[Cin]

You know the fact that Obama can give a pretty speech was, in my mind, never in question. And his State of the Union/reelection speech was no different. He knows what we want to hear. He knows what needs to be done. And he has great ideas for getting it done. Unfortunately that has yet to translate into him actually doing it.

The remark he made during his speech about students who face the threat of deportation is particularly telling. Telling in that there are so many issues which have played out exactly like this. Obama is accused of being soft on something or having an agenda surrounding something. He bends over backwards in the other direction to prove them wrong. His opponents continue to insist he is doing the opposite. And on and on it goes. It seems he never will stand up and do what he says he wants to do and what they say he is doing anyway. It makes my head hurt.

During the Obama administration there have been more deportation than ever before, close to 400,000 just this year alone. And still the GOP makes claims that Obama is soft on immigration. Right now the Halt Act, a bill to stop the Obama administration from blocking deportation for families of U.S. citizens who are being sent to dangerous countries, is in the House and while it is unlikely it will ever pass, it does act as a counter balance to the Democrats’ urging that Obama use this presidential power. This will likely, as we have seen over and over around a variety of issues during his administration, lead to Obama doing nothing at all. Nothing that is, but giving the issue lip service. Obama loves to give lip service. Apparently that costs him nothing at all and it might get him some votes back.

I think Obama would like to do at least some of the things he promised when many of us saw him as America’s great hope but he’s not going to. The cost during his time in office and after is too great. That said I am too frightened of what would happen should a Republican take office to vote for anyone else.

But according to the polls after the State of the Union, the prediction seems to be that a Republican will be elected. And you can be sure he, whoever he is, won’t be afraid to do exactly what he said he was going to do and he’ll have the support of the corporate media, Wall Street and the 1% behind him. Which means when the middle class gasps it’s last breath, it’s dead weight will come crashing down on top of the working class and the poor squeezing them into an even more limited future. All the while mainstream corporate owned media will tell us how much everything is improving now that the job creators are getting even more corporate welfare. And if you are part of the 99% and you happened to vote republican yet you are feeling the economic pinch, don’t worry because I’m sure the new republican administration in conjunction with that delightful republican congress will take some food stamps away from the hungry and some social security from the aged poor. No doubt that will tide you over while you wait for those job creators to commence creating.