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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Semi-Open Thread: SOTU or STFU

Tonight we hear President Obama speak officially for the second time on the State of the Union. This is an Open Thread for commentary on Obama’s speech, the Republican rebuttal (Ryan), and the Tea Party rebuttal (Bachmann).

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I’m mostly kidding about the STFU in regards to other topics…mostly. 😉

While I am sure there will be several places to watch, you can view all three in full on CNN. Obama starts the evening at 9pm EST.

I am admittedly most looking forward to the Tea Party rebuttal. In fact, I would not be surprised if Bachmann’s speechifying gets more airplay in the long run than either Obama or Ryan. Comedy tends to get good ratings. 😉 Perhaps she will announce her intent to run for President on the Republican ticket?

So, what are your thoughts, Moose? What state do you think our Union is in?

(10 points to the first Moose who says “Alaska”, 20 for the first who says “denial”)



Have at it.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 211 Comments

211 comments

  1. Kysen

    and also intend to mock the rebuttal’s in full. It slays me that there is going to be a Tea Party Republican rebuttal to the Republican rebuttal.

    Hope all Moose are well.

    Oh, and a belated WELCOME to princss6!

    Photobucket

    It’s good to see another familiar name, hope ya continue to join in on the Moose.  ðŸ˜‰

    See ya’ll in a few hours…

    Carry on.

  2. John Allen

    it’s not in a state of grace.

    I’m not thrilled about some of what I’m reading so far. If there is an emphasis on a spending freeze then I’ll bet Krugman isn’t going to like it either. There is a real danger of replicating the economic consequences of FDR’s belt-tightening in 1936-1937 that led to an economic slowdown and increased unemployment. Here’s a good article on the issue – http://www.dailyfinance.com/st…

  3. fogiv

    of either greatness or impending doom, but i’m betting he touches on this theme somehow tonight:

    The United States had big challenges ahead in staying competetive, and much of the media, [President Obama] thought, was clueless about what was truly important. For instance, he noted that President Lee Myong Bak of South Korea, presiding over a “very competetive” economy, has said that his biggest problem in education was that Korean parents were too demanding and were insisting on importing English teachers so their kids could learn English in first grade instead of having to wait for second grade. This is what complacent America was up against. “And then I sit down with U.S. reporters, and the question they have for me, in Asia, is, ‘Have I read Sarah Palin’s book?'” At this point, the president shook his head, incredulous. “True. True story.”

    http://www.motleymoose.com/sho…

  4. HappyinVT

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…

    She gets the usual talking points in there, it appears.

    Paul Broun isn’t looking to join the “join hands and get along by sitting together” crowd:

    I already believe very firmly that it is a trap and a ruse that Democrats are proposing. They don’t want civility. They want silence from the Republicans. And the sitting together being kissy-kissy is just another way to try to silence Republicans, and also to show – to keep the American people from seeing how few of them there are in the U.S. House now. Then when people stand up to – what the Democrats are going to be doing when Barack Obama spews out all his venom, then, um, if they’re scattered throughout all the Republicans, then it won’t be as noticeable as if we’re sitting apart. So it is a ruse and I’m not in favor of it and I’m talking about it and I hope other members of the Republican conference in the House will not take the bait.

    George Will thinks the whole thing is a waste of time

    Will called the State of the Union a political pep rally.  “If it’s going to be a pep rally,” Will exclaimed on the “This Week” roundtable, “with the president’s supporters or whatever party standing up and braying approval, and histrionic pouting on the part of the other, then it’s no place for the judiciary, it’s no place for the uniformed military, and it’s no place for non-adolescent legislators.”

    And Mitt Romney apparently needs more time to plan his rebuttal ~ he’s on Hannity tomorrow night.

    Oh yeah, and I’m slightly miffed the president scheduled this on the same date and time as #1 The Ohio State University takes on #12 Purdue in basketball.  Inconsiderate bastid.  ðŸ™‚

  5. creamer

    Two years ago it was around 7,000. Taking credit for saving the economy would be a good place to start.

    Then I hope he needs to present a plan to put America back to work short term and long term. While I suspect some on the far left will be unhappy with his speech, moving to the center a little will be much easier when you have Ms Loony Toons ending the evening.

     Todays Hardball had her patting the founding fathers on the back for working “tiressly” to end slavery. Her ignorance of American history is a good way to start a conversation on the need for investing in education.  

  6. HappyinVT

    thinks about all these rebuttals.  Her forthcoming rebuttal tweet may not cause the media to get all atwitter.

    (She’s been awfully quiet so either she’s in hiding to let the “blood libel” kerfuffle die down or she’s booting Todd out of the house.)

  7. Strummerson

    At 9:07 EST, just after the first round of applause is dying down, fanboys in OFA t-shirts will enter from every doorway to the chamber, backed by FBI and IRS agents.  All Republicans will be “civilly persuaded” to accompany them to vans bound for Camp David, now renamed the Rep. Jeremiah Wright Center for the Reeducation and de-Americanization of Congress.  In a freak accident, Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Rep. Steve King and Sen. Rand Paul will all go into anaphylactic shock from a bad dose of cough syrup the three agreed to share from a CVS along the way.  At the Wright center, the rest of the Republican caucus will learn to play basketball while listening to NWA.  All food served will be Idonesian Muslim food like felafel fu yung and lamb wontons.  By morning they will have memorized both Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts and the Holy Qur’an.

  8. Kysen

    ..and Matthews has just run a clip of Bachmann that, even for her, is mindnumbingly ignorant. She seems to believe that the Founding Fathers ended slavery. Yup. Ended slavery, John Quincy Adams and the other Founding Fathers ENDED slavery. ENDED Slavery?? How FUCKING dense is this woman? I bet she wears velcro shoes. Geez.

  9. HappyinVT

    Gabrielle Giffords watched an hour of television from her hospital bed, a development her husband Mark Kelly called “exciting,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a friend of Giffords who spoke to Kelly Tuesday.

    “Last night or the night before she watched television — it was CNN in fact — and the fact that she was able to do that for about an hour, in terms of attention span, they were pretty excited about that,” Wasserman said.

    http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/…

    Joking aside, this is wonderful news.

    I also read that members of Congress will be wearing black and white ribbons in her honor.

  10. Kysen

    …the talking heads reading long excerpts from a speech that has not yet been delivered? Also, why project your speech so thoroughly…thereby giving those who rebut it time to write a more detailed counter? Does not make sense to me…but, sense aside…I think it takes a lot out of hearing it for the first time as it is spoken. Just me?

  11. fogiv

    wrestled the remote from the two year old, and flicked it to msnbc.  coulda swore i just heard dr. howard dean say something like

    i’m very, very happy with this president

    or something to that effect.  then i felt a flicker in the force, heard a distant rumble sounding the explosion of the liberal blogosphere, and feared for you all.  we should prepare for refugees.  surely there must be survivors.

    srsly, any moose watching msnbc?  did i hear dean right?  man, some folks are gonna lose their shit if he was heaping praise on o-dog.

  24. Strummerson

    He’s basically challenging the de-regulators to make their cases.  It’s not triangulation or capitulation, it’s making them demonstrate their ideology.

  31. Kysen

    Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love.

  36. Strummerson

    Just as I expected.  Obama didn’t really launch his reelection effort tonight like I thought he would, but Bachmann is launching the effort to replace him through…blaming the Bush havoc he’s been dealing with on him.

  39. John Allen

    I wasn’t overly impressed with the SOTU. I thought it was a bit bland. It was fairly conciliatory, which may be why it didn’t really move me, but that might play well with the public.

  41. fogiv

    he paints a great picture.  i would have loved it more left leaning, but he’s crafty right?  sounded a bit centristy, co-opting a bit of the middle and middle right style ‘murica, fuck yeah! lingo.  think about it, was there much of anything in there we should oppose?  that shits gonna resonate.  look at those numbers foxy just posted.  damn.

    does anybody get the feeling that obama is slowly moving the country to the left in meaningful ways?

    Okay, pork belly prices have been dropping all morning, which means that everybody is waiting for it to hit rock bottom, so they can buy low. Which means that the people who own the pork belly contracts are saying, “Hey, we’re losing all our damn money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain’t gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip! And my wife ain’t gonna f… my wife ain’t gonna make love to me if I got no money!” So they’re panicking right now, they’re screaming “SELL! SELL!” to get out before the price keeps dropping. They’re panicking out there right now, I can feel it.

  42. Chris Blask

    Oh dear small barking spiders, that Bachmann piece was incredibly painful.

    Not just the content, that was the most poorly produced piece of political video I have seen in my life. Third world opposition parties do better film. I did better political television with old equipment (did she just say “spunding”?) and volunteers in Toronto.

    Tip #1: Teleprompter built into the camera.  Been doing it for years, they sell them on ebay, I’m sure you can pick one up cheap. Won’t leave everyone wondering who it is over their left shoulder you are talking to.

    Tip #2: Professional camera operators. Folks who can handle a pan-zoom without making the shot look like Dad’s holiday home movies.

    Tip #3. That graphic. Srsly. I know a really good graphics person who could whip you up a better one for a hundred bucks.

    I almost wonder if that was all intentional. “Look who folksy we are! We don’t need no elitist union crew, Bob and Mary Lou have a camcorder!”

  43. fogiv

    @GOS (where else?)

    You don’t have to post… (6+ / 0-)

    anything for us to understand that…your screenname tells us everything we need to know about you.

    by cardboardurinal on Tue Jan 25, 2011 at 10:07:56 PM PST

    [ Parent | Reply to This | RecommendHide ]

    lulz

    cardboardurinal  <———— ?!

  45. HappyinVT

    Representative Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party leader, didn’t bring a “prom date” to the State of the Union address, she didn’t wear the ribbon corsage and she crashed the after party known as the official Republican response. When Ms. Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, addressed the nation with her own, more alarmist assessment of its state, she seemed almost like the telekinetic high school heroine of “Carrie.”

    snip

    It wasn’t just what she said, though she used words like “explosion” and “exploded” and “Obamacare” a lot. It was the way Ms. Bachmann spoke, smiling and gesturing with an intensity that almost cracked the screen.

    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…

    Bachmann apparently did show some real class because she chose not to sit next to a Democrat during the speech like most folks did.  And, she chose not to wear the black and white ribbon in honor of the Tucson shooting victims.

    Somehow I get the feeling her presidential prospects are fading quickly whether she knows it or not.

  46. DeniseVelez

    I fell asleep mid SOTU cause I was pooped and woke up to the sound of Rachel Maddow deconstructing the events.

    Went back to sleep – went to see what GOS was saying (though I already knew)  No applause.  No apologies for the hysteria around THE EVIL O-LORD IS GOING TO DISMANTLE SOCIAL SECURITY AT THE SOTU.

    anyway – I enjoyed your wit.

    ““““

    Have now watched the full video.  He played it safe, which makes sense.  The masses for the most part liked it.

    Good job.  

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