Like a small number of the American people, I just finished watching President Obama’s state of the Union address. The State of the Union always makes any president look good. He can speak broadly about major issues and look very presidential while doing so. I admit I let myself get carried away by the presidents rhetoric, because there was not anything in the State of the Union I had a problem with, and this is because the presidents platform as expressed tonight was both moderate and obvious.
The most important aspect of his speech was a call for by partisanship. The president spoke directly to congress for a moment, ignoring the reality that the speech is mostly for the TV audience.
He told congress that nationally no one trusts them. He called Washington broken. It is. He asked congress if anyone can blame us for our distrust. No one can.
I would like to speak to the five hundred and thirty five members of congress, just for this next paragraph. None of them will read this, but I’ve been upset for a year now as I’ve watched them engaged in nothing more than political theater.
You all disgust me. You do less than everyone I know. Most of you will be reelected because not enough of your constituency has the appetite to watch you repeatedly fuck them so they have disengaged. You are all either corrupt or intransigent. You have shaken my faith in our democracy. You act like small retarded children. You are stubborn and pig headed. You are only about self aggrandizement and making your party look good while making the other party look bad. But both parties as represented by congress are equally culpable of getting nothing done. I respect none of you, most of my fellow Americans respect none of you. We can tell from your continued actions that you shit on our respect.
If there was a theme to the state of the union it was that the president kept asking for specific bills to be put on his desk.
I kept wondering why he hadn’t brought them along, each a single page with no amendments. I wish he would have put each one on the podium as he spoke about it. If I had one objection to his State of the Union it was that he gave them not one thousandth of the serious reaming out someone needs to give them.
The president asked for legislation to help employ returning veterans, by forming an organization to leaze with communities, a type of placement bored. He asked for legislation which would stop payroll taxes from being raised. He asked for legislation to help community colleges perform job training because as it stands today there are many companies who are trying to find people to hire but are struggling because there are not enough people with the skills they need. He asked for comprehensive immigration reform and specifically drew attention to those people who were brought here young by there parents and are now attending college and also those who have come here to get degrees that we force to leave after graduation.
There were other things the president implored congress to send him which because I didn’t take notes, I now cannot remember, but none of them struck me as partisan.
Cynics will say the president is going to get none of what he asked for. I guess you can call me a cynic because the only thing that I think has much of a chance with this congress in power of getting passed is the extension of the payroll tax cut, and the only reason that will get passed is not even the most irresponsible members of congress can come up with a reason that it shouldn’t be extended which will play well on television. But as far as everything else goes he won’t get the bills he asked for. Congress will bitch at itself until the elections when at least ninety percent of them will be reelected for all of that… Good work they’re doing. Ladies and gentlemen I applaud you.
The president painted a picture of a wonderful american future. He told us that we are still competitive and that we still have world influence. He aid out a set of steps which are not innovative or complex, but are merely things that people with common sense recognize must be done if we are to maintain our preeminence.
Government research has been responsible for many of the inventions which have revolutionized our way of life. It is only common sense that says it will be as vital to future technological progress. Our bridges are crumbling because we’ve neglected them. We should fix them before they break with traffic on them. When congress does not and the news is saturated with talk of a dead family of four whose car fell into a river because of a broken bridge, I will only say, I told you so.
The president began his speech with a discussion of the armed forces. His point was that they did not bicker over differences when they had shit which needed to be done. He wished congress would be more like our troops.
This sounds stupid and overly earnest when he says it but this is only because our congress has made us feel the same type of crippling disappointment and angry confusion we would feel if someone close to us had committed rape.
Partisanship has become like parity, it has become so cartoonish and unrealistic that if I wasn’t living through it I wouldn’t even believe it were so bad and awful.
Many republicans watching the speech I’m sure had a knee jerk reaction. “I hate this guy.” But so little of this speech was partisan. Obama wants to lower the corporate tax rate, end subsidies for oil companies, punish companies that do outsource with higher tax rates as compared with those that do not outsource, and give tax breaks to companies that either do not outsource or choose to bring jobs back home.
The State of the Union was made up of good idea’s. In a follow up interview Mit romney called the president a lier. He says that the president has done the opisit of what he claimed in tonight’s speech he says he would like to do. And if Mit Romney is telling the truth, then shame on the president for acting like Mit Romney. But if this is political exaggeration, it is symptomatic of our hatred problem.
The president ended his speech with a call for by partisanship. The only thing I see almost as much of as congressional gridlock is people complaining about it, but his tone touched me.
Mainly because his point is so clear and simple. We elected congress to do a job, and it isn’t doing it. Instead its fighting with itself. There was a mythical time in this country when our congress worked together. It was a time when party politics meant that two groups with differing ideas of the best way to govern found common ground by talking to one another. They turned that common ground into law. Republicans and democrats would bounce ideas off one another until they found something which was not what they had first wanted but which they could except. We call that time the 90’s. Washington used to be functional. Now it isn’t. The responsibility for that rests squarely and almost exclusively on the heads of the meat sacks in congress tonight.
They don’t pass legislation. Therefore the president doesn’t sign it.
When bills are passed they are so long that reporters have to hire teams to read them because each bill is long enough that one person cannot just sit down by herself, read it, and then summarize it. They don’t just pass a law, they pass a law with five hundred unrelated amendments. And when someone doesn’t get to shove his amendment right up the bills ass with the big repository of amendments already there, he votes against it to show people that next time he should get a piece of the pie.
And when that rarest of things, a politician with principles, sees a bill that is a good law covered in the maggoty amendments the other congressman have forced upon it, he feels he cannot vote for it because the amendments are bad, so few things get passed.
The president ended the State of the Union by talking about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He pointed out that the members of the Seal team who killed Bin Laden as well as the members of government watching the operation from the situation room were not concerned with politics but with getting the job, killing Bin Laden , done.
The work of congress is equally important. Imagine that you were back in college working on a group project and you told your professor you didn’t get it done because the members of your group couldn’t agree on how to do it. He’d laugh at you and then flunk you. We have flunked congress. They have a national approval rating of nine percent. They have this approval rating because even if you aren’t into politics at all, you know from your glimpses of the news that all they do is fight. They are completely ignoring their responsibility to this nation.
To put that in perspective, in two thousand and seven back when congress was half assing its responsibilities , its approval rating was in the lower forties.
They have been given literally the most important job in this country and somehow they’ve chosen not to do it. In case you don’t follow politics, I’d like to be clear. It isn’t always like this. Our government is supposed to be low energy which means its not supposed to be easy to get laws passed. The process is supposed to take a while so that we can’t, in some odd national mood, outlaw ice cream or cars or whatever. But it isn’t supposed to be no energy, which it is now. Four times in this congressional term we’ve been less than four days from the government shutting down because congress was so reluctant to do even the bare minimum we expect of it.
Lots of people I know tell me over and over again its unprofessional to curse in a blog, but what they’ve done reminds me, and I am not being hyperbolic , of the teenaged girls that leave newborn children in dumpster’s because they can’t be bothered. America is that little crying baby and what congress is doing is killing it slow, and it makes me fucking hate them! It makes me hate them with a white hot fury, both altogether and individually, it makes me wish with all my heart that they could feel our combined disgust with them in some massive psychic onslaught. The only time all of them applauded the same thing was when gabby giffords came in, and some republicans probably thought the president giving her a hug was showmanship.
The president called on congress to be like Seal team six and do something without focusing on who was republican and who was democrat. He said that good ideas come from both parties and that there are always areas of consensus.
I try and approach politics rationally. But I admit as the president finished his remarks, I closed my eyes and pictured a congress that worked together, a congress that didn’t want to make the other party look bad but who found things they all or at least the majority of them agreed on and made those things into law. In other words the polar opisit of what is happening there today.
I pictured what most of them were thinking as they listened to the stirring final minutes of the speech which was probably, oh, good, this is almost over. Now I can get back to mudslinging. I thought that it was only five hundred or so people taking this country and letting it slowly slip from superpower to has been and I became indescribably sad.
I let the presidents words wash over me and was bittersweet as I imagined what our country could be if everyone was engaged in politics and if all of congress did have the atitude of the army.
We have problems that everyone knows must be delt with. If congress really did think like the army it would say to itself, here is what we must get done. Then they’d argue and prepose and counterprepose, and no matter how hard it was or how much everyone came into the term with differing idea’s, they’d pass what it was clear had to get passed.
As the speech ended, I let the tiny nationalistic fire that burns within me flare up for a moment as I thought of alternative 2012’s which could be but which will not be. I thought that its only these five hundred douchebags in congress and this inixplicible polerization which is letting our country slip like malasis dripping down glass from superpower to has been. And I was indescribibley sad.
And then came the worst moment of the night.
“Well bob,” said the news anker, “You can see the president is gearing up for reelection. You see all that talk of economic fairness, well, that’s probably going to come up a lot in the next forty-one weeks. How many times do you think the President used the word fairness tonight?”
Back to the spin. Back t the world of american politics where nothing is genuinely meant and where everyone badmouthes each other except when they’re forced to be on telivision at the same time.
I thought about what Mit Romney said after the State of the Union. I was saddened yet again after watching Mitch Daniels respond to the president. First because he should be in the 2012 Republican nominating process, and second because of many remarks he made it was clear that he either did not watch the State of the Union or did not bother to revise his remarks after he did watch it. I suspect the former. In particular he bashed obama for bashing Steve Jobs when in the State of the Union Obama made a point of praising Steve Jobs.
Welcome to 2012 everyone. Its like a greek tradgety. If we pull together and take concerted action American exceptionalism won’t be a joke. But we won’t do that. So ask your parents what it was like when we didn’t suck because you’ll probably never know.
Pages & Rages 
Thoughts on the State of the Union and the mess of American Politics
Like a small number of the American people, I just finished watching President Obama’s state of the Union address. The State of the Union always makes any president look good. He can speak broadly about major issues and look very presidential while doing so. I admit I let myself get carried away by the presidents rhetoric, because there was not anything in the State of the Union I had a problem with, and this is because the presidents platform as expressed tonight was both moderate and obvious.
The most important aspect of his speech was a call for by partisanship. The president spoke directly to congress for a moment, ignoring the reality that the speech is mostly for the TV audience.
He told congress that nationally no one trusts them. He called Washington broken. It is. He asked congress if anyone can blame us for our distrust. No one can.
I would like to speak to the five hundred and thirty five members of congress, just for this next paragraph. None of them will read this, but I’ve been upset for a year now as I’ve watched them engaged in nothing more than political theater.
You all disgust me. You do less than everyone I know. Most of you will be reelected because not enough of your constituency has the appetite to watch you repeatedly fuck them so they have disengaged. You are all either corrupt or intransigent. You have shaken my faith in our democracy. You act like small retarded children. You are stubborn and pig headed. You are only about self aggrandizement and making your party look good while making the other party look bad. But both parties as represented by congress are equally culpable of getting nothing done. I respect none of you, most of my fellow Americans respect none of you. We can tell from your continued actions that you shit on our respect.
If there was a theme to the state of the union it was that the president kept asking for specific bills to be put on his desk.
I kept wondering why he hadn’t brought them along, each a single page with no amendments. I wish he would have put each one on the podium as he spoke about it. If I had one objection to his State of the Union it was that he gave them not one thousandth of the serious reaming out someone needs to give them.
The president asked for legislation to help employ returning veterans, by forming an organization to leaze with communities, a type of placement bored. He asked for legislation which would stop payroll taxes from being raised. He asked for legislation to help community colleges perform job training because as it stands today there are many companies who are trying to find people to hire but are struggling because there are not enough people with the skills they need. He asked for comprehensive immigration reform and specifically drew attention to those people who were brought here young by there parents and are now attending college and also those who have come here to get degrees that we force to leave after graduation.
There were other things the president implored congress to send him which because I didn’t take notes, I now cannot remember, but none of them struck me as partisan.
Cynics will say the president is going to get none of what he asked for. I guess you can call me a cynic because the only thing that I think has much of a chance with this congress in power of getting passed is the extension of the payroll tax cut, and the only reason that will get passed is not even the most irresponsible members of congress can come up with a reason that it shouldn’t be extended which will play well on television. But as far as everything else goes he won’t get the bills he asked for. Congress will bitch at itself until the elections when at least ninety percent of them will be reelected for all of that… Good work they’re doing. Ladies and gentlemen I applaud you.
The president painted a picture of a wonderful american future. He told us that we are still competitive and that we still have world influence. He aid out a set of steps which are not innovative or complex, but are merely things that people with common sense recognize must be done if we are to maintain our preeminence.
Government research has been responsible for many of the inventions which have revolutionized our way of life. It is only common sense that says it will be as vital to future technological progress. Our bridges are crumbling because we’ve neglected them. We should fix them before they break with traffic on them. When congress does not and the news is saturated with talk of a dead family of four whose car fell into a river because of a broken bridge, I will only say, I told you so.
The president began his speech with a discussion of the armed forces. His point was that they did not bicker over differences when they had shit which needed to be done. He wished congress would be more like our troops.
This sounds stupid and overly earnest when he says it but this is only because our congress has made us feel the same type of crippling disappointment and angry confusion we would feel if someone close to us had committed rape.
Partisanship has become like parity, it has become so cartoonish and unrealistic that if I wasn’t living through it I wouldn’t even believe it were so bad and awful.
Many republicans watching the speech I’m sure had a knee jerk reaction. “I hate this guy.” But so little of this speech was partisan. Obama wants to lower the corporate tax rate, end subsidies for oil companies, punish companies that do outsource with higher tax rates as compared with those that do not outsource, and give tax breaks to companies that either do not outsource or choose to bring jobs back home.
The State of the Union was made up of good idea’s. In a follow up interview Mit romney called the president a lier. He says that the president has done the opisit of what he claimed in tonight’s speech he says he would like to do. And if Mit Romney is telling the truth, then shame on the president for acting like Mit Romney. But if this is political exaggeration, it is symptomatic of our hatred problem.
The president ended his speech with a call for by partisanship. The only thing I see almost as much of as congressional gridlock is people complaining about it, but his tone touched me.
Mainly because his point is so clear and simple. We elected congress to do a job, and it isn’t doing it. Instead its fighting with itself. There was a mythical time in this country when our congress worked together. It was a time when party politics meant that two groups with differing ideas of the best way to govern found common ground by talking to one another. They turned that common ground into law. Republicans and democrats would bounce ideas off one another until they found something which was not what they had first wanted but which they could except. We call that time the 90’s. Washington used to be functional. Now it isn’t. The responsibility for that rests squarely and almost exclusively on the heads of the meat sacks in congress tonight.
They don’t pass legislation. Therefore the president doesn’t sign it.
When bills are passed they are so long that reporters have to hire teams to read them because each bill is long enough that one person cannot just sit down by herself, read it, and then summarize it. They don’t just pass a law, they pass a law with five hundred unrelated amendments. And when someone doesn’t get to shove his amendment right up the bills ass with the big repository of amendments already there, he votes against it to show people that next time he should get a piece of the pie.
And when that rarest of things, a politician with principles, sees a bill that is a good law covered in the maggoty amendments the other congressman have forced upon it, he feels he cannot vote for it because the amendments are bad, so few things get passed.
The president ended the State of the Union by talking about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He pointed out that the members of the Seal team who killed Bin Laden as well as the members of government watching the operation from the situation room were not concerned with politics but with getting the job, killing Bin Laden , done.
The work of congress is equally important. Imagine that you were back in college working on a group project and you told your professor you didn’t get it done because the members of your group couldn’t agree on how to do it. He’d laugh at you and then flunk you. We have flunked congress. They have a national approval rating of nine percent. They have this approval rating because even if you aren’t into politics at all, you know from your glimpses of the news that all they do is fight. They are completely ignoring their responsibility to this nation.
To put that in perspective, in two thousand and seven back when congress was half assing its responsibilities , its approval rating was in the lower forties.
They have been given literally the most important job in this country and somehow they’ve chosen not to do it. In case you don’t follow politics, I’d like to be clear. It isn’t always like this. Our government is supposed to be low energy which means its not supposed to be easy to get laws passed. The process is supposed to take a while so that we can’t, in some odd national mood, outlaw ice cream or cars or whatever. But it isn’t supposed to be no energy, which it is now. Four times in this congressional term we’ve been less than four days from the government shutting down because congress was so reluctant to do even the bare minimum we expect of it.
Lots of people I know tell me over and over again its unprofessional to curse in a blog, but what they’ve done reminds me, and I am not being hyperbolic , of the teenaged girls that leave newborn children in dumpster’s because they can’t be bothered. America is that little crying baby and what congress is doing is killing it slow, and it makes me fucking hate them! It makes me hate them with a white hot fury, both altogether and individually, it makes me wish with all my heart that they could feel our combined disgust with them in some massive psychic onslaught. The only time all of them applauded the same thing was when gabby giffords came in, and some republicans probably thought the president giving her a hug was showmanship.
The president called on congress to be like Seal team six and do something without focusing on who was republican and who was democrat. He said that good ideas come from both parties and that there are always areas of consensus.
I try and approach politics rationally. But I admit as the president finished his remarks, I closed my eyes and pictured a congress that worked together, a congress that didn’t want to make the other party look bad but who found things they all or at least the majority of them agreed on and made those things into law. In other words the polar opisit of what is happening there today.
I pictured what most of them were thinking as they listened to the stirring final minutes of the speech which was probably, oh, good, this is almost over. Now I can get back to mudslinging. I thought that it was only five hundred or so people taking this country and letting it slowly slip from superpower to has been and I became indescribably sad.
I let the presidents words wash over me and was bittersweet as I imagined what our country could be if everyone was engaged in politics and if all of congress did have the atitude of the army.
We have problems that everyone knows must be delt with. If congress really did think like the army it would say to itself, here is what we must get done. Then they’d argue and prepose and counterprepose, and no matter how hard it was or how much everyone came into the term with differing idea’s, they’d pass what it was clear had to get passed.
As the speech ended, I let the tiny nationalistic fire that burns within me flare up for a moment as I thought of alternative 2012’s which could be but which will not be. I thought that its only these five hundred douchebags in congress and this inixplicible polerization which is letting our country slip like malasis dripping down glass from superpower to has been. And I was indescribibley sad.
And then came the worst moment of the night.
“Well bob,” said the news anker, “You can see the president is gearing up for reelection. You see all that talk of economic fairness, well, that’s probably going to come up a lot in the next forty-one weeks. How many times do you think the President used the word fairness tonight?”
Back to the spin. Back t the world of american politics where nothing is genuinely meant and where everyone badmouthes each other except when they’re forced to be on telivision at the same time.
I thought about what Mit Romney said after the State of the Union. I was saddened yet again after watching Mitch Daniels respond to the president. First because he should be in the 2012 Republican nominating process, and second because of many remarks he made it was clear that he either did not watch the State of the Union or did not bother to revise his remarks after he did watch it. I suspect the former. In particular he bashed obama for bashing Steve Jobs when in the State of the Union Obama made a point of praising Steve Jobs.
Welcome to 2012 everyone. Its like a greek tradgety. If we pull together and take concerted action American exceptionalism won’t be a joke. But we won’t do that. So ask your parents what it was like when we didn’t suck because you’ll probably never know.
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