Obama's State of Anti-Americanism

President Barack Obama strutted in front of Congress and the nation last night to give his State of the Union address. This time his undeniable oratorical skills simply could not save him from the facts that have become clear in his first full year in office. Facts that now have his speeches sounding more and more like skips on a broken record.

Let's start by taking a look at what his programs have actually done over the past year, and see what he said last night. Directly because of the programs and initiatives launched by the Obama administration, our unemployment rate has soared past the 10% mark for the first time in decades and our national debt has been set on course to triple over the next decade.

But what is Obama suggesting that we do as we move into his vision of the future? Spend more, go further into debt, reward cronyism and failed industries. Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress wish to throw massive amounts of good money after excessive and irresponsible amounts of bad.

The President proposed in his speech last night to "take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat." 

So we taxpayers, who did not want to do it in the first place, loaned money to banks. It was repaid, but now we lend that same money back out to banks? So what exactly is going to have been "repaid"?

Why again did I lend money to banks in the first place? Do you know why? To save the financial system from collapse? Really?

Why do we taxpayers need to prop up any business that cannot succeed on the strength of it's own hard work, value, worth, and entrepreneurial skills? Businesses large and small have gone under for centuries. Why do we have to save some now with taxpayer dollars?

Greed is Not Good

"...Greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA." - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street"

The Catholic Church divided sin into two classes - venial sins, which were relatively minor, and the more serious cardinal sins, which became known classically as the 'seven deadly sins'. These were said to "destroy the life of grace" and brought the threat of eternal damnation on those who practiced them, unless absolved through a formal confession or forgiven through an act of perfect contrition by the offender.

One of these was the sin of 'Greed', which is seen as a sin of excess, and is applied in particular to the acquisition of wealth. It is closely aligned to avarice, which can manifest itself in bribery, robbery or theft by means of violence, trickery, betrayal, and even treason. It also covers the scavenging and hoarding of materials, as well as manipulation or abuse of authority.

In the film 'Wall Street', Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko delivered the above now-famous speech at a shareholder's meeting. Gekko was trying to woo shareholders to accept a bid that his company was making to takeover the Teldar Paper company.

Gekko's sales pitch highlighted that the current Teldar management was bloated, wasteful, and borderline incompetent. Either that, or they were intentionally abusing their positions to ensure their own personal gain, and those shareholders be damned.