Obama's Non-State of the Union Address
This would have been a State of the Union (SOTU) address had it been any other President delivering it.
Besides ending with "God Bless America", a formulaic SOTU is expected to include somewhere in its first ten minutes the phrase, "The state of the Union is strong." On the face of it, such an utterance would have been greeted with the same derision as John McCain's "The Fundamentals of our economy are strong" was last year. In view of the current fundamentals of our economy, our Union has seen better days. A McCain or a Bush would have put lipstick on it and pronounced our ailing body politic as hale and hearty. But President Obama is a non-prevaricating leader who tells it as it is, and that's what he did Tuesday night. Eloquently.
Some leaders on the other side don't like the truth to be told.
I don't think they can be reached.
Besides ending with "God Bless America", a formulaic SOTU is expected to include somewhere in its first ten minutes the phrase, "The state of the Union is strong." On the face of it, such an utterance would have been greeted with the same derision as John McCain's "The Fundamentals of our economy are strong" was last year. In view of the current fundamentals of our economy, our Union has seen better days. A McCain or a Bush would have put lipstick on it and pronounced our ailing body politic as hale and hearty. But President Obama is a non-prevaricating leader who tells it as it is, and that's what he did Tuesday night. Eloquently.
Some leaders on the other side don't like the truth to be told.
I don't think they can be reached.
posted by Vigilante at 2/26/2009 07:52:00 PM
12 Moderated Comments:
Dear Rethuglicans,
You lost. Get over it. Elections have consequences. So much for bipartisanship...
Yours untruly,
Stella
(Hi Vig!)
Dear Rethuglicans,
You gave Pres. Bush 8 years of Reaganomics, tax cuts for the rich and government that allowed his rich friends to raid the government treasury.
Face it: Reaganomics failed even while Reagan was in office (He raised taxes in his second term). Face it: Bushed failed trying to emulate Reagan. Face it: You guys no longer have an appropriate ideology for our times.
Deal with it and start helping Obama get our country past this terrible economic crisis.
Guys.... Demonizing the Republicans, as much fun as that might be, is hardly going to solve this crisis.
We cannot handle this level of debt. As I wrote oven on my blog entry "The Party of No":
"The Washington Dems are trying to blame the whole thing on previous administration, normally a foolproof strategy good for the first couple of years of any new administration. Unfortunately, in this case, such an argument doesn't stand up to even the most cursory analysis. Compared to Obama's spending, Bush was a rank amateur. Actually Bush was a rank amateur in most areas of government, but I digress......"
Wizard: What you're missing, first, is that all things are not equal. It's not a question of who is spending the most.
Second, Bush has choices that Obama doesn't. Bush chose to take us into an unnecessary, stupid war, which drained the treasury. But chose to do no oversight, to ignore what the banks and mortgage companies were doing in unisom to get us into the mess. On the other hand, Obama has not choice but to deal with the worst U.S. economy in memory. He has no other choice but to spend and make sure banks have money to loan to small businesses to keep them afloat. Obama has no other choice but to act and act boldly. He has no other choice but to try to restart the economy while, at the same time, provide a safety net for the middle and low-income Americans.He has no other choice but to change tax policies that presently favor rich businesses over working people, change military procurement policy and reform healthcare.
You're comparing apples and oranges. One administration created the problem. The other has to spend money in the short run to clean up the problem.
I'm starting to think Lindsey and John are a couple.
Throw Lieberman in for a threesome.
I appreciate your input MacDaddy, but you prove my point and fulfill my quote to the letter.
Blaming Bush is sure a lot of fun, but it is Obama who decided the only way out of the hole was to dig faster and with a bigger shovel.
This isn't some sort of zero sum game. You don't get to win just because you can shout "Bush is a loser" the loudest.
Bush is a loser. F*!#@^ him.
Now let's solve the problem. And not with make believe numbers and so much more borrowed money it is actually impossible to ever repay the debt.
I'm certain you noticed that in the ten years of Obama's projections (two years more than he hopes to hold the office) he never projects paying back one penny of the National Debt.
MacDaddy, you're absolutely right: "One administration created the problem. The other has to spend money in the short run to clean up the problem."
Wizard, Bush took money from all the social programs, national infrastructure, and environment to funnel money to Halliburton, Telecomms, Big Oil, Big Pharma, et al. While the rest of us suffered, they did fine. Bush cost Louisiana billions in the wake of Katrina.
Much as I like, respect, and agree with your common sense attitude about not wanting to go further into debt, we still need to fix our nation. I believe green energy and microchip technology will help the financial crisis greatly.
I'm also concerned that it may be impossible to pay the debt, but more concerned about fixing the mess Bush made of America.
All I can say is that I hope that China doesn't get mad at us any time soon. They're the ones who are paying for the excessess of BOTH Bush and Obama. And now Obama wants to try and "win" this war if Afghanistan (something that the Brits and the Soviets at the heights of their power couldn't accomplish). We need a Paul Tsongas type in the White House, folks. That's what we really need.
Will Hart & Beach have been reading my mind!
Thanks to all for a surprising colorful discussion.
Try as I might to find some degree of affinity with Wizard's position I still experience significant and irreducible degrees of separation.
For one thing his position has always been 'squishy': in the recent past he was a 'true believer' in Obama, then switched to Hillary. He's denounced those with 'Bush Derangement Syndrome', now calls Bush a loser inspite of having backed McCain-Palin in the election. After all, McCain wanted to invade Iraq before Bush did. Wizard's favorite expression is 'two wrongs don't make a right', but his own track record shows he, himself, has been more wrong then right.
As for the remarks of Stella and Daddy, hugs and hand shakes! Your points are born out by the historical record. If Busheney had not delivered our once-great nation to their suceeding POTUS on a life support system, new New Deal measures would not be necessary. As you both state so unequivocably, we have to get this year right.
Otherwise, we will become a first world version of Bangladesh.
Well Vigil I for some reason thought you were out of town or in a coma. I wish I had stopped by sooner. This was truly a wonderful discussion and I agree wholeheartedly with your original post and subsequent analysis.
No, they wouldn't like the way Pres Obama used scalpel to disect the ailing economy.
John McCain, if I remember rightly, would prefer to use a hatchet.
Hi Vig, how's everything going?
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