0127-How Barack Obama Became a Republican

Obama: "I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more." 


This was U.S. President Barack Obama during his annual State of the Union address to Congress on January 25, 2012. The rest of the world, including the American public were also invited to tune in but let's just say a lot of them chose not to and got the gist of the address from news outlets the next day.  But let's examine Obama's profound statement drawing a comparison between himself and Abraham Lincoln. The government should only do for us what we cannot do better ourselves. The implication in this statement is that Republicans supposedly believe we should have less government. If they really believed that why don't they start in their own House - and Senate - and start making some cuts there?  And, let's consider a few things we might do better than government. How about running the government for one?  A few years back a gentleman had an idea to include the American people directly in government by allowing everyday citizens to directly participate in government decisions in Congress. He called the idea House of America but for unknown reasons it has not germinated. Oh wait, the reasons are not exactly unknown. That private club called House and Senate would not fare well with the American public having direct input in the running of government. We are still clawing out of the most profound recession in world history, finally, and these guys know what they are doing? 


One thing the American people would demand of government, should we be allowed something other than a lost vote in a plastic booth that doesn't even have full length curtains, is to turn on it's belly the process of product availability in this country. Most people are resigned to it but stop for a few seconds and consider the implications, the results of having almost everything we buy come from another country. How can a country keep it's people employed if most of its' products are made overseas?  Government can blame private industry but government needs to blame itself, and get off it's butt and regulate something that needs to be regulated instead of what we can watch on television and the internet. 


Republicans do not want less government they want less taxes and less accountability. At the same time Republicans do not want major private industry to pay any more than necessary for the privilege of making billions of dollars off the American consumer. 


Obama is worried about the diminishing middle class. Everyone should be worried about the big divide - the push of a more wealthier class to the top and a shove of the middle class to a lower station. This option was able to be exercised with the onset of the great red and blue states debacle when John Kerry was running for President. We begin to see signs of the new political lexicon with the still popular "Con versus Lib" debate. The ability to drive a wedge between two major political sectors in the American public was ingenious for creating the environment necessary to drive the economical shovel in deeper. The American people - most of them it seems - bought it. Earlier this week a dead cat was found in Arkansas with the word "Liberal" spray painted on it. The owner of the cat was a Democratic campaign manager. It is an example of the hatred politics can breed, and how individual citizens can be prone to blame an entire political party for their own individual woes.