Senator Obama, Presidential Candidate

Today I watched Senator Obama declare himself as a candidate for President of the United States, and I enjoyed listening to him, he is a very good speaker. He spoke at the old Statehouse in Springfield, Illinois where the greatest American President, Abraham Lincoln (Republican), once stood to deliver a speech warning of the perils of a divided nation. Senator Obama's talk was encouraging, hopeful, and engineered not to offend people like me. He spoke as a Washington outsider who wanted to inspire politicians and citizens to do better. He called for more government entitlements, like health care and higher education. He called for higher pay for teachers, stronger labor unions, and he wants to protect America in some way. Senator Obama says he has a plan to end the war in Iraq

For the democratic party faithful it must have been nearly an orgasmic experience, I think. One of the party faithful, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, was noticeably giddy and gushing afterwards. It was almost embarrassing. The din from the back-slapping was fierce, I tell you. It was so loud at one point that I could hardly hear my wife calling me for lunch (it was her turn, she doesn't actually live to serve me).

Senator Obama, you seem like a nice fellow, you really do. But think, man ... how are you going to live up to all those promises if you do become President. Well yeah, I know that your party will support you in raising taxes for every entitlement program that you can dream about. But I don't think that they will support any of your dreams to protect America, to hold teachers accountable, or to instill values and responsibility in our citizens. That's just not what the Democratic Party is about... never, ever... they just could never get that done.

So what would we be left with, after half of your dreams were implemented. We would be left with a health care system just as expensive (per patient) as the one we have now, except that it would be paid for by taxes, filtered inefficiently through some Government Bureaucracy. Rich lawyers (eternal supporters of the Democratic Party) would continue to sue doctors (and me) at an ever increasing rate and your party would do nothing regarding tort reform. Schools would get more money and students would continue to do badly, because the democratic party views accountability as some sort of intrusion on personal liberty or an affront to self-esteem or some other far-left, social no-no. Under your party, accountability is directed towards only a selected few (and never teachers, lawyers, democratic politicians, or select special groups of protected citizens/non-citizens).

So, Senator Obama, generally I like what you say and how you say it. I am sure that you know a lot more than I do about politics, but sir, in my opinion you haven't a snowball's chance at getting folks such as Waxman, Boxer, Pelosi, Kennedy, Murtha, Reid, Finegold, Schumer and the like at doing anything more than increasing entitlements, raising taxes, protecting special interests, cutting defence spending, and generally providing only lip service to protecting America. That's what they've always done and that's what they will always do. After all, that is how they got themselves elected.

After the Obama declaration, I drifted on over to CNN which wrapped up its coverage of the Senator's speech and then spent several minutes with Senator Hillary Clinton who was answering questions before a friendly crowd in New Hampshire. After two separate reporters massaged her campaign shamelessly for several minutes right there on the "news", the CNN newsreader commented for about 10 seconds on what the three Republican hopefuls were up to (Senator Brownbeck, Governor Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani). I suppose CNN included the Republicans briefly so that they can feel good about their unbiased journalism skills.