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FMP’s response to the 2011 State of the Union

Posted 26 Jan 2011 in Barack Obama, class warfare, economy, unemployment
*** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES ***
Paul Ryan’s GOP response here, Michelle Bachmann’s Tea Party response here

I don’t place much stock in State of the Union speeches, because they really don’t live up to their name. The President does not give Congress a report on the true state of the union. Regardless of the political party in power, the president stands in the House of Representatives and offers a collection of campaign-style platitudes and emotional anecdotes, intended to be dissected and disseminated as sound bites over the following week.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech was a mind-numbing 6,955 words, droning on for 61 minutes. That’s not long by SOTU standards, but it sure felt like it. (Full text of the speech here) It was an exercise in sheer political razzle-dazzle. Put it this way, the most compelling takeaway from the speech was Obama’s lame joke about salmon.

Generally speaking, I was struck by the fact that Obama’s superficial speech offered more about where he would increase spending than where he would cut. And his attempt to sound hawkish on the deficit by calling for a spending freeze is pretty disingenuous after he’s increased spending a whopping 21% since taking office. Freezing spending at current rates just allows the fiscal irresponsibility to continue!

Additionally, the President never mentioned the 15 million Americans out of work. Not one single word about unemployment. America’s unemployment rate is over 17% when you count the underemployed and those who’ve given up looking for a job; these are crisis levels we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. And yet it’s not important enough to mention as part of the current State of the Union?

A few other specifics that really ticked me off:

  • “Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans’ paychecks are a little bigger today.” — I’m glad to hear the president admit that tax cuts grow the economy. But he can’t take credit for the Bush tax cuts. He fought them tooth and nail until he realized Democrats didn’t have the political clout to raise taxes on achievers. So he brokered a deal with Republicans to continue the current tax rates for another two years. That’s not a cut. It’s maintaining the status quo.

  • “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.” — Seriously? After defunding NASA and changing its focus to Muslim outreach, Obama expects to use a Soviet space program to inspire Americans?

  • “Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents.” — This was a disgusting example of political correctness, and was nothing more than a concession to the illegal alien voting bloc within the Democrat party. The children of bank robbers shouldn’t be allowed to keep the proceeds of their parents’ crimes, nor should the children of illegal aliens be allowed to remain in the United States to prosper from their parents’ criminal invasion of our country.

  • “When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.” — This was an empty nod to business owners who have been feeling the squeeze of Obama’s policies. His actions, unlike his rhetoric, demonstrate that he thinks ALL burdens on business are necessary.

    If he was truly dedicated to “fix what needs fixing and move forward,” he would help the Republicans repeal Obamacare.

  • “Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.” — Sorry, I call bullsh*t. It most certainly IS a matter of punishing success. “I do think, at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” ~Barack Hussein Obama, April 28, 2010

  • “If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.” — Yeah, I’m sure this time he really means it. Unlike the $410 billion spending package containing 9,000 earmarks that he quietly approved after having campaigned against earmarks “…absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” ~Barack Hussein Obama, Sept. 26, 2008

Obama’s speech used the word “together” 6 times. I’d like to see him work together with Republicans rather than the way he’s demonized them ever since he took up residence in the White House. It’s easy to talk the same talk as Conservatives, let’s see if our president can walk the walk. He promised to make the hard choices to rein in our deficits, but his policies have added more than $3 trillion to the national debt in two years. His past actions don’t bode well for his future performance.

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UPDATE: No wonder last night’s speech was so uninspiring; we’ve pretty much heard it all before…literally. U.S. News & World Report‘s Alvin Felzenberg asserts that “Obama’s State of the Union Was Tantamount to Plagiarism.”

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what can be said of plagiarism? President Obama’s second State of the Union address contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince. I suppose this is what one does when one not only has nothing new to say, but is required by custom and Constitution to come forth with a report of some kind by a certain time and day.

Had Obama or his writers been considerate enough to have informed listeners of where some of the president’s best lines and offered-up ideas originated, the speech might be remembered for its cutting and pasting of great and not-so-great moments of the past performance of others. After quoting Robert Kennedy early on, Obama tried to have his listeners believe that everything else he said that we might remember were his or his writers’ creations. Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean.

There’s much more, read the whole thing.

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RELATED: The AP did their own fact-checking of Dear Leader’s speech and found it more than a little lacking.

RELATED: From the ”Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day” file, The New York Times deserves kudos for their interactive fact-checking of Obama’s speech. It combines the full video and transcript of the speech with concurrent fact-checking and viewer reactions from around the web. Since it’s The New York Times, don’t expect them to deviate from their agenda too much. But it’s a well-made piece, nevertheless.

RELATED: The folks at Reason.tv make a simple point…

President Obama spent last year’s State of the Union address celebrating spending programs past (hooray, stimulus!) and proposing new budget-busters. The shellacking Democrats took during the 2010 midterm elections was supposed to change all that, but at Tuesday night’s SOTU Obama reverted to his “throw-money-at-every-conceivable-problem” self.

Yes he included some proposals to cut spending, but those are as likely to vanish as the spending hikes are likely to swell.

Could the “new” Obama be even more expensive than last year’s model?

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

1 Comment

  1. Admin
    Dean
    27 January 11, 12:31am

    Nice breakdown, FMP.

    Re: the Sputnik remark. After a slow start out of the blocks, we absolutely destroyed the Soviets in the space race. What a bizarre analogy to make.

    Reply

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