Yeah, yeah, I'm late to the table, but gimme a break! Here in New Yorkistan we're buried under 40" of snow, and news travels slow in these parts. Here was what I heard:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, The President of the United States:
Blah, blah blah, blah, spend more money we don't have and have to print, invent or borrow from the Chinese, blah, blah, blah, blah."
Nowadays, "Investment" is a euphemism for what used to be called"Stimulus", which is another word for "pay off my political allies with phony money we have to print, invent or borrow from the Chinese, and which, ultimately, is wasted, having had no economic effect whatsoever...except to deepen the ocean of national red ink.
Obambi's repeated mantra of "Education, Education, Education!" was sorta-kinda nice, except for three things:
1. The Schools don't educate anyone, anymore. They're government-funded baby-sitting services, where the day is whiled away in self-esteem building exercises with healthy lunches, and Unionized "Teachers" are like Soviet Factory workers who go through the motions but have no enthusiasm, no clue, and no care about the quality of their work. Like the doofus who put together tractors at the state-run factory, they simply do enough to qualify for their government-supplied apartment, and the right to stand for three hours in the toilet paper line.
Who cares if the kids are actually learning anything, when you work in a job that it's almost impossible to get fired from for simple incompetence, and where you are earning far more than you're worth, considering that you probably finished somewhere in the bottom 20% of your own graduating class, and changed majors twice before finally settling for a government job?
If you want to educate people, Mr. President, you get them out of the Public Schools. The idea that more funding will improve the Public Schools, practically liberal dogma, is known to simply be a false one. The call for more"Education" is simply Barack Obama laying the first minefield with which to defend his liberal stronghold, come the first budget battles; republicans will, as usual, be tarred with the charge that they want your children to remain ignorant, and sit in their own stupor in a filthy, understaffed, dilapidated school building.
2. The economic troubles we face today have little to do with education. In fact, there are probably too many people walking around with a college degree, most of whom had no business getting one in the first place, but hell, they managed to scrape up the funding and then faithfully parrot Professor Douchebag, so why not give them the piece of paper?
Our current crisis is one caused by the collusion of government and business. Reduce the size of government, then redirect it's efforts into what it should be doing (like enforcing the law and leaving markets alone), and much of the problem is solved. You will never solve the second half of the problem, the complete lack of ethics in today's business community, until someone gets around to punishing the wrongdoers instead of taking their campaign contributions.
True, economic growth is dependant upon a stream of intelligent entrepreneurs and skilled workers, but the colleges are throwing out very few of either. People who major in African-American or Gender Studies, Education, Psychology or Marketing are not exactly the sort of people you need for economic prosperity: you need doers, not parasites. You need workers, not Liberal Arts majors. If Obambi was serious about Education-as-Economic-Engine, he would have suggested that, perhaps, some of this education money we're already spending be geared towards trade and vocational schools, rather than colleges. Those people would emerge from school with actual, useful skills, and a ready pool of skilled labor might prod some folks with money to bring back a few industrial jobs to take advantage of it.
We need that, more industry, more than we need an indoctrination disguised as an education.
3. Education is probably the first thing that should be cut. We spend more money on that than just about anything that isn't an entitlement or have to do with the Pentagon, and the failure of that spend-more-get-better mindset is abject. Time for a new plan, but I wouldn't depend on Obama or the democrats in the Senate to formulate it; unless they're about to lose their seat, or have a gun to their heads (Violent Rhetoric Alert!) they'll not change a damned thing. They are incapable of doing so; it would mean the end of their rice bowls.
The Sputnik Analogy: Seriously? That's the best you could do? Why is it that conservatives (small 'c' intentional) are always accused of wanting the bring back the 1950's, and excoriated for it, but this dickhead can get away with a Sputnik reference? What's next, the Cuban Missile Crisis as call to action? I can't wait for the day when "Remember Tet!" becomes the basis of national policy.
No Cuts, but Lots of Freezing: how stupid do you think people (other than the ones who voted for you) are? I know, you have to save ObamaCare; it's your single "accomplishment". Without it, your only accomplishment will be "made Jimmy Carter look like Pericles". Spending"freezes" don't work, only real cuts do. Unfortunately for you, Mr. President, the most obvious thing to cut is Part I of the Reparations Plan, the Great Band-Aids and Eyedrops for Everyone Scam.
More Green Energy Bullshit: Ummm, I don't know if you've noticed, but we're buried in snow up here these days. What happened to all that Global Warming bullshit? Green Energy is (mostly) a boondoggle, a very expensive one, and it will not spur the sort of economic expansion you think it will for a very simple reason: until we find an alternative to fossil fuels that provides an equivalent amount of energy, at an affordable price, that is is easy to transport/distribute and doesn't require a super-massive infrastructure project to bring to market, we're not going to "Go Green".
Actually, if you wanted to promote Green Energy, you should be pushing for more nuclear power plants, which is the cleanest form of power known to man. Oh right, environmentalists hate splitting atoms, too, which makes them either stupid, liars or both.
This Whole "Sitting Together" Nonsense: excuse me, but I didn't vote for bi-partisanship. In fact, I, and many like me, voted for the most extreme partisanship imaginable, within certain limits, this past November.
I don't want to see Nancy Pelosi (D) sitting with Congressman Schmo (R), I want to see Congressman Schmo helping Nancy to the door, and then down the Capitol steps, hailing her a cab, and then telling the driver to find the nearest convenient bridge to plunge off of.
The word "Bi-Partisan" is, in fact, two lies for the price of one. When a R calls for bi-partisanship, he's asking dems to support something he otherwise cannot justify. When a D asks for it, it's either a plea for mercy, or a tactical retreat. Very often, when both use it, it simply means "gimme cover on this piece of shit I've crafted that rewards my cronies but hoses the public -- but gives you something, too. When a D asks for it, it's nothing if not about getting what they want, no matter what, no matter how stupid or destructive.
I don't want democrats and republicans working together, because for the most part, that is when the worst sorts of abuses occur. "Compromise" takes place where it shouldn't, and Senator R gets his cuts, but only because Senator D managed to keep that Abortion Funding. Many of the issues we're dealing with no don't lend themselves to the idea of compromise. These questions are more along the lines of "Would you rather pass a bowling ball, or have an umbrella opened inside your anus? Would you prefer to screw your mother, or perform fellatio upon your father?"
The questions are clearly unpleasant, and the solutions will be, as well. The choice is between national bankruptcy and the inevitable Zimbabwe death-spiral that comes with it, or a chance to change things for the better. This requires that certain principles never be compromised. The second we start talking"non-partisan" those graven-in-stone principles can be envisioned as circling the bowl.
Obama gives us a steady diet of more-of-the-same, only the semantics and packaging have changed (see? I told you marketing majors were useless!) . It's almost as if he lives in some strange, alien cocoon that blinds him to the reality that everyone else seems to grapple with, that makes facts easy to ignore or gloss over. This man's term of office cannot end soon enough.
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