A Hagmann & Hagmann Review of Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address

By S. Daily Warren
special correspondent to the Hagmann & Hagmann Report

(wife) “Honey, the State of the Union is on tv.”
(husband) “Oh. Is it too early for a drink?”
Snapshot of the average American household on Jan. 20, 2015

The man who coined the phrase “Liars figure but figures never lie” obviously never served as an appointee to the Bureau of Labor, and while no reliable statistics or polling data exists as to the true elevated pulse rate of the American people when it comes to President Obama’s popularity it’s safe to say that of the 33 million people watching his address, most were yawning.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a masterful speech delivered by a masterful orator. It was and he is. Obama seems to have almost entirely weaned himself away from the TOTUS (teleprompter of the United States) and he was animated Tuesday night and succeeded admirably in appearing almost sincere. None of this, however, prevented the 2015 address from receiving the lowest Nielsen rating numbers since a post-Lewinsky/post-impeachment Bill Clinton delivered his address in 2000. 

Another great adage is the jocular query, “how can you tell when a politician lying? Answer: his lips are moving.” But as pundits rushed to fact check Obama’s speech, pro and con, it actually appears as if he were for the most part telling the truth when relying upon statistics to buttress up his assertions in an undeniably trademark democratic speech to a newly elected republican congress. That is, of course, if you believe federal statistics. As an example, Obama claimed 11 million new jobs have been created and according to the labor statistics that is a fairly close figure, thanks to the service industry. Also that math and reading scores are up along with high school graduation rates and was even accurate about the money Americans are saving at the pump in light of plummeting gas prices. Many if not most Americans may not like the man, but he didn’t wander too far from statistical facts, albeit somewhat slanted facts and of dubious bureaucratic origin.

He did receive a few well-deserved raspberries in claiming Iran’s nuclear program progress has been halted and that ISIL’s advances in the Middle East have been stopped. To quote an ancient beat reporter with a brazen sense of irony, “That’s news to me!” The budget deficits in the fed may have indeed been reduced by two-thirds (the figure is actually 71%) but that is almost entirely a result of a massive increase in tax revenues gouged out of the lives of struggling middle class families. If someone were truly looking for a flat-out lie they need search no farther than this fragment, “…since the day I swore an oath on the steps of this capitol.” Technically, he mangled his first oath and was compelled to retake it in private chambers shortly after this public display of his speaking prowess.

Yes, Obama is looking a bit more presidential these days and a very democratic one at that with lots to say about climate change being a national security threat, the need for a higher federal minimum wage standard and the closing of Guantanamo Bay. The 2015 address was as much a pain reliever to congressional democrats who’ve taken it on the chin lately as it was an ipecac to republicans like Speaker of the House John Boehner whose only facial expressions emerging from his taciturn visage above his trademark pastel tie was a grimace. The contrast of seeing Vice-President Biden, smug and smarmy as always, giving a standing ovation while Boehner clapped unenthusiastically from his seat tells us everything we know about the chronically unhealed divide in American bipartisan politics.

Yet we must remember this is drama at its finest and most expensive, rivaling any big Hollywood blockbuster. And so effective it is that even some of the characters responding from the aisles of congress didn’t know they were actors in a play. You clap when he says something you like, you stand when he mentions veterans and you smile and nod your head when he upholds the safety of children or the importance of economic dominance, all right on cue. The speech, like so much of national politics seeping from Washington like a leaky septic tank, was all the more convincing for its orchestrated non-orchestration.

But what was the message? What was the true agenda? And where is it taking us? The idea that Obama is setting himself up as a perpetual monarch that won’t be ousted from office is no more convincing than the Bureau of Labor statistics he cited. The man is happier on a golf course in Hawaii or strolling on the beach with Reggie Love. One may remember his first year in office when he wandered like an errant puppy away from his Secret Service handlers, giving them the slip, to hit the streets of Chicago to perhaps so goodbye to an old life. If he’s a tyrant then he’s not a very convincing one, although the moniker of tyrannical puppet might not be too far off the mark. He may look presidential now but a safe bet is that he’ll go running from the White House the moment his 2^nd term is up.

But someone else may have looked presidential that night. In what some commentators are calling the worst republican response to a State of the Union address ever, junior Iowa Senator Jodi Ernst (no relation to Ernst Stavro Blofeld of James Bond villainy) was handpicked to give the rebuttal, which in actuality was no rebuttal at all. Senator Ernst with her sassy short hair cut and gleaming smile atop her military posture made few if any refutations of Obama’s facts or policies, instead talking about her life growing up as a farm girl in the heartland. She worked the morning biscuit line at Hardee’s and plowed the fields with her dad in her one pair of shoes before getting on the school bus with plastic bags on her feet to protect that precious, singular footwear from the elements. But don’t cry for her, Argentina, because all the other kids were similarly attired in down-to-earth Iowa.

Congratulations, America. You may have just been introduced to the GOP’s favored candidate for the 2016 presidential elections. But how can that be, you may ask. Her speech was stiff and her smile unconvincing, and as a republican she was even wearing blue for crying out loud. Exactly. Now allow for a real introduction to Jodi Ernst.

She’s the first woman veteran to sit in the halls of the U.S. Senate, having served as a company commander in Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004 and still retaining the rank of lt. colonel in the National Guard. This heartland sweetheart believes in the 10^th amendment and the nullification of federal laws. She wants the IRS abolished along with the Department of Education, instead favoring the 50 states for the indoctrination of our children, an undeniably state’s rights position. She opposes the federal minimum wage, supports a partial privatization of social security, has spoken out against the U.N.’s Agenda 21, backs the citizen’s rights to the open carrying of firearms and even received an “A” rating from the NRA. Just because she hasn’t received the standard high-gloss polishing (yet) from D.C. handlers and image consultants doesn’t mean she is not perfectly poised to garner resounding grass roots appeal the likes of which would make Rand Paul salivate. And everyone knows that the message from on high is this: it’s time for a woman in the White House.

Junior Senator Jodi Ernst may very well be the woman to watch in the upcoming election, edging in delicately and subtly to once again nudge Hillary Clinton further away from her dreams of the highest office, and we have had 6 years to reflect on the fact that the junior senator from nowhere approach can work like a charm. Again, orchestrated drama of the highest order, made palatable and believable by its very non-orchestrated nature. They have run the little lady up the flagpole and are now seeing if anyone salutes her, or more insidiously, if anyone notices that she’s being groomed. Our own handlers do like their little surprises in tidy little packages with just the right appeal and just the right amount of mascara.

This may not have been a State of the Union address at all. Perhaps what we’re witnessing is the first opening chess moves of the changing of the guard.

(S. Daily Warren is an award-winning reporter, writer and columnist who supports state’s rights, the Constitution, healthy food and the Bible. He currently resides in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and invites you to follow his blog at: http://overthetopandback.blogspot.com/)

Madhouse

Seventh Century Savagery and other Parisian Treats:
an editorial about the bloody attack on the French satirical magazine, 1-7-15
by S. Daily Warren

“It’s a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!” – Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes”

It’s happened again. Three masked gunmen armed with AK-47s and an RPG forced entry into the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. They murdered the editor and a cartoonist known for depicting the prophet Mohammed along with 10 other people including two police officers. Video clearly shows the gunmen moving methodically along the street as they made their getaway, stopping long enough to execute a wounded police officer. The assailants fled in a getaway car and a manhunt is currently underway to affect their capture.

There is a great danger in getting used to these kinds of headlines and events, an oppressive lethargy and apathy that turns sheep into even quieter, more docile sheep plagued by a sense of chronic depression and helplessness. But even more dangerous than this are the responses this incident is soliciting. From the pinnacles of power in both governance and the press, two institutions that are barely distinguishable anymore, comes the clarion call of….upside down cake, also known in certain circles as the Mxyzptlk Effect.

(for those of you unfamiliar with the comic book enemies of Superman, Mxyptlk was an inter-dimensional prankster who could only be banished back to his home universe by being tricked into saying or spelling his name backwards)

This is where we find ourselves, in a madhouse, a world turned upside down with the embers of destruction swiftly being fanned into conflagration. In the American White House, the primary occupant of which is either the world’s biggest coward or an enemy of the state flirting dangerously with treason, they couldn’t even summon the gumption to call the act “terrorism” until the Weekly Standard caught Obama with his hand on the chicken switch again. Apparently more interested in polls than people, the Chief Executive Waffle only issued a statement calling it terrorism after the press pointed out his reticence.

Which makes the press our hero, right? Wrong, Morton Kondracke! The general coverage of the event is deplorable, and one actually finds more common sense in the online comment section of the news story than in the story itself. My old home paper, the Kansas City Star (also known affectionately to locals as The Red Star, The Falling Star and the Kansas City Scar) fell all over itself in a rush to point out that this satirical magazine had defamed the prophet Mohammed. An entire article, meaningfully headlined “French Paper, Where 12 Were Killed, Has History of Angering Muslims” sets the stage for their slant and infers that it is somehow acceptable for angry Muslims to shoot innocent people after being so maligned. This piece of tripe, which isn’t worth the electrons used to spew it across the ether, refers repeatedly to the “crimes” of the French magazine in defaming Islam’s holiest figure and details their other abuses as well. The subtext of the article is that the French journalists had it coming.

Do you see the logical disconnect here? Not only has the media become the drooling lapdog of Big Gov but they’ve gone so far over the edge that they won’t even defend their own fellow journalists. In a way, these French pencil pushers actually died for free speech, and I’m not sure when an American journalist last performed that act of sacrifice. And in the words of editor Stephane “Charb” Charbonnier who continues to rightly defend the satirical cartoons, “Mohammed isn’t sacred to me. I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Quranic law.”

In a nation where the Muslim population is nearing 10% (though some reports put it closer to 30%) and the culturally indigenous French birth rate has dropped below what demographers call the “recovery line”, making a statement like that takes a yard of guts. Editor Stephane was one of those systematically targeted and executed, reports indicating the attackers sought him out by name.

In the wake of this travesty, horrific for both its violence and the brazen attack on western civilization’s most noble underpinning, free speech, we may be asking the wrong questions. Here are the queries we might consider positing:

-          Should the French civilian population be allowed to arm itself in the course of self defense?

-          Should the French adopt a policy of mass deportation?

-          What is the solution to the French being bred out of existence in their own country?

-          Is France, along with other western nations, in a war and not admitting it to themselves?

-          Can France be saved?

I watched a YouTube video today sent by a friend trying to illicit a laugh. It was barely a minute long and showed a person pulling up to a gas station. The driver seemed not to know which side of her car the gas cap was on and pulled around to the other side…still facing the wrong way. Then this person did it again. And again. What started off striking me as funny quickly devolved into a sense of stunned disbelief followed by the red shame of embarrassment. Citing the old adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result, one can see the connection to our current political crisis with Islam. We just keep turning a blind eye and they just keep plucking it out. A similar blind eye is turned to women’s rights, genital mutilation, utter cruelty and barbarity in criminal punishments such as lashes and lopping off of hands. Live in a Muslim nation and you will most likely pay the dhimmi tax; a tax one pays for not being Muslim, yet in western nations who welcome Muslims with open arms the cry for their human rights is relentless. While immigration provides cheap labor from a hard-working populace that is thrifty and industrious, the bloody event in Paris is the real price that must be paid for bringing a snake into the garden.

We do indeed live in a world turned upside down, and it’s high time someone just called it like it is. There is no War on Terror, or War on Drugs or War on Poverty. Our leaders are not leading and they do not have our best interests at heart. The only war before us is being waged against us, against the People of the world. Here then is radical, militant Islam: babies strapped to bombs and hatred of any free speech they disagree with, a 6-8 children per family birth rate and an insatiable hunger for all things western, making war on the very culture that supports them at home and abroad and then running to hide in their mosques while wailing about the freedom of their religion (which is most obviously a political movement, and a successful one at that) Radical, militant Islam is a tool of freedom’s true enemy. And that tool rests snugly in the tool belt of our national leaders who claim to protect us. Much like a game of chess we as liberty’s defenders must wade through the  enemy pawns before getting to the King, but so far we have yet to even identify our enemy as an enemy.

Perhaps if we make Islam say or spell its name backwards it will be banished back to where it came from. In a mad, mad, mad, mad world this makes about as much sense as being bludgeoned to death by a political movement that hates you yet at the same time calls itself a victim with a savvy unbefitting an acolyte of a savage, seventh century cult.

Introduction

Introduction:

This is a political blog based on the works of the following writers and revolutionaries, mentors in a sense, depicting our current state of affairs in the western world and the world at large. Please take a moment and peruse the works of the following:

-          Milton William Cooper

-          Karl Granse

-          Charles Fort

-          William Bramley

-          Joseph P. Farrell

Of these men, at least one has died in the line of fire for his beliefs – that of liberty and freedom of expression and the ability to determine one’s own destiny – and one or two others are still in the trenches. But for the most ecumenical education I strongly recommend Charles Fort. He is the author of “The Book of the Damned” (pardon the dramatic title, but it makes sense once you read his pioneering work) and the inspiration for the founding of the Forteans society, a group of like-minded people that he himself refused to have anything to do with.

Fort was a maverick and basically lived in a London library for a decade to complete his research. There are a plethora of so-called homegrown reporters, researchers and patriots out there, but most operate from their armchairs or their internet routers and do little else but honk like angry geese. Fort, like William Cooper, was the real deal. It was he who first coined the term “prison planet” and I have yet to hear the likes of Alex Jones give an ounce of credit to Fort’s avant garde work that encompassed a lifetime.

William Bramley authored “The Gods of Eden” and his work acts as a supplement to the ideas and concepts so deftly detailed by Fort. It is also a must read.

Karl Granse, both mentor and friend, possesses one of the greatest legal minds I’ve ever known and is a fearless warrior for truth and justice who has stood up to more federal judges than anyone I know.

Dr. Farrell is also a favorite because he pounces upon two of my favorite topics: WW2 and flying saucers, both of which play powerfully into our current state of affairs. He’s prolific as a writer and quite accomplished though he may lack a bit of polishing. Farrell’s excellence is partly a matter of circumstance, as he realized that when the 50 year information ban was lifted by the secrecy acts around WW2 a host of unseen documents rose gloriously to the light of day. It seems the Nazis were up to a lot more than we gave them credit for, and they might even still be with us.

And Bill Cooper…well,  you’ll have to check out the late Mr. Cooper for yourself but I can state that I knew the man personally and, for all his faults, he was truly all-American and died that way.
Lastly, the blog is so named because of the common usage of the phrase, "that's so over-the-top". Before it was worn completely out I completed the thought with my own phraseology: "That's so over the top it came back 'round the other side!" I both got my laughs and made my point at the same time.

I hope you enjoy our journey together. Let freedom ring.

Warmly,
S. Daily Warren