Major Points from Tonight's State of the Union Address

[The T]

The State of the Union is strong. That's a message Americans want and need to hear, not the fear mongering from the right.

Sometimes what we WANT to hear is not the truth and it's not what we need to hear.

In reality, the State of the Union is concerning.

Until all members of the legislative branch (and the President, too) face up to the potentially DIRE implications of our deficit CRISIS and start acting accordingly, we are not "strong." We are in peril.

It is not "rear mongering" to tell someone about to be hit by a fast approaching bus that he needs to "watch out!"

Well now, where the hell were you when the Repubs were running the deficit up to wage a war based on lies?

The present president has ran the deficit up preventing the Second Great Republican Depression.

And where were you when Obama and the Democrats sold our grandchildren and thier children into the new slavery to pay off their deficit spending while gladhanding our new bankers...the Chinese you piece of shit?

 

[MaggieMae]

Wait Wait Wait, he used the family of the murdered child as a prop? He can't let them grieve in peace? He had to showcase them?

That's fucking sick

As I recall Booooooooooooooooooooosh liked to use family members of their kids who had gone down in flames in Iraq, seriously wounded soldiers and Marines. Using "props" as you incorrectly define them is hardly a new visual when making a specific point.

 

[MaggieMae]

"Invest," (spend) so we can "win the future."

Obama came off like a commercial...

Children
Fire fighters
Teachers
Troops
Education
USA - The most awesome bright beam of light in the universe with the most giving hardest working coolest people ever know...

He gave NO idea how he wants to pay for all of this. Obama simply tapped a nerve of, people don't like paying for something so GOVERNMENT will, thus, buying votes by making people MORE dependent on Government.

Dependent on...

Education...
Travel...
Healthcare...
Food...

And well, anything you don't like spending money on... With a nation getting poorer and poorer despite NEW MASSIVE GOVERNEMNET (weird how government never shrinks and things only seem to get worse) of course we see lots of people wanting Government to help pay MORE for their education, to bad it's Government that helps drive up that cost of it.

So I guess those items are unimportant to you, then. Sadly, that says volumes, because each and every one is an area that keeps America strong and keeps you alive.

Were you even listening? He talked about paying for some of it by using existing unnecessary subsidies elsewhere, by eliminating duplication, especially agency duplication. In effect, he was talking about cleaning out the bureaucracy. He talked about forming policy around some of the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Committee. Obama also committed to revising the tax code to simplify it and make it more fair. Now that he's thrown down the gauntlet, he needs to set the mechanics in motion to make it happen.

Cool, replace debt with debt paid out in a different area... Moronic.

Like it or not, folks, the deficit will remain high until the economy turns around. The economy won't turn around until the unemployment numbers go down. Unemployment won't go down until people get trained (retrained) to do the work that represents state-of-the-art industry and manufacturing. Modern industry won't happen until investments are made by infusion of money by both public and private entities. Only then will REVENUE start to increase and the necessary spending on jump-starting modernization will no longer be necessary.

 

[MaggieMae]

has he NOT said any of this before?

There are NO details...not even an inkling.

Frankly all of the sotu addys are just a free night of coverage.

A State of the Union address never gives details on proposals for future governing.

uh huh, that why I don't watch and why its just a big campaign speech....and maybe they should instead of promising everything and embarrassing themselves.

Sorry, but to a majority of Americans, the SOTU speech was not embarrassing. Would you have preferred he stand there and preach gloom and doom? I think he did a good job of straddling the doomsday possibilities with the still existing strengths and resiliency of the American people. Most of us need to hear the latter occasionally.

 

[Avorysuds]

Wait Wait Wait, he used the family of the murdered child as a prop? He can't let them grieve in peace? He had to showcase them?

That's fucking sick

As I recall Booooooooooooooooooooosh liked to use family members of their kids who had gone down in flames in Iraq, seriously wounded soldiers and Marines. Using "props" as you incorrectly define them is hardly a new visual when making a specific point.

Bush also helped destroy the Republican party and gave birth to the TPM. This is of course if the person looking at what happened just a few years ago is not a total hack who believes the TPM was created because Obama is black...

What was Bush's approval rating? 31% or something? What was the Republican Congress’s, 13% or something?

Reps/Dems, conservatives and Democrats hated Bush and the Rep congress... The question is why do so many liberals love Bush's policies now that Obama is 100-150% backing them today? Obama grows the war, grows homeland security and yet all the protests went away. Bush does Medicare part D and OMFGZ, yet Obama does Obamacare and liberals cheer!

 

[MaggieMae]

What 'Major Points'?

The whole speech was preening for Obama to kick off 2012 aspirations...

It was FLAT...and a FLOP. SOSDD...(Same old SHIT, Different Day)...

SOTU: FACT CHECK: Obama and his imbalanced ledger...<LINK

[SNIP]

OBAMA: "The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don't agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it — in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes."

THE FACTS: Obama's fiscal commission did not simply recommend cutting excessive spending; it proposed that the deficit could only be tamed by cutting $3 for every $1 of new revenue raised — in other words, a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Instead, Obama proposed an overhaul of the corporate tax system that would eliminate loopholes and tax breaks but also reduce tax rates. The net effect would be neutral; it would not reduce or raise any revenue. Obama has yet to sign on to any of the ideas, even though he promised when creating the panel that it would not be "one of those Washington gimmicks."

One of many Obama has been called upon in that failure of a so-called speech...

Whoever did that fact-checking made some incorrect assumptions.

Commission's final deficit report preserves controversial spending cuts

The final blueprint for rebalancing the federal budget hews closely to an earlier plan released before Thanksgiving. Like the original, it offers an aggressive prescription for reducing deficits by nearly $4 trillion by the end of the decade, in large part by slashing domestic and military spending.

In hopes of satisfying the concerns of the panel's Republicans, those cuts would be even deeper than in the original document, slicing more than $1.6 trillion from Obama's proposed budgets by 2020 and reducing overall government spending to just under 22 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

Among the most painful of those decisions, Bowles said, is a recommendation to reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent by the end of the decade, eliminating 200,000 jobs.

Obama clearly said a goal was to [paraphrasing] tackle the huge bureacracy, particularly the duplication (and in some areas triplication).

PDF view of the actual report:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/TheMomentofTruth.pdf

 

[MaggieMae]

Sometimes what we WANT to hear is not the truth and it's not what we need to hear.

In reality, the State of the Union is concerning.

Until all members of the legislative branch (and the President, too) face up to the potentially DIRE implications of our deficit CRISIS and start acting accordingly, we are not "strong." We are in peril.

It is not "rear mongering" to tell someone about to be hit by a fast approaching bus that he needs to "watch out!"

Well now, where the hell were you when the Repubs were running the deficit up to wage a war based on lies?

The present president has ran the deficit up preventing the Second Great Republican Depression.

First you stupid fuck, this is why we went to war

Second, FDR oversaw the Great Depression, he was a Democrat

Third I have another foot of snow here,please tell me again how "ManMade GlobalWarming" is responsible

to both. Facts don't support those now very lame assumptions.

 

[MaggieMae]

Well now, where the hell were you when the Repubs were running the deficit up to wage a war based on lies?

The present president has ran the deficit up preventing the Second Great Republican Depression.

First you stupid fuck, this is why we went to war

Second, FDR oversaw the Great Depression, he was a Democrat

Third I have another foot of snow here,please tell me again how "ManMade GlobalWarming" is responsible

Frank? The Snow you step forth into is Global warming...it doesn't matter to these freaks.

Ah yes, it must be snowing and freezing cold everywhere on the globe. CLIMATE variations in any one given spot on earth is NOT an indicator of global warming.

Climate Change: News

The oceans surrounding Antarctica have been warming, so Schodlok doesn’t doubt that the ice shelves are being undermined by warmer water being brought up from the depths. But he admits that it hasn’t been proven rigorously, because satellites can’t measure underneath the ice.

Enter Andrill:

UNL | News Release | ANDRILL team to conduct Antarctic survey project in 2010-11 season

When sea ice forms, it pushes the salt out, creating a mass of cold, salty, dense water that sinks to the bottom of the ocean, creating deep ocean currents that affect ocean circulation and the distribution of heat worldwide. By drilling deeper into the Antarctic ice sheets, which are currently melting, these scientists hope to discover when and why the melting occurred similarly millions of years ago.

 

[MaggieMae]

Sometimes what we WANT to hear is not the truth and it's not what we need to hear.

In reality, the State of the Union is concerning.

Until all members of the legislative branch (and the President, too) face up to the potentially DIRE implications of our deficit CRISIS and start acting accordingly, we are not "strong." We are in peril.

It is not "rear mongering" to tell someone about to be hit by a fast approaching bus that he needs to "watch out!"

Well now, where the hell were you when the Repubs were running the deficit up to wage a war based on lies?

The present president has ran the deficit up preventing the Second Great Republican Depression.

And where were you when Obama and the Democrats sold our grandchildren and thier children into the new slavery to pay off their deficit spending while gladhanding our new bankers...the Chinese you piece of shit?

You represent the epitome of ignorance. "Our children will be paying for this!!!!" mantra has been around for decades. So far, nobody seems to have suffered as greatly as your stupid analogy as a direct result of deficit spending, nor will they.

 

[Trajan]

humm so the Sputnik analogy wasn't his apparently. I am nont sure that lets him off the hook though.



Sputnik moment," however, sounded to us not just false but clichéd. And in fact, it turned out the president himself had trotted out the "our generation's Sputnik moment" line before, at a Dec. 6, 2010, speech in North Carolina. But we doubted it originated in the White House speechwriting shop. It sounded like the work of a far, far worse writer. Sure enough, our suspicions were confirmed by a book review in the Sept. 9, 2008, edition of the New York Times: "Thomas L. Friedman's latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment."

Friedman, it turns out, has been beating the Sputnik drum since the Clinton years:

* "Just as the Soviet launch of Sputnik elevated the importance of science education in the early cold war, the onset of globalization and intensified economic competition is elevating the importance of technology education today."--March 10, 2000
* "Think about this. We are facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. The generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who were spurred to get advanced degrees by the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the challenge by President John Kennedy to put a man on the moon is slowly retiring."--Dec. 5, 2004
* "A few years ago my youngest daughter participated in the National History Day program for eighth graders. . . . My daughter's project was 'How Sputnik Led to the Internet.' "--June 1, 2005
* "I came to Detroit looking for the hottest new American cars. Instead, I found Sputnik."--Jan. 20, 2006
* "The big question for me is, how will President Bush and the Democratic Congress use China: as a scapegoat or a Sputnik?"--Nov. 10, 2006
* "We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge."--June 29, 2008
* "I believe this Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik. . . . Well, folks. Sputnik just went up again: China's going clean-tech. . . . China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day."--Sept. 27, 2009
* "I hope Americans see China's rise as the 21st-century equivalent of Russia launching the Sputnik satellite. . . . Unfortunately, the Cheneyites want to make fighting Al Qaeda our Sputnik."--Jan. 16, 2010

etc etc etc

more at-
The Speech Is Flat - WSJ.com

 

[MaggieMae]

Wait Wait Wait, he used the family of the murdered child as a prop? He can't let them grieve in peace? He had to showcase them?

That's fucking sick

As I recall Booooooooooooooooooooosh liked to use family members of their kids who had gone down in flames in Iraq, seriously wounded soldiers and Marines. Using "props" as you incorrectly define them is hardly a new visual when making a specific point.

Bush also helped destroy the Republican party and gave birth to the TPM. This is of course if the person looking at what happened just a few years ago is not a total hack who believes the TPM was created because Obama is black...

What was Bush's approval rating? 31% or something? What was the Republican Congress&#8217;s, 13% or something?

Reps/Dems, conservatives and Democrats hated Bush and the Rep congress... The question is why do so many liberals love Bush's policies now that Obama is 100-150% backing them today? Obama grows the war, grows homeland security and yet all the protests went away. Bush does Medicare part D and OMFGZ, yet Obama does Obamacare and liberals cheer!

I would argue that Obama has not adopted Bush policies 150%, but I don't want to derail this thread even further. As for Medicare Part D, it was fucking UNFUNDED, period, while Healthcare Reform at least has projected how it will be funded, including closing the Medicare deficit caused in large part by the UNFUNDED MANDATE OF PART D.

 

[MaggieMae]

humm so the Sputnik analogy wasn't his apparently. I am nont sure that lets him off the hook though.



Sputnik moment," however, sounded to us not just false but clichéd. And in fact, it turned out the president himself had trotted out the "our generation's Sputnik moment" line before, at a Dec. 6, 2010, speech in North Carolina. But we doubted it originated in the White House speechwriting shop. It sounded like the work of a far, far worse writer. Sure enough, our suspicions were confirmed by a book review in the Sept. 9, 2008, edition of the New York Times: "Thomas L. Friedman's latest book is a plea for a new Sputnik moment."

Friedman, it turns out, has been beating the Sputnik drum since the Clinton years:

* "Just as the Soviet launch of Sputnik elevated the importance of science education in the early cold war, the onset of globalization and intensified economic competition is elevating the importance of technology education today."--March 10, 2000
* "Think about this. We are facing a mounting crisis in science and engineering education. The generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who were spurred to get advanced degrees by the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik and the challenge by President John Kennedy to put a man on the moon is slowly retiring."--Dec. 5, 2004
* "A few years ago my youngest daughter participated in the National History Day program for eighth graders. . . . My daughter's project was 'How Sputnik Led to the Internet.' "--June 1, 2005
* "I came to Detroit looking for the hottest new American cars. Instead, I found Sputnik."--Jan. 20, 2006
* "The big question for me is, how will President Bush and the Democratic Congress use China: as a scapegoat or a Sputnik?"--Nov. 10, 2006
* "We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge."--June 29, 2008
* "I believe this Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik. . . . Well, folks. Sputnik just went up again: China's going clean-tech. . . . China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day."--Sept. 27, 2009
* "I hope Americans see China's rise as the 21st-century equivalent of Russia launching the Sputnik satellite. . . . Unfortunately, the Cheneyites want to make fighting Al Qaeda our Sputnik."--Jan. 16, 2010

etc etc etc

more at-
The Speech Is Flat - WSJ.com

The analogy has been around and used for decades. That's why it's a bit shocking that Palin didn't have a clue. All she knew was that it was a Russian space vehicle, but she thought it failed. Hopefully by today, she's got her book out.

 

[MaggieMae]

A couple of recent polls:

and
Americans Oppose Cuts in Education, Social Security, Defense

Prior to the State of the Union address, a majority of Americans said they favor cutting U.S. foreign aid, but more than 6 in 10 opposed cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare. Smaller majorities objected to cutting programs for the poor, national defense, homeland security, aid to farmers, and funding for the arts and sciences.

So are we all talk and no action???

 

[Flopper]

A couple of recent polls:

and
Americans Oppose Cuts in Education, Social Security, Defense

Prior to the State of the Union address, a majority of Americans said they favor cutting U.S. foreign aid, but more than 6 in 10 opposed cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare. Smaller majorities objected to cutting programs for the poor, national defense, homeland security, aid to farmers, and funding for the arts and sciences.

So are we all talk and no action???

There are several problems with cutting foreign aid. First, it means breaking commitments the US has made with other countries which is not a good idea since our financial system is based on the faith and trust of others. Second, many of our financial aid agreements have strings attached such as opening markets for US goods, trade deals, and security issues. Lastly, cutting foreign aid is not going solve our financial problems.

Solving our financial problems requires that government go against the wishes of most Americans, making deep cuts in programs the people value and/or adding to their tax burden, a tough job for any politician.