The Democrat Thread

[lostfan]

Did anybody see Joe Biden attempt to clap at a line and then realize he was the only one and tried to play it off after one clap? That was hilarious.

[Balta1701]

Did anybody see Joe Biden attempt to clap at a line and then realize he was the only one and tried to play it off after one clap? That was hilarious.

Actually I think this was about the only :30 I tuned in for.

 

Unless he did it more than once.

[NorthSideSox72]

Clean Energy research = our Apollo project

 

Eliminate oil company subsidies.

 

Like.

 

Definitely like, but Congress (mostly GOP in this case, but not entirely) loves oil. It makes all the sense in the world to take those oil subsidies away from the oil companies who are doing just fine thank you, and put it towards an actually future-oriented use. I just think the climate (so to speak) right now won't allow for it.

 

Ahhh, the poodles are wagging their tails this morning.

 

Haven't seen one single instance of that in here - care to point it out?

 

I thought the speech was "meh" as Balta put it. Mostly platitudes and flowery prose, some goals that will be nearly impossible to achieve and with no information as to how to get there, and a few actual policy statements.

 

[Balta1701]

I thought the speech was "meh" as Balta put it. Mostly platitudes and flowery prose, some goals that will be nearly impossible to achieve and with no information as to how to get there, and a few actual policy statements.

I've been reading up on what some of the past administrations have done regarding this speech, and its interesting how the Clinton administration (unlike most of his recent competitors) really used it as a shaping moment for their year. Rather than just doing the laundry list of cute-sounding policies and getting the President out there, they would start setting out their SOTU address in June/July of the year before, basically right after the budget fights were over.

 

They'd start coming up with policies early, they'd start coming up with the talking points and studies on them, they'd have hearings beforehand where people would talk about those policies, then they'd use the SOTU as the crescendo to really try to force things that they wanted to happen into the budgeting process. The SOTU was sort of the focus of their policy-making year, rather than just a laundry list of whatever they're thinking about in January and a chance to change the topic for a few days.

 

I found it equally interesting that the Clinton administration was the only one that, on average, actually received a statistical positive bounce in their poll ratings after the SOTU; most others its either negative or non-existent.

[Balta1701]

At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

 

Oh, great, the President is stalking me.

[BigSqwert]

Unlike every president in memory, I'll level with you:

 

– Adults and even children are being raped with impunity by people who aren't punished even when they're caught.

 

– Lockheed Martin is imprudently, alarmingly large and powerful.

 

– Sex slavery is surprisingly common.

 

– Our southern neighbor is beset by murder and mayhem, partly due to our failed drug prohibition policies.

 

– We're spending much more money than we're taking in, and the interest on the debt alone is getting increasingly burdensome. Our most popular entitlements, as currently constituted, are wildly unsustainable.

 

– Due to a federal government whose scope far exceeds the expectations of the framers, the presidency is an unmanageable job.

 

– Our largest state is being bankrupted by a pension crisis that isn't likely to be fixed.

 

– Paramilitary forces routinely break into the homes of Americans with battering rams, and with surprising frequency they get the wrong address, shoot pets, or injure or kill people who are innocent of any crime.

 

There's a lot of other bad news. Improving as a nation requires us to acknowledge it as a first step. Feel good national moments come easy. We're richer than most everyone else. We win gold medals at the Olympics. Our hour long television dramas eventually bring their protagonists together in the romances we've wanted to see happen all along. Our beer improves in quality every year. So it isn't feel good moments that we require from our president. Instead he or she ought to use the bully pulpit to force us to confront serious problems – especially ones that the average American doesn't even know about.

 

It isn't any surprise that instead we get a SOTU address designed to cast the president in a likable light. But I wish pundits would stop judging the speech by that metric. Surely we can imagine fantastic iterations on this annual civic tradition. Judging presidents on the risky, civically enlightening speech they might've given – and labeling anything less a disappointment – would tranform the political calculus. Expect more, get more. Decide that anything better than the status quo is an unrealistic expectation, and it will never happen.

 

via Conor Friedersdorf (filling in for Sullivan)

[Balta1701]

Not going to endorse everything in this one, and some language that is nsfw, but this read at least came close to my thoughts in a number of ways.

So, that speech sucked. The prior sentence could refer to all of the speeches last night, but obviously the one in question is Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Last night, the emptiness of it pissed me off, particularly how he talked a big game about innovation and moving forward and education, and then proceeded to concede the argument to Republicans that we really shouldn’t do any of those things because they cost money. But this morning, I’ve mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it’s not like anything can be done with the den of wingnut weasels the country just elected to Congress. All he’s got left is admonishing us to try harder, while knowing we totally plan to fail and fail hard. Until people who care more about the possibility that women are having unauthorized orgasms than about the state of our economy and our future, we’re going to continue this slide downhill, and that’s basically all there is to it.

[Balta1701]

The state of our Union is . . .

 

* 2011: Strong

* 2010: Strong

* 2008: Strong

* 2007: Strong

* 2006: Strong

* 2005: Confident and Strong

* 2004: Confident and Strong

* 2003: Strong

* 2002: Never been stronger

* 2000: Strongest it has ever been

* 1999: Strong

* 1998: Strong

* 1997: Strong

* 1996: Strong

* 1995: Stronger than it was two year ago

* 1994: Growing stronger

[Y2HH]

Not going to endorse everything in this one, and some language that is nsfw, but this read at least came close to my thoughts in a number of ways.

 

I see the point he's attempting to make, but I feel his ideology has infected his opinion. Living beyond our means was never the intention of our government, but it's exactly what we do, and if you read what he says, it's what he wants us to continue to do. He uses this as the excuse that he "respects" that Obama has "given up". I have no respect for that at all. Now, he'd have a point if throwing money at these problems solved them, such as eduction, for example...but throwing money at education the way our government does doesn't make it better, and in some cases, makes it worse. It's not that money doesn't help...but it has to be spent properly, and it's not. Buying 50,000,000 worth of computers doesn't make anyone more computer literate when the way in which they use them or install them is completely wrong. It's pouring money down the drain.

[Balta1701]

I see the point he's attempting to make, but I feel his ideology has infected his opinion.

Your ideology is showing as well, as you assumed that the author was obviously a male.

[Y2HH]

Your ideology is showing as well, as you assumed that the author was obviously a male.

 

That has nothing to do with anything whatsoever. I don't even know why you felt it necessary to point out sex...my referral to her as he doesn't mean anything at all, it was nothing more than a generalization, which you had to latch onto to argue because you had no real argument.

 

I don't care if its a male, female, black, white or green alien from mars...no bearing whatsoever on the conversation you utterly and completely missed.

 

And "ideology" has nothing to do with male or female...wtf are you talking about?

Edited January 26, 2011 by Y2HH

[Balta1701]

Anyway...I really get what the author is trying to say. In Obama's inauguration speech..."We are the people we've been waiting for" was one of the better lines. The time has come for actually solving hard problems, not putting them off.

 

We've had 9 and a half percent unemployment for nearly a year. Wall Street is riding high while everyone else suffers. Half the world seems to be underwater. Basically every state in the union has a budget crisis.

 

Yet, we're too scared to say anything out of the ordinary, so we call for cutting back fossil fuel subsidies (as has been done by I presume the last 30 SOTU speeches), we never name anything we actually want to cut so we take the 3 year budget freeze Obama proposed last year and make it even freeze-ier by making it last 5 years, and we call for desperately needed infrastructure investment without having any workable plan to make it happen.

 

It's not being the people we've been waiting for.

[Balta1701]

That has nothing to do with anything whatsoever. I don't even know why you felt it necessary to point out sex...my referral to her as he doesn't mean anything at all, it was nothing more than a generalization, which you had to latch onto to argue because you had no real argument.

 

I don't care if its a male, female, black, white or green alien from mars...no bearing whatsoever on the conversation you utterly and completely missed.

 

And "ideology" has nothing to do with male or female...wtf are you talking about?

I think it's fairly embarrassing that you just assumed that because you were reading something written, it had to be by a male.

[Y2HH]

I think it's fairly embarrassing that you just assumed that because you were reading something written, it had to be by a male.

 

I don't, considering it doesn't matter whatsoever. I find it funny you'd find something so trivial to be an "embarrassment" in this case, since sex has absolutely nothing to do with that story.

[Jenksismyhero]

Anyway...I really get what the author is trying to say. In Obama's inauguration speech..."We are the people we've been waiting for" was one of the better lines. The time has come for actually solving hard problems, not putting them off.

 

We've had 9 and a half percent unemployment for nearly a year. Wall Street is riding high while everyone else suffers. Half the world seems to be underwater. Basically every state in the union has a budget crisis.

 

Yet, we're too scared to say anything out of the ordinary, so we call for cutting back fossil fuel subsidies (as has been done by I presume the last 30 SOTU speeches), we never name anything we actually want to cut so we take the 3 year budget freeze Obama proposed last year and make it even freeze-ier by making it last 5 years, and we call for desperately needed infrastructure investment without having any workable plan to make it happen.

 

It's not being the people we've been waiting for.

 

You know who has? House Republicans. Guess who isn't going to go along with them... (and yes, I agree that they need to look into defense/security cuts)

[bmags]

is anyone going to dial back Y2HH?

[Y2HH]

is anyone going to dial back Y2HH?

 

Why are you always out to get me?

[lostfan]

Not really. What is he doing wrong? (For once?)

[BigSqwert]

It's astounding that this woman has a highly possible chance at being a presidential candidate in 2012:

 

Sarah Palin Thinks The USSR Won The Space Race

 

Also, while browsing through some of the comments I noticed this unrelated bit of info that is pathetically true about Fox News. They always refer to her as Governor Palin on that network but mostly refer to the President as simply Obama. What a joke.

Edited January 27, 2011 by BigSqwert

[StrangeSox]

LOL, Sputnik led to the collapse of the USSR! I guess it wasn't Reagan's massive balls that brought them down after all.

[Y2HH]

It's astounding that this woman has a highly possible chance at being a presidential candidate in 2012:

 

Sarah Palin Thinks The USSR Won The Space Race

 

Also, while browsing through some of the comments I noticed this unrelated bit of info that is pathetically true about Fox News. They always refer to her as Governor Palin on that network but mostly refer to the President as simply Obama. What a joke.

 

Palin is stupid, and needs to be ignored. She continues to be popular because people continue making her popular. She was the singular reason why I completely dismissed being able to vote for McCain in the last election. After he chose her as his running mate, he was removed from consideration.

[BigSqwert]

Palin is stupid, and needs to be ignored. She continues to be popular because people continue making her popular. She was the singular reason why I completely dismissed being able to vote for McCain in the last election. After he chose her as his running mate, he was removed from consideration.

 

It's hard to ignore someone that is considered one of the front runners for the GOP Presidential nomination and:

 

- Is all over a major News network

- Is highly visible and active in social media

- Has her own TV show

- Had her her daughter on one of the highest rated shows on TV

 

 

 

[Jenksismyhero]

It's hard to ignore someone that is considered one of the front runners for the GOP Presidential nomination and:

 

- Is all over a major News network

- Is highly visible and active in social media

- Has her own TV show

- Had her her daughter on one of the highest rated shows on TV

 

By liberals, because they want to continue this pipe dream that no real candidate will challenge Obama.

[Y2HH]

By liberals, because they want to continue this pipe dream that no real candidate will challenge Obama.

 

Agreed...I can personally say, she's NOT a viable candidate for President (or even VP) of the United States. If the GOP can't do better than her, they deserve to fail...and they won't have a chance at my vote, that's for sure.

[Chet Lemon]

By liberals, because they want to continue this pipe dream that no real candidate will challenge Obama.

 

If she does run, though I'm thinking that is less likely as each week passes, she can likely win the nomination. Her grassroots following will carry in the Iowa Caucus, she losses New Hampshire, her popularity in South Carolina will carry her to victory there. Nevada probably goes to Romney, but whichever GOP candidate has won the SC Primary has won the nomination since 1980. No guarantees in '12, but a clear path exists.