In a variation on the man-bites-dog story, Barack Obama last night pledged in his first (God help us!) State of the Union Address (full text here) to go after “Washington.”
Now, maybe the misunderstanding is all mine. Maybe he means Washington State (a pox on them)! Or maybe he means a different Washington. According to this disambiguation page at Wikipedia, there are Washingtons in some two dozen-plus states.
Surely, the president doesn’t mean Washington, DC — which is epitomized first and foremost by the head of the executive branch, the president himself. Then again, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the Washington he had in mind.
But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We can’t wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side — a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. The confirmation of — (applause) — I’m speaking to both parties now. The confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn’t be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual senators. (Applause.)
Did you notice that warning to both benches? That was kinda neat. He understands that it’s not the Republicans alone who are mucking things up, though it’s mainly them. He also took a shot at the third branch of government, the Judicial, by dressing down the Supreme Court, while its members sat there in the chamber.
But I digress. Look again at that quote. He feels our pain, he says. He understands that what frustrates us, the People, is “a Washington where every day is Election Day.” He is right. I for one am sick to death of some idiot getting up on stage day after day, campaigning for an office he already won. But I can think of only one individual among all the presidents in my lifetime to do that, and it was the speaker of those words.
This was also the first time I’ve seen a president call out the Supremes during a SOTU, but what does he care? What’s the worst thing that bunch of clowns can do to him? Oh, that’s right.
If there were any lingering doubts that this is a man teetering on the brink of derangement, last night he erased them all. I know there was a limousine outside the Capitol waiting to spirit him back to his living quarters at the White House. Given the current state of emotional stability of Barack Obama (SOES), it won’t be long before that vehicle is replaced by a rubber truck spiriting Obama off to his new digs, which will be padded for this safety.
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Comments 41
He was attacking George Washington. Small-headed, floppy-nosed, wooden-toothed SOB. I never did like Washington. Better late than never.
January 28th, 2010 at 7:40 am
Howard, The BIG story is what everyone ignored last night,THE FED,who’s going to run it,what is its mission,ETC ETC
CONSERVATIVE VIEW:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/27/bernanke-agonistes/
LIBERAL VIEW:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/opinion/28blinder.html?ref=opinion
The heart of this debate is the question Does Capitalism Require a Central Bank? This,like all the Crucial questions of the day is not discussed. What we had,last night,Is a puppet show by our Government as a whole,APPEARANCE vs REALITY. BTW,Check out C. Baum’s article in Bloomberg discussing Geithner’s Golden parachute ala Goldman Sachs,very hush hush.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:03 am
No no no. He says the same stuff that swept George Washington into power swept him into power.
He wants to change The Washington Redskins.
They will henceforth be called The Washington Community Organizers.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:04 am
Or The Washington Bla Bla Bla
January 28th, 2010 at 8:08 am
It was a totally unhinged speech ‘where are the strawberry’s’ it is reminiscent of the supposed rants that Woodward and Bernstein
alleged about Nixon, (too good to check, speciallly for SNL), and the kind of scurrilous rumor mongering by Halperin and co, but out in the open.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:15 am
Some very funny stuff there, folks! Thanks.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:40 am
“If there were any lingering doubts that this is a man teetering on the brink of derangement”
Howard, I feel your pain,but your pain is so selective. How would things be any different*/better if McCain had won,and all of Congress was solidly Repub?
*Not different in Appearance,but different in reality. Would our economy be better? Would our deficits be lower? Would our currency be stronger? etc etc
January 28th, 2010 at 8:45 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
Perhaps we wouldn’t re racing toward the financial cliff you always talk about at quite as great a speed. If nothing else the Rs are moderated by the big media and the academy.
January 28th, 2010 at 8:54 am
First of all it’s unlikely that mcCain would have had a Republican majority. yes he shares some of the same bete noires as Obama, but there would be a better than even chance, that there would be some
budget discipline, which would lead to a more solid currency, that we would be conducting the variouscampaigns in the war on terror more efficiently,
January 28th, 2010 at 8:54 am
budget discipline, which would lead to a more solid currency.
No way,Currency strength is the Fed’s province. Budget discipline would immediately raise the unemployment rate,and that’s political cyanide for either party. Please admit that this is all about style not substance. Last night,I was watching a total presence of ineptitude from the Presidency,Congress,and the SC. Howard is ignoring most of the incompetence. For example,when Mitch McConnell was asked if he agreed with the recent SC decision on,he was asked if he agreed that Foreign owned US Corporations should benefit from the ruling,his response,”I didn’t know about that part.”
January 28th, 2010 at 9:25 am
financial cliff
Pushing the Lemmings is the Fed,not the Government. Neither party has any control over it because of economic ignorance.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:08 am
The Fed was ostensibly a reaction to the 1907 Panic, the first big Fed
Chief was Menjamin Strong, the NY Morgan banker, who helped manage
the 1919-20 bust, but what out of the picture, by 1929. Greenspan,
doesn’t have that excuse, But the Fed didn’t generate the 14 trillion
debt
January 28th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Rex Caruthers wrote:
When was it ever different, and how long did it last?
As for McConnell’s response on the Supreme Court, it was actually quite reasonable, since BO was “making stuff up.”
January 28th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Fed didn’t generate the 14 trillion
The Fed generated a much larger debt,25 Trillion in brand new electronic dollars(they went to save Wall Street,loaned out at 0% interest so Wall Street would invest in treasuries yeilding 4.5%,a satanic deal,why didn’t the Fed put that money directly in Treasuries at 0%?????) that go right to their own bottom line,on the DEBIT side,because they are all IOUs. That kind of Debt is what is called “Off balance sheet”,and it will take you down like a heart attack.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:41 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
An optimistic conservative (where are you, JED) might at least hope that Mister Peanut’s State of the Union Tantrum can hasten the point at which the public really says ENOUGH, and then the pendulum can swing back to basics, maybe even to the kind of hard currency you want, my frem!
January 28th, 2010 at 11:00 am
scientific socialist wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
An optimistic conservative (where are you, JED) might at least hope that Mister Peanut’s State of the Union Tantrum can hasten the point at which the public really says ENOUGH, and then the pendulum can swing back to basics, maybe even to the kind of hard currency you want, my frem!
Not going to happen until we crave Reality above Appearance. We need to educate our young on Plato’s Cave,The Greek Tragedies,and the Old Testament. We could make video games from all three.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:09 am
After a year the verdict is in: What we have on our hands here is a failed actor. Not a president. The pathos is deep. President Obama imagines that he is Henry V at Agincourt or Hamlet in the graveyard, when all that his reed-thin talent can project is a bizarre variation of Jack Webb in Dragnet, dressing down a bicycle thief. In his own unconventional opinion, he is punching above his weight, with startling portrayals on a par with, say, Olivier or Gielgud. When what actually comes to mind in seeing it is Hermann Munster on Prozac, a serious gap in expectations yawns before us, a stoic grimness that settles on all critics as they contemplate an uninspiring season. How many times more will this ghastly actor maudit tread the boards? Can we – should we for sanity’s sake – endure even one more address to Congress? Can’t anything be done about it? A performance this flawed should be canceled. What is called for is a new concept, which cannot go into rehearsals too soon. But the real novelty would be a single change in the dramatis.
Dreadful but true. Barack Obama deserves a supporting role on “The Guiding Light,” I won’t quibble. As a Kiwanis speaker, he probably cannot be beat. Under his current contract, however, he can be booked into prime time at a moment’s notice. What an agent!
January 28th, 2010 at 11:20 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
Nothing of the kind. Forget what might have been, Rex. Open your eyes to what is. The country under Obama is a nightmare. The Republicans may not have answers either — certainly not all to them — but don’t you EVER get bored with repeating this message as though no one heard you the first 1,000 times?
You are beginning to sound like a seriously stuck record.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Joe NS wrote:
Maybe the new season will bring a new fashion: congressional government, with the president, and this president especially, reduced to/revealed as figurehead.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:35 am
I’ve found this is a common attitude, with many but not all Paulians on many of the blogs I frequent. Two Vente cups of fresh Spenglerian gloom
January 28th, 2010 at 11:44 am
@ CK MacLeod:
be careful in what you pish for, boys. you might get to see a little of it and it might be found to be just as offensive this time as the public found it to be last time we were ankle-deep in it.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
@ fuster:
A pronouncement so enigmatic, I felt momentarily transported in time to the precincts of Delphi. I looked (in vain) for the virgin clothed in Samite and the snow-white bullock garlanded with oleander.
Speak English, for heaven’s sake.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
@ Joe NS:
A hook, a hook, my island for a hook
Bear up. We have three more years of stoic grimness to endure.
I shall start my enduring wondering whether fuster is the virgin or the bullock.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
@ Joe NS:
Sorry, Joe. I sorta thought that the last thing on Earth that the congress would want to do is to be seen as leading the government and assuming responsibility for the mess that the public sees in the economy picture.
Am I wrong to assume that the Republicans in Congress plan to prevent anything proposed by the administration and cry to that the administration is responsible all the way to the next election?
January 28th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
@ fuster:
That point only works when the congress is normally divided. The joy and hurt of a majority in the House and a 60 vote majority in the Senate, as the Dems had until last week, is 100% ability to pass legislation and 100% responsibility.
Now, with the Dems needing one Republican for cloture in the Senate, the Republicans bear precisely 1/60th of the responsibility for the outcomes. A lot of Dems will surely be glad for and will be touting that little fig leaf of cover come November.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
@ Sully:
the Oracle says : It works only if it works and the Republicans bear as much responsibility for the failure to pass legislation as the public says that it does.
If nothing passes, we’ll sees who gains.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
@ fuster:
When would you date the last time we were “ankle-deep” in congressional government?
January 28th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
You are beginning to sound like a seriously stuck record.
I’m very consistent,I agree. May I be so bold to suggest that you too might be accused of a similiar but opposite consistancy.
“The country under Obama is a nightmare.”
True,as it would be under any leader;Bankruptcy is the nightmare,not the country.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
DaNewt
January 28th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
The Republicans to this point have been able to seize the high ground because they were opposing stuff the public was screaming for the government (Democrats) to stop. Health care, extending the financial bailout and subsequent ownership of two of the domestic auto companies (notice how the public is punishing GM and Chrysler and rewarding Ford, that might tell you what the people think), TARP II, cap n trade, Porkulus, etc. To the extent anyone gets blamed moving forward it will be based upon what actually exists in the bills and if the GOP actually gets an opportunity to help write any of them.
The problem right now, the dems wrote them all, and forced them on pure party line voting. Obama owns all of this. How the public views the SOTU, and Obama’s performance will determine how many seats his party will get to lose. All I know is that Cook puts the GOP’s shot at the House at 50/50, and while still believing the Senate is out of reach, is backing off the no way never happen schtick.
January 28th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
There may be some truth to that. Then again, I’m not tapping anyone on the shoulder trying to convince them that their position is wrong.
January 28th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Hey, O’s not in Washington, he’s in Tampa today. Accepting plaudits for his funding of a completely unnecessary high-speed rail line from Tampa to Orlando.
Keep up, HP.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
There may be some truth to that. Then again, I’m not tapping anyone on the shoulder trying to convince them that their position is wrong.
Your position isn’t wrong,just narrowly focused on what is naturally unpleasant to you. However,it’s difficult for you to be critical towards that which you are amiable,even when it is very dysfunctional. In my case,I have to be very critical of Obama because of his dependence on Bernanke and Geithner;this is a fatal error. I just heard that 70/100 Senators voted for Bernanke,that means lots of Conservatives supported him,I won’t hear much from you on the Conservatives lack of judgement in this regard.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
I lived in Tampa, BTW. This rail project is riduculous. If there has to be a high-speed rail it should run from Atlanta to Orlando. Of course, since the airways are far from overtaxed between Atlanta and Orlando, there’s that whole lack of necessity thing looming over us again.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
I was out driving and heard Hugh Hewitt predicting that, if he is still doing his radio show 27 years from now, when he’d be 80 years old, they still won’t have broken ground on the line.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
We need to fund boring machines to create direct on the chord connection tunnels between cities so we can travel anywhere in the country in 45 minutes at virtually no cost in energy (if my memory serves).
Plus the longer tunnels will be getting down into hot rock at their centers, so the cooling system necessary around their titanium liners to keep the passengers from being cooked can be built to generate clean CO2 free geothermal energy.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
He didn’t get that many GOP votes, though I did hear two issues.
1 – certain conservatives are going to defer to the president on these types of appointments because he is the president.
2 – they were terrified of who was going to be the next nominee if he wasn’t re-confirmed.
January 28th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
@ Sully:
Is that from GENESIS II?
January 28th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
It’s probably from Popular Science or Popular Mechanics. Tunnels kept in vacuum, little energy required because the first half is acceleration downhill (frictionless tracks) and the second half is deceleration from very high speeds. I seem to vaguely recall that the travel time is the same for tunnels of all lengths.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:52 am
Sully wrote:
Well, approximately. There’d be friction, however minute, and the vacuum would be imperfect, and there would be other effects (materials, gravity, etc.). Small variations would be magnified over longer journeys and higher speeds… with vehicles that fell apart, imploded, or were blasted to pieces by collisions with dust particles (at super high acceleration) never completing the trips.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:08 am
@ CK MacLeod:
All those are trivial engineering challenges next to the basic problem of finding enough unobtanium to line the tunnels at depths hotter than the melting point of titanium.
January 29th, 2010 at 10:17 am