After Tuesday's State of the Union (5 down, 3 to go!), nothing has changed: Barack Obama remains a Marxist caricature, his presidency vapid by historical standards, and his leadership style exemplar of fecklessness... You wouldn't know it by the applause in the House chamber, nor by the booming economy that never stopped booming around the Beltway, but this recovery is no recovery outside the skull of Chris Matthews. People are suffering. Americans are suffering. And yet a president whose words belie the effects of his policies, a man who lies about "deficit reduction," then turns around and puts the pedal down on spending, nonetheless has managed to ride a sycophantic media to popular appeal. The federal budget, as a percentage of the economy, is at historically high levels-nearly 25% of GDP... And yet Obama, with a straight face, continues to ask "the rich" to pay more - just "a little more," mind you - floating an assertion removed from mathematics. The top 5% of taxpayers pay 60% of all federal income taxes, and rhetoric notwithstanding, "the rich" don't have the money... It's not there. It will never be there, so long as the federal government borrows $4 billion per/day, everyday, on the Primrose Path to a sovereign debt crisis.

What drives our debt? Entitlements-83 redundant federal programs designed to redistribute tax dollars to "the least among us," trapping them in an insidious cycle of dependency. Medicare-a wholly failed government monopoly that pays out 3 dollars for every dollar it takes in. Social Security, which does likewise, a raided fund full of empty IOUs.

What is the deficit-slashing, ultra-cerebral president's position on entitlements? HANDS OFF. Head-in-Sand. Alfred E. Nueman: Who me?
delusion.

This is the default line of a man consumed by rhetoric. The president loves rhetoric. Indeed, he desires all the trappings of power, the Bully Pulpit and the megaphone, the pomp and the primacy, but none of the responsibility or accountability of the job. That he's achieving this state free of challenge from traditional sources is a tragedy.
The media acts as if he took office yesterday, as if the president - glowingly insular - is supremely occupied with solving problems, with deep, existential questions, when in fact he's disinterested, lazy, and aloof. He doesn't govern-that would take leadership and engagement... There is no seriousness in Barack Obama-he's occupied with politics, wedge issues that deflect blame to Republicans, and expanding bureaucracy. He's occupied with saying one thing and doing another. He's profoundly unserious.

But he's trying!

Yes, the new standard among the left, too many hapless moderates, and a jaw-droppingly dumbed-down electorate, is words that "sound good"
and reflect non-reality. This week the president is "hitting the road," traveling the country to sell his new agenda: gun control, green jobs, and tax hikes packaged as a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction.

The American people, meanwhile, suffer Truth Reduction, even as the president claims great success and manipulates words from his high-horse Trojan Mare.