2010-01-28

State Of The Union Address

Because you demanded it, here are my thoughts - mediocre they may be - about the Lecture To The Union Address. Did anyone get the feeling President Obama was looking for his chalk? "Where's that dang yellow chalk! Chin up, chin up! Look scholarly. You. Da. Man!"

I'm not gonna touch the "he's so eloquent and post-racial" thing. I'm sure there's plenty of that going around. Like for instance, this:

 

"I forgot he was black for an hour." And then, when I took my common sense medication he was black again. Sure. MSNBC is "real" intellectual commentating. Fuck. Me.

They were saying about Fox?

I'll let the experts dissect the speech. The Washington Post did a great job here. And check out Politifact here.

However, I will say this. I found it interesting how he spun the economy in a way such that he saved it from getting worse. In defense of his bank bailouts, he asserted he had "no choice" but to do it lest the economy falls apart. Unemployment would have doubled without it. This sounds a little exaggerated to me and I would love to cite a source but so far no one has fact check this claim. In essence, it's an "if I don't do this, this will happen" mode of logic.Weak in other words. It may very well be true but it never conclusively proved it would be the case. No one really could.

In the end, Obama donned his cape and became Captain Solv'rythin. He offered everything except promise everyone would get unlimited Ben & Jerry ice-cream. Can he even remotely deliver on all that?

He did make some good points, for example I think he scored well with his clean energy plea. Nonetheless, I get the feeling he's taking on way too much here.

***

Just a quick note on Obama's rebuke of the recent Supreme Court ruling on whether corporations can spend from their own treasuries during an election.  Which politifact concluded was exaggerated. If you're gonna take on the Big Supremo, and this is just me, you may want to get your facts a little less bent. No?

Be careful. If you don't force your kids to eat broccoli, Obama just may scold you dear parents. Don't laugh.

Sure, I guess he's free to opine about the decision, but to rebuke them publicly in such a manner? It seemed excessive to me.

That being said, I guess Alito could have remained stoic like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then again, she probably was sleeping. Bad form for all involved?

Still. I'd love to see Alito and Scalia take on Obama in an intellectual debate. It would be like watching a lion rip a zebra to shreds. You guess who the zebra would be.

I'd make it the under-card for the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1/29/2010

    One can only imagine if O'Reilly said those same words over at Fox and what Olbermann's hysterical (but strangley entertaining) response would have been the very next day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. EXACTLY!

    Or Limbaugh for that matter.

    If any of them said the things Reid and Biden have said about race. Well...

    I like Olbermann too in that it's clear he has a brain but his antics are way over the top. That comment about Malkin was just plain awful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1/31/2010

    Olbermann would never like to admit this, but he is a shock jock just like Limbaugh, or a lot of other hot air blowers on the airwaves. They blow their mouths off to get ratings. As bloggers we can do it better without the costly overhead.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Call me nuts but Limbaugh backs up a lot of his stuff with facts. You can dispute them but he's not talking out of his ass. Mostly I notice he reacts to what's being said in the papers. If Obama says 'A', he goes off about how it's really 'B.'

    Limbaugh doesn't go as far as Olbermann - for example Malkin. I still find it amazing that the press let Olbermann get away with that but jump on Limbaugh for less serious comments.

    I don't mean to defend him but I see a lot of Don Cherry here. Too often, people take the comments out of context and focus on the messenger as opposed to the message.

    Sure Cherry goes over the line at times, but it shouldn't detract from the fact he does make sound and insightful comments about hockey - most of which the mainstream media doesn't want to hear.

    But you know what? Tough luck. I actually want to hear what he says about hockey. I can determine what's good and not.

    Sorry for the tangent.

    ReplyDelete

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