The Obama Legacy: How you like me now?

The reality gets stuck in your throat. The music helps it go down.

"I've gotta say, I'm very amused."

Ouch.

TIME: O's the New FDR! I mean Reagan!

TIME magazine doesn't believe you can't read. They believe you can't think.



NOVEMBER 2008:
Obama won! Everyone's now a liberal. Big government rocks. Our boy Obama is the new FDR!

FEBRUARY 2011:
Crap. Everyone hates big government. Obama got pounced in the recent election. Obama is the new Reagan!

For the liberals at TIME, Obama must succeed. The media has staked everything on this nuance kid from no where who accomplished nothing. They hold the controlling interest in his stock. He is the image. And that image can and must be tweaked, depending on how the wind blows. He's like a bendy straw. So if publicly bending over one ideology doesn't work, he'll publicly twist back the other way.

But he's still the same liberal. Still believes people are incapable of running their own lives. Still believes in a government control that far exceeds, and actually reverses, our own Constitution. Still hates a Republic democracy, capitalism, and the right of every human to live and die by our own moral stamina.

They can twist him in whatever direction they choose, but he is still the same. And Americans don't want his ideas.

So maybe he's more like a stir stick.

SOTU Address: Fact or Fiction?

As a writer, words mean something to me. They have a purpose, a target, a specific reason for being spoken. Spoken words always say something, either the truth or a lie. It has to be one or the other.

With Obama, I really lost interest in his speeches during the campaign trail. He used words like special effects - heighten emotion here, create sense of well-being there, paint the sky red and roll back the sea, all while the sky remains blue and the sea remains constant.

He wasn't speaking truth. He was the Wizard behind the curtain, except in his case it was a podium, pulling levers and creating awe and distraction. Don't focus on his voting record, focus on his words. Don't focus on his experience, focus on his words. Don't focus on what he's really saying, focus on how his words make you feel.

Many called that being a great orator. I called it sporadic tinnitus. All I could hear was this flat ringing in my ears.

So listening to his State of the Union Address wasn't on my agenda last night. I have a life to live and not enough time in it to waste on white noise.

The day after with the polls and the fact-checks, however, is always interesting. If you want truth, the AP actually took a stab at it by listing the creative math and memory behind Obama's speech last night. Here's an example:

OBAMA: Vowed to veto any bills sent to him that include "earmarks," pet spending provisions pushed by individual lawmakers. "Both parties in Congress should know this: If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it."

THE FACTS: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has promised that no bill with earmarks will be sent to Obama in the first place. Republicans have taken the lead in battling earmarks while Obama signed plenty of earmark-laden spending bills when Democrats controlled both houses. As recently as last month, Obama was prepared to sign a catchall spending measure stuffed with earmarks, before it collapsed in the Senate after an outcry from conservatives over the bill's $8 billion-plus in home-state pet projects.

It's a turnabout for the president; in early 2009, Obama sounded like an apologist for the practice: "Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts, and that's why I've opposed their outright elimination," he said then.

And if you want fun, brief highlights of the "most" moments - including most honest and most tired - check out Kevin McCollough's article at FoxNews.

His most ridiculous: "This is our generation’s Sputnik moment."

This analogy was bad from the start. "Sputnik" was the failed first effort of the Soviets. Americans should not, and will not want a 'Sputnik moment'."

I'm not sure whose living in a dream world - Obama or his speech writers or both since he hired them and approves of what they say. Either way, I had an excellent evening last night, good company, great conversation, creamy mashed potatoes and flawless digestion.

Verbal gobbledygook wasn't on the menu.

Quote Them: Obama is short on cash, too

"(Michelle and I are) not that far removed from what most Americans are going through. It was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there."

President Obama,
who could only spend $70,000 on date night last year instead of the $75,000 planned

PS Of course, that doesn't include the "private, mother-daughter trip" to Spain next week for Michelle and Sasha where 30 rooms have been reserved in a five-star hotel in Benhavis near Marbella for their getaway. Or the 10 vacation days for the entire family at an "upscale northeastern resort island of Martha's Vineyard."

The Obamas really do get it. Just last week, my mom wanted to come visit me but couldn't afford the $10 lunch eating out. So we had to cancel our private, mother-daughter trip to Qdoba.

Good to know we have a President who understands the financial plight he's putting us all in.

the Word: will the real Hope please stand up

Not today.
I'm not going to say anything.
I'm letting the celebrities and pundits and talking heads slobber over every inch of this Inauguration day.

There are days to speak. Days to listen. Then, there are days to observe, quietly and with God as your only company. And...maybe a glass of wine. Or two.

Today there is hope. There truly is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Washington D.C. or Oprah or a man some want to crown King.
But hope, real hope, is alive.
It was yesterday, the day before, eight years before, thousands of years earlier, and every moment from then until the end. Hope came with one man, who will never die. And there is where hope resides.

So tomorrow, definitely tomorrow, my comments and sarcasm and observations will return. But today, I think you need something more.

A friend sent me this:


Psalm 37


9 Before long the crooks will be bankrupt;God-investors will soon own the store.

11 Down-to-earth people will move in and take over,relishing a huge bonanza.

13 But God isn't losing any sleep; to him they're a joke with no punch line.

18 God keeps track of the decent folk;what they do won't soon be forgotten.

19 In hard times, they'll hold their heads high;when the shelves are bare, they'll be full.

21 Wicked borrows and never returns;Righteous gives and gives.
28 God loves this kind of thing,never turns away from his friends.
Live this way and you've got it made,
but bad eggs will be tossed out.

35 I saw Wicked bloated like a toad,croaking pretentious nonsense.

36 The next time I looked there was nothing—a punctured bladder, vapid and limp.

37 Keep your eye on the healthy soul,scrutinize the straight life;
There's a future
in strenuous wholeness.

40 God-strengthened, we're delivered from evil—when we run to him, he saves us.

Case of the Mondays

Today is my birthday.
Uh huh. Yeah and all that.

Anyway, I'm a firm believer in taking every day off possible. So I'm gone today, planning on spending the entire day with family and being extravagant, which means window shopping with no credit limit.

However, since I've officially ended my blogging vacation, I couldn't leave you without at least one Monday laugh from my favorite political cartoonist, Gary Varvel.

See you tomorrow!