President Obama gave his fourth State of the Union address on Tuesday and with only a few exceptions it was little more than a rewording of his prior annual addresses. Obama kicked off his address by quoting from a speech by the late former president John F. Kennedy given before Congress where Kennedy declared that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power, but partners for progress.”
It’s humorous when modern-day Liberals quote President Kennedy who by every measure has much more in common with present-day Conservatives than the progressive far left that has taken over his party. It may be even more amusing when Obama echoes Kennedy’s views of a partnership with Congress when he has repeatedly bypassed Congress to further his agenda, often in violation of the law.
Obama praised the creation of over six million jobs when a great many of those jobs have been part-time or government jobs while unemployment hovers around eight percent.
The president lauded the sales of American cars being at its highest point in more than five years after the government plowed billions into the automotive industry and the natural growth of sales of everything is higher than when the economy was shedding jobs; how he claims credit for any of that is a mystery.
The president boasted that we purchase less foreign oil than we have in 20 years, though the government has shut down oil refineries, held up permits on public land and stopped the flow of oil from Canada. The truth is that we produce more oil and therefore import less for numerous reasons: one production on private land is at an all time high, something the government has no part of, and two because we consume far less energy when the economy is stagnant.
President Obama urged the Congress, once again, to produce a balanced budget, which is Obama codeword for raising taxes on the rich. The problem with the president’s assertion is that the Democrat-controlled Senate hasn’t produced a budget in nearly four years.
Obama claimed a reduction of more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction; note the word “deficit” – that’s the word for annual spending above what the government takes in. There hasn’t yet been a dime of debt reduction. The debt, as it currently stands, will continue to grow and blow past $20 trillion before the end of this decade. Obama said these magical reductions have been made through spending cuts and raising tax rates on the wealthiest one percent of Americans; unfortunately taxes have increased for everyone, not just the top one percent.
The president returned to his tired old argument that shifting of health care or college costs onto families, forcing communities to lay off more teachers, police and firefighters won’t grow the economy. It’s a ridiculous premise. No one is in favor of that even though Obamacare is doing just that, shifting costs from employers that will drop coverage and creating a health insurance crisis for families. The increased cost to municipalities for expanded Medicaid coverage required by Obama will result in staff reductions for cities and towns translation: fewer teachers, police and firefighters.
President Obama claimed that already the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs; ask most American’s if they’ve seen a slowing of their health care costs.
Not everything the president said is without merit, the problem with this president and his Liberal cohorts is that they can’t do anything without attaching strings to punish the successful and assuring more congressional paralysis. Obama said the American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms and more time expanding and hiring; that’s a very reasonable and surely well received message; however he couldn’t stop himself from adding, “a tax code that ensures billionaires with high- powered accountants can’t work the system and pay a lower rate than their hard-working secretaries;” he started in a positive direction, but couldn’t stop himself from throwing in a “Buffett Rule” reference. Clinton was known as the Teflon president and Obama is the yes-but president.
Obama said the greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next. President Obama is right and yet he won’t travel a few miles from the White House to the Congress to bring people together.
Why, in this day and age, can we not get an absolute and definitive answer on Global Warming? While those on the left claim climate change in a settled science that is completely false. The scientific community remains divided and yet the President states, “for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.”
Sure the president is free to believe how he chooses but not to creating falsehoods and posing them as facts. For example, in his speech the president claimed that the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 years. That is simply not true. The planet has cooled over the last decade and averaged over the entire 15 year period the president referenced global temperatures have been nearly static.
Obama claimed that “heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late.” It is simply nothing more than a tilt of the hat to his green energy supporters; you know the type that writes books about the coming ecological disaster caused by carbon-based fuels and then sells their companies to the oil shieks.
Several times in his speech the president threatened more illegal executive orders to create law in the absence of congressional action.
President Obama said he would direct his cabinet to come up with executive actions to take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
Without funding in place the president proposed a “Fix-It-First” program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. Sound like another failed stimulus package? It should, though he won’t have a cooperative House of Representatives this time.
This president has a unique ability to color the pages of history any way he chooses and leave out facts to hide his dishonest assertions. Obama said we need strong border security and that the nation needs to build on the progress his administration has already made; this is the administration that is being sued by its own border patrol for not letting them do their jobs.
The president said we have more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history and has reduced illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years. Okay, Mr. Obama, now let’s give some of the facts:
- Your horrible economy cannot support the flow of job-seeking illegal aliens from Mexico, so fewer come.
- Because of executive orders issued to the Homeland Security Department, the Obama faux “Dream Act,” when the Border Patrol intercepts a young illegal alien on the southern border they must ask if they have a high school diploma or a GED. If they answer yes, they cannot be detained.
- While it’s true that we’ve hired thousands of Border Patrol agents, what Mr. Obama doesn’t want you to know is that most are stationed in offices far from the U.S. border; new boots in offices 20 miles from the border are not boots on the border Mr. Obama; and those that are on the border have been handcuffed by rules this administration his put into place.
Obama touted the Senate’s vote to pass the Violence Against Women Act. Why is it that the Liberals think that the solution to not enforcing current law is to write more laws? The answer is that Liberals could care less about solving problems, only in demonstrating their elitist compassion.
Obama then went on to argue for equal pay for women. Perhaps this author is simply confused but wasn’t that the point of the Lilly Ledbetter Act that President Obama signed into law in 2009? That law allowed women to sue, virtually indefinitely, for equal pay for equal work, which is already required by federal law; just more pabulum for female voters.
Mr. Obama argued that we should raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. According to numerous studies raising the minimum wage costs jobs; not the most intelligent proposal amidst the worst job market in modern history.
President Obama claimed that “the organization that attacked us on 9/11 is a shadow of its former self.” Notice his failure to use the name Al Qaeda? Convenient considering that “the organization” has spread to more than 70 nations since he took office, just killed four Americans in Libya and is thriving throughout northern Africa; just ask the French that are doing our job for us in Mali.
In reference to Iran Obama said, “We will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”
It takes real chutzpah to make that threat when Iran is on the verge of achieving their nuclear goals and the only respectable threat against them getting a nuclear weapon comes from Israel, not the U.S.
“We must all do our part to make sure our God-given rights are protected here at home. That includes one of the most fundamental rights of a democracy, the right to vote. When any American — no matter where they live or what their party — are denied that right because they can’t wait for five or six or seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals. So, tonight, I’m announcing a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America.”
Yes, that’s what we need Mr. Obama, another commission. We don’t need to enforce laws that prevent members of the Black Panthers from intimidating voters at Philadelphia polls. Early voting has come to a majority of states. We have absentee balloting so that no one need wait in line for hours to vote unless they choose to do so. This entire “right to vote” movement has nothing to do with individual rights, it’s all about manufacturing votes, and sorry Mr. Obama, don’t for a second fool yourself into believing that we don’t already know this.
Then the president wrapped up with what everyone was expecting: the attack on gun ownership. Obama tried to lay out the need for tough new laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals, police chiefs begging for the government to get guns off the streets because they’re tired of seeing their guys and gals being outgunned.
Arguing about why it is that criminals don’t really care about what new tough laws the president puts forth isn’t worth the keystrokes. Police chiefs need not be outgunned as they have access to the latest and greatest weapons that cannot be procured by criminals; this is just the same old left-wing anti-gun argument cloaked in the guise of concern and guilt.
Obama said that gun violence has taken more than a thousand lives in the two months since Newtown. Assuming that statistic is valid, how many of those lives were taken in the inner-city, by a handgun not regulated by the proposed assault weapons or high-capacity magazine bans? The answer is undoubtedly most, if not all.
Obama finished his anti-gun rhetoric with a reference to the young girl that had performed at his inauguration and was fatally shot just a mile from the president’s Chicago home. That shooting was gang related, used a revolver and occurred in the city with the strictest gun laws in the nation. Nothing in any law proposed by the president or by the Democrats in Congress would have had any impact on the loss of this young girl’s life, yet the president paraded out this girl’s parents and used them to promote his own agenda. How sad is that?
In summary, this was the same Liberal agenda the president has served up for his entire tenure in Washington; he was reelected and believes he has the American people’s backing for his approach to governing; can’t really blame him. That’s why elections count. How much of this radical liberal agenda will find its way into our lives through laws or executive orders will have much to do with the next election cycle in 2014.
Next time it would be best if the president stayed home and they simply reran old State of the Union speeches.