Are You Down for the Struggle?

The president gave his 3rd State of the Union address on Tuesday with predictable results. His supporters loved it and his detractors hated it. I am annoyed and frustrated with all of it! Let me preface this diatribe with admitting that I did not watch the speech when it happened. I was at a meeting and caught the last 10 minutes on the radio. I did watch it later on a replay with my bucket at the ready in case of nausea. The main theme was easy to discern : "I want to be re-elected next year and I want to make you feel good about making the same mistake twice." The speech was optimistic and gave lip service to the deficit but the theme remained the same. This was countered by Paul Ryan, one of the few adults in the picture, with that sexy message telling us we can't afford all this spending and we need to get our government under control. Which message does our credit-addicted society want to believe?

I am not going to waste much of your time telling you the truth because everyone really knows it already. Major changes in the way our government operates have to happen if we are to survive as a strong, independent nation. (see Greece, Ireland, Spain). Sacrifices have to be made by everyone to correct the mistakes of the past. Remember that word : everyone! Entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cannot be "off limits". They need to be scaled back tremendously to serve as the safety nets they were supposed to be.

The big question is whether our citizens (and illegals that we don't seem to want to send home) are down for the sacrifice? Sure it's great to punish those evil rich people and corporations but when it comes to someone in his 89th week of unemployment benefits sitting on his butt not trying to get a job is it so great? Or the retired person with a six-figure retirement income sucking the last nickel from his government benefits because he is "entitled" to it? They should both ask themselves what their grandparents would think of this behavior. I can remember when a man would do anything to avoid being on the government dole! Now the government not only encourages it but seeks to mandate it. We are the only ones that can change this and the first shot was fired last November. Only time will tell if this was the start of a revolution or just a temper tantrum. The fight is not over!