State of the Union: Pandering As An Art Form

by Gary Graham

The President is a great orator.  That doesn’t make him a great leader.  I know, I know – give him a chance.  But if you were able to glimpse into the future and could glean important information, vital information that a nation’s leader was actually unknowingly leading his people over a cliff; wouldn’t you…want to tell someone about it?

I am no genius.  I’m a pretty average, normal guy…but a guy who has been paying attention.  I remember the past, as it helps me extrapolate into the future and make better decisions for myself and my family.  Avoid the pitfalls.  Swerve around the danger.  I don’t doubt President Obama is a smart man, loves his family and truly wants what he considers to be the best for America.

But obviously, he hasn’t been paying attention.

The President said today, following up on his speech before the joint session of Congress: “…because we know that business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country.  It is entrepreneurship and industry that are the well-springs of an economy that has been the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history.” 

Huh?  Did these words actually emanate from the mouth of one Barrack Obama today?  One week after he signed a bill that evidences a completely opposite point of view?  “Business, not government, is the engine of growth”??  Then why, may I ask, are we not letting business grow, instead of government? 

Wow, I’m jolted into a major communication disconnect.  Whiplash neck spasms in tag team Wrestlemania, C-6 and C-7 locked in a smackdown.  Calls are going out to my chiropractor and my accountant, in that order. 

The President’s words today sound awfully familiar; don’t they to you? The President almost sounded like …Ronald Reagan for a second.  Almost sounds like his statement was cut-and-pasted from a previous Reagan speech.  But after last light, RR must be rolling over in his grave.  And President Bush doesn’t get a pass.  As was pounded in last night, the Obama administration ‘inherited’ this deficit, this debt, this crisis. (Nevermind the whole Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae fiasco and the Democrat’s mishandling that lead to the mortgage meltdown…are you listening Dodd, Frank, and Pelosi?)  President Bush acted like no Conservative I’ve ever known when he okay’ed the TARP legislation.  And by the way…where is that $700B and why did it not accomplish what it was supposed to?  So here’s a bent twist to syllogistic reasoning (If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C):   Now we have, If A equals B and B equals C, then O equals S, unless M doesn’t do what we want it to, and we have to tap G to T the R and then ZZ equals Top. 

So problem solved — Let’s throw more money at the problem, smile and declare it a Success.   I feel good now.

The truth is often found in the simplest of answers:  Socialism does not work.  Scream it from the rooftops to all the dumbed down voters who didn’t pay attention to world events the past 50 years.

But how does Obama’s Conservative words square with his recent actions?  Does it sound to you like he truly believes that “business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country”?   Oh, wait – I forgot to translate the statement.   Sorry, my bad.  I, being a formal college-indoctrinated liberal, actually speak fluent Lefty.  And since you, the reader, deserve the truth, I shall now provide for you that valuable service.

“…business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country.”  Translation:  “Business is a slave of my newly re-imagined government.  Yes, it is the engine, and yes I will have my hands firmly on the steering wheel, it will go when I stomp the accelerator and not before, and it will be fueled by the incredible debt I am now piling onto your future generations.”

And moving on to the rest:  “…it is entrepreneurship and industry that are the well-springs of an economy that has been the greatest force of prosperity in human history”.  Translation:  While all that sounds really neat and noble and all that…what I really mean to do is shackle entrepreneurship and industry with carefully tightened regulation, restriction, taxation, marching orders, and constraints, forcing business and industry to produce products nobody wants to buy but that I think we really, really need to make, in order to save the planet for the children and for working families…until innovation is frustrated, incentive is exhausted, and once and for all, the beast that is Capitalism is sucked completely dry.”

Any questions?

I mean… What sort of flim-flam, talking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth, snake-oil salesman, con artist are we dealing with here?  And I thought Bill Clinton was slick!

And the sums involved!  Can any of us actually contemplate how much a trillion dollars is?  Sure, we say, flippantly – it’s a thousand billion.  Big deal.  But really, it’s a number so big, we can’t even picture it.  Grains of sand on the beach, number of stars in the sky type of thing.  A few hundred million we can maybe picture.  But a trillion or two, or three?  It ceases to hold any meaning to us.

So he’s able to slip that on to our tab.  Megamyopia – it’s so big we can’t even see it.

But!  Tell ya what I’m gonna do…come closer little lady, that’s right, step right up, here’s what I’m gonna do.  If you act today, I am including in your purchase of Dr. Barry’s Magic Elixir Stimulus Package, an absolute free no-cost-to-you TAX REBATE!  No, don’t look over there behind that curtain, look here, see, it’s MONEY!  Free MONEY!  Just don’t save any of it, SPEND IT NOW, hurry, run off and spend all of your fee money!

I got a headache.

 There it is.  To lighten the sting, to lessen the blow, we get a payoff.  Tax breaks for everyone earning less than $250K.   And why that arbitrary cutoff?  Because the number of voters earning over 250K is so small as compared to those earning less.  (The Dems play the numbers game dontcha know…but we mustn’t call it pandering, lest we be ‘haters’.) 

So, even though, according to President Obama, “entrepreneurship and industry that are the well-springs” of the economy…we are going to punish achievers earning more than 250K with higher taxation.  Everyone else gets a pass, in fact, “the checks are in the mail.”  Now…not everyone in the upper income bracket is a heartless, shiftless and arrogant, extravagance-addled, cruel and selfish jerk.  (Though you wouldn’t know it to listen to the class-warfare spewing mainstream media.)

Many of my good friends are quite affluent.  They are decent people who work hard, love their families, live life with vigor and vitality and love America.  Aren’t theirs ‘working families’ as well?   Gary Sinise is a friend of mine.  He earns, I’m guessing well over the $250K line.  But his is a ‘working family’.  He loves his wife, his kids, his country.  Yet, he is in the earning class that is daily maligned by public sentiment as ‘rich guys’… ‘wealthy, greedy bastards’ who don’t care about the ‘little people’.  So let’s get even with them.  The party’s over, dudes…time to pony up.  You wanna dance, ya gotta pay the band.  Cough up, tightwad, The One told us you’re not paying enough (even though your relatively small group is paying well over 50% of the taxes) so it’s time to get out the checkbook.  Because you ‘can afford it’. 

And that’s another thing.  How do we know what someone else ‘can afford’?  And what business is it of ours anyway?  Only the truly greedy and envious can make the claim that they know what somebody else can or cannot afford.  Isn’t it ironic that those who decry the rich as ‘greedy’ …are they themselves the truly greedy; as it is they who covet something to which they have no rightful claim.

But back to my evil and greedy rich friend Gary Sinise.  Nevermind the tremendous contributions he makes towards the Arts.  Nevermind the community events he volunteers to organize each month.  Nevermind the exhaustive effort, time and sacrifice Gary expends selflessly year-in and year-out flying to the Middle East to entertain and uplift our troops; the men and women who lay their lives on the line daily to preserve our freedoms.  But…he achieved more than the average Joe, so he must be punished.

For the rest of us…  Oh joy, we get money back!  (Even though some will get checks who paid no taxes, maybe aren’t even legal citizens, but…are prospective Democrat voters, hint hint.)  “The check’s are in the mail,” said the President last night.  Hmmm…tempt millions of people with immediate gratification, even though we are going further and further into astronomical debt.  Does this sound at all familiar?  As in…the very thinking that lead to our economic catastrophe?  There is another phrase for attempting to mollify people from looking too closely at your actions – Hush Money.

But oh we all feel good about it…because we’re doing it for ‘Working Families’, dontcha know.  This is the new feelgood buzz word, replacing the former Lefty fave, ‘for the children’.  If you are jamming it to the citizen taxpayer, (er, I mean asking the people for more patriotic sacrifice)…you can’t do any better than to do it ‘for the children and working families.’  Cue music, We Are The World.  Pass the Kleenex box, please.

And since, sniff sniff, everything Bigger Government is doing to us is being done For the Children and Working Families, who can oppose it with impunity?  What, do you want to be a child-abuser, a hater of families, a bigot, tightwad homophobe, misogynist, creepazoid from hell?  Well…but I just wanted…to hang on to my business…  Ha!  You selfish bastard!  Where’s your patriotism!  Give peace a chance for the change and hope we need, you asshole!

Nope, we have to go along with this.  And we have to feel good about it.  (hey, buddy, at least use some K-Y, huh?  Maybe slip on a Sinatra record first?) 

It is now considered patriotic to celebrate our own evisceration.

Many a runaway train has been jammed into the tunnel of ‘crisis’.  What has emerged from the other side has rarely been desirable, or even recognizable.  I am disparaged constantly for being a ‘doom and gloomer’…a sour-grapes pessimist…a hater.  “Give the man a chance, my god!” they scream at me.  “It’s only been a month!  Don’t you want us to succeed, don’t you want America to recover??”

Well…yes and no.  I love America…just not the concept of America the Lefties envision.  Ameroeurope holds no appeal to me.  Nor does Ameranada.  Or Amerexico.  And Ameranistan is right out. 

Every time I see Mr. Obama’s big charming smile I am reminded of the famous bump-and-run technique of an expert pickpocket.  They casually bump into you (crisis), then quickly put hands on you asking if you’re all right (caring concern), then touching you further ask if you’re sure, they bumped you pretty hard (offer to make things better), then smile and quickly leave – with your watch and wallet (taxation).

But, the Stimulus Package is officially enacted.  It’s done, it’s happened.  We don’t get a do-over if God-forbid, this thing doesn’t work.  If this old hackneyed Keynesian socialist experiment in futility doesn’t defy the historically consistent pattern of results that have thwarted collectivists since the beginning of time… if the arrogance of its invention is not charismatic enough to lift the mechanism of the physical universe from its hinges…and the President’s plan actually works?  I will tear off my clothes and dance in the street.  Because everything I know will be wrong.  And I will be ready for the dudes in the white coats.  Please take me to my padded cell, sirs, and be quick about it.  Martinis and Zoloft and please turn the TV to either The WWF or CNN, makes no difference.

Reversing this rape that has begun on our nation will take ten generations to reverse – if it can be reversed at all.   America as we knew it is gone.  A memory.  A story to tell our grandchildren. 

I’d love to believe in this monstrous spending plan.  But even if you dressed up a turd… it would still be a turd.


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Posted Feb 25th 2009 at 1:25 pm in Featured Story, Politics | 173 Comments