Obama's speeches are often too long to just listen to and get anything out of them. It's like trying to catch an audio book in a bar while music is playing.

In the speech Obama goes on to list all of the different areas of life that he believes government should be in inserted, or at least providing. Take a look at some of these quotes.

Obama on Ryan's 2011 budget...

Those are both worthy goals for us to achieve. But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history.

A 70% cut to clean energy. A 25% cut in education. A 30% cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That's what they're proposing. These aren't the kind of cuts you make when you're trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren't the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can't afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that's deeply pessimistic.

It's a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can't afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can't afford to send them. Go to China and you'll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on Earth – can't afford any of this.

It's a vision that says America can't afford to keep the promise we've made to care for our seniors. It says that ten years from now, if you're a 65 year old who's eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn't worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you're on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it.

No Mr. Obama; this is the America you envision --not the America envisioned by those who love freedom. Obama envisions an America resembling that which the founders escaped from. Obama does not believe in personal responsibility or individual liberty. This speech puts it all out in the open.

People who use the terms "pessimistic" and "optimistic" when referring to matters of fact are trying to avoid the truth, or disguise it.

After saying, "It's a vision that says America can't afford to keep the promise we've made to care for our seniors". Obama later in the speech talks of how, "Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill came together to save Social Security for future generations". If Social Security need to be saved once before, how is it so hard to believe that its in trouble now?

This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone's grandparents who wouldn't be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down's syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we'd be telling to fend for themselves.

The Health Care Exchanges don't open until after 2014. How can 50 million people who don't have health insurance loose it? Where are these poor children who have health insurance right now, but are going to loose it if we stop Obama Care? Repealing Obama Care will result in people who don't have health insurance having the health insurance that they don't have taken away. This is nonsense.

Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can't afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that's who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that's paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? That's not right, and it's not going to happen as long as I'm President.

How does 1 trillion in "tax breaks" cost the government? Will that 1 trillion not be spent and circulated through the economy? Obama wants the American people to believe that every penny a wealthy person earns is hidden away somewhere so as to be immune to any form of tax.

The America I know is generous and compassionate; a land of opportunity and optimism. We take responsibility for ourselves and each other; for the country we want and the future we share. We are the nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI bill and saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives.

Opportunity is being destroyed by this administration's policies and everyone with any ties to industry knows this.

Private inventors are the ones who come up with the ideas that improve our lives. Sure a lot has come out of the space program, but mostly from contractors not government administrative types.

This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don't have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I'm President, we won't.

Today, I'm proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. It's an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget. It's an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table, but one that protects the middle-class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.

We'll he's right about one thing. As long as he is president we are not going to do anything about our fiscal crisis.

How are we going to reduce the deficit and still "Invest" in the future? "It's an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table". Remember, Obama says exactly what he means. Sure they'll put every kind of spending on the table, they just won't reduce any of it. Obama is the master of lying by omission. He says he'll address something, he'll change something, he never says how. You can address anything, it doesn't mean you'll take any action on it. You can change some things by leaving them alone --like the Bush tax cuts which will again expire. This is how Obama works.

I don't think that this was a very "presidential" speech.

What did you think?

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I find it a little strange that the media is propping up John Boehner. Before this most recent budget deal, Boehner has NOT been a media darling. This begs the question why now?

It has now been confirmed that establishment Republicans are not going to try to stop Obama Care, and will not move to reduce the deficit. Even the most generous efforts put the Republican budget cutting only about 38 billion from the national deficit.

The U.S. government, on course to reach a record annual budget deficit, posted a monthly shortfall of $188.2 billion in March, wider than a year earlier, Treasury Department statistics showed today.

Last month’s deficit was up from a $65.4 billion gap in March 2010, when the government marked down the cost of the Troubled Assets Relief Program by $115 billion.

The White House and Congress last week reached agreement on a spending plan for the current fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, and face another fiscal hurdle next month with the prospect of reaching the statutory debt limit of more than $14 trillion. Last week’s agreement averted a shutdown of government agencies.

“The last-minute agreement to cut government spending and avert a federal government shutdown is a start, but realistically the budget cut amount is just a drop in the bucket,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said before the report.

The establishment Republicans have to go! Obama Care is now off the table, and what is a 38 billion dollar cut (over nearly a year) when the debt increases at 6.5 billion each day?

If this country doesn't wake up soon and get rid of these elitist Republicans, we're all going down with the ship. I agree with Pat Caddell; I don't think that the Republicans want to get rid of Obama Care, they just want to be the ones to control it.

Keep in mind that the G20 has already announced that they are going to instate a new unit for global trade to replace the dollar.

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For reference here is a list of Muslim majority countries.

The media narrative is that Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia and Egypt are experiencing uprisings because their people want “freedom”. While this might be true to some extent; freedom has a completely different meaning to Muslims.

The uprisings are a result of many factors largely economic in nature, but there are many factors which are a direct result of Islam. Islam doesn't allow for freedom in the western since. Most majority Muslim countries have adopted some form of Sharia Law. Sharia Law is very oppressive in nature. Sharia courts issue punishments, which by western standards, would be considered cruel and unusual, to say the least. Still the majority of the world's Muslims agree that Sharia Law is the best and most pure form of law.

With Sharia Law there are quite a few issues when it comes to freedom. Sharia Law is more than just a system of law as westerners understand law. Western laws are generally applied on an individual basis, Sharia Law is applied to every part of life. Sharia is an entire system of religious laws and governmental laws simultaneously. Think about that for a minute, what if government, any government, could claim that their actions are directly mandated by God. That's not to say you have rights ordained by God, but that man (government) can do whatever to you in God's name. Doesn't that sound a little scary to you? Now you understand why the founders of the United States of America stated that congress is not to establish a national religion.

In short Islam doesn't lend itself to a free society, in the western since, because the limits imposed on personal freedom under Sharia Law are so overbearing. Let's say that a true Muslim democracy emerges. Even if elections in this Muslim nation were held; what would one vote to change? The only thing you could do would be to vote for government officials who would enforce Sharia Law to a greater or lesser degree. Islam binds its followers to Sharia Law, there is no way to opt-out.

Libya has been under the control of Gaddafi for just under 42 years. How does one man keep his power so long and in a place that is considered largely tribal? The most glaring factor among modern dictatorships is that they are mostly in majority Muslim countries. It sounds strange to say this but Islam works well with dictatorships because those who practice Islam tend to be numb to the kinds of atrocities that dictators commit. After all, offenders of Sharia Law are often sentenced to atrocious forms of punishment.

- 2001-SEP: Nigeria: A teenage single mother, Bariya Ibrahim Magazu claimed at trial that she was raped by three men. The court assumed that she was guilty, because she could not prove that her father pressured her to engage in sexual activity with the men. She was found guilty of two offenses: having pre-marital sex, and bringing false charges against the men that she claimed were responsible. Her sentence was 180 lashes. 5 "When nongovernmental groups ramped up pressure to free the girl, the government immediately carried out the sentence, ignoring a promised appeal process. The local authorities said they wanted to put an end to the controversy."

- 2001-DEC: Sudan: An 18 year-old pregnant woman, Abok Alfa Akok, was accused by her husband of adultery. She claimed that she had been raped. The man co-accused with Abok was not tried due to lack of evidence. She was tried, even though the country claims that Sharia would not be applied to non-Muslims. In Sudan, a married person found guilty of adultery is executed by stoning; an unmarried person receives 100 lashes. She had no lawyer, and was unaware of her rights during the trial. She could not speak or understand Arabic, the language of the court. The Court of Appeal in Southern Darfur overturned the death sentence and sent the case back to the lawyer court which set punishment at 75 lashes. By immediately executing the sentence, she was denied her right to obtain legal advice and/or an launch an appeal prior to the beating.

- 1996-MAR: Afghanistan: Some strict interpretations of Islamic law calls for the death penalty for any woman found in the company of a man other than a close family member. Sexual activity is assumed to have happened. A woman, Jamila, was found guilty of trying to leave the country with such a man. She was caught and stoned to death on 1996-MAR-28.

- 1996-NOV: Afghanistan: Under the previous, Taliban, regime, a woman, Nurbibi, 40, and a man Turylai, 38, were stoned to death in a public assembly using palm-sized stones. They were found guilty of non-marital sex. Turylai was dead within ten minutes, but Nurbibi had to be finished off by dropping a large rock on her head. Mr. Wali, head of the Office for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prohibition of Vice expressed satisfaction with the execution: "...I am very happy, because it means that the rule of Islam is being implemented." These executions (as well as hand amputations for convicted thieves) are regarded as religious occasions and are not normally viewed by non-Muslims.

Just something to keep in mind when you see news stories about how the people of Libya or any other majority Muslim nation are fighting for freedom. Freedom, as US citizens are used to it, is still a very long way from becoming the norm in the Middle East. Still any move towards freedom is a good move no matter how small.

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Here is a link to the president's speech from the White House website.

I'm concerned with this speech for three main reasons.

(1) Why did it take so long to address the nation about a "war" / "Kinetic Military Action" / "Time Limited Scope Limited Military Action"?

(2) Why can't Obama give a speech without referring to some "straw-man"?

First off, If regional stability was one of the goals from the beginning, why was that not pointed out by anyone in the administration 9 days ago?

In the speech; Obama goes on about how there was going to be a slaughter and we had to get involved to stop it. This too is a legitimate reason to intervene, but it makes less since than the first reason I listed considering that there are people in the Middle East being slaughtered by other dictatorships even as you read this. Why are we not involved there as well?

Secondly, the straw-man argument is one of Obama's most used forms of misrepresentation. The straw-man argument is used to purposely misrepresent those with opinions which don't align with Obama's.

These quotes are from Obama's address to the nation on Monday 03-28-11

So for those who doubted our capacity to carry out this operation, I want to be clear: The United States of America has done what we said we would do.

Who exactly doubted that we could create a no-fly zone over Libya? Even Gadaffi's opposition knew we could do that!

Now, just as there are those who have argued against intervention in Libya, there are others who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Qaddafi and usher in a new government.

Obama so eloquently lays down both extremes in this situation so he can casually walk down the middle and claim that he's doing it right.

I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.

This last quote is unbelievable. Who are "those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through storms..."? The Secretary of State doesn't know who "those" are, top officials at The Pentagon don't know who "those" are. There is a reason that we are hesitant to arm "those". Nobody knows who "those" are! But Obama can somehow see into the hearts of "those" and tell that they have "the same core principles" as most Americans? This is a classic textbook example of sophistry.

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I wonder if the anyone in the White House can tell us what's going on? I know one thing, they don't want to call it a war.

In the last few days, Obama administration officials have frequently faced the question: Is the fighting in Libya a war? From military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer is no. But that leaves the question: What is it?

In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer. "I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone," Rhodes said. "Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end."

Government officials sound like Beaky Buzzard, "Nope, Nope, it's not a war Nope..."

U.S. officials avoid describing the operation as a war. White house press secretary Jay Carney said it was "a time-limited, scope-limited military action."

Somewhere someone came up with the term "kinetic military action", followed by "a time-limited, scope-limited military action." Are you kidding me? The Obama White House is coming up with it's own form of political Pig Latin. We can't say "War on Terror" we have to say "Overseas Contingency Operation". Now we can't even say war at all, it's not a war it's a "kinetic military action" or a "a time-limited, scope-limited military action." We have a war being directed by individuals who are too scared to call it a war. This does not sit well with me.

The official response to the question of whether or not the action in Libya is a war begins with "I think what we are doing is..." One of the stated goals is protecting the Libyan people. Which Libyan people and protect them from what? This is absurd. We are going to kill the Libyans who are attacking the other Libyans; all of this is done to protect Libyans and avert a humanitarian crisis... Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is not sure what we are doing! It sounds like we're intervening in a civil war, but we can't use the word war.

The confusion surrounding military intervention in Libya is amazing.

The US government, wary of getting stuck in another war in a Muslim country, would like to hand control of the mission over to NATO, but the alliance is divided. At a meeting on Monday, NATO ambassadors failed to agree on whether the alliance should take control of the mission. NATO involvement would require approval by all 28 members.

France has opposed handing control to NATO because of Arab skepticism about the alliance, which is perceived as being dominated by the US. Paris would prefer the current coalition of France, Britain and the US to keep political control of the mission, with operational support from NATO, according to sources quoted by Reuters. Turkey, an alliance member which sees itself as a bridge to the Muslim world, is opposing NATO control of the operation. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the United Nations should be in charge of an entirely humanitarian operation in Libya.

Britain and Italy want the alliance to be in charge of the operation, however. Rome has threatened to restrict access to its air bases, which are crucial to the mission, if NATO does not take over control. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested that Britain or France could also take control of the mission, but some NATO officials doubt if either country could handle the operation by itself, according to Reuters.

That's not what Obama told the American people last Sunday 03/19/11.

I’m also proud that we are acting as part of a coalition that includes close allies and partners who are prepared to meet their responsibility to protect the people of Libya and uphold the mandate of the international community.

I’ve acted after consulting with my national security team, and Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress. And in the coming hours and days, my administration will keep the American people fully informed. But make no mistake: Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people. And we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world.

I don't really know what to say at this point. "World Leaders" are so hamstrung over the political implications of their actions they are not leading.

A war is started with no clear goal and nobody wants to take responsibility for it.

WHO'S ON FIRST!