The Address to Congress

No matter how you slice or dice it, President Obama’s Address to Congress (fka The State of the Union Address) was a homerun. No one can deny his eloquence in delivery, and his ability to articulate the hopes and aspirations of what America should be. He pushed all the populist buttons, such as big, bad bank executives, while assuring the business community that he understands that the root cause of our financial problems is based in the banking system and a credit freeze. And who can be against finding a cure for cancer in our time. It was baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet (literally)!

It all sounds good on paper…but when you get to the details…it is the same old same old. Liberals have a knack for double speak. While extolling the virtues of fiscal prudence, Congress is working on an omnibus spending bill (needed to fund government operations) that is filled with the very “porkie” projects he criticized last night. I saw some of the pork projects today, and they are too numerous to list, as well as disgusting and scary. Watch next week. This is in addition to the stimulus package that was just passed. Of course, this one is in the hundreds of millions instead of billions…so it must be OK.

Health care is certainly an issue…but a single payer socialized system is looming. For those who aren’t watching, Canada is beginning to address the flaws in its single payer system by re-introducing private insurance which heretofore was outlawed. We should be looking north to make sure we don’t end up with health care rationing…which is the stated goal of Tom Daschle, the now disgraced nominee for HHS Secretary, that I mentioned in my article last week (Did You Vote for This?).

I think I heard him say that he wants to provide free education from pre-school through college. Who is going to pay? He certainly didn’t address the bloated salaries of academia which is more disgraceful that some of the Wall Street antics. Of course, academia is one of his core constituencies.

And while he said he is going to increase troop levels in our military, he focused on weapons reductions and withdrawing from Iraq as a source of funds for his domestic programs…and mentioned his plans for ramping up the war in Afghanistan in a single line. That is one of the most dangerous ideas of all. No foreign country has ever run a successful military campaign in Afghanistan. And his statements relating to sanctuaries in Pakistan may lead us to a really ugly war with Mideast nuclear power that can spill over into India and China. And what about Iran? I hope he knows what he is doing.

Nowhere in his speech did he mention personal responsibiltiy. It is apparently the fault of the educational system that more people aren't graduating from high school, let alone college. Must be those bad teachers and not the hip/hop culture that degrades education in the inner city, and the total lack of self control and discipline in the schools resulting from student "rights". As for the economic problem, it was the big, bad bankers who forced people to buy homes they couldn't afford, second homes they couldn't afford, and the government requiring lenders to loan to credit unworthy individuals because it was the fair thing to do. Personal responsibility is irrelevant.

Not that President Obama shouldn’t try to implement his ambitious programs. It appears to me, however, that unless standard liberal idealogy is jettisoned in the process…a new generation will learn about stagflation, and relive the Jimmy Carter days. Looking at Nancy Pelosi jumping up and down like a jack in the box, I don’t think that is going to happen