What Obama Left Out of His SOTU Address
Posted: January 26, 2011 Filed under: Barack Obama, Gulf Oil Spill, Gun Control, jobs, SOTU, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, corporitism, right-wing talking points, Ronald Reagan, SOTU 32 Comments
After Obama’s pro-corporate, cliche-ridden SOTU speech filled with right wing talking points, I think anyone with a brain has to admit that the mask is off. This man is Ronald Reagan without the folksy anecdotes and charisma (I never saw it, but supposedly he had it).
The speech last night demonstrated once and for all that Obama is heartless, self-involved, and narcissistic. He cares nothing about the fate of ordinary Americans, or what will become of this country once he has eliminated the middle class. The only thing he cares about is making sure he has a soft life giving speeches and serving on boards of directors after he leaves the White House.
To accomplish that Obama needs to try not to piss off too many rich people and he has to finish the job that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II started–handing over the U.S. treasury to the wealthiest 1% and in the process destroying the country.
I read the SOTU speech carefully, and there are quite a number of important topics that President Obama completely failed to address. Here are some relevant words that were never even mentioned in Obama’s 2011 SOTU address:
middle class
poor
poverty
hungry
homeless
school lunches
guns
firearms
gun control
unemployment
women’s rights
reproductive rights
Guantanamo
torture
rendition
drones
Gulf of Mexico
oil spill
BP
seafood
AIDS
How could this man get up and address the country without once mentioning the rapidly ballooning poverty and homeless rates and the millions of unemployed Americans–many of whom have completely exhausted their benefits? How could he talk about our schools without mentioning the many children who are struggling to get an education while living on the streets or in families who can’t afford enough food?
How could he talk about the shootings in Tucson without discussing the need for some kind of rational gun control?
How could he freeze government salaries and ask Congress to freeze discretionary spending for five years while recommending more corporate giveaways and tax cuts for corporations?
How could he talk about cutting the deficit without getting us out of the two wars we’ve been fighting on borrowed money for longer than any other war in U.S. history?
How could he talk about competition for jobs without seriously addressing corporate outsourcing or the possibility of the government creating jobs as Roosevelt did during the last Great Depression?
I was sickened by Obama’s call for “sacrifice.”
The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.
And now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. (Applause.) We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future.
Bullshit! What sacrifice are you going to make Mr. President? What sacrifice will you ask of your corporate masters, of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America? Do tell. No, the sacrifice you talk about is to be borne by public employees (who, btw, are “disproportionately Black”), the citizens of states that will go bankrupt, the poor, the elderly, and the shrinking middle class.
I was nauseated by Obama’s call for universities to
open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.
The “divisive battles of the past?” Meaning the fight to end the Vietnam War? The endless war that has now been exceeded in length by the mess in Afghanistan?
I was also disturbed by Obama’s claim that Americans “share common hopes and a common creed.” Really? What hopes do I share in common with John Boehner or Michelle Bachmann? What “creed” is he referring to? If it’s Christianity, many of us don’t share that either.
There was so much wrong with Obama’s speech last night. But worst of all was the President’s complete lack of compassion for those who are suffering while bankers and CEOs get bailouts and tax cuts. Much of the corporate media has either praised Obama’s speech or made excuses for it. Here’s an antidote from Patrick Martin at the World Socialist website:
Obama displayed utter callousness and indifference toward the social distress of tens of millions of Americans. There was virtually no reference to unemployment or the staggering growth of economic inequality, and no proposals for creating jobs for the 17 million workers who are jobless or forced to subsist on part-time and temporary work.
The words “poverty,” “foreclosures,” “hunger” and “homelessness” were not uttered, despite sharp increases in all four during the first two years of Obama’s tenure.
Listening to Obama’s desultory remarks, one would never have guessed that just 28 months ago the American financial-corporate elite brought the American and world economy to its knees, precipitating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The speech was a paean to American capitalism and the very financial bandits who are chiefly responsible for the catastrophe facing the American people.
Obama boasted of the good fortune of corporate America, which is making more money than ever. “The stock market has come roaring back,” he declared. “Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” Under conditions of near double-digit unemployment, he claimed to have “broken the back of this recession.”
The state of our union is not strong. Our society is sick and getting sicker by the day. We desperately need leadership, but it doesn’t seem like we’re going to get it soon. I don’t know what the answer is, but Barack Obama is not going to help us find it.
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Wow, the art sketch is great, thanks for sharing that. A picture does tell a thousand words.
As I recall Reagan wasn’t very pro-active on the AIDS front and many died and were shunned. Mother Teresa and Princes Diana did a lot of work in dispelling the fear people had towards AIDS patients.
Reagan’s callousness about AIDS was what brought me from the beach and dance clubs back to protesting in the streets as we’d done about Viet Nam. He was full of charisma and pretty words, and he was heartless the same way Obama is. It’s so prescient that during the primaries Obama referred to Reagan, not Clinton or even FDR, as his role model for “transformative.” And as recently as a month ago Gibbs proudly told reporters that Obama took the Reagan bio, “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,” to read on vacation.
Doesn’t occur to him to pick up a book about FDR or the New Deal.
It is so nice to hear others remember Reagan and his policies because when I hear people go on and on about him I have very different memories. Obama was in Hawaii and if you recall only a couple of years ago it was discovered that they were putting the homeless on flights to other states.
Reagan is one of the main reasons why ACT UP came into being!
Wow, this is such a good post BB. I can’t think of anything more distressing than those words that were left out of the “discussion.” Thank you for writing this, and pointing out exactly what was missing from that awful speech. The real people of the country, the ones that are struggling.
Thanks, Minx. I didn’t listen to it last night, but reading it today was really depressing. What a pile of crap!
Yep, a pile of crap is exactly what that was.
“The State of the Union in Your Words”
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133211131/the-state-of-the-union-in-your-words
Salmon. Heh.
Back 30 years ago, maybe more, before the fish hatchery was put up at the mouth of my stream, salmon used to run up the stream. Once in a while it would flood (not every year like now, due to poor stream management) and the salmon would end up all over the fields. As the waters receded they’d be there, flopping and flapping. Good fertilizer. Of course, this was back when there was abundant salmon, and my area was really, really rural. No more, alas, no more.
Wonderful post, bb! You touched on the very same things that were rolling around in my head all day.
I too read the speech rather than heard it and it was full of the usual claptrack, platitudes and meaningless phrases we have all become accustomed to hearing over the years.
And our own state of MA is going to have to cut many jobs once again in order to satisfy some of the budget shortfalls we face which is not only going to drive up the unemployment rate but leave that many more people competing against one another for the few jobs out there.
And what’s with Paul Ryan referring to the unemployed as lolling on hammocks? What is wrong with these people? Are they so out of touch with reality that they can just stand there spouting bullsh*t without fear of reprisal?
I cringe thinking of what this nation is facing in the next 6 years with this boatload of fools leading the way.
Pat, the poor are relaxing in hammocks, while the rich people are out starting new businesses and creating jobs with all that tax cut money. Life is beautiful.
Today, outside of the upscale (for our area) supermarket, my partner and I saw a man sleeping on a bench. It looked like he had a carton of milk or juice in his hand. Young man, maybe mid 20’s at the latest. Dirty torn clothes. Our first rural unemployed bum. I don’t think he was a drunk, didn’t seem like it.
Supermarket bench /= hammock.
That’s so sad.
Yes, I hear this meme all the time from the Republicans in general – not just Ryan. I heard it months ago and almost crashed the T.V. – i.e., people are getting used to being unemployed and enjoying it. Oh my God – how can a rational person even think this? It blows my mind. It won’t even pay the rent in California.
The guy is an expert at using phrases that, without specifics, everyone gets to interpret their own way. I had a conversation with a friend back in 2008 when Obama was campaigning about hope and change without defining what he meant. My concern was that each person has his/her own idea of what that hope and change meant but no one knew what Obama meant by it. Or maybe we did know that he hoped to get into the White House so he could change the Democratic brand to garbage and provide long-term support to his corporate owners.
It sounds like he revisited that habit of throwing together a bunch of catch-phrases without defining them in the SOTU. I’m so glad I missed it — and thank you to everyone on this blog who did the listening for me.
I’m glad my parents are dead — my father, who fought in WWII, in particular would have been so disheartened to see what has become of his beloved country.
Very well said, BB. Thank you. There was very little connection with reality in the speech.
oh man! I love you BB!! so true.
Terrific post BB!
The speech last night demonstrated once and for all that Obama is heartless, self-involved, and narcissistic. He cares nothing about the fate of ordinary Americans, or what will become of this country once he has eliminated the middle class.
Exactly why the upper crust just HAD to have him .
Brava, bb! Everytime I see another O speech it’s like another scene of another act of Death of a Salespitch.
The list of missing words was nicely done, BB.
We all have our bellweathers–the sort of “Will it play in Peoria?” test. Mine came this morning, when my best friend and I were discussing the speech. For the past two years my friend has been defending Obama primarily based on two conceptions: 1) Obama must be bright because of his academic credentials, and 2) the problems Obama inherited were so monumental that anyone else would have had similar difficulties in office. Today, however, without any prior input from me, my friend said that O’s speech may have sounded great to the upper 1% but sounded totally clueless as to what is really going on in the country right now. When you lose people like my friend, you’ve lost the independents completely.
Obama's State of the Union Was Tantamount to Plagiarism – Alvin Felzenberg (usnews.com)
Just saw this on Memeorandum, not sure it has been posted or not…
Barack Obama is a cheater. A fake. A pretender. A wannabe. There is nothing genuine or original about him, everything is copied or mimicked from someone or something else.
Everything, big and small. I’d bet the farm if you fed him a truth serum or looked long enough into his history you’d find the person he stole the way he bounces down a staircase with his hands fisted athletically in front of him. He adopts mannerisms and speech pattern and ideas from others – he is a soul-less man who pilfers bits and pieces from others to present this pretend self. He keeps it vague, like a newspaper horoscope, so those who are willing can make of him what they need him to be.
And strange as this may seem, that’s one of the things that appeals to his loyalists. This is a generation of wannabes, of copiers. They call it retro or emulating but it’s not, it’s stealing from the creation of others because they’re too lazy or too unimaginative themselves, or too empty at their core, to come up with their own ideas. Even their passion is faked – that cheering at the Arizona memorial was a fine example of how inauthentic the whole thing is.
Wow, brilliant comment Zal. That could be a post in itself!
Yes, this is very good! (And your post BB is excellent) Narcissists need to people please; this keeps them on the pedestal of adoration. Since the coming of Boehner, Obama has made it a point to idiolize this man …. he’s going to people please his way onto the Republicans side …. this way he’ll be idolized by them. He’s a jerk. And you are right …. he’s a phony to the core.
Well said, Bostonboomer! Perfect.
Listening to the positive response yesterday from so many Democrats turned my stomach. Where are the liberals? Where are the war protestors? Where are the Democrats who speak for the poor, the jobless, the elderly, the vulnerable, the middle class who are losing their homes and careers and pensions and their prospects for the future?
Be more competitive, more productive, he says while handing out tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, and doing nothing even approaching the kind of jobs programs a Democrat could put forth. Obama’s a disgrace to everything Democrats have stood and fought for in my lifetime and my parent’s lifetime. And his loyalists go right along with it.
BB, you speak for me. Every word is spot-on.
loved the post…very insightful and by the way LOVE the font change..makes the site look much cleaner and easier to read…
oh no…what happend to the font..the titles have gone all curly ugly again….please the mix is almost u readable
Which browser are you using? The titles shouldn’t be curly.
I’m seeing curly titles too. Mozilla Firefox.
hmmm … mac or windows? cause I use mozilla and it doesn’t look curly to for me … it looks like a hand print with real straight lines. What’s your default font set to?
OK, I’m seeing the hand print. I called it curly because it’s not standard, and I thought that’s what she meant.
Great post Greta should read it aloud on her show!
Flights into Egypt are being suspended right now including all those from Air Egypt.