About Us
Mission Statement
Rules of Conduct
 
Name:
Pswd:
Remember Me
Register
 

SOTU Recap
Author: BobR    Date: 01/26/2011 13:32:47

Last night President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union speech to Congress, the SCOTUS, and all of America. As these speeches tend to be, his was the usual rundown of accomplishments for the year, and plans for the future. As always, there was the "response", which in this case was delivered by Republican Paul Ryan, and an extra nugget of entertainment - the Tea Party response - delivered by erstewhile Republican Michelle Bachmann.

Here are the themes the President spoke about during the speech:
  • A call for unity
  • Investment tax breaks
  • World competition
  • Winning The future - reforming the government
  • Innovation (Sputnik)
  • Clean energy
  • Education: schools, teachers, college funding
  • Infrastructure: high speed rail
  • Trade agreements
  • Government regulations
  • Healthcare legislation
  • Balanced budget
  • Saving Medicare and Social Security
  • Remove tax breaks for the rich
  • Eliminate government waste
  • Enhance government efficiencies
  • Vetoing legislation with earmarks
  • Same ol' same ol', re: wars, homeland security
  • The idea of what America means - doing big things

Here's an interesting word cloud of the speech:
http://www.polls.newsvine.com/_vine/images/users/600/WillFemia/5919133.jpg

(The Republican and Bachmann word clouds can be seen here)

You can read an analysis of the speech here and some random fact-checking here. My overall impression was that I was behind it about 80-90%. I think his austerity plan for government employees will be detrimental to the economy. I also was left scratching my head over his plan to increase investments for new technologies while decreasing spending. Based on a comment by David Axelrod after the speech, the funds for those new programs will come from reducing government waste, inefficiencies, and redundancies. I also felt like the comments on the wars in the Middle East were more of the same.

Other than that, though, I appreciated the rest of the speech.

The official government response came from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which contained the following:
  • A pandering reference to Rep. Giffords
  • Warnings about federal spending
  • Warnings about the federal debt
  • Antipathy towards the Insurance mandates
  • Spoke of a replacement for the health care law, but provided no details
  • Lied about the health care law "bankrupting" America
  • Spoke in favor of "limited government" (ie: drown it in a bathtub)

(More analysis here). All in all, it was the usual FEAR from the Republican party.

The icing on the cake, though, was the Tea Party response from Michelle Bachmann. With makeup caked on to a level approaching circus clown, she stared off into the distance (never once looking at the camera) reading prepared words on a TELEPROMPTER! as seemingly random images appeared on a screen behind her. It was surreal theatre of the absurd at its finest. You can watch it here.



So while the pundits debate, and the political activists look for hidden meanings, life goes on. Perhaps next year we can see how much has really changed.


 

87 comments (Latest Comment: 01/27/2011 02:15:15 by TriSec)
   Perma Link

Share This!

Furl it!
Spurl
NewsVine
Reddit
Technorati