Obama Jobs Speech

It’s 4:30am.  Last night I had some wine and was in bed by 9:30pm.  Whenever I drink wine at night it makes me wake up extremely early.  Must be the sugar. 

Since I cannot sleep any longer I decided to fire up the computer and maybe do a few battlegrounds in World of Warcraft.  Yes, I started playing again hence the lack of posts on this blog from me.  I take a quick look at my Google news reader in the sidebar and see the article “The irrelevancy of the Obama presidency” by The Washington Post. 

At first I just filed this under more Obama hatred from the Right.  But for whatever reason I decided to click on it before I clicked on the World of Warcraft Launcher.  The article starts by stating which Republicans laughed at the President during his speech.  

1.) “You should pass this jobs plan right away!” Obama exhorted. Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled.

2.) “Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix,” Obama went on. Widespread laughter broke out on the GOP side of the aisle.

3.) “This isn’t political grandstanding,” Obama said. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) guffawed.

4.) “This isn’t class warfare,” Obama said. More hysterics on the right.

5.) “We’ve identified over 500 [regulatory] reforms which will save billions of dollars,” the president claimed. Majority leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) giggled.

What occurred to me while reading this is how adolescent the US political scene has become.  

Now, most pundits will either attack the President in a mocking way or attack the Right for behaving like incorrigible teenagers.  However, I believe that both sides are missing the point.  That point being, our political system no longer functions as it should and for my part has lost all respect.  

Politicians are those that the people entrust to find solutions to problems.  I believe most people expect them to be a serious bunch who should not only BE leaders but act like leaders as well.  These are people that set policy for the entire nation!  For me, it doesn’t matter if the President is Republican or Democrat, I would expect both sides of the isle to at least afford the Office of the President of the United States the respect it deserves even if they completely disagree with what is being said.  

Perhaps I expect things to return to the way they used to be in my short 34 years of existence.  When the political leaders gather, especially in difficult times, there should be a high level of decorum and propriety. 

What happened last night was much more like a high school classroom where unruly students simply laugh at proposed solutions because they are too juvenile and immature to participate seriously in anything.  The best way for them to show their indignation is to laugh because they really have no fix, no way to resolve the problem.  Instead of responding in an appropriate fashion and challenging in a thoughtful way, they simply disrespect the teacher.  

Republican leaders, having forced Obama to postpone the speech because of the GOP debate, decided they wouldn’t dignify the event by offering a formal, televised “response.” 

This does two things.  The first is to show the rest of their classmates how they hold the teacher in such low regard.  The second is to show their classmates how little they care for the classroom in general.  

And what happens to such students?  Well, in the past they used to get sent to the Dean of Students for a good beating.  These days they are allowed to run rampant like feral dogs which is proven by many public school systems in their rankings compared to other nations.  

Now, this nonsense has spread to the political scene.  

The message last night was about jobs.  Now, you do not have to agree one iota with what the President was saying if you choose.  But the truth of the matter is the President was elected to lead and in terrible economic times like this the President is required to do something or at least being perceived as doing something.  Sure, many of us probably believe at this point there is not much he can really do.  But being the leader of the nation, every leader must try to find a fix when times are bad.  

Again, most Republicans will vehemently disagree with what was said.  But what was their solution when this crisis began?  If you’ve forgotten let me remind you.  

“Here is 100 dollars.  Things are fine.  Go shopping.” – President Bush

If I were to lower my response to the GOP to their juvenile level, I would point out they are not entitled to laugh when their response to the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression was to go shopping.  That gives you no street cred what so ever.  You can only laugh if you find yourselves too cool to even care about the institution at all.  In fact, it would be even cooler if you didn’t even show up at all and simply hung out on the corner and smoked cigarettes.   

In fact, that is almost exactly happened.

Almost all Republicans ignored the call of some within their ranks to boycott the speech.

Seems like a missed opportunity to me.  That would have definitely shown the nation just how little you care for the welfare of the nation.  It’s like the kid that wants to be bad, but doesn’t have the balls to play hooky because mommy would be called.  

Now, I don’t want this to be a Democrat vs. Republican thing.  As I mentioned that is not the point.  The point, like my example of misbehaving students is that the respect for The Office of President should be maintained at all costs, Republican or Democrat it does not matter.  The Office of President is the face of the USA, like the man personally or not.  By laughing at it they laugh at the USA and weaken the nation.  It just so happens that it is the Republican side this time who is behaving like idiots and should be expelled.