State Of The Union (or: Why I Even Bothered To Write About The D@#& Thing)

President Obama gave his State of the Union address last night, and (I guess) I was supposed to react as if it were a huge deal (as if Barack Obama was going to say something I'd be happy about).  Needless to say, I had better things to do with my time than watch the President give his address, but I was reminded last night by a friend of the importance of knowing what your enemy is doing.  So, with a heavy heart, I decided to not watch the address (you didn't seriously think I would actually sit down and watch it, did you?); I read it instead.

I didn't expect anything other than the usual cheap platitudes, doublespeak, slick spin, bullcrap and in the areas where he would be genuine, nobody who believes in liberty would accept them.  Thus, I began to read the address (I should've recited that passage from Hamlet before I started: “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”), and as I expected, cheap platitudes, doublespeak, slick spin and flat out bullcrap peppered the address.

There were mentions of energy independence, reducing deficits, investing a dollar and getting back $140, calls for bipartisanship, creating over six million jobs and so on, all of it nicely packaged spin, and then there was the complete bullcrap, like “we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we can say with renewed confidence that the State of our Union is stronger”, “the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs”, “Let me repeat -- nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime” and so on (and so on and so on and so on).

I found it amusing to come across doublespeak such as “It is not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth”, and the parts of the address where the President was genuine included calls for fleecing the wealthy 1% (including wealthy seniors), raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour (as if it's ever been a good idea), so-called common sense gun reforms (a.k.a. gun control), and dealing with climate change (oh my, The Day After Tomorrow is upon us!).

The responses from Gary Johnson, Carla Howell, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and (of course) Rand Paul do a better job of tearing apart the President's address than I could.  All in all, while it's important to know what your enemy is doing, this is one occasion where I not only knew what my enemy was doing, I anticipated his actions (and it turned out I was right; how about that?).  So why did I bother writing about it?  Well...........I'll get back to you on that.