Did you keep your kids home from school yesterday as a protest against Barack Obama’s speech? Good going. You could have let your kid go to school where he or she would have found out that the Super Coolest President of the U.S. Ever is about as stimulating as day-old decaf. You could have exposed your kid to the reality of a grown-up in a suit blathering on about staying in school and being good and trying to be cool by mentioning Facebook.*
But no, you just made the president as cool as an M-Rated video game. You really showed him!
*(Of course, you could also have sent your kid to school, telling Little Johnny that though you disagree with the president, he IS the president and, in a Democracy, we give even our opponents a chance to make the case. But that’s just deranged commie talk on my part.)
KEN WHEATON 
I studied economics back in college and am well familiar with both sides of liberal-conservative policy debates. There are many logical, conservative retorts to the reforms being proposed by Obama – mainly, we can’t afford it, deficit spending might harm the future of our country, governments are bad in meddling in free markets. Good points. Worth a listen. While I’m in favor of healthcare reform, I welcome those points of view as intelligent checks on the reform speedway.
However, I’m watching the hostility against Obama with amazement. The Mark Levin rants, the Glenn Beck “he’s a racist” comments (!), are stunning. When did a political opponent become an enemy seizing America with underlings like a swarm of locusts?
My only conclusion is racism is at the core of this anger — the claim that Obama is a radical Muslim who also attended a radical Christian church is most reveling. Others claim he wasn’t born in the U.S. because we’re confused about paperwork in Hawaii. Still others claim he is bankrupting society (after saving the U.S. banking system, note to Rush, “stimulus” requires “spending”). And in the most laughable claim of all, Obama’s proposing death panels (with social work job descriptions to give end-of-life advice to ailing seniors). I wonder if aging Boomers, the largest voting block in this country, really would be threatened by any politician seeking re-election, or if this really were true, why haven’t insurance companies with the same incentive to keep costs down tried to kill old people, too.
No matter. The point is clear, political and financial debates have turned into paranoid dementia.
Logical debates on the role of government and its spending are fine. But the paranoid hatred of government, by the same people who like its military, air-traffic control, roads, schools, water systems and fire departments, is amazing. “I don’t trust government,” they say, while they salute the military, employed by government, carrying guns. Um, I guess it’s only *part* of the government that is bad, right? Not the part your cousin Johnny signed up for?
All I can think is people are afraid. The formula for stress is demand/control, and fear of losing jobs puts a lot of demand on people with little control. We’re all a bit strung out. Eight years of negligence (check the underside of your local highway bridges for rust, mate) and expensive wars abroad (what country was the Taliban in again?) almost crippled our economy, with a banking system spun out of control due to no regulation, and the party that was in power at the time is lashing out.
That’s cool man. Logical debates are welcome. Paranoia is a tempting solace when you’re feeling down and out — it can’t be *us* that screwed up, someone else, perhaps *the man*, is doing it to us instead. Just please, people, stop screaming, and don’t tell me the government that you salute is evil. You can’t wave the flag and hate the flag at the same time. It’s all, people, one flag. If you want to debate resource allocation, by all means, get logical. The future will be expensive; resources are misappropriated; there are people without, and people paying taxes who don’t want to pay more. Solving that subsidy issue is very hard. Claiming government is just a big, bad, bear is not the solution, when we all have a role in making it work. If you don’t believe me, be true to your mission, and stop driving on the public roads my taxes are paying for you.