When Obama said ‘Republicans must bring more to the table than no’ at his SOTU, I’m betting he did not see Paul Ryan sitting there licking his chops.
Released two days before the unusual back-and-forth session between Obama and the GOP, the bill sponsored by Ryan and five other House members would seek to reduce the deficit and spur economic growth by cutting the tax rate on corporations, shifting future Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to private insurance plans, and both raising the retirement age gradually to 70 and reducing the growth of benefits to make Social Security solvent. Even Democrats have acknowledged that it is one of the few plans offered by a member of either party that would lower the long-term budget deficit. (read the whole thing at WaPo Republican lawmaker’s budget plan gets Obama’s attention)
Obama won’t have the luxury of ignoring Paul Ryan much longer. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future has been out there for a while now, and people are starting to take notice. His name has come up amongst those of us behind the Tea Party movement, including Sarah Palin on Fox News Sunday this morning. He is a Republican by name, but his ideas and beliefs are in line with the majority of Americans. Ryan has shown patience, evident in the fact he turned in a health care bill last spring that the Dem’s totally ignored because it would have been too popular, only to turn it in again after the SOTU. He has proven to be strong, never wavering on his position. He is fluid when it comes to communicating, never needing a teleprompter. And he is, in reality, an independent politician. Ryan has no political agenda driving him (unlike Obama). He doesn’t have to check in with people to make sure what he says is what he is supposed to say.
I’m not saying Ryan will be some sort of savior (I don’t believe in worshiping a politician). But Ryan is one of those rare politicians that only come along about every 20 to 30 years. Ryan has the ability to make Obama look like a fool. And he will, if Obama doesn’t look out.
Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’ “
Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.
Christ is nowhere to be found: The president is supposedly a Christian, yet there wasn’t a single mention of Christ or Jesus in today’s speech.
God and war: Obama said that God’s grace is expressed through the efforts of our armed forces. Really? Sarah Palin was publicly flayed for suggesting just this when she asked her congregation to pray for the military.
Americans are terrible: The president devoted a considerable portion of his speech to condemning Americans for becoming “absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, our contests for power.” It might have been nice to mention that we are also the most philanthropic country in the world, especially considering that even in our own time of economic struggle, we have generously opened our wallets to help rebuild another devastated nation.
Dissing evangelicals: In throwing a bone to the religious right, Obama doesn’t miss a chance to also insult them. “We see that in many conservative pastors who are helping lead the way to fix our broken immigration system. It’s not what would be expected from them, and yet they recognize, in those immigrant families, the face of God.” He may as well have just called them xenophobic nativists.
And no Obama speech would be complete without a shout-out to the other big guy upstairs – himself. So he closed his Prayer Breakfast speech by congratulating himself for doing such a great job with his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, just in case you momentarily forgot that 2012 is right around the corner.
All in all, it was actually fairly predictable – if you’ve ever heard this president discuss faith you know that he is incredibly uneasy with the themes and constructs of American belief, and often manages to slight the faithful just as he’s awkwardly trying to address them.
What more could we expect from the man that stood in front of the world and said America is no longer a Christian nation. I say this to Obama: quit trying to hide who you really are. Let the world know you prefer the preaching of the racist Reverend Wright. Say your real opinion at the Prayer Breakfast that this country is not a Christian country. Come on out of the ol’ closet and let everyone know you have no ambition to attend a church in the D.C. area and exactly why.
Personally, I don’t care what other people’s religious beliefs are. But if you are going to portray the image of a holy man, like Obama is doing now, you better be ready to back it up.
Functioning societies depend on agreed rules. If you want to open a business, you do it in Singapore or Ireland, because the rules are known to all parties. You don’t go to Sudan or Zimbabwe, where the rules are whatever the state’s whims happen to be that morning.
That’s why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president’s proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of “health” “care” “reform” that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees’ health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won’t. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they’re being made up as they go along — and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon’s new corporate tax.
In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.
Read the whole article. Everything Mark Steyn says in this article is 100% true. Scary, yet true.
Obama insisted that the Republicans MUST bring more to the table than “no”. Well, here ya’ go!! Granted, it’s not the first time the Repubs have done this. But now the Savior has no excuse for blowing them off yet again.
In recent years, Americans have become dependent not just on electricity but on computers, microchips, and satellites. The infrastructure that supports all this has become increasingly sophisticated — but not more resilient. On the contrary, as this infrastructure has become more complex, it also has become more fragile and therefore more vulnerable — an Achilles’ heel.
That is why, in 2001, the U.S. government established a commission to “assess the threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.” Such an attack would involve the detonation of a nuclear warhead at high altitude over the American mainland, producing a shockwave powerful enough to knock out electrical power, electronics, communications, transportation, refrigeration, water-pumping stations, sewage systems, and much more. Think of a blackout, but one of indefinite duration — because we have no plan for recovery and could expect little or no help from abroad.
Check out the article. It is definitely worth the read.
We have discussed this exact thing at quite a few of our cabinet meetings. The topic first came up years ago when the Prez asked if either myself or Mr. Secretary had ever heard of an EMP. I wondered if an EMP was anything like the time I was doing some electrical work in his house and his wife did not turn off the right breaker, but instead I said “no, but you have my interest” and I continued drinking my beer, listening to what the Prez had to say. After many beers (and lots of whiskey for Mr. Secretary), one question became the focus: what is being done to protect against this possible threat?
We couldn’t answer the question then, and still can’t answer it now.
This may sound a little too much like science fiction to be believable. Just like a nuclear weapon would have been considered science fiction before the bomb was made.
