We've Come a Long Way From "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You"...........

The Presidents big Day. He turns it into another "panderfest".

I wish he would have at least had the good sense to say, at the end, "now, all of you out there that have jobs, don't give up, keep working, keep paying those taxes, because after all, somebody has to pay for all of this shit".

Sounded pretty good to me!!

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.

Bigger Government, more regulations, more debt, more spending..........nothing about making us more free...the speech was all about more government.

It was a terrific speech. Conservative columnist David Brooks called it the best inaugural speech in the last 50 years.

>>>>The best Inaugural Addresses make an argument for something. President Obama’s second one, which surely has to rank among the best of the past half-century, makes an argument for a pragmatic and patriotic progressivism.
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Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks

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His critics have sometimes accused him of being an outsider, but Obama wove his vision from deep strands in the nation’s past. He told an American story that began with the Declaration and then touched upon the railroad legislation, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the highway legislation, the Great Society, Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall.
Turning to the present, Obama argued that America has to change its approach if it wants to continue its progress. Modern problems like globalization, technological change, widening inequality and wage stagnation compel us to take new collective measures if we’re to pursue the old goals of equality and opportunity.
Obama wasn’t explicit about why we have failed to meet these challenges. But his critique was implicit. There has been too much “me” — too much individualism and narcissism, too much retreating into the private sphere. There hasn’t been enough “us,” not enough communal action for the common good.
The president then described some of the places where collective action is necessary: to address global warming, to fortify the middle class, to defend Medicare and Social Security, to guarantee equal pay for women and equal rights for gays and lesbians.
During his first term, Obama was inhibited by his desire to be postpartisan, by the need to not offend the Republicans with whom he was negotiating. Now he is liberated. Now he has picked a team and put his liberalism on full display. He argued for it in a way that was unapologetic. Those who agree, those who disagree and those of us who partly agree now have to raise our game. We have to engage his core narrative and his core arguments for a collective turn.
I am not a liberal like Obama, so I was struck by what he left out in his tour through American history. I, too, would celebrate Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, but I’d also mention Wall Street, State Street, Menlo Park and Silicon Valley. I’d emphasize that America has prospered because we have a decentralizing genius.
When Europeans nationalized their religions, we decentralized and produced a great flowering of entrepreneurial denominations. When Europe organized state universities, our diverse communities organized private universities. When Europeans invested in national welfare states, American localities invested in human capital.
America’s greatest innovations and commercial blessings were unforeseen by those at the national headquarters. They emerged, bottom up, from tinkerers and business outsiders who could never have attracted the attention of a president or some public-private investment commission.
I would have been more respectful of this decentralizing genius than Obama was, more nervous about dismissing it for the sake of collective action, more concerned that centralization will lead to stultification, as it has in every other historic instance.
I also think Obama misunderstands this moment. The Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw, underinstitutionalized and needed taming.
We are no longer that nation. We are now a mature nation with an aging population. Far from being underinstitutionalized, we are bogged down with a bloated political system, a tangled tax code, a byzantine legal code and a crushing debt.
The task of reinvigorating a mature nation is fundamentally different than the task of civilizing a young and boisterous one. It does require some collective action: investing in human capital. But, in other areas, it also involves stripping away — streamlining the special interest sinecures that have built up over the years and liberating private daring.
Reinvigorating a mature nation means using government to give people the tools to compete, but then opening up a wide field so they do so raucously and creatively. It means spending more here but deregulating more there. It means facing the fact that we do have to choose between the current benefits to seniors and investments in our future, and that to pretend we don’t face that choice, as Obama did, is effectively to sacrifice the future to the past.
Obama made his case beautifully. He came across as a prudent, nonpopulist progressive. But I’m not sure he rescrambled the debate. We still have one party that talks the language of government and one that talks the language of the market. We have no party that is comfortable with civil society, no party that understands the ways government and the market can both crush and nurture community, no party with new ideas about how these things might blend together.
But at least the debate is started. Maybe that new wind will come.

If you read past the Brooks headline; he isn't so flattering of the Obama speech...

"

I would have been more respectful of this decentralizing genius than Obama was, more nervous about dismissing it for the sake of collective action, more concerned that centralization will lead to stultification, as it has in every other historic instance.

I also think Obama misunderstands this moment. The Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw, under institutionalized and needed taming.

"

But a critque more to the point is the observations of Ben Shaprio over at Breitbart........

"Ben Shapiro called yesterday’s inaugural address ‘Orweillian’, saying that it’s clear Obama hates the Constitution. He cited examples where Obama said he wants to adapt our founding principles for our changing needs and that ‘our founding creed doesn't dictate that we agree on what liberty constitutes’. Shaprio sharply disagreed and argued that Obama wants to render our founding documents meaningless in the name of big government progressivism."

http://www.therightscoop.com/ben-sha...-constitution/

In summary Obama hates the founding principles and wants bigger government, more spending, less freedom for the individual.

"our founding creed doesn't dictate that we agree on what liberty constitutes."

Barack Hussein Obama

??????????????????

Sounds like a lawyer who is looking to turn the constitution inside out; and that can't be good for individual freedom and liberty.

"our founding creed doesn't dictate that we agree on what liberty constitutes."

Barack Hussein Obama

??????????????????

Sounds like a lawyer who is looking to turn the constitution inside out; and that can't be good for individual freedom and liberty. Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Only a numbnut like you, who wants to dictate "what liberty constitutes" (what you agree with) could say that is an incorrect statement.

If you read past the Brooks headline; he isn't so flattering of the Obama speech...

"

I would have been more respectful of this decentralizing genius than Obama was, more nervous about dismissing it for the sake of collective action, more concerned that centralization will lead to stultification, as it has in every other historic instance.

I also think Obama misunderstands this moment. The Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw, under institutionalized and needed taming.

" Originally Posted by Whirlaway

I read every word of it. He called it the best inaugural speech of the last half century. And the portions you quote seem only mildly critical of Obama to me. Maybe you're the one who didn't read it.

But a critque more to the point is the observations of Ben Shaprio over at Breitbart........

"Ben Shapiro called yesterday’s inaugural address ‘Orweillian’, saying that it’s clear Obama hates the Constitution. He cited examples where Obama said he wants to adapt our founding principles for our changing needs and that ‘our founding creed doesn't dictate that we agree on what liberty constitutes’. Shaprio sharply disagreed and argued that Obama wants to render our founding documents meaningless in the name of big government progressivism."

http://www.therightscoop.com/ben-sha...-constitution/ Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Anyone who takes bretfasrt over David Brooks is wanting dioshit of the month award.

I see you don't refute that the speech was about more government, more spending, more debt, less freedom, less liberty.......

I am tired of all the BS he keeps shoveling so that he looks rational. I want him to start backing up what he says with action. Such as balanced approach to fixing the deficit or open government with cameras.

I am tired of all the BS he keeps shoveling so that he looks rational. I want him to start backing up what he says with action. Such as balanced approach to fixing the deficit or open government with cameras. Originally Posted by Laz

Laz, The President has no balanced approach to fixing anything, because in order to make things work, he has to abandon the very people who put him in office.

President Obama is no fool, he knows that the very people that he lambasted during tha campain are the very people who really make this Country work.

He does not want to be the next Jimmy Carter. He would much rather be a Democrat Ronald Reagan. In order to be that, sooner or later he will have to abandon all of the political tripe that, while is good for winning elections, is disastrous when actually trying to govern.

But a critque more to the point is the observations of Ben Shaprio over at Breitbart........

"Ben Shapiro called yesterday’s inaugural address ‘Orweillian’, saying that it’s clear Obama hates the Constitution. He cited examples where Obama said he wants to adapt our founding principles for our changing needs and that ‘our founding creed doesn't dictate that we agree on what liberty constitutes’. Shaprio sharply disagreed and argued that Obama wants to render our founding documents meaningless in the name of big government progressivism."

http://www.therightscoop.com/ben-sha...-constitution/ Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Y'all need to get used to the idea -- we won, y'all lost. If Obama will grow a pair -- which I sincerely doubt -- he can spend the next four years beating the Republicans like rented mules. They will instinctively flee to the right further alienating themselves from the public. I doubt he has the spine to do it, but his speech suggest he at least understands the concept.