The State of the Union

President Obama is set to give a state of the Union address tomorrow. Since we have entered a very difficult period of history, I thought I might offer him some suggestions on things he might want to say.

“Jobs have continued to decrease in the United States. Nevertheless we have followed a path of regulating the remaining jobs out of existence. This is a part of the change we can be proud of. We have leveled the playing field in America by pulling more and more of the middle class down into poverty. A major portion of this leveling affect has been the mandates of the Affordable Care Act. This law has pushed employers to decrease hours of their workers in order to avoid paying the unwieldy mandated benefits.

“There are more people on public assistance in this country than ever before, which we also claim as a victory. Nothing makes a voter come to be in favor of welfare as much as being a recipient. No one should go hungry in this, the greatest nation on earth. Neither should we the policy makers miss a chance to make hungry voters dependent upon us and our policies.

“Millions of people have been dropped by their health insurance, but we have successfully made them dependent on the government by making it impossible to pick up private insurance. They now must rely on a chaotic, expensive, unreliable government system for their healthcare. This too is a part of the change we are proud of. We can point to several hundred people who were benefitted, and the millions who were called on to make sacrifices should be proud to do so, or face the political name calling of left.

“This overhaul of the healthcare system is going to be the legacy of my administration. Nothing leaves the brand of change quite as deeply as voting for laws we don’t understand and have not discussed. As this law is phasing its way into implementation, we have guaranteed the ripples of change will continue to reverberate through our economy.

“The financial adjustments necessary to pay for these changes drove up our national debt in astronomical ways. This is another first of this administration. We can truly say we have driven the United States up to the brink of default without accepting blame. In fact we have managed to lay the blame for every battle at the feet of our opponents.

“In summary we have created new formulas for political success, for suppressing political opponents, and for restructuring American society. All we really promised was change, and everyone must agree, we have blindly and foolishly followed a policy of change.”

Advertisement

Shutdown Politics

So the government is deciding it needs to go into a partial shutdown because of a lack of funds. I would be more encouraged if I really believed this was a sign of responsible financial behavior.

Am I the only one who is getting the impression the shutdown is being designed more to make people uncomfortable than to save money?

Barricading off open air monuments makes no sense, especially those which receive no public funds.  Even if they did, what expense are they saving, trash removal?  I expect we will be spending more on barricades and enforcement than we ever would have leaving the monuments open.

It looks like it is designed to make people angry in hopes that the public will force republicans to give way. In fact, everything done by the administration seems to be about undermining the credibility of the republicans. Is it really the unofficial motto of this administration that it doesn’t matter what happens as long as you have someone to blame?

Have politicians forgotten we elected them to govern? Do they really believe their country is served by demonizing their opponents?

Obama Depressive Disorder

#Politics Monday – But talking about politics is getting too easy, so today I am going out on a limb to talk about mental health instead. In fact, I am going really far out on a limb to predict a soon to be recognized mental illness which should be identified by the medical professionals any day now.

I am confident the medical world will recognize it, because I see people all around me suffering from the effects of this dread disorder. Since I am the one that first identified it, I get to name it. So I am going to call it Obama Depressive Disorder or ODD for short.

People cursed with ODD will exhibit the symptoms of depression initiated by an overwhelming case of fear of what Obama and his policies are doing to this country and to them personally.

The most severely afflicted people will believe that Obama is the antichrist. That he will never leave office at the end of his term and from there they expect he will eventually rule the world for the devil’s glory. These people may be preparing to become survivalists, stockpiling food and guns or similar behaviors.

The mildest cases will exhibit a certain paranoia about being identified as a racist simply because they disagree with the president’s policies. The primary symptom for these individuals is to fail to speak out no matter how ludicrous they find the actions of government.

The more common, middle of the road cases will demonstrate financial symptoms. The severity of the financial indicators ranges from setting aside additional savings in an attempt to pay for whatever fines, fees, or taxes they are about to incur, all the way up to long term unemployment. In these more severe cases you can expect to see loss of assets and bankruptcy.

There are some disturbing medical symptoms too, specifically people seem to be throwing up their hands and giving up on trying to keep up with their own medical care, and especially a fear of red tape associated with future medical care. I have even seen medical professionals abandon their studied field to avoid such legal constraints.

The executive branch might quibble with my description of ODD, preferring to think of it as WRD, that is W’s Recessive Disorder. But by their own declarations, they already fixed WRD, so personally I think Obama needs to own this one.

I will be in my office when you’re ready to give me my Nobel Prize for medicine. I probably will not be clutching an automatic handgun and hoarding canned goods. Probably not.