The Glade 4.0

Obama's First State of the Union Address

What are your thoughts and opinions?

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Thank god I missed it???

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Raell Kromwell

I encourage you to read it. It is an enlightening speech.

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Your link points to a register only site, so unreadable to me. I'm sure its elsewhere on the web, I'll find another copy.

I don't think Samuel Alito was all that enthusiastic.

New York Times isn't register only is it?

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I get a Must Register/Log in to view this page screen when I use your link.

Weird, I don't have a Web Subscription for the NYT and view it just fine =\

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The link goes right to the speech transcript for me. Sorry you're having trouble, Ladas.

NYT is sub only for some of it's content. You can see the speech on YouTube.

I watched it live last night. The President is an excellent speaker, and a fantastic speech writer. He and his team did a great job with the SOTU address.

I liked his proposal for student loans. I was pleased that he came out strongly against the SCOTUS ruling on corporate spending on campaigns. I was pleased that he held the line on HCR, and I was pleased that he stated very firmly that our troops will be out of Iraq by year's end.

I was happy that he clearly called the Republicans onto the carpet for their unprecedented use of the filibuster to halt legislation. I was happy that he declared he was going to work with congress to repeal DADT this year.

Can he do it? It depends on how willing democrats in congress are going to be to buck the fillibuster and fight back against republican obstructionism. The Republicans proved this year that they will filibuster every single solitary piece of legislation the Democrats propose. I don't have a lot of faith in Senate democrats to use the same tactics Bush used to push his agenda through. So I suppose we'll see.

There is a reason this president remains significantly more popular than congressional republicans or Democrats, and I think the SOTU showed why.

Now he has to deliver. Or at least, he has to fight as hard as he can to deliver, and be seen as fighting.

The President needs to practice what he preaches a bit better, I think. His comments on lobbyists are great, but he needs to walk the walk as well. His administration has waved several lobbyists to work for them (because they were also highly qualified people), but the appearance is simply inconsistent with the rhetoric.

We keep talking about fiscal health, but no one wants to talk about revenue. We have this huge deficit, and we need to increase taxes in order to help pay it down. Freezing discretionary spending won't actually have that huge of an impact, but allowing Bush's tax cuts to expire and perhaps passing an additional tax increase could probably see us to a much healthier fiscal position.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

The speech was well delivered and the media did a good job with the quality.



Why do you hate college students so much?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I found the speech ineffectual and filled with empty rhetoric, but at least it is a sign of change. While most sitting Presidents have used it to levy some criticism at their political opposition, Barack Obama turned it into a cudgel. Obama used the speech to politicize the situation on Capital Hill and absolve himself of guilt for his mistakes and failures. He invoked the Bush Shield or the Obstructionist Republican Shield or the "Whatever It Takes For This To NOT Be His Fault" Shield ... The speech demonstrates his failure as a leader. In an interview on Health Care Reform, Princeton Professor Uwe Reinhardt describes Obama as a great orator, but never the pedagogue. Obama's speeches attack emotion, but they never teach or instruct. And I think that criticism is indicative of last night's speech. It was a failure because it neither inspired confidence nor corrected misconceptions. It simply appealed to the same emotions that are already stretched thin on empty promises and unfulfilled ideals.

I also think President Obama has finally destroyed all credibility as a "Senior Lecturer" on Constitutional Law: the Supreme Court defended the First Amendment. The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of Constitutionality. I'm sorry that his politics don't allow for the reality of that decision, because it was the right decision vis-a-vis the First.

So what do I see in the speech? I see an impetuous fool throwing a tantrum and blaming everyone else for his failure to do the job with which he is tasked: Leading the American People. Many Presidents have faced similar difficulties in their first year; Obama is the first President I've seen blame everyone else for his inability to ramrod his agenda through government. Maybe, just maybe, Obama will try to earn some political capital and national goodwill with next years speech; that is, if he's smart enough to put out the fires he started last night.

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I like to imagine that after watching that speech I now have some idea of what a woman feels like after 2 minutes of sex.

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The Dude abides.

My initial reaction on the student loan proposal was that it was retarded. Nobody in their right minds would loan money to a student under those conditions. It would be impossible to get a loan. I'm hoping he only means this for federal loans.

Also, his speech was lacking a bit in the fact department. Listening to NPR this morning, he mispoke on several items, including how much filibustering is actually going on (and why), the suggestion that his spending freeze would pay for the trillion dollars he's spent so far (he's proposing a 3 year freeze - they said a 10-year freeze might reach a quarter of that in savings), and also the suggestion that the CBO said his health care plan will save a trillion dollars. It won't.

I viewed last night as Barack Obama's last chance to step up and be the President of the United States. It was his last opportunity to do the job: he failed. He's still stumping on the campaign trail. The United States needs a leader, and Barack Obama is sorely lacking in the leadership department.

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TL;DR.

Glad I didn't. Seems more of the same old same old.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Do you know the background of the ruling and the oh so tasty irony of the situation?

I'm not sure I'll hit on the same things you're thinking; I do know that the SCotUSBlog has basically given up its non-partisan pretenses based on this decision. Of course, it occurs to me that Stevens' is being rather duplicitous in his dissent, since Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce ruled on "more than was necessary" as well.

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I didn't listen or watch because I don't desire to spend my time being lied to.

I don't intend to read it because I have better things to do than read about the lies he spoke.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It was an amazing bit of finger-pointing, blame-deflection and empty-promise making. When even those who worship at the altar of the Obamessiah begin questioning the merit of his promises, things aren't going well for him, and he's beginning to flail about in his never-ending election campaign, looking for cheap votes.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I get the impression that many folks were underwhelmed by the whole thing.

It appears someone else agrees with you:

[youtube]4pB5uR3zgsA[/youtube]

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I was referring to a recent Forbes article I read about Martin Redish and his influence on the original ruling regarding corporate free speech, his ties as senior counsel at Sidley Austin, the law firm in which the Obamas worked/met, and his work at Northwestern University.

I found the article... Are Class Actions Unconstitutional?

Vindicarre:

The irony of that statement is that President Obama has read neither of the opinions in question. The prohibition on direct corporate contributions remains in tact.

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It's informative that even the liberal justices didn't get up and clap for that remark. That was the low point of the speech IMO. You don't, if you're the President or Congress "come out strongly" against a point of law the Supreme Court has ruled upon. That's their purview. It was essentially a tantrum that separation of powers resulted in something he didn't like.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."