Last evening, President Obama delivered the State of the Union address.
His message was orated with the sublime skills of an experienced
lecture hall professor but filled with concessions to the Republicans.
During the speech, the audience acted as they were choreographed to do
as practiced with intermittent applause, ovation standing and the
occasional yell of approval. The President came out with all the pomp
of the leader of the free world but throughout his speech seemed to be
campaigning again with no real measure of solution to his words but
rather, responses to what the polling data dictated. Through the entire
message, one which was meant to instill confidence in the American
people of the job he was doing, the President missed one important
thing; to address the the real issues and the Liberal ideals that got
him elected to office.
From the beginning to the end of Obama's
speech, I kept shifting my stares from Vice President Biden to Speaker
Boehner. Biden seemed the easily pleased, happy guy who would never
dare to disagree or find any fault in our President. Boehner on the
other hand, the man who cries when thinking about the American Dream and
the plight of our children in this country, looked as if he was
measuring every word with the look of a man thinking "you had better say
what we agreed upon". I could almost see the puppet strings from his
hands and his lips moving while Obama spoke.
Seeming like a
schizophrenic ideologue confused by the voices in his head, President
Obama teetered throughout his speech as if trying to balance on a picket
fence suspended over a pit of alligators. In one breath he would
expound upon the streamlining of government to cut costs while with the
next, call for more governmental influence by saying this was America's
Sputnik moment and we must reinvent America through governmental
influence. The following statement embodied this imbalance:
He
also seemed to have been suffering from selective reasoning when in one
breath he praised our troops overseas and how the war in Iraq was
coming to an end but never mentioned the additional employ of soldiers
to Afghanistan or the impending showdown with Iran or even the
increasing restrictions on U.S. citizens at airports, FBI increased
on-line monitoring or many other basic civil liberties compromised by
the Patriot Act. He did of course, have a Bush moment and mentioned
9/11 and the fight against our enemies which I am sure is why the issue
of the largest defense budget since WWII; a whopping 725 Billion
Dollars. After all, he must keep up appearances. If the President
wants to find programs to cut, why doesn't he start there instead of
Medicare or Social Security?
Mentioned not was neither the 20%
unemployment rate in Florida's Space Coast due to the cuts to NASA nor
the environmental destruction of our coal rich centers or the people
sickened because of corporate greed. He did mention clean or renewable
energy but nary a word uttered about ceasing corporate welfare and the
easing of taxation on the middle class. Our President also forgot to
mention the housing crisis and rising homelessness in this country as a
direct result of it or for that matter, solutions to said dilemma.
Democrats are supposed to care for the American people but on this
night, our President seemed more concerned about his political career.
In
his rush to the center, Obama seems to have forgotten why some of us
voted him into office. The entire speech was meant not to give us an
idea of the State of our Union but rather an effort to propel his
political agenda to a now Republican controlled Congress and the State
of separation. It seemed that he and the writers of his speech were
only reacting to the political polls and measuring the words by effect
rather than staying within the elected purpose of his administration: to
bring Real Change to Washington and by proxy, to We the People.
I
would have liked very much to have heard some reality in the State of
the Union. Instead, I heard almost criminal levels of patronization and
purposeful misdirection away from the issues that are really affecting
this Nation today or at least those we Liberals care about. The center
approach would have been good two years ago but now I cannot help but
think that if the Republicans hadn't won the Majority, our President
wouldn't have tried so hard to concede to their demands on his
administration.
When I started watching the SOTU, I had hopes
that our President would stand for the Liberal agenda and the American
People but instead, he stood for politics and concession. Although some
of his words about reinvesting in our future resonated with true hope,
the end result of such investment will end up in the hands of the
corporations who are doing most of their business overseas rather than
into the already lint filled pockets of We the People.
Obama's
wordsin this speech were not informative at all but rather a collection
of more campaign rhetoric but this time, instead of trying to win the
votes of us Liberals, he seemed to be trying to win the votes of the
Republicans. Rather than telling us what the State of the Union truly
is, Obama turned it into the State of the Political Landscape and threw
concessions rather than Presidential conditions to the other side of the
aisle. He was successful in one area though; he succeeded in showing
the chameleon coat with which he will unfortunately envelop himself
through the rest of his one term Presidency and revealing how wasted my
vote was in 2008.
What is interesting to me is how history
records the financial currents of our Nation. Whenever crisis hits in
the form of recessions or depressions the People vote into office a
Democrat to sort out the mess. Once things are back in order, the
People vote for a Republican until the cycle returns to start. In the
case of this great recession, our Democrat of choice is returning us to
the Republicans two years too early. Despite my prior expressions of
disappointment in Obama, I have still been clinging to the hope that he
would bring us the change he promised but after watching the pomp and
circumstance Tuesday night, I can say without reserve that the State of
the Union is unfortunately; back to politics as usual.
His message was orated with the sublime skills of an experienced
lecture hall professor but filled with concessions to the Republicans.
During the speech, the audience acted as they were choreographed to do
as practiced with intermittent applause, ovation standing and the
occasional yell of approval. The President came out with all the pomp
of the leader of the free world but throughout his speech seemed to be
campaigning again with no real measure of solution to his words but
rather, responses to what the polling data dictated. Through the entire
message, one which was meant to instill confidence in the American
people of the job he was doing, the President missed one important
thing; to address the the real issues and the Liberal ideals that got
him elected to office.
From the beginning to the end of Obama's
speech, I kept shifting my stares from Vice President Biden to Speaker
Boehner. Biden seemed the easily pleased, happy guy who would never
dare to disagree or find any fault in our President. Boehner on the
other hand, the man who cries when thinking about the American Dream and
the plight of our children in this country, looked as if he was
measuring every word with the look of a man thinking "you had better say
what we agreed upon". I could almost see the puppet strings from his
hands and his lips moving while Obama spoke.
Seeming like a
schizophrenic ideologue confused by the voices in his head, President
Obama teetered throughout his speech as if trying to balance on a picket
fence suspended over a pit of alligators. In one breath he would
expound upon the streamlining of government to cut costs while with the
next, call for more governmental influence by saying this was America's
Sputnik moment and we must reinvent America through governmental
influence. The following statement embodied this imbalance:
"OurSo more government programs? Less? I don't know.
free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not
always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout
our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and
inventors with the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds
for the Internet. That's what helped make possible things like computer
chips and GPS. Just think of all the good jobs -- from manufacturing to
retail -- that have come from these breakthroughs."
He
also seemed to have been suffering from selective reasoning when in one
breath he praised our troops overseas and how the war in Iraq was
coming to an end but never mentioned the additional employ of soldiers
to Afghanistan or the impending showdown with Iran or even the
increasing restrictions on U.S. citizens at airports, FBI increased
on-line monitoring or many other basic civil liberties compromised by
the Patriot Act. He did of course, have a Bush moment and mentioned
9/11 and the fight against our enemies which I am sure is why the issue
of the largest defense budget since WWII; a whopping 725 Billion
Dollars. After all, he must keep up appearances. If the President
wants to find programs to cut, why doesn't he start there instead of
Medicare or Social Security?
unemployment rate in Florida's Space Coast due to the cuts to NASA nor
the environmental destruction of our coal rich centers or the people
sickened because of corporate greed. He did mention clean or renewable
energy but nary a word uttered about ceasing corporate welfare and the
easing of taxation on the middle class. Our President also forgot to
mention the housing crisis and rising homelessness in this country as a
direct result of it or for that matter, solutions to said dilemma.
Democrats are supposed to care for the American people but on this
night, our President seemed more concerned about his political career.
In
his rush to the center, Obama seems to have forgotten why some of us
voted him into office. The entire speech was meant not to give us an
idea of the State of our Union but rather an effort to propel his
political agenda to a now Republican controlled Congress and the State
of separation. It seemed that he and the writers of his speech were
only reacting to the political polls and measuring the words by effect
rather than staying within the elected purpose of his administration: to
bring Real Change to Washington and by proxy, to We the People.
I
would have liked very much to have heard some reality in the State of
the Union. Instead, I heard almost criminal levels of patronization and
purposeful misdirection away from the issues that are really affecting
this Nation today or at least those we Liberals care about. The center
approach would have been good two years ago but now I cannot help but
think that if the Republicans hadn't won the Majority, our President
wouldn't have tried so hard to concede to their demands on his
administration.
When I started watching the SOTU, I had hopes
that our President would stand for the Liberal agenda and the American
People but instead, he stood for politics and concession. Although some
of his words about reinvesting in our future resonated with true hope,
the end result of such investment will end up in the hands of the
corporations who are doing most of their business overseas rather than
into the already lint filled pockets of We the People.
Obama's
wordsin this speech were not informative at all but rather a collection
of more campaign rhetoric but this time, instead of trying to win the
votes of us Liberals, he seemed to be trying to win the votes of the
Republicans. Rather than telling us what the State of the Union truly
is, Obama turned it into the State of the Political Landscape and threw
concessions rather than Presidential conditions to the other side of the
aisle. He was successful in one area though; he succeeded in showing
the chameleon coat with which he will unfortunately envelop himself
through the rest of his one term Presidency and revealing how wasted my
vote was in 2008.
What is interesting to me is how history
records the financial currents of our Nation. Whenever crisis hits in
the form of recessions or depressions the People vote into office a
Democrat to sort out the mess. Once things are back in order, the
People vote for a Republican until the cycle returns to start. In the
case of this great recession, our Democrat of choice is returning us to
the Republicans two years too early. Despite my prior expressions of
disappointment in Obama, I have still been clinging to the hope that he
would bring us the change he promised but after watching the pomp and
circumstance Tuesday night, I can say without reserve that the State of
the Union is unfortunately; back to politics as usual.
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