The State of the Union 2013

hat tip-The Obama Diary





Desiline Victor (102) awaits the president’s State of the Union Speech

When she set out to her local library in North Miami, Fla., to cast her vote in the presidential election last year, Desiline Victor had no way of knowing the journey would lead all the way to the White House.

On Tuesday night, Victor, a 102-year-old Haitian immigrant, will sit in the ornate House chamber as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama to listen to President Obama’s State of the Union address

Victor voted for the president, but it was not easy. On her first visit to the polls on the morning of Oct. 28, the first day of early voting, she waited in line for three hours. Poll workers eventually advised her to come back later, and she did.

She finally cast her vote that evening.

Her story spread around the polling place and inspired some would-be voters to stay in line, too, instead of being deterred by the delays.

On Monday night, Victor sat in a suite at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza hotel in Washington, a flight from Miami behind her. Ahead was a night in which she hopes meet the man she waited to vote for.

“I’m very happy, very proud,” she said, communicating through a translator because she speaks only Haitian Creole. The translator is her godson, Mathieu Pierre Louis, whom she raised as her son. She moved to the United States in 1989 and became a naturalized citizen in 2005.

She never expected to become a symbol, she said — she just wanted to vote.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

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The President's 2012 State of the Union Address

2012 State Of The Union Address: Enhanced Version



From Balloon Juice:

SOTU Reaction
by John Cole

I gotta say, every time I get some one on one time with that guy, which is basically what the SOTU is- an opportunity for the President to speak to America, I just want to vote for him early and often. The contrast between Obama and the crowd of miscreants in the GOP running to replace him is just striking.

One of the things I found interesting is that if you are a political junkie, you will find the speech from Obama a little bit feistier than those who are casual observers of the political process. I caught the references to Solyndra and telling the Republicans to back off on that nonsense, I got the DADT references, and so forth.

But most of all, every time I hear him speak, I am still aware of all the things I disagree with him on, but think “That is a good man doing what he thinks is best.” That is really all you can ask for from someone, because as far as I can tell, I’m the only one who agrees with me 100% of the time. And as you all know, if you give me a week, I’ll disagree with myself.

We really don’t deserve him. We really don’t.

State of the Union Recap & Reactions

Voters React Positively to Obama's Message

Media Reaction & Commentary

Great speech, but Republicans will remain united in opposition to this President. His ability to govern or to do anything significant legislatively will be limited. The Republicans are hellbent on making sure that most of Obama's agenda is scuttled or delayed. A few token initiatives might get through this year, but most (if not all) of the big ticket legislative items will be blocked. Here is where Obama's agenda currently stands in my opinion.

The State of the Union failed to sway any moderate Republicans towards supporting Health Care Reform. Serious banking reform, campaign reform, stimulus Part II, and many other plans also seem very questionable. I think all three of the initiatives that I mentioned are either dead or will face significant opposition.

The Republican plan appears to be to make Obama look like a weak, lame duck President who won't be able to claim very many major legislative successes going into the mid-term elections. It's a crude & shrewd political game, but they are playing it because it works for them. They see the recent Republican victories in New Jersey, Virginia and now Massachusetts as the reward for their obstructionism... so they have no reason to change their strategy. Their road to Republican victories in 2010 and 2012 is to create as much gridlock as possible. Their biggest threat is a Democrat in the White House who is actually able to make things happen and could point to substantive accomplishments that have a positive impact on the lives of everyday Americans. That is a situation that Republicans won't be able to allow.

One way out of this madness would be to change the rules on cloture and eliminating the magic number of 60. The problem with that approach is that it would take a 2/3 majority of the Senate to approve such a change. So unfortunately, that's just not going to happen.

In the meantime, the gridlock remains. All of the Country's big problems (that require fundamental sweeping change) will remain. The United States of America will continue its slow, steady decline. Watching this Country is like watching a house burn down in slow motion. The impact of the gridlock is palpable.

The President's Speech: The Shock Doctrine Reversed

Al Giordano over at The Field had an interesting article about The President's speech. He brings up a point that was missed by plenty of the pundits.

About Last Night: The Shock Doctrine Reversed
Posted by Al Giordano - February 25, 2009 at 12:22 pm
By Al Giordano

After offering the soundbite heard ‘round the world - "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before" - the President proceeded to make the case for three big domestic spending priorities: energy, health care, and education:

"The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. "

Those who liked to complain in recent weeks that the $787 billion dollar Stimulus Package was "not enough" behaved as if it were the only spending that would be proposed ever again from here to eternity. Yet we've already seen, just one day after the signing of the Stimulus, the rollout of $75 billion toward saving family homes during this housing crisis. And we'll look in a moment at what Obama, according to his speech last night, has on the docket for the immediate future.

First, it's important to note what is really going on here: The Obama-Axelrod-Emanuel war room has taken Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine - the observation that those in power use times of crisis to supplant the state with private sector capitalism - and turned it on its head. Instead, they're using the current economic crisis to bring back the New Deal (government stimulation of the economy and firmer regulation of the corporate sector) and the Great Society (domestic and social programs to create a safety net for American workers and the poor).

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Jindal lays a big egg (and may have lied while doing it)

The best thing about President George W. Bush was that he was a pure red-blooded Republican. He is a conservative's conservative. He allowed the American people the opportunity to see what the Republican Party truly believed. He was Reagan on steroids. The problem wasn't just big government. It was government.

This brings me to the new darling of the Republican Party Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal has an impressive personal story. He went to college at Brown University and was accepted to Harvard medical school but instead went to Yale for law school. He then got a Masters degree in political science. In 1996 he was appointed Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. From then through 2003 he was appointed to multiple different agencies at a state and national level. He lost a bid for governor in 2003. In 2004 he ran for Congress from Louisiana's first Congressional District. He won this election overwhelmingly. He ran for governor in 2007, again, and won. This brings us to the present.

The reason I mentioned President George W. Bush (in the first paragraph) was that Bobby Jindal's response (full text) was the typical conservative Republican response. He offered no new ideas (as I expected). He served up a smorgasbord of tax cuts, suggesting we "... create jobs by lowering income taxes for working families... cutting taxes for small businesses... strengthening incentives (tax credits) for businesses to invest in new equipment and hire new workers... and stabilizing homeowners by creating a new tax credit for homebuyers." Wasn't this the exact plan that George W. Bush proposed and passed in 2001 or was that his 2003 tax cut plan? This is more of the same.

The Republican hatred of government was on full display. The governor told us a story about Hurricane Katrina, the moral of which was that we don't need government to help us with anything. (This is kind of surprising since the governor's mother used to work for the government.) That was a lesson that he and other Republicans learned from Hurricane Katrina. They learned the government just can't function. I may be wrong but if you're running an agency in which disaster management expertise is called for from an agency and it is headed by a guy that has no experience in that field, it would seem to me that the agency may not function as well as it should. President Clinton and FEMA evacuated over a million people from Florida ahead of Hurricane Floyd. Now no one is comparing Hurricane Floyd to Hurricane Katrina. What I am saying is that the government can work if you put competent people in charge.

Watch the Republican response.

Finally, I was surprised at how poor the governor's presentation was. His gestures were wooden and his speech was halting. He never seemed to flow. I can get over the mechanical gestures if he only had something of substance to add to the discussion. Not one new idea. Not one new theme. Not even a direction where we can find an idea. He is simply the latest new, young face that the GOP has thrown in front of the American people.

Update: Could Governor Bobby Jindal have been mistaken about his touching story about the Louisiana Sheriff during Katrina? Did the Governor lie? Could it be that he wasn't in New Orleans until days after the Hurricane had passed? It sure seems like his story is very similar to President of Jefferson Parish Aaron Broussard's story that he told on Meet the Press. Then again, I might be mistaken. I'm sure that a Governor wouldn't go on national TV and make up facts. No way.

Update 2: America loved Obama's speech!!

The Announcement of the Night

Madam Speaker, the President of the United States.

Video Here

I tried copying the embed code, but it won't work for me.

The Republican Response to The President by Gov. Jindal

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Rude Pundit Asks: What fucking speech is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal responding to? Because what he's saying has fuck-all to do with what Obama just said

LOL

State of the Nation Open Thread

What did you think of The President's speech?