Part One

I had put this post on hold, being unsure that anyone would be interested in anything I had to say, but after the response to the last post, I'm dragging it out and posting it. A good bit of what I have to say has already been said by a number of people in a number of other places, but that's my fault for sitting on the post rather than writing and publishing as soon as the address was made. Enough stalling. I give you: my response to President Obama.

Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States:

I’ve come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.

Let's be easy on that use of "distinguished" there. If you mean gray hairs and scandals involving sex, then go right ahead and use that word. If you mean made conspicuous by excellence, then go back to your thesaurus.

What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.

Mr. President, have you actually met the American people? I'm not talking about the plastic, plastered-smile asskissers that attend your fundraisers in an attempt to see and be seen, I mean the American people. The people who, at this moment, are farting into a knock-off Barcalounger, stuffing their faces with greasy fast food offerings, swilling it down with cheap beer and laughing their fat, lard filled asses off at a guy getting kicked in the nuts on MTV.

These people are not watching your speech, these people are grousing that you have interrupted their night of reality programming. They are frighteningly the majority it seems. The only time these people pull together is when you put them all on the same truck at the tractor pull. The only confrontation you'll get from them is when you challenge them to leash their dogs or move their truck. Responsibility? Unknown concept. Personal responsibility? Most of these people can't handle personal hygiene! Don't think they're going away. Don't be fooled into the notion that the more intelligent will prevail, because these dumbasses are out-breeding the intelligent population at a rate that would make rabbits swoon.

Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities – as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.

Nice way to ay-lay lame-bay while they're not ooking-lay. Seriously? The few people who are watching this are completely aware of what you just did there. Score one for insulting my intelligence.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Congratulations, you just described the American Way. We are a land of people who do what's easy and fast. If you don't believe me, try this. Take a mental drive from your current location to the nearest public library. How many locations of McDonald's, Burger King, and Starbucks did you pass on that little tour? How many drive-thrus of other services?

And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.

That's right, rule three of speech writing: if you feel you may lose the crowd, paraphrase Stan Lee.

And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.

Because if it's on the internet, IT MUST BE TRUE!!

Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values – Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2000 per year on their mortgage.

Whee! Refinance! You'll save money that way! At least, you will if you can afford to cough up the $6000 - $10,000 USD that will be required for a new appraisal, bank fees and other assorted costs involved in securing a new loan. So... is the Federal government providing the funds for that? I seriously doubt it. Banks don't want to help anyone who pays their bills on time. They don't make the extra money from late fees and penalties that way. If you pay on time, you're a deadbeat as far as the bank is concerned.

This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.

Yeah, call me when the First Lady decides to forgo redecorating the living quarters of the White House and when you no longer jet off to Chicago on Air Force One.

But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment.

So is that why you singled out CEOs just moments earlier? Or is that why you're standing over the bank bailout money shaking your finger? You keep saying that it's about helping people. Which people? The people who didn't take enough personal responsibility to walk away from a loan they couldn't afford when times where good, much less when things got tough? I'm sure there are people out there who have been fiscally responsible and are still honestly struggling through no fault of there own, but the people I'm actually seeing are the ones who defaulted on their mortgages in Le Triomphe because they just had to have that new home in that fabulous see and be seen community, River Ranch.

Seriously, if you live in this area, take the time to go look up the records on Le Triomphe and River Ranch. A large number of the people you have entrusted with your money, either through election or through hiring them for highly professional services, bought homes they couldn't afford with money they didn't have and couldn't afford to pay back simply because their old half million dollar estate in Le Triomphe was not as "now" as the half million dollar properties in River Ranch. If you don't live here, look around your own municipality, I'm willing to bet it happened there too.

That is our responsibility.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.

From Wikipedia: "Every Southern state subsidized railroads, which modernizers felt could haul the South out of isolation and poverty. Millions of dollars in bonds and subsidies were fraudulently pocketed. One ring in North Carolina spent $200,000 in bribing the legislature and obtained millions in state money for its railroads. Instead of building new track, however, it used the funds to speculate in bonds, reward friends with extravagant fees, and enjoy lavish trips to Europe."

From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age.

Other than the public outcry over child labor that removed children from the factory and placed them into the classroom, I do not see the parallel here. Is this one of those "yoga" examples? It seems a little stretched.

In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it was all of the post-war fucking that created the largest middle-class in history. Soldiers coming home from wet, sloppy, cold holes they had to share with other men to warm, wet, willing holes they could have to themselves. Not to mention the fact that your average GI returning from WWII had nothing to spend his paycheck on the entire time he was deployed, which provided a strong financial base to start a life from and that any business in town was more than happy to hire a fine, respectable, hard-working soldier.

And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

While I'm not sure where he's pulling "twilight" from other than to pick up on a choice, hot word floating around in the popular culture right now, I have to give him this one. Fear of getting our asses nuked built escape routes and fear that those damn Commies would out-do us put American men on the moon. However, he did leave out Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry is responsible for more of the technology floating around our world than anything NASA ever produced. Your cell phone? Thank Roddenberry. Touch screen kiosk? Thank Roddenberry.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

Oh boy, where do I begin?

Let's start with 1992. In 1992, my mother brought home a brand new, clean, shiny Honda Civic VX. Oh, you've never heard of the VX? I'm surprised. You see, in 1992 this vehicle clocked 40mpg in the city and 70mpg on the highway. What happened to the VX model? We don't know. They were pulled off the market and never seen again. We would not see another 40mpg vehicle until nine years later, with the release of the Toyota Prius in 2001.

Next we have 1996 when General Motors leased the EV1 to a number of individuals in Arizona and California. The leasees loved these vehicles and begged GM to reconsider the "no purchase" clause of the lease. GM refused and pulled the all electric vehicle, citing that it could not sell enough to be profitable. Wall Street deemed the pursuit a failure and the rest of the industry turned their back on the production of electric vehicles. These days, GM is looking at financial failure and pinning all of their hopes on the EV1's successor, the Chevy Volt. Let's see how GM and the President feel when the public becomes aware of "Who Killed the Electric Car?".

Digest what I've given you so far while I clean up the next portion: Health Care reform. Goodnight.