State Of The Union Address
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
Our President is one of the best public speakers of my lifetime.
He said some very important things tonight and pissed off just about everyone in that room at one point or another.
He extended olive branches and called bullshit on a bunch of folks.
He tapdanced through a few topics and dropped bombshells on others.
Overall lofty goals, positive vibes and what a redneck down here might call a "Come to Jesus meeting" for folks to get their shit together.
And there was plenty of partisan shit on the floor....but the one thing they all stood and cheered for was Obama said "We can't continue to spend more than we take in".....hey, all you idiots standing and cheering....YOU'RE THE ONES DOING THE OVERSPENDING!!!
Joe Biden is a character and may have his own sitcom someday.
He said some very important things tonight and pissed off just about everyone in that room at one point or another.
He extended olive branches and called bullshit on a bunch of folks.
He tapdanced through a few topics and dropped bombshells on others.
Overall lofty goals, positive vibes and what a redneck down here might call a "Come to Jesus meeting" for folks to get their shit together.
And there was plenty of partisan shit on the floor....but the one thing they all stood and cheered for was Obama said "We can't continue to spend more than we take in".....hey, all you idiots standing and cheering....YOU'RE THE ONES DOING THE OVERSPENDING!!!
Joe Biden is a character and may have his own sitcom someday.
Comments
Obama's speech was fine. It's genuinely important that he be reelected, but it's obvious that not much in the way of big legislation will happen between now and 2012. He's already accomplished quite a bit, anything else in this first term is gravy. People who expected him to work miracles are almost as nuts as people who think he was born in Kenya, even if their hearts were in the right place.
Best president in my lifetime and it's not even close, all things considered. I'm 49.
I was looking at debt & deficit related stuff this morning for my own country and was doing comparisons with other countries and came up on the US debt clock and was just kind of flabbergasted......yeah, flabbergasted.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
The one dreadful thought that I had during the SOTU address was that if he pissed off the wrong powerful people his life would be in a greater danger than anything a nutball like Jared Lee Laughner could create.
Those times when he addressed Oil Companies, Education, etc. and you only saw 5-10 people on the floor stand and applaud it was because the rest of those crooks, R&D alike, were thinking that the Big Oil Lobby and Teacher's Unions they would have to go home and deal with wouldn't be happy......Obama hit many nails on the head.....and today those heads must be hurting.
Because big oil and the teachers unions have the same kind of pull. Get your head out of that bag of glue.
Dude....who said they were equal....or even compared them??
No politician wants to go home to angry constituents of any sort....let alone those who have them in their pockets or helped get them elected.
It does seem like we are back to talking about maybe starting work on that project called "bridge to the 21st century". Hopefully we can build it before 2100. Coz by that time we are going to need a hell of a lot more bridges, especially in low lying areas.
And that's just money. The oil companies don't bus thousands of their employees to rallies for republican candidates, or get out the vote drives, or to canvas neigborhoods.
You were talking about power and influence, and busing people to rallies, and when you contextualize the place of unions and defense contractors in the modern day U.S., the fact that teachers unions are exerting more to lobby and influence politics could just reflect the fact that the Republicans seem to have major contempt for unions and protecting worker's rights. So maybe the teacher's unions just REALLY need to work hard to get the only party who still might care to listen to them. In other words, maybe it just reflects the fact that corporate interests don't have to beg so hard to get attention in the U.S.
I'm not saying I'm right - and I definitely don't think that unions are without their own faults - but I don't totally buy your argument with those examples.
From your same mystery source
Top 10 Heavy Hitters:
ActBlue $47,896,163
AT&T Inc $46,024,320
American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees $43,295,361
National Assn of Realtors $38,628,241
Goldman Sachs $33,264,702
American Assn for Justice $32,939,279
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $32,927,766
National Education Assn $31,832,740
Laborers Union $30,061,550
Service Employees International Union $29,114,982
Anyway, we are getting off topic.... SOTU: how fucked are we?
I'm sorry. Is this supposed to make any kind of sense? Is there an argument for either for or against the proposition that the teachers' unions have the same/less/more influence as oil companies hidden somewhere in that mess?
It's nothing else than buying legislation and it's overall effect is to give money and advantage to groups that already have more than their share.
Its hard to tell if you're just trying to be sarcastic, or if you're just stupid.
It's everyone's right as an American citizen to have access to their representative to make their voice heard. And free speech includes campaign contributions. Are you saying gay people shouldn't be able to lobby for gay rights? Or people with Aids or cancer for research money? Or people with neurological diseases for stemcell research? Why shouldn't a corporation have that same right. Corporations employee people and create wealth for sharehodlers and employees. Corporations pay taxes and regulatory fees that provide services. Why shouldn't they have a voice in the legislative process.
Most of them don't. The vast majority, in fact.
Yeah. Well, you gotta turn a profit to pay taxes on it. And I would say, they pay taxes, they just don't pay them here - so you may be right about that. And thats a whole different problem.
Since I brought up Teacher's Unions I'll assume this was aimed at me.
President Obama specifically targeted "bad" teachers and said we need to stop protecting them.....he obviously thinks this is a problem and I agree with him.
So who on earth would protect the careers of "bad" teachers??
Who were his comments directed towards if not the Teacher's Union(s)??
There's also the question about what "turning a profit" means.
But the fact remains that when you said "corporations pay taxes' you weren't accurate. As usual.
They already have a way to make their voices heard - it's called a vote.
Our government already provides other avenues for peoples voices to be heard, and there are other ways to communicate with politicians other than throwing money at them and gaining access most citizens don't have.
The net result is legislation (and politicians) for sale - do you really think that isn't the case?