The President gave a speech last night.

More words and platitudes wrapped up in a tidy pleasing package.

Yea, the man can give a speech.

He has a gift you might say. As a matter of fact, the president did.

If we look beyond the soaring rhetoric what do we see?

A whole bunch of desserts and no vegetables.

After all, it was not so long ago the president told us it was time to eat our peas.

In fairness, the president claims a week from Monday he is going to give us a plan to not only pay for these “new” proposals but apparently he has an aggressive deficit reduction plan.

Simply put, the president addressed a joint session of Congress to give America some dessert. Let us examine some of what he said:

Pass this jobs bill, and starting tomorrow, small businesses will get a tax cut if they hire new workers or raise workers’ wages. Pass this jobs bill, and all small business owners will also see their payroll taxes cut in half next year. If you have 50 employees making an average salary, that’s an $80,000 tax cut. And all businesses will be able to continue writing off the investments they make in 2012.

That is one nice piece of chocolate cake. How can anyone refuse it?

Pass this jobs bill, and the typical working family will get a fifteen hundred-dollar tax cut next year. Fifteen hundred dollars that would have been taken out of your paycheck will go right into your pocket

Oh Boy! We just got some ice cream with the piece of cake!

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get a $4,000 tax credit if they hire anyone who has spent more than six months looking for a job. We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work

He just added some sprinkles and whip cream to the ice cream. I love sprinkles and whip cream. That is one nice dessert the president has presented the country.

Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows that we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over this country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world.

Wait a minute!

I think we just had this dessert not too long ago.

He is talking about shovel ready jobs again.

Did he not recently admit shovel ready jobs were not so shovel ready?

I know he did.

I’m sure he has a solution to that problem:

We’re cutting the red tape that prevents some of these projects from getting started as quickly as possible. And we’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it would do for the economy.

Okay, this is where I lose my humor. He wants to create a whole new bureaucracy. A whole new layer of government.

Uh, no.

By eliminating pages of loopholes and deductions, we can lower one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Our tax code shouldn’t give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs here in America.

There is no doubt the corporate tax code requires reform, however, since Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of GE ( a company that used every loophole available to avoid paying taxes), was sitting next to the First Lady last night, how do I take this seriously?

And we’re going to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root not in China or Europe, but right here, in the United States of America.

And again, the person sitting next to the First Lady is one who is shipping those jobs out of America.

I try to use my humor to deal with serious things and our country is facing some serious challenges. Challenges that require new solutions not the same rhetoric we have heard for the last 2 1/2 years. Not the same stimulus, only smaller, that did not work in the past. When the president said:

Those of us here tonight can’t solve all of our nation’s woes. Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers. But we can help.

I thought of Ronald Reagan when he said:

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’