Talk To Us, Mr President

Tonight President Barack Obama makes his first presidential address to the American people (and the rest of us), less than three weeks after taking office. I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the news over the past couple of days, but I assume that he'll be talking about the various prospects for this year's contingent of American Idol contestants... or possibly the stimulus package that he's trying to get approved before the world ends.

I can't help but wonder what the average American citizen thinks of the "cut taxes but don't spend" rhetoric that the Republican party has been banging out with impressive regularity and solidarity since the 44th president was sworn in last month. It doesn't seem to matter how many economists come forward and explain that the Bush tax cuts didn't succeed in stimulating the economy. Too much of it was used to pay off debt or put toward savings, it seems, neither of which would be a bad thing to have happen in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, what's needed now is job creation and the exchange of funds between people, which tax cuts don't actually service all that well. Of course, the U.S. of A. was formed in an revolution against "taxation without representation" and almost two and a half centuries later, talk of tax of any shape or colour seems to make many Americans see red, and not as in "red, white and blue."

I hope Mr Obama can pull off whatever he's attempting tonight, because I, for one, have no desire to find out what living through a Depression is like. My mother and her generation didn't exactly sing its praises after all those years of standing in food lines, and so the thought that we might be blindly driving off the cliff toward another one really boggles my mind.