by Jesus Alaniz
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia skipped his 19th address deeming State of the Union Addresses as a “childish spectacle”. Justice Clarence Thomas has judged them to be partisan and has not attended one since 2012 while Chief Justice John Roberts has judged them to be a “political pep rally”. I believe the best analogy of the state of the union address is found in Aristotle’s words “The three aims of the tyrant are, one, the humiliation of his subjects…two, the creation of mistrust among them…three, the tyrant desires that all his subjects shall be incapable of action.”
In November 2010 Obama stated, “I won. Get over it.” In this state of the union address he touted his so called success by proclaiming “The shadow of crisis has passed…I have no more campaigns to run” followed by an off-script remark in which he said “I know because I won both of them.” Montesquieu wrote of such arrogance “Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!”
It’s typical of Washington to create a problem and then seek praise from the public after they create another problem to solve the first problem they created in the first place. A colleague of mine expressed it to me this way “The federal government, which has “Tomahawk” cruise missiles and “Apache,” “Blackhawk,” ‘Kiowa” and “Lakota’ helicopters – and used the code name “Geronimo” in the attack that killed Osama bin Laden, officially objects to the name of the Washington Redskins.” It was Obama who cancelled the tax holiday which increased people’s payroll to avoid a “fiscal cliff” and leave it to Obama to propose tax cuts for working families to cover the costs of Obamacare and the fiscal cliff tax he caused. As for raising the minimum wage, why didn’t Obama raise it when he had the majority in the house & senate? One moment he tells Americans that they are better off with him the next moment he attempts to diminish Americans into believing they are suffering and need him. The former slave, Booker T. Washington wrote “I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.” I don’t believe Obama wants the patient to get well and wants him dependent on government.
On point three Obama promised to make congress inactive by threatening to veto any bill that defunds the burdens of Obamacare, creates an oil pipeline, overrides his unconstitutional amnesty executive order or tightens sanctions on Valerie Jarad’s ancestral country of Iran. Obama had an opportunity to address the working class tax issues but chose himself instead. If Obama’s goal was to mislead the public, inflate his successes & ego to equivocate himself to other politicians, I’ll give him credit and say he succeeded.
