Chicken Scratch

Consti coming to you from the Underground Bunker Medical facility where I am awaiting the lumps and bruises this article surely will generate. No worries though, Med techs are standing by. Since there hasn’t been a critique of the SOTU yet I figure I would oblige. Now this was Obama’s longest speech so far. Clocking in at approximately 70 minutes. I will attempt to keep this article to the word limit, but in a sense of accuracy just a warning; I might run long. (Thanks to JFesta for pointing to the official transcript.) If my Teleprompters are ready we can begin.

Now we all know that Obama is a great orator with a prepared speech. So the fist 7 or so minutes was spent paying homage to the “American Spirit” and his inheriting the problems of the previous administration. Blah, blah, blah… Regan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush II, now Obama. All have whined about inheriting problems from “the previous Administration” and rhetoric about America. So let’s facts check just some of the 70 minute the State of the Union shall we?

• It was found Obama was exaggerating the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance when he said it would “open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign companies – to spend without limit in our elections.” It was rated Barely True. There was a lot of talk on this site and others about weather this was a good idea. I just want to point out a couple of things. We have truth in advertising laws, so anything false would be called out. Corporations hide behind PAC’s so we don’t REALLY know who is supporting whom. I believe this will bring greater transparency since now a corporation will have to put its name to a political commercial. Beyond all of this, it’s freedom of speech. You can’t limit it for some and not for all.
• Obama was barely on the mark with his claim that he had opened White House visitor logs. We rated that one Mostly True. The White House has purposely been slow in releasing information, and the information released has been redacted in places. I’ll note that special interest SEIU president Andy Stern has been the most frequent visitor.
• Obama incorrectly described his “revolving door” policy on former lobbyists being barred from policy jobs in his administration. Remember this; PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE BARACK OBAMA: We’re going to have to change the culture in Washington so that lobbyists and special interests aren’t driving the process and your voices aren’t being drowned out. Guess that doesn’t apply to HIS special interest groups. Several exceptions have been made, and of course there is the SEIU President.
• Obama exaggerated the role that “pay as you go” policies had on the budget in the 1990s. Even though “pay as you go” was adopted the deficit still rose.



• Obama earned a Full Flop for supporting a spending freeze, which he opposed during the campaign. The exact plan actually that McCain proposed and was derided by the Media talking heads. The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than one percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.
• Obama was right that 95 percent of working families have gotten a tax cut. And that’s a good start. More can be done, and frankly over the last year should have been done. My grandmother would have called this “chicken scratch.” I will get behind his attempts to support the unemployed, and financially suffering public. But it was too little too late in my opinion.
• He earned a Mostly True for his claim that the nation had a $200 billion budget surplus at the start of the Bush administration and that Obama inherited a $1 trillion deficit. Being attacked on U.S. soil will do that. Let’s not forget that approximately some 3,000 of our fellow Americans were murdered in New York on 9/11. And in addition BOTH Democrats AND Republicans voted almost unanimously to fund both Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Hillary voted for it. So the blame can be easily split. Regardless of if you were against it before you were for it.
• “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem.” “So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.” A commission that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate 15 hours later, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would be toothless.
• He called the White House and Congress “to do our work openly…” Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and big labor behind closed doors
• Drawing on classified information, the President claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: “And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.” It is an impossible claim to verify and ranked false. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

By no means is this a complete summary of the SOTU. I encourage all of you to list your personal stand out points in the comments. And of course your “comments” about those listed above.

Upon reflection of the State of the Union there were only two or three things I was actually impressed to hear. (Not that I was impressed with the last administrations SOTU either.) Most of what I heard in the SOTU I heard in Obama’s campaign for President. After doing nothing but healthcare for a year and taking their focus off of unemployment and the public it’s sad that he is just now revamping his message. If the Democrats hadn’t taken a beating in Massachusetts would we have been hearing about anything BUT Healthcare in the SOTU?

Oddly enough I wasn’t the only one yawning eh Mr. Reid?

Consti.

Tagged as: 2012 election, Barack Obama, Current Events, Economy, Health Care Reform, obama administration, political news, SOTU

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