The dishonesty of our President in his State of the Union campaign speech | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Is he this much out of touch or just this dishonest?

    The Barack Obama State of the Union address Tuesday (1-24-12) night was, if nothing else, two things: Rehashed proposals that have no chance of passing, many of which have already been rejected by the Democrats in Congress and outright lies or distortions of fact.

    For example, the called on Congress to fund a massive construction program, saying "Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home." Here's the dishonesty in that statement: Most of the money that was spent on Iraq and in Afghanistan was borrowed money. So all the abandonment of Iraq and the impending abandonment of Afghanistan does is reduce the borrowing. There is no cash windfall. Moreover, much of the spending was for salaries, equipment and supplies that still have to be purchased, not matter where the members of the armed services are stationed. Total spending will not decrease as much as Obama claims. He simply wants to make it sound good in order to spend more on pork barrel projects, most of which were directed at contributors and unions which supported his election.

    One other glaring example. Obama announced that he was creating a special prosecution unit in the Justice Department to investigate Wall Street and the collapse of the housing market. Yet he does not say the the two men closest to this debacle are now working for him in his campaign. And you have to wonder what took him three years to decide to investigate some of his major contributors in 2008.

    There's much more. Click here to review the "quick and dirty" fact checking by the Associated Press, remembering of course that Obama has few stronger cheerleaders than the AP.

    Click here for another analysis.

    Click here for another "Fact Check," this one from another cheerleader, the Washington Post.

    And Rush has not even gone on the air.

    Commentary

    We regret it if some of our readers are offended by our selection of pictures for this article. But we think it very appropriate. While we deeply respect the office of President of the United States, we have lost almost all respect for the man who now fills that office. We think integrity is an absolutely essential quality for a President to have and a simple breakdown of what Obama said Tuesday night disintegrates his integrity to the point we can't respect him as a man. The State of the Union speech, in our opinion, was a campaign speech in which he is trying to save his job.