MaxRedline: "My Message Is Simple"

This is one of the rare occasions when Obama speaks with complete honesty: not one of his alleged "State of the Union" speeches has achived above an eighth-grade level of language skill, and while the Left routinely portrayed George W. Bush as intellectually impaired, all of his State of the Union speeches exceeded Obama's in this regard.

Indeed, Obama's message was not only simple, but blunt: he don't need no steekin' Constitution. It doesn't get much simpler than that. And he hit all the right notes: class warfare, his commitment to raising taxes, increasing regulation and income redistribution.

As Senator Marco Rubio noted: the tax issue was an important one, because, “I have never seen a President pit Americans against each other like this one does.”

Carefully omitted from Obama's speech were any significant discussions of his accomplishments to date; this is entirely understandable in view of the fact that there are none - despite having had, for two thirds of his term in office, a Democrat - controlled House and Senate. Although they rammed Obamacare through, his administration has granted thousands of exemptions to this finely-crafted legislation, and virtually all have gone to his union supporters - although nearly 20% of all waivers granted to date have gone to Nancy Pelosi's district.

It's hard to claim something like that as an achievement. He tried to claim credit for a Detroit Comeback: On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. And the Government Motors Chevy Volt is flying out of dealerships across the country! Not. Okay, time to move on to that darn "do-nothing Congress"!

Boogey-men are so much easier than substance.

In his entire speech, Obama touched not once upon the alleged subject: the State of the Union. It's entirely understandable: the State of the Union is not good, his administration's actions (Gunrunner, suing the states, etc.) are making it worse, not better, and he's clueless.

You want to set forth a "blueprint" for America, Mr. Obama? Fine.

Let's start with this: First, Do No Harm. Now that the ground-rule's in place, let's look at some actual benefits: eliminating the U.S. Department of Vegetation Education would save $100 billion per year, every year. Let the states handle it.

Privatize the US Postal Service; forcing it to compete on equal footing with the likes of UPS and FedEx. If they can't compete, then they go away. Either way, we save billions.

Privatize AmTrak. Growing up in Illinois, three private train lines ran through my town: Santa Fe, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, and Burlington Northern. They all carried passengers, although CB&Q devoted considerably more resources to freight transport. However, since all of our politicians and planners assure us that rail is the transport of the future, we obviously don't need to subsidize it. Turn it back to the private sector, where it belongs.

And instead of funneling billions of transportation dollars into light rail and streetcars, we could use some of that gas tax money to fill pot-holes and build bridges. After all, rail is the transport of the future - and since the technology's been around for well over a century, we don't need to subsidize it.

Obama has had three State of the Union addresses, now - and has yet to discuss the actual State of the Union and reasonable means for improvement. Instead, he keeps flogging the same tired horses.