“The aspirations they hold are shared.  A job that pays the bills.  A chance to get ahead.  Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.”

Why is it that liberal politicians never—never ever—mention freedom?  Or our relationship with God?  Apparently they look at fellow Americans and see nothing but hungry mouths and utility bills that need paying.

Let’s be blunt: any person whose aspirations are limited to “a job that pays the bills” and “a chance to get ahead” is a disappointment to the definition of humanity.

I wasn’t going to write about President Obama’s state of the union speech, I really wasn't.  Columns on this website are supposed to provide a different angle on things, and state of the union speeches are analyzed and critiqued ad nauseam by pundits and columnists around the world, leaving little elbow room for demonstrating difference.

And I spent this past week revamping the website—for technophiles, I switched from static HTML pages to dynamic PHP pages—so I was busy.  (And irritable… I’m too damn old to be learning new computer languages on the spur of the moment.)

“One in ten Americans still cannot find work.”

What changed my mind was the frightening lack of understanding of his job Obama demonstrated by this speech.  When you are the President of the United States of America, you represent all of the people in the nation, not just the people who voted for you and not just your own particular philosophical segment of society.  When you give an official speech as the president you put partisanship and small-mindedness aside.  Most importantly, you avoid the kind of outright lying that politicians employ when they are running for office.

The more I ruminated on President Obama’s speech, the angrier I became.

The number of Americans who cannot find work is closer to two in ten than one in ten and Barack Obama knows this.  It is the president’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics that says 17.3% of Americans cannot find work.  You can see the numbers for yourself here.  Look at the U-6 rate, not the U-3 rate which represents only the 10% of Americans who are still drawing unemployment benefits.

Unfortunately, that was only the first lie.

“And we haven't raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person.  Not a single dime.”

This is pure hutzpah.  Democrats increased about a dozen different taxes in 2009 but not income taxes.  Thing is, when the government is running around grabbing money, do we really care what they call the tax?

Meanwhile, the worst tax grabs are waiting in the wings.  Between the new taxes included in the healthcare legislation and the new taxes which form the essence of Cap ’n’ Trade legislation, Americans are looking at gargantuan tax increases to pay for the Obama agenda.  The only reason these particular tax increases haven’t been enacted yet is because of Republican opposition.

Basically, this is a man who tried to pick our pocket bragging about his virtue because he missed our wallet.

“Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed.”

This number is nonsense.  Complete and utter nonsense.  As the Associated Press reported when they fact-checked Obama’s speech, there is no way to verify Obama’s claim and even the CBO, which tried to count the number of new jobs optimistically, could only justify about half the number that Obama claims.

Somebody needs to tell this man he is not campaigning for office anymore.  He’s the president.  It’s time to stop making shit up and spouting idiotic claims about stuff he hasn’t really accomplished.  It’s time to show some dignity.

“And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

Obviously, if you can’t count the number of jobs saved so far, you sure as hell can’t count the number of jobs saved in the future.  This number is simply the difference between the fictitious “two million jobs” he claims to have saved and the “three and a half million jobs” he promised to save last year.

So at least it’s logically consistent.  If fantasy is allowed when reporting on the past, it should be allowed when predicting the future, right?

“…overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.”

This is so stupid it’s scary.  In the last two months we’ve learned that climate scientists around the world have been lying about temperature data, we’ve learned that the United Nations has lied about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 and lied about the rest of the world’s glaciers and lied about the effects of climate change on the Amazon rainforests.  And along with all that we’ve seen nearly unprecedented cold weather across the globe.

Upon what does the president base his claim that there is overwhelming evidence of global warming?  Did Bigfoot tell him?

“…the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

Economics is not that difficult to comprehend if you aren’t blinded by Marxist dogma.  It’s mostly basic common sense.  Energy is crucial to driving an economy and obviously cheap energy is better for an economy than expensive energy.  Duh.  Since “clean” energy is not cheap energy, it doesn’t take Milton Friedman to see that the president’s claim about a “clean energy economy” is bullshit.

If you want a strong economy, you make energy cheap and dirty.  If you want a pristine environment then you go for clean energy and a crappy economy.  You can’t have both.

Most Americans feel that compromise is acceptable.  We don’t want dirty-coal-burning power plants spewing 500-mile plumes of black soot downwind but neither do we want environmental whackos telling us that windmills, magic Gaia crystals, and Marxist slogans will suffice for powering a twenty first century civilization.

Obama’s insistence on repeating the lie that green energy is good for the economy is silly… dangerously silly.

“Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.”

This is directly belied by the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that 10 million Americans will lose their employer coverage under the senate plan.  The CBO also warns that millions of retired Americans on Medicare would lose their doctors as reimbursement rates are drastically reduced as part of the plan.  Medicare patients are already being turned away by doctors across the nation so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, least of all the president, that reducing Medicare payments to doctors will exacerbate the problem.

How dare the president, standing in front of congress representing all of us, make such a statement?  It’s time that we all start noticing who we’ve elected and start asking ourselves what kind of man can be so unselfconscious about lying.

“And according to the Congressional Budget Office, the independent organization that both parties have cited as the official scorekeeper for Congress, our approach would bring down the deficit by as much as $1 trillion over the next two decades.”

Here’s what the CBO actually says: the ten-year cost of the senate healthcare legislation once it is fully in effect will be $2.5 trillion.  The only way you can reduce the budget by $1 trillion while spending an additional $2.5 trillion is to raise taxes by $3.5 trillion.  That’s simple arithmetic.

Speaking of arithmetic, raising taxes by $3.5 trillion means $11,000 of new taxes for each of us… $11,000 of additional taxes for every man, woman, and child in the country.  Welcome to Democrat Party healthcare reform.

“Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.”

This notion was lampooned in the press and already a joke before Obama gave his speech.  His plan to “freeze government” after a year in which he increased spending faster than any president in history is like having your home burglarized and then having the burglar give you back your toaster.  Would that make up for losing your big screen television?

Plus, the plan exempts so much of the actual government—the Defense Department is exempt, Social Security is exempt, Medicare is exempt, etc.—that the actual savings, even if congress agreed to the plan, are so tiny they don’t amount to a hair on a gnat’s ass.

These buttheads spent one trillion dollars on pork last year, called it a “stimulus,” and now they think you’re stupid enough to get excited about saving a couple dollars on pencils at the Bureau of Land Management.

“And that's why we've excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.”

Again with the campaign crap.  Candidate Obama promised to exclude lobbyists from his administration.  President Obama appointed 17 lobbyists during his first two weeks on the job.

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”

The Supreme Court reversed part of McCain-Feingold, which is campaign finance legislation passed in 2002.  2002 is not a century ago.  It’s not even a decade ago.  What’s more, foreign corporations are still not allowed to contribute to U.S. election campaigns.  That didn’t change because of this ruling, which did not even address the issue.

For a man who claims to have taught constitutional law, the misstatement should be embarrassing.

“I'm also calling on Congress to continue down the path of earmark reform.  You have trimmed some of this spending and embraced some meaningful change.”

“Trimmed some of this spending?”  The so-called stimulus bill was a trillion dollars of pork all by itself.  Never in the history of the world did so much pork squeal out of the sty at once.  In the guise of rescuing us from a financial crisis, the Democrats spent money on a $300,000 helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings, $30 million to build a spring training field for the Arizona Diamondbacks, $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport which has 20 passengers per day, $219,000 to study the sex lives of freshmen coeds at Syracuse (Where do I sign up to help with that study?), $3.1 million to turn a barge into a floating museum on the Erie Canal, etc., etc., try not to puke, etc.

In one of the many vagaries of the English language, sometimes “trimming” means more stuff to eat, like when you’re talking about a turkey.  Maybe that’s what he meant.

“The confirmation of well-qualified public servants should not be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual Senators.”

In 2006 Senator Obama led the effort to filibuster the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, even though he admitted that Alito was an accomplished jurist and well-qualified for the job.  Maybe he had a grudge against Alito because the man doesn’t hang Mao ornaments on his Christmas tree.

“And in the last year, hundreds of Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed, far more than in 2008.”

Since neither Bush nor Obama has ever released casualty counts for Al Qaeda members, we have no way of knowing whether this is fact or fiction.  He might as well have said he saw Vince Foster’s ghost in the Lincoln Bedroom staring at a Hillary Clinton portrait.  If Obama had a reputation for honesty, we might choose to believe the claim.  He doesn’t.

“…the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.”

Fact: last year the Obama Administration promised a new treaty by early December, when the previous treaty expired.  Fact: in spite of throwing Eastern European democracies under the bus by acceding to Russian demands to abandon anti-missile defenses (defenses which were previously promised to them by the U.S.), the administration has received no concessions from the Russians and the talks are stalled.

Fact: for the first time since 1991 we have no arms treaty with the Russians… because Obama dropped the ball.  (For the time being, both sides have agreed to live by the terms of the treaty which expired.)

“For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.”

That would be nice.  If it was true.  Even though our own ambitions are limited to finding a job and paying utility bills, it would be nice to root for other people with higher aspirations.  Trouble is, when Iran’s citizens revolted against a fixed election in June and took to the streets, the Obama administration sided with the fixers and Islamofacist thugs, not the citizens demanding freedom and human dignity who were being imprisoned, tortured, and killed.  And then when the president of Honduras declared himself a communist who wanted to be president for life instead of being term limited as the Honduran constitution requires, and an orderly and legal process replaced him with a new president and scheduled democratic elections, the White House sided with the communist thug instead of democracy.

“America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity.”  Those are great words, almost Churchillian, but the words are meaningless if they aren’t spoken in truth… and bitter insults to the people of Iran and Honduras.

Face it, this whole speech was an insult.  The speech was patronizing, partisan, unpresidential, and its pervasive dishonesty was insulting to all of us.  And if all that isn’t enough to rile you, here’s a final quotation:

“We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal…”

Uh, Mr. President?  Mr. Constitutional Scholar?  Those words are not in the Constitution.  Those words are from the Declaration of Independence.

Sheesh.


From Reno, Nevada, USA

February 2, 2010 - Dear Nazis, Please, no more such drivel! Unsubscribe me! Heil! - Norm, Michigan

J.P. replies: "Nazis."  Good one.  Because everybody on the political right must be a Nazi, right?  Trouble is, Norm, "Nazi" is derived from "National Socialist German Workers’ Party," which, as you can probably tell, was a leftwing organization.  Oops.  No substitute for a good education, is there?  By the way, Norm, you already unsubscribed, a decision which causes me less grief than you might think.

February 2, 2010 - Thank you! That was really fun to read the facts behind my yelling at the TV all thru his speech! His speech made me so mad as I knew he was citing lies! And to have a leader in our country that lies so easily makes me sooooo upset...so thx again...great article! - Mary, Ohio

February 2, 2010 - J.P.'s State of the Union trumps B.O.'s by a constitutional mile. But wait...Big Foot isn't real? You can just call me: Lady Gag-gag. - Boomer Pie, Florida