State of Obama versus State of Reality

By Thomas Berry · Monday, January 30, 2012

Wanting to obey my doctor about managing my blood pressure, and not being into masochism, I skipped this year's State of the Union address. I was not alone; it was the least-watched address since 2008. Given Obama's repetitive, pedestrian content, dwindling TV audiences are no surprise. Instead, I chose to read it so as to better contemplate his profound utterances, some of which we will now examine.

He called preserving the ability to ". . . raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement" our most urgent challenge. Leaving alone how his policies have made these goals less and less achievable, our most urgent challenge is the restoration of our former Constitutional republic.

He, who trashed bankruptcy rules to shaft Chrysler bondholders while rewarding unions; he, who gave his backers at Solyndra $535,000,000 in taxpayer-guaranteed Porkulus kickbacks, lauded the concept of everyone getting a fair shot and playing by the same rules.

Speaking of Chrysler, he praised its successes, along with GM's (self-combusting Volts notwithstanding) -- and then condemned the business bailouts that he has claimed made those successes possible.

He promised " . . . not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits." Yet, according to White House data, in the three fiscal years of his presidency, the federal deficit has increased $4.25 trillion dollars. (Under George W. Bush, it increased $3.546 trillion over eight years -- $1.412 trillion in FY 2009 alone, thanks to a Democrat-controlled Congress.)

On his watch, the gross federal deficit has exceeded gross domestic product; and, twelve days before the Address, he glibly asked Congress to increase the federal debt ceiling another $1.2 trillion. As for phoniness, his administration cooks every month's economy and unemployment numbers to show demonstrably false results.

He spoke of his interest in reviving American manufacturing. Even if we've heard it before, it was certainly better than his astoundingly debased summary of this goal a couple of days later: "I laid out a blueprint for an economy . . . Where we're making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere." Such eloquence doth tingle the leg.

He warned that "we'll run out of money" if we keep subsidizing skyrocketing college tuitions. Uh, sir, you already have run out of money; that's why you keep printing more.

He promised again to "take on illegal immigration." But his "boots on the border" are unarmed and ineffective, and his border policy is embodied in the new signs dotting the desert sixty miles into Arizona: "Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area."

Shades of Gerald Ford's idiotic WIN buttons! Perhaps, if the borders were in fact secured, border state citizens were no longer used as pawns, and states were not sued for trying to enforce existing federal immigration law, our southern border and our people would be safe!

He boasted, "we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration . . ." and that American oil production is the highest in eight years. But Mark Green of www.energytomorrow.org notes, ". . . leasing acreage on federal lands is at its lowest point since 2001 -- declining from 47 million acres in 2008 to 38 million acres in 2011 -- and that the number of leases in effect has also declined."

Green also wrote, "the production gains the country is seeing now date to a process that started up to a decade or more ago." (Thank you, George W. Bush!) "You don't just flip a switch and suddenly oil starts flowing." For Obama to take credit for this is as egotistically deceitful as his crowing over putting the hit on Osama bin Hidin while failing to credit the years of preparatory work done by the Bush administration.

Remember too that the Obama administration has shut down increased natural gas production through "fracking" on national forest lands in Ohio, perhaps in retribution for Ohioans rejecting Obamacare, and strangled drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Obama also claimed, " . . . last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years." Little wonder, since under Obamanomics so many Americans have been forced to reduce consumption of prohibitively expensive oil and gasoline.

He acknowledged dissent concerning health care. But he did not mention specifically dissent from Catholics who, under Obamacare, will be forced to either pay directly for or fund through taxes contraception and abortion, both of which they consider immoral.

Want four more years of this insanity? Re-elect Obama.

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