State of the abyss

We are living in times of delusional grandeur. America should be thankful the State of the Union speech comes but once per year; otherwise having to watch pouting, surly-faced politicians on prime time television might result in a spiked increase in TV casualties.

President Barack Obama, after having spent the previous year reaching across party lines to pacify the world’s finest pouters, spent just over an hour during his SOTU address making sure Nancy Pelosi had her cheerleader act down pat. Such is the world of ethical responsibility.

Great quotes

The first standing ovation came less than four minutes into the Obama speech. One would have thought he had delivered a slam dunk or a home run. Excuse me, but we’re talking wiffle ball here. Destined to go down as one of his more forgettable speeches, he did however deliver several great quotes. “One year later the worst of the storm has passed.” Check it out. He followed that lie with this truth: “...change has not come fast enough.” Back and forth he whiffed.

Although we all wait impatiently for heads to roll in the fat cat game of investment bonuses, Obama delivered another great one when he stated that “We all hated the bank bailout.” Well, yes, we did. He then immediately went into another lie when he stated that last year “...millions of Americans had more to spend...” He still has not acknowledged that many of the millions of Americans that he thinks had more to spend are actually living in a nightmare world. Foreclosed upon, unemployed, living in cars, all while the bankers club gets fatter.

During the course of Barackstar’s first year in office he spent a disproportionate amount of time ignoring the working class while focusing on health insurance reform. That blinding effort to pay back healthcare support (i.e. campaign donors) fell flat on its face with the stunning upset in the recent Massachusetts election. Many saw this failure of leadership months ago, if not during the political campaign then immediately after Dick Cheney went on TV to inform his new president who was still calling the shots. Thus the failure of Barackstar to deliver, to date, on anything of note.

During his speech, in yet his latest effort to reach across party lines, he groveled with his political opposition, begging and pleading for one last chance at a healthcare solution. “Don’t walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close.” Someone pass the hanky. Such quiet whimpering coming from a chosen one seems abysmal. Now that affordable health care for all is still not an option, Obama has decided to refocus his energies where they should have been all along: on the struggling American people. There is nothing quite like arriving at the party fashionably late.

By now everyone is in agreement that the one shining moment of the speech is when Barackstar took on the Supreme Court and its recent ruling in the Citizens United case. So harsh were his words that Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing the words “Not true” on prime time TV. There is little doubt that, had the President continued with his newfound enthusiasm for hope and change, Alito would have been reaching for that hanky. At the very least, wiping his sniveling nose on his robe sleeve.

Still, rumor has it that next year’s corporate-chosen politicians will be wearing spandex suits with their respective corporate sponsor(s) logos blazing across their backs, helping give them some semblance of spine support.

Is Obama really so inept or is he being deliberate? Is there a bigger picture here that no one, absolutely no one, is seeing? Think back for a moment to those glorious gold rush days. America was living in heady and crazy times. Many people, after spending countless hours panning that wild mountain stream, headed for town to cash in those small bags of gold. Party time was on the horizon. Everyone starry-eyed, full of hope at the change getting ready to transform the country. Instead, a year later, the proprietor proves to us all that those bags are full of nothing more than fools’ gold, and they will, in fact, shortly be turning into tea bags.

In denial, many of the gold rush fools are just beginning to accept the humiliation and utter disappointment of reality. As the world’s finest enslaved lives begin coping with that reality, Barackstar sticks the knife in a bit deeper by letting us know that the three year spending freeze does not apply to the world’s largest military industrial complex’s budget. Forward march, gung ho, here we come.

For those with a visual awareness, an enhanced viewpoint, it seems the inevitable dead end that Bushjunior led us toward is now fast approaching.