Economic Recovery

President Obama spoke in the State of the Union as to the good news Americans seem to be overlooking. He lifted up the example of Rebekah Erler. He explains that she wrote him a letter speaking of their economic struggles and how they had to sacrifice to get ahead. Seemingly they were grateful to the policies of the current administration for creating a climate that allowed them to pull out of their difficulties.

What you might already know, and what was never mentioned in the speech, is that Rebekah worked as a campaigner for Democratic Washington Senator Patty Murray. Based on the timing it is likely that this is the job credited with pulling her out of the recession caused by her husband working in the housing industry.

When you know that part of the story it comes across very differently, doesn’t it? Her job, credited to the white house, was campaigning for the Democrats. In fact, this is the same family that he spent a day with back in 2014 to illustrate his compassion for struggling Americans.

The illustration is an example of some problems I believe I see in our president far too often. First he doesn’t care too much about the exact truth of a situation, but instead cares how he can make it appear in the press.

Second he focuses very closely on the moment, not remembering the past nor learning lessons from it. He expects the rest of America to forget as well, or else he would have at least picked a little more random of an example of economic recovery. After all he wants us to believe people moving up economically are easy to find, so he should have a lot of them to choose from.

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Is Anyone Listening?

Looking back over stats for the State of the Union, I notice the number of viewers was at its lowest in 14 years. I wonder if the president wishes it was more? I wonder if he would prefer it to be less? I probably should comment on the content of the speech, but I didn’t watch it either.

I understand President Obama was just interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. Reading a few reports about the interview I understand the president said the different scandals in his administrations existed only because they were promoted by Fox News. I would give you a direct quote, but I didn’t watch this event either.

The president and the liberal media have been surprisingly successful at marginalizing conservative media like Fox News. The liberal media never realizes it does matter what happened at the IRS, Benghazi, healthcare.gov et. al. The end result is he has become unaccountable to the press. Their normal job of accountability through the public spotlight is lost because he can dismiss any media which points to his faults as lies.

The end result of constantly hearing one is being lied to, is to quit listening. The American public has quit listening. They no longer listen to either the conservative press, nor the president, nor the liberal press. But the strength of the American system is the involvement of the people. America’s greatest weakness is the public having been beaten into complacency by the constant barrage of divisive rhetoric.

Again I wonder sometimes, does the president want us paying attention, lauding him for his position and achievements?  Or does he prefer us to be not paying attention to the details of what he is doing?

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.”