Our initial plan today was to do as we have done here for several years now. In the day before and the day after the President's address, outlining the state of our nation, we have first previewed, and then reviewed the words of the President, along with the ideas outlined in the address.
We will do some of that today. Then we will let the President's words speak for themselves.
In short, President Obama made it clear; We can accomplish the challenges that face our country by working TOGETHER. If there are those who wish to fight against what is best for everyone to retain an unequal advantage or stay locked in a rigid ideology, that is their choice. But the rest of us will fight against them - and we will win, as we have already been doing.
Yes - this speech was very aspirational, more poetry than prose, more ideals than details. Obama didn't shy away from accepting responsibility, however. He made clear that he, and the Executive Branch, have work to do to fix the problems of the branch of government he directs - and that Congress MUST do the same thing.
He made it very clear, that we can accomplish anything, TOGETHER, specifically noting the actions of those who took down Osama Bin Laden. He made it even more clear, noting that the auto company Americans rescued - General Motors - is now the number one automaker in the world, again.
President Obama also called on corporations to do what is best for their country, as corporate citizens. He called on American companies and corporations to insource jobs - to bring them back to America - and to pay their fair share of taxes, no matter where in the world they may bank their profits.
The President also made clear that the days of severe economic inequality are over - and that it is high time that the laws on financial fraud have REAL teeth. "We will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits,” Mr. Obama said. "I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules.”
He hit on the poisonous effects of money in politics, of judicial appointments being held hostage, and even the issue of insider trading among members of Congress. He tackled the fact that we have already dealt with debt and the deficit, and that we have more work to do - including a desperate need to invest in our own nation.
As one commentator said after the speech, President Obama hit those in Congress, who would rather have ignored him, right where they lived.
By the looks on the faces of those in the chamber, some extremist members of Congress appeared VERY worried indeed, that they will no longer have a place to hide, and still be able to be to be considered ethical and honest, if they choose to work AGAINST the President and the nation.
The President finished with these words:
"Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong."
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
American Checkup
Tonight, the President of The United States will give his third official State Of The Union speech, and his fourth annual address to the combined Congress of the United States. In light of that pivotal moment, we think it's a good time to take stock of what's happened over the last few years - and what our next steps should be.
Four years ago, when Barack Obama took over the Presidency from George W. Bush, this is what Mr. Obama found waiting for him at the entrance door to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The American economy was in a freefall. America lost close to three-quarters of a million jobs that January, most before Mr. Obama set one foot inside the White House. This was after the worst year for jobs since 1945. The housing market collapse was in full roar as well. Our nation was also deeply entrenched in two wars, one in the heart of the Middle East, and one in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was still alive, and Wall Street titans were still highly unregulated. On top of all of that, the worst drag on our Federal budget into the future was the ever increasing cost of health care - and there were no legitimate plans in Congress to staunch that fiscal wound.
This is the job that Barack Obama was handed that cold January four years ago.
He was also given to work with, to help govern our nation out of the mess he'd been handed, a Congress full of weak-kneed Democrats, along with many angry and arrogant Republicans. The latter had a single goal, clearly stated by one of their leaders, Mitch McConnell: to make Obama a one-term President, above all else. To top it all off, Mr. Obama was also "gifted" with a conservative-leaning, activist Supreme Court, where the members most likely to retire were those on the political left.
To say that the task set before him was monumental is probably one of the greatest political understatements ever.
Fast forward four years, to now.
Even Mitt Romney agrees the economy is now getting better. Unemployment is going down, with some of the best numbers in years - though it's still not getting better as fast as we'd like. Even so, America has seen twenty-two months of private sector job creation. If extremist Republicans wouldn't continue to insist on gutting our public services without ethically and legitimately collecting more revenue, the private sector jobs level might be further into recovery than it is now. That many legislators - mostly Republican, though some Democratic - still keep trying to rob cities, counties, and states to pay for tax cut proposals we can't afford is a problem that voters no longer seem blind to.
The housing market is showing positive - though shaky - signs, for the first time in years, Wall Street has begun to be put under control again, and the insurance and medical cost curve appears to be bending lower. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and thousands of Americans are already home from one war and beginning plans to get out of the other.
All of this has been done with a Congress made up of a large number of Republicans who did not want ANY of this this done as much as they wanted to see President Obama fail.
If he had failed, our nation would also have failed. As evidenced by the difference between four years ago, and now, President Obama did not fail, and we did not fail him or our nation - but that does not mean our nation is healthy.
Unemployment is still far too high. We are not yet out of Afghanistan. The foreclosure crisis is a long way from over. Wall Street needs more regulation - and the big banks must be made to pay for their own "gambling" debts, instead of expecting taxpayers to bail them out. Corporations and the rich need to pay the amount in taxes they're supposed to. Lastly, the poisonous levels of hate and fear that have been evident in many of the recent GOP debates and candidate rallies still infect far too much of this nation, and must not be allowed to determine the future for the rest of us.
There are a great many Americans who believe that regardless of what our challenges are, we can, we should, and we have - RECENTLY - worked together to solve some of America's worst problems in generations, regardless of our class, race, age, sexual preferences - or even political affiliation.
The state of what America CAN be is still strong, but to keep improving our collective health, we will need a leader like the one we already have, who has proven over the last few years that he is the President of ALL of us - not just the President of those who agree with his ideology.
Four years ago, when Barack Obama took over the Presidency from George W. Bush, this is what Mr. Obama found waiting for him at the entrance door to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The American economy was in a freefall. America lost close to three-quarters of a million jobs that January, most before Mr. Obama set one foot inside the White House. This was after the worst year for jobs since 1945. The housing market collapse was in full roar as well. Our nation was also deeply entrenched in two wars, one in the heart of the Middle East, and one in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was still alive, and Wall Street titans were still highly unregulated. On top of all of that, the worst drag on our Federal budget into the future was the ever increasing cost of health care - and there were no legitimate plans in Congress to staunch that fiscal wound.
This is the job that Barack Obama was handed that cold January four years ago.
He was also given to work with, to help govern our nation out of the mess he'd been handed, a Congress full of weak-kneed Democrats, along with many angry and arrogant Republicans. The latter had a single goal, clearly stated by one of their leaders, Mitch McConnell: to make Obama a one-term President, above all else. To top it all off, Mr. Obama was also "gifted" with a conservative-leaning, activist Supreme Court, where the members most likely to retire were those on the political left.
To say that the task set before him was monumental is probably one of the greatest political understatements ever.
Fast forward four years, to now.
Even Mitt Romney agrees the economy is now getting better. Unemployment is going down, with some of the best numbers in years - though it's still not getting better as fast as we'd like. Even so, America has seen twenty-two months of private sector job creation. If extremist Republicans wouldn't continue to insist on gutting our public services without ethically and legitimately collecting more revenue, the private sector jobs level might be further into recovery than it is now. That many legislators - mostly Republican, though some Democratic - still keep trying to rob cities, counties, and states to pay for tax cut proposals we can't afford is a problem that voters no longer seem blind to.
The housing market is showing positive - though shaky - signs, for the first time in years, Wall Street has begun to be put under control again, and the insurance and medical cost curve appears to be bending lower. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and thousands of Americans are already home from one war and beginning plans to get out of the other.
All of this has been done with a Congress made up of a large number of Republicans who did not want ANY of this this done as much as they wanted to see President Obama fail.
If he had failed, our nation would also have failed. As evidenced by the difference between four years ago, and now, President Obama did not fail, and we did not fail him or our nation - but that does not mean our nation is healthy.
Unemployment is still far too high. We are not yet out of Afghanistan. The foreclosure crisis is a long way from over. Wall Street needs more regulation - and the big banks must be made to pay for their own "gambling" debts, instead of expecting taxpayers to bail them out. Corporations and the rich need to pay the amount in taxes they're supposed to. Lastly, the poisonous levels of hate and fear that have been evident in many of the recent GOP debates and candidate rallies still infect far too much of this nation, and must not be allowed to determine the future for the rest of us.
There are a great many Americans who believe that regardless of what our challenges are, we can, we should, and we have - RECENTLY - worked together to solve some of America's worst problems in generations, regardless of our class, race, age, sexual preferences - or even political affiliation.
The state of what America CAN be is still strong, but to keep improving our collective health, we will need a leader like the one we already have, who has proven over the last few years that he is the President of ALL of us - not just the President of those who agree with his ideology.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Swing And A Miss
After a weekend filled with football, politics, some REAL winter weather in our Northern locations, and little bit of fried fair food for our South Florida staff [They have regional fairs in winter in South Florida; who knew?], we still have yet to process everything that happened over the last two days.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has announced she'll resign her Arizona House seat sometime this week to focus on her recovery, and Arizona's extremist Republican Governor Jan Brewer is already preparing to set the special election for Giffords' seat. Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died of cancer over the weekend - a fate we wish on nobody, no matter what they did or did not do in life. The NFL playoffs also finished up over the weekend, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants set to play a rematch in this year's Super Bowl.
The biggest news over the weekend - or at least the story that received the most major media coverage - was the South Carolina GOP Primary contest. In a win that didn't really surprise us, noted hypocrite, adulterer, and former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, nominally defeated former Masssachusetts governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, along with Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Rep. Rick Santorum.
The truth is, the real winner this weekend may once again have been President Obama.
In extensive exit polling, it became starkly obvious that the kinds of voters who backed Newt Gingrich on Saturday were exactly the kind of voters the right-wing ideologues and media talking heads have been increasingly stoking for most of the last twenty years. We could have guessed their makeup, though the data confirms it: Older, angry, less educated extremists, who are also so-called evangelicals, who are scared about the economy - and most importantly, who want to beat President Obama in this election at ALL costs. That includes making the economy temporarily worse, and even increasing the debt.
It should be no surprise after looking at those exit polls, that those who claim to be conservative yet are hypocritical about their own beliefs, would push so heavily for the nomination of a man who is also a hypocrite and an extremist. That Republicans in MANY other areas of the country - including the Midwest - do not generally share South Carolinians' blind hatred of President Obama quite obviously meant nothing to the Republican primary voters there.
What the blindly ignorant in South Carolina don't seem to understand is that - no matter how angry they are - the fact is, Newt Gingrich will not likely be the GOP nominee. As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich's unfavorables - the number of people who dislike him, for any reason - are around 60%. Nominating Gingrich would not only drive away moderates and independents - where much of the election could be won. As multiple Republican party members and supporters also pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich is so divisive that if he were the nominee, the GOP stands a significant chance of losing support down the entire rest of the ballot. That could cost Republicans the House, and chances at the Senate and the Presidency, as moderate, sane Republicans would also likely abandon the party.
That kind of logic doesn't seem to matter to the Tea Party extremists currently in control of the Republican Party, however. After wildly swinging at the President over tax cuts and the Keystone pipeline in December - and beating themselves silly in the process - the GOP extremists in Congress look to be trying another attempt at the same action. Even though they've just returned to DC, they're already threatening to hold the country hostage unless the President ties immediate approval of the Keystone pipeline to an extension of middle class tax cuts.
The President is on firm ground; the deadline on Keystone that the GOP wanted in December was a phony made-up time limit. The State department and the state of Nebraska have both said it would take about a year to gain environmental and planning approval for a new path for the pipeline. No amount of foot stomping, huffing in Congress, or bloviating in the media will change those facts, any more than the anger of the extremist Republicans will make Newt the GOP's eventual nominee.
There's a reason politics at this level is sometimes called "pro ball." The amateurs in the Republican Party need to learn when to put down their makeshift bats, before they hurt themselves any worse then they already have.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has announced she'll resign her Arizona House seat sometime this week to focus on her recovery, and Arizona's extremist Republican Governor Jan Brewer is already preparing to set the special election for Giffords' seat. Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died of cancer over the weekend - a fate we wish on nobody, no matter what they did or did not do in life. The NFL playoffs also finished up over the weekend, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants set to play a rematch in this year's Super Bowl.
The biggest news over the weekend - or at least the story that received the most major media coverage - was the South Carolina GOP Primary contest. In a win that didn't really surprise us, noted hypocrite, adulterer, and former U.S. House Speaker from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, nominally defeated former Masssachusetts governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, along with Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Rep. Rick Santorum.
The truth is, the real winner this weekend may once again have been President Obama.
In extensive exit polling, it became starkly obvious that the kinds of voters who backed Newt Gingrich on Saturday were exactly the kind of voters the right-wing ideologues and media talking heads have been increasingly stoking for most of the last twenty years. We could have guessed their makeup, though the data confirms it: Older, angry, less educated extremists, who are also so-called evangelicals, who are scared about the economy - and most importantly, who want to beat President Obama in this election at ALL costs. That includes making the economy temporarily worse, and even increasing the debt.
It should be no surprise after looking at those exit polls, that those who claim to be conservative yet are hypocritical about their own beliefs, would push so heavily for the nomination of a man who is also a hypocrite and an extremist. That Republicans in MANY other areas of the country - including the Midwest - do not generally share South Carolinians' blind hatred of President Obama quite obviously meant nothing to the Republican primary voters there.
What the blindly ignorant in South Carolina don't seem to understand is that - no matter how angry they are - the fact is, Newt Gingrich will not likely be the GOP nominee. As journalist Josh Marshall pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich's unfavorables - the number of people who dislike him, for any reason - are around 60%. Nominating Gingrich would not only drive away moderates and independents - where much of the election could be won. As multiple Republican party members and supporters also pointed out over the weekend, Gingrich is so divisive that if he were the nominee, the GOP stands a significant chance of losing support down the entire rest of the ballot. That could cost Republicans the House, and chances at the Senate and the Presidency, as moderate, sane Republicans would also likely abandon the party.
That kind of logic doesn't seem to matter to the Tea Party extremists currently in control of the Republican Party, however. After wildly swinging at the President over tax cuts and the Keystone pipeline in December - and beating themselves silly in the process - the GOP extremists in Congress look to be trying another attempt at the same action. Even though they've just returned to DC, they're already threatening to hold the country hostage unless the President ties immediate approval of the Keystone pipeline to an extension of middle class tax cuts.
The President is on firm ground; the deadline on Keystone that the GOP wanted in December was a phony made-up time limit. The State department and the state of Nebraska have both said it would take about a year to gain environmental and planning approval for a new path for the pipeline. No amount of foot stomping, huffing in Congress, or bloviating in the media will change those facts, any more than the anger of the extremist Republicans will make Newt the GOP's eventual nominee.
There's a reason politics at this level is sometimes called "pro ball." The amateurs in the Republican Party need to learn when to put down their makeshift bats, before they hurt themselves any worse then they already have.
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