect. Worse, I believe he knows it.
How could he or anyone make a statement that the state of the nation is strong? 23 million unemployed and a debt approaching $17 trillion is not an indication of strength. It is as though Obama believes by stating something as true it becomes true. Lies do not equal truths except in Obama's world.
I believe it is Obama's intent to drive this country's economy into the ground and then offer himself to the nation as the man who will guarantee enough for all we remaining poor people to subside. Enough to feed us. Enough to keep us in our homes. Enough to allow us to exist together in a common misery. Obama would not be the first. He is following the strategy of Hitler, of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and others. He is destroying the economy and he is doing this purposely. He intends to disarm the public. He intends to pave the way for the successful in this country to have as little as those who have not worked, have not been educated and have not applied their God given talents to build a better life. How better could he build the dependent class he needs to succeed in his own ambitions? Obama is not alone in this. No the political "ruling" class would replace the political representative and Obama, his supporters and his adoring entourage of close advisers will then dominate the entire country and to the victors go the spoils.
I don't really know what is worse, the malevolent design I am convinced is the Obama strategy or the fact that the Congress stood and applauded this speech. He presented anecdotal evidence of problems that I do not deny. Who could possibly not grieve with the mother and father of the poor little girl who was gunned down in a Chicago park one mile from Obama's home. A better response from the crowd would have been to tell Obama to clean up his own neighborhood but no, the applauding lemmings instead see the guns those gang members used to shoot that girl as the problem. It is of little matter that Chicago already has strict gun laws and those in possession of the firearms were in obvious violation of those laws. Let's create more laws, make them national and take all means of self defense from law abiding citizens so that only the outlaw gangs will have guns and we will be left with no form of real self defense. There are those whom I fear more than burglars, gang bangers and single minded murderers. I fear a government led by Barack Obama and you should too.
I have never before supported the opposition party offering a rebuttal to the President's State of the Union message. I have always felt that this is contrary to the spirit of unity we should present. We do only have one president at a time. I am however reevaluating this position as Marco Rubio provided a breath of sanity to the evening and let's face it, I believe Barack Obama is a traitor and there is no way I would or could ever unite behind him.
Those who voted for him will get what they deserve. Those of us who did not vote for him in no way deserve what we are going to get.
I don’t know who wrote this, but it mirrors my sentiments.
Well, it's official; I don't know anything…
I thought for sure that given such a clear choice, Americans would vote for love of country over revenge.
I was wrong.
I thought, that just as every presidential election in my lifetime, the bad economy would be hung around the incumbent's neck, sinking him.
I was wrong.
I thought that even those few Americans who were fortunate enough to still be fully employed (not counting those leeching off the public system) would be cognizant of how much pain their neighbors were in and elect someone who would at least try to make improvements.
I was wrong.
I thought that now that FINALLY some of the disturbing truths about our first black president had come to light, voters would reject a man so dangerously at odds with the American experience.
I was wrong.
I thought the 2010 elections and the Tea Party meant something. I thought the enthusiasm on display at Romney/Ryan events, contrasted with the lack of same at Obama/Biden events meant something. I thought Americans would never sell their liberty for the sake of trinkets like cell phones or even big shiny lies like 'free health care'.
I was wrong.
Never in a million years would I have supposed that America would support a president who left his (our) people to die at the hands of our enemies overseas without lifting a hand to help, then lie about what he watched in real time for over two weeks, then lie about the lie for another month.
I was wrong.
I thought Americans could tell a hawk from a handsaw.
I was wrong.
We were offered the clearest choice we've had since 1980, where we had malaise and a misery index on one hand and a shining city on a hill on the other. Back then, we chose the city on the hill. This time the choice was between a man who says 7.9% unemployment and $4.00 gas is the new normal and a guy whose entire career has been about fixing broken entities. We chose to stay broken and broke.
Maybe I'm wrong about the ramifications of this choice. Maybe windmills will actually turn out to be a viable energy source. Maybe America diminished will be loved overseas. Maybe a nuclear Iran won't be a threat. Maybe Israel is over reacting. Maybe western civilization was always over rated. Maybe life under sharia is not bad at all. Maybe when the rest of the world realizes that we have no intention of ever paying back that $16,000,000,000,000.00 (and counting) that we've borrowed from them, they won't devalue the dollar, causing hyper inflation here at home. Maybe China will just keep on giving us money and not demand our hearts, souls, national monuments and marriageable daughters as payment.
I've watched my candidate lose elections before but I've never felt the way I did when this one was called for Obama. It wasn't bitterness or sadness or even disappointment. It took me a while to figure out what it was. Then it hit me; it was horror, pure, unadulterated horror. Not because of Obama, but because of what it says about us, the American people, that we chose this.
It shouldn't have even been close. Faced with the choice between taking charge of our destiny and tackling our financial problems, we opted to get high and have sex. We re-elected a guy who doesn't understand that a growing economy that creates more tax payers will bring in more revenue than higher taxes. A Commander in Chief who doesn't know our military still uses bayonets and cannot pronounce Navy Corpsman. A man who wants to control the economy without even knowing the difference between bankruptcy and liquidation. It was one thing to elect an unknown quantity, buying his line of 'Hope and Change'. It's something else to deliberately choose his failed policies over someone who has actually achieved success in life. I never dreamed America would do that.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, hello idiocracy!
Goodbye, recovery.
Goodbye, energy independence.
Goodbye, religious liberty.
Goodbye, liberty and justice for all.
Goodbye, 2nd amendment rights
Goodbye, American dream.
It profits a man nothing to lose his soul for the whole world but we threw ours away for cell phones and birth control pills. In the twentieth century (the American Century), we stepped up to the plate three times and saved the rest of the world from fascism, Nazism and communism. We were the cavalry, always riding to the rescue. now, we've gotten rid of our horses, spent all our money on windmills, alienated our allies, bowed to our enemies, cut ourselves off from our own natural resources, thrown away our children's birthright and spent their inheritance. And we did it all on purpose.
When the wolf is at the door (and he's coming, yelling 'Allah Akbar') we're going to find out that there is no one out there to come to our rescue.
On the bright side, maybe it'll all turn out great. After all, I don't know anything.
Isn't it amazing how Hollywood considers itself "brave" for playing "pretend" games? I used to play "pretend" as a young child but I never considered myself "brave" for doing so.
So what is it to be brave?
How is this brave? I would consider bravery as placing yourself at risk as is done daily by our military, our police and fireman. I consider bravery in Hollywood to be limited to the small percentage of actors and others who go public with comments that place their careers at risk by disclosing opinions unpopular with your colleagues on the issues of the day.
Those in Hollywood like Julianne Moore are cowards. What risk did she incur by making a movie that people will see only in her physical absence or by accepting the obligatory pat on the back from her peers at an awards ceremony that only like minded peers will attend.
The lessons we often find that will benefit us the most we should have learned in Kindergarten.
Fifty years ago we began chasing God and prayers from our schools and what followed has been a steady diet of tolerance for all things our Christian faith has taught us to be immoral. For almost forty years we have through judicial fiat allowed the wanton slaughter of babies in the womb. It was justified as a "choice" and this "choice" has through the killing of more than 40 million babies culminated in a trivialization of life itself. We have over the last several years defined one deviant class after another as deserving of special legal protections or civil rights beginning with homosexuals and then progressing to bisexuals, transsexuals and as I now understand, pedophiles. We live now in a society where all decent things like God, motherhood and honor are regarded as old fashioned and out of touch. We decry real violence but allow companies to market violent video games to our children. These same children are learning to communicate and socialize with others through text messages rather than face to face conversation and real personal relationships where they must work out their differences as we did in our youths. We allow gangs to roam freely selling drugs in our communities yet only talk about the evil they distribute. We allow our government to distribute funds from our treasury to purchase the votes of constituents in an effort to make those constituents dependent on our government, this as a means for politicians to gain votes and retain power. We celebrate poor role models whether they be sports stars, movie stars, rock stars, or vulgar comedians while we turn our backs on the Boy Scouts and all positive examples available to us. We allow mobs to burn our flag and call that free speech regardless of the disrespect to our heritage. We allow judges to make decisions our Constitution leaves to the people. We accept things on our television that our grandparents would never have allowed. All of this is in the name of freedom while with each new step we deny people the freedom to worship their God on public property; we deny people the freedom to associate with whom we want; we deny people the ability to bury their sons and daughters who were sacrificed in war without the presence of protestors; we deny people the right to enjoy the Christmas holidays without legal protests from atheists; we deny our society the ability to legally commit persons known to be mentally ill. We decry the evils of drugs and pornography and its impact on our youth but allow it to be legally available and pass laws to legalize these things saying it is too difficult to control and too difficult to define.
In the face of all of this is it any wonder that we build a tolerance for evil? If so then why should we be surprised when evil shows its face whether in an Amish community in Pennsylvania, the Columbine High School in Colorado or the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut? And when evil shows its presence what does it matter whether it carries a gun, a ton of fertilizer or box cutters on an airplane? Are we to outlaw planes, trains and automobiles, knives and fertilizer? Guns are not the problem. The problem is what our culture has learned to tolerate despite its evil characteristics.
No, I will not endorse any efforts to control guns and I would encourage others to resist the temptation to control guns as this flies in the face of our rights as Americans and this will do nothing to eliminate the evils faced in our society. The confiscation of guns preceded Hitler's rise to power. Stalin, Mao and every despot criminal regime the world has ever seen began by confiscating weapons and eliminating their enemies. It is the 2nd Amendment that protects all the rest. Sacrifice that and be prepared to sacrifice your freedom, your liberty and everything else. If you don't believe this could happen here, look at who is in the White House and see what he has already accomplished in only four years.
I am constantly mystified and disappointed in the lack of interest many display in their country's affairs. Those who take no interest in politics will someday learn that politics or more specifically, politicians will take an interest in them.
For example, does everyone understand there is no real fiscal cliff?
It is a metaphor. The cliff represents certain disaster because of our politicians' management of our finances. Please, if you understand nothing else, understand this. The cliff is not real but disaster is most certain. I contend that we already are over the cliff and in a freefall.
At best, both the Congress and the president are irresponsible. The largest problem is that we have lived too long with cries of "Wolf" over continuing deficits without doing a thing about it. It was during the early 1960's that my own Social Studies teacher told our class to not worry about deficits. They were of no matter. Yes, deficits long ago became the norm. These deficits are caused by spending, not because our citizens are not being taxed enough. I say this factually because federal revenues continue to grow year after year at levels well above those necessary to fund the Constitutional obligations of the federal government. The problem is all the entitlement programs that have been created in the many years beginning with the New Deal. What began as safety nets that are understandably "feel good" programs have been extended by both legislation and agency regulation into monstrous programs incapable of being managed from Washington D.C. I won't even deal with their constitutionality at the federal level in this tome.
It has been demonstrated three times by three different presidents that it is when you cut taxes that you encourage growth and this growth consistently increases revenues to the US Treasury. Cutting taxes leaves cash in the economy where it can be invested and allow the economy to grow. Yet taxes will increase on January 1 either for all citizens or for only the wealthy.
When you increase taxes you get less activity. This isn't only because people flee from those activities that would generate the taxes but more importantly the government is taking from profit and less cash is then available for investment and for borrowing. When businesses are able they will pass those taxes on to their consumers but this is not always possible. They may be affected by foreign competition that is immune to the tax. When the tax can be passed on, it will be and it is then when the poor and the middle class see the impact of the tax on "the rich." Sadly these are hidden taxes and the government escapes blame for the increased prices of goods and services people demand. When businesses can't pass on the tax penalties, they can't sustain their current structures; people lose their jobs; no jobs are created; and it is here where the poor and middle classes are impacted most. There is no one to hire them.
Then there is the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. They have already announced another round of quantitative easing. Simply put, by an accounting entry on the books at the Federal Reserve, more money is created and released into the economy. By doing so there is more money in circulation chasing the same amount of goods. An increase in the money supply without a corresponding increase in productivity is the recipe for inflation. The dollars in our pockets and in our savings and investment accounts are now worth less. They buy less and what was once a sufficient income to manage a household is suddenly inadequate but where will the family get more money? In an economy with more than 10% real unemployment there will be no raises and there are few places to go for second jobs. So what will families do? They will cut back and buy less. They will cut car washes, dinners out, movies, books, vacations, and maybe cable TV from their budgets and this will do what? It will reduce the demand for labor in those companies affected by those cutbacks. Now, instead of trying to live on 80 or 90% of what they had in better economic times, some will need to live on savings and what government will provide.
This is the cliff that is described by the metaphor, fiscal cliff. We have a government talking about taking food from the economy when the economy needs to be fed. We have government doing the opposite of what families faced with the same situation understand they must do to survive. Instead of cutting their budget, they increase it. We have a government in the face of a staggering debt printing more money. The result can only be more unemployment, more dependency on government when collectively we are less able to afford it and we will surely see super-inflation that could be as bad as experienced during the Carter administration.
Obama's logic is no different than was Carter's. It was Carter's response that Americans must prepare for a future less secure than their parents enjoyed. In the face of high unemployment, high interest rates and high inflation, what did Carter do? He created the Department of Energy to enact regulations to make us less dependent upon foreign oil. Have they done that? No. It took Ronald Reagan to change Carter's downward spiral. In 2012 we had a man on the ballot that understands all of this and who might have made a difference. Instead we reelected Barack Obama.
As I see it we are already beyond the edge of the cliff and in a certain freefall. In this environment the House must say, "No more!" No more Continuing Resolutions that substitute for the Senate's refusal to act on their constitutional obligation to enact a budget. No more increases to the debt limit without an enacted budget that also includes a plan to amortize and reduce the debt. No more new programs. We simply cannot afford to do anything we didn't do in 2000. No compromises. We have compromised to the point that brought us to this cliff. This means no funding for Obamacare. Above all we must not take food from the economy. No increase in effective tax rates meaning no increase in the rates themselves and no reduction in the legal deductions available to all people and all businesses. No new taxes.
This is leverage the House possesses. They can put a stop to all of this on their very own because it is they that constitutionally control the purse. Who is blamed, be damned.