President Obama: Laxative in Chief

With friends like you, who needs enemas! -- The Road to Wellville

The State of the Union Address is less compelling with every year. The American People are hoping for a Road to Wellville. What they got is well, a whole lot of BS. They get another crock of hopes and dreams, aspirations which We the People can expect to pay for.

President Obama State of the Union Speech (2011)

The whole spectacle is becoming less than spectacular. Last year, the President was agitating for raising the minimum wage. Not exactly a stellar benchmark. In the last two months, the President has poisoned relations with Congress, acting on his own to indemnify millions of illegal immigrants without Congressional approval. Twice he has done this, if anyone remembers his 2012 Deferred Action for Children of Arrivals program in 2012.

I must admit that I am not too worried about these actions. Many illegal immigrants prefer to stay in the shadows, knowing that the President's pronouncements carry no legal authority, and may be rescinded in the next two years.

Rather than Chief Executive, President Obama has become the Chief Laxative, excreting a host of nonsensical policies, depleted and wasteful. Inadvertently, though, the President has been the necessary cleansing agent for a host of interest groups and demographics who had looked to the Barack Obama as the Hope and Change they were looking for.

President Obama waiting to enter Congress

Millenials see their job prospects in a dimmer light. African-Americans in the inner cities have witnessed the cultural savagery of unjust riots and vandalism, all in the name of Energy policy sits at a standstill because of the President's deepened opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, even though every major media organ, labor union, and general business interest wants that pipeline constructed. President Obama has also become the Chief Obstructionist in Washington, too, purely for ideological reasons.

Or did they really think that each of us could be that very Hope and Change in our own lives?

Another enema, please! Pepto Bismol, too?

Some of the more distasteful, wasteful passages:

Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis.

With creative statistical accounting, perhaps. How many of the new hires are part-time or contracted employees? How many have given up looking for work? Unemployment figures don't mean much when you are barely getting by.

Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.

No it isn't, and the fighting has gotten worse in Iraq. American military might is in retreat all over the world, and since political tyranny abhors a vacuum, behold ISIS (or ISIL) invading Syria and installing its own caliphate.

Briefly identifying the efforts of Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis, newly-weds whose first careers died off following the Great Recession, who adapted and prospered with new careers, President Obama had nothing to take in pride in. His health insurance mandates, plus aggressive deficit spending, and extortionist tax rates, are hurting businesses. For all the talk about wind and solar energy, the reason why gas prices are so low is higher carbon extraction and production, followed by weakened demand in Europe and Asia. President Obama did not build the USA's economic recovery.

The substance of incremental progress in this country is true, but the President had nothing to do with it:

So the verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work, as long as politics don't get in the way.

Thank you, Mr. President, so please get out of the way. Without admitting it, the President has repeated the Republican Party economic platform. Then he veered toward championing more socialist reforms. Wash, Rinse, then flush away:

Here's another example. Today, we're the only advanced country on Earth that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers.

The reason why the United States remains advanced head of nanny-state social democracies is precisely because of our aversion to a generous safety net. Government subsidized babysitting is a dirty diaper at best. Throw it away, and let the American people be grown-ups and prioritize their family planning and daycare.

Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That's why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. Really.

She already is, if she does the same job, working the same hours. Really. Flush. .  . 

I am sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of community college -- to zero. .

Nothing is free, Mr. President. Someone pays for it. Get me a to a toilet bowl. Free high school in government schools has not ensured a quality education for many inner city youth? If you think that community college is expensive now, just wait for the costs when it's free.

And as a new generation of veterans comes home, we owe them every opportunity to live the American Dream they helped defend.

How about granting them quality health care? Instead, our veterans died on secret waiting  lists while VA administrators were getting top pay. Cabinet head Eri Shinseki resigned, but how about dismantling the whole bureaucratic morass and offering vouchers for private care? And about Obamacare. Since government medicine makes our veterans sicker, why force it on the American people, too? Didn't they fight to protect our rights to live?

Then the President rhapsodized about liquid fuel, converting sunlight into energy. Maybe we can ride on unicorns who belch rainbows and fart symphonies, too? The government is not in the business of innovation. You and me, We the People, we do that. We build that. The President wants an infrastructure policy beyond "one pipeline". What about the millions of jobs and economic growth which can follow from expanding oil extraction and transmission? That one pipeline is a big step, but the Obama Administration has mistepped on it big time.

Then there's the foreign policy fantasies:

We stand united with people around the world who've been targeted by terrorists -- from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris.

Where was President Obama when the Iranian people protested the disputed (and corrupted) 2009 Presidential election? He said nothing. Why has he pushed Israel to give up lands, when the Palestinian Authorities define themselves on the destruction of Israel? Contain and Diminish is not a foreign policy against Muslim terrorists intent on conversion or death for non-Muslims. What about Crimea and Eastern Ukraine?

In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you're doing doesn't work for fifty years, it's time to try something new.

No we are not, Mr. President, because you do not get to redefine diplomatic relations with hostile states with a stroke of the pen and call on the phone. Why not put phone and pen to use and work with Congress to normalize your respect for the Constitution and the American People?

Then there's climate change. Always about climate change:

2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does -- 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.

California braced for freezing temperatures in 2013 and 2015. Rhode Islanders endured severe snowstorms. Global warming? Warmest years on record? What is Obama reading? Most Americans are looking at the thermometers hanging on their windows. It's been cold out there!

Then all the blather about human dignity and civil rights. The President and his attorney general had stuffed then lighted a powder king of racial animus, now exploding throughout the country. His unilateral reversals on welfare reform and affirmative action have worsened race relations in this country, too. Instead of improving the prospects of the black man, Obama wants to talk about individuals struggling with identity issues:

That's why we defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

President Obama used "transgender" in his latest SOTU speech. Another first. Would the President be the first to acknowledge that transgenderism is a problem in  need of a solution? Martin Luther King said as much about homosexual conduct.

A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other. . .

Really? Take the first step, Mr. President. Be the change you want to see in the world.

In the last part of his speech, he repeated his red state, blue state rhetoric, his import to unite not divide America. After six years of Obama, there is a predominantly Red America, and Blue America is stuck in economic doldrums. Voters have rejected his regressive agenda, and a Republican Congress (whom he failed to recognize) is pushing back against his redundant agenda.

President Obama has been the Chief Laxative, purging away America's taste for progressive statism, as well as removing Democratic preeminence in Washington.

Heckuva job there, Barry! With friends like Obama, Republicans don’t need enemas!

President Obama: Laxative in Chief