President Obama's Speech Lost Touch with Reality

The President’s state of the Union speech pretty much completely lost touch with reality.  The speech could roughly be divided into quarters.  The speech began at 6:12 and ended right at 7:12 and the tempo of the speech was fast and furious as the President ran down this long wish list of items appallingly lacking in specifics.  The first part of the speech was a real pep rally touting his great accomplishments with the economy over the past six years.  Never mind the republicans rightly point out gigantic flaws in these statistics.  Then the wish list started.  He spoke of “tax hikes for the wealthy” but didn’t give a figure, or what type of tax he wants raised and why he picked the number he did.  I thought the unearned income rate was fifteen percent but some people have said it was raised to twenty-three percent, which seems high enough to me if true.  The President wants the unearned income figure to be at 28% which is where it was under Ronald Reagan in 1986 but the President never pointed this out.  But there was endless talk about health care and paid time for sick leave and free junior college education for all- no matter what it costs.  He kept unveiling new program after new program.  Apparently the President wants free child care accross America.  That's completely absurd.  What does he think this is- - Sweden?  Then he got on to foreign policy at a quarter to seven.  He spent more time on relations with foreign countries than usual saying pretty much what everybody wanted to hear.  But there were no substantitive changes announced.  I guess he’s happy with the past six years.  He kept talking about “turning the page” but I have not seen any “pages” turn, or any indication personally that the past six and a half years are a thing of the past.  The final minutes of the speech were for personal insights and kind of philosophizing, and kind of a “can’t we all just get along” moment.   ABC news pretty much ripped into the president’s speech.  Then Joanie Earnst spoke starting about fifteen minutes after the President finished.  She obviously read from a teleprompter and kept up that big smile and the flashy hairdo and really was better at connecting with the American people.  She kept using the phrase “This new republican congress that you elected- - cares about the problems of average Americans”.   I think for the “Average American” this approach was more in touch with reality then the dizzying wish list of the President.  Keep in mind not one time did the President ever mention the fact that his party lost big in November, but carried on with the speech as though the democrats had won everything.  And I will say the applause was spirited.

But I think it’s time to discuss “What was left out of the biscuits”.   This is an Everett Dirkson term for a response to one of Lyndon Johnson’s speech, where Dirkson points out all the relevant matters that were left OUT of the speech.  In fact there were SO many items left OUT of the President’s speech entirely last night, it’s doubtful I’ll get to all of them in this paragraph. First of all the President skirted around the issue of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.  He says “Well, these agreements haven’t worked out so good before but trust me on this one”.   He never even used the phrase “Trans pacific partnership” because he knows what a red flag it is for congress.  The president said nothing about drug companies and now the FDA is drug pusher in chief working with doctors to poeddle new drugs.  He never mentioned negotiating down prices for medication like the VA has.  I personally would have said that Americans are way over-medicated to begin with.  The President never said a thing about Wall Street corruptions.  And for all his talk about personal debt he never proposed that average Americans should once again as prior to 1986 be able to deduct the interest they pay in their 18% to 24% credit card fees, or reducing the interest burden from six percent to three percent for student loans.  Most importantly the President never said a thing about gun proliferation.  And the President never came out squarely and said he would veto the Keystone XL Pipeline.  And frankly a few reminders of the damage oil pollution has done to America’s heartland- - wouldn’t be at all out of place here.  The President never attacked the whole money thing of political donations or lobbyists in congress.  And the President never talked about a favorite Johnson topic of - - urban renewal- - - or speak of the financial screwing over cities like Detroit have gotten.  And there’s another obvious thing the President never discussed and that is the impending twenty percent cut in disability benefits for the poor.  And while he was at it- - I would have mentioned the Post Office- - and how it got screwed over by the congress of ten years ago saying the Post Office had to be funded 75 years in advance.  I never heard any specific recommendation that the $115,000 cap on FICA be lifted to fix the long term problem with Social Security.  

 I listened to Rush Limbaugh.  His words on the President’s speech were prophetic.  Rush said that the President would disregard reality and stick to his liberal agenda because that’s “all he knows how to do”.   And Rush rather mockingly played all of these drive by media references to the President’s speech being a foundation for Hillary’s run for President next year.  Rush thinks this idea is nonsense.  After listening to the President’s speech, I think the drive by media may have a point.   I'm wondering if these are all FOX news stations.  There was one line about the economy about "This year the Easter bunny won't have the same spring in his step" that was picked up by about fifteen different news outlets- - and one late night comedian played them all.  Now you have proof that some central script writers writes all the so called "local news".  People think liberals want a disstant centralized government.  Not me.  I think cities should do what cities do best and States (Hello, Governor Snyder) should not interfere with them.  States should do what states do best on matters such as gay marriage and abortion, and the Federal government should just keep its hands out.  In terms of President Obama wanting a high speed European style internet- - that's ten times faster and subsedized by the government - - some states have specific laws barring such a public internet.  The first thing we need to do is just to make sure we have internet neutrality and leave it at that.  Yes the internet is a common carrier.  But the government's place is to function as traffic cop, and not Uncle Sugar.  Eveybody doesn't need to have 300 megahertz internet speed. 

 The Patriots have this under inflated football scandal now.   There was an Indy Colt that intercepted a ball and it felt soft to him so he had the coach look at it.  And they did an investigation and eleven out of the twelve footballs used in this play-off game were under inflated by at least two pounds.   But of course it won't neccetate the re "litigation" of the football game itself.  The results of the game stand.  The Federation had no stake on the AFC outcome anyhow.  At this point we would rather Seattle facing New England than we would be the Colts.  The Federation regards the tone of President Obama's speech delivery as a major victory.  To them it doesn't matter whether anything will get passed or not.  To them it's victory enough that the Republicans just have to sit politely and listen to it all.   In soap news- - Victor Kiriacus needs to grow a pair fast because Clyde Weston has done an amazing job at emasculating this industry titan.  Maybe Victor should visit Stephanie's gynocologist to see if his gonads are capable of producing anything other than dust balls. The previous conversation was bad enough- - but nobody talks to Victor Kiriacus the way Clyde Weston did yesterday without wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the river.  I think Maggie as a mafia wife needs to learn certain truths really quickly.  This guy can't be allowed to get away with the bullshit he's been pulling either on the Di Miras or Titan Industries.  Somebody needs to put this Poppler Bluff hillbilly in his place- - fast.

Turkey and Greece have similar economies in that both rely on tourism to a large extent.  But the Turkish lira is a lot cheaper so that tourists would much rather spend their vacation money in Turkey where their dollar goes a lot farther than in Greece, which still uses the Euro because they are tied to the EEC.  Greece has been pretty messed over by the European Economic Community and if they went back to the Drachma, they would right their ship of their economy and get it going again.   President Netenyahoo has been personally invited by John Boehner to speak before congress.  The idea is to lobby the bill the Republicans are pushing- - to implement new economic sanctions against Iran.  I heard Obama mention these sanctions last night but apparently- - according to Thom Hartmann- - these new sanctions would torpedo the progress we have made getting Iran’s Nukes under control.  Hartman claims John Boehner wants to torpedo this whole “datente” with Iran as part of Boehner’s overall drive these past six years to destroy the Obama Presidency.    This move of John Boehner breaks long term protocol where only the President can invite a foreign dignitary to speak.  It was John Boehner who requested that Netenyahoo speak on the subject of Iranian Nukes.  Using a foreign dignitary to get a partisan bill passed is just beyond the pale.  We have Joanie Ernst- - and her “poor boy” act.  If that’s the case how did she get so rich now?  Her family has received $450,000 worth in farm subsedies by the United States government, so I don’t want to hear any of this talk about making due with plastic bags over your shoes on rainy days to keep out the water.   There is something extremely phoney about Joanie Ernst.   I would like to talk about this whole meme put forth by the Republicans about how 38% of the taxes in this country are paid by the top one percent.  First let’s correct the figure for federal income tax only.  The figure is “between 33% and 36%.   But this is only for Federal Income tax.   But most money held by the rich is in unearned income.  The rich “acquire” income, but it can hardly be said that they “earn” it.    I thought that the unearned income tax was still frozen at fifteen percent like Warren Buffet talked about.  If it had been raised to 23% like some liberals said, you’d think I’ve have heard about it because it would be real news. And if it had been raised we’d be pulling in a whole lot more tax money in now.  It’s a well known that John Boehner drinks Murlow.  The question is- - people saw some liquid in the old 1810 ink well at the speaker’s podium.  Was their vodka in it?