Third verse, same as the first.  President Obama’s speech Tuesday night before the Congress, although couched in rousing terms of “teamwork” and “rebuilding America,” was in the end just more of the usual Progressive fare of class warfare, higher taxes and spending, and bigger government.

While promising to work toward job creation, Obama already has cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have been worth a prompt 20,000 construction and construction-related jobs and an additional 100,000 plus follow-on, more permanent jobs.  While promising vast reductions of intrusive regulations (he actually cited only a single elimination, that of 40-year-old regulation concerning treating spilled milk as an oil spill), his EPA has been running amok with intrusive regulations, from dictating the light bulbs we’re allowed to have in our bed- and bathrooms, to closing down badly needed electricity power plants (with their jobs and the jobs of the businesses that need that power) with excessive “pollutant” regulations that will do nothing to improve our environment or our health, to expanded regulations in the medical device industry that will stifle innovation in that vital area, and on and on.

He wants to reform our tax system, he said, but only to raise taxes on disfavored groups while “reforming” it through extending a payroll tax holiday that guts funding for Social Security;  “double[ing] the tax deduction” for businesses that manufacture in the US, adding to the Byzantine complexity of our corporate tax code; taxing revenue (all of it) from the sale of those severely regulated medical devices; and so on.  But he refuses to accept an overall reduction in income taxes in substitution for that general payroll tax reduction, he refuses to simplify the code and reduce the rates for all corporations—or for all individuals.  Instead, he wants to raise taxes on his “wealthy,” the top 5% of whom pay nearly 60% of the nation’s income taxes, while he refuses to talk about the taxes of the 50% of Americans who pay around 3%-4% of the nation’s income taxes while.  He wants to eliminate the tax breaks for

an [oil and gas] industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits….

Yes—he refuses to eliminate the same subsidies for his “green” energy efforts, like Solyndra, et al.

Obama said he wants an “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”  This from the president that shoved senior creditors (at least as defined by existing bankruptcy law) to the back of the bus and gave preferential treatment to his union donors in the government-union takeover of GM and Chrysler.

And he promised openly to continue to govern by fiat whenever our democratic process won’t let him get his way:

With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions….

Next, there are factual errors in Obama’s speech.  He claimed that Obamacare “relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”  But the fact is that fully half the more than 30 million currently uninsured are expected to receive coverage through government programs, while the other half are expected to be enrolled in government-approved “private” health insurance through state-based insurance markets.  Moreover, many of these will be get federal subsidies to do so.  Further, Medicaid will be expanded drastically.

And there’s this:  “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen.”  I’ve addressed above some of the corrections to this claim.  Here’s more: the bailout actually began under President Bush the Younger.  Ford, though, the other member of the American auto industry as Progressives define it (eliding Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. that also have major manufacturing plants in the US and so are key participants in the American auto industry) took none of the bailout money.  Furthermore, if we’re limiting the “American auto industry” in the Obama manner, Chrysler is no longer a part: it’s owned by Fiat, an Italian company.

Finally, although Obama gave short shrift to America’s foreign affairs, he did claim this.  “The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”  However, the latest National Intelligence Estimate says that the Taliban will grow stronger, and it’ll use Obama’s unilateral offer of “negotiation” for delay.  The NIE adds that the Taliban in fact will end controlling the Afghan countryside—which gives it the cities