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Tag: SOTU

SOTU 2022

Posted in meantime by Adam
Posted on

A reasonable speech calling for good legislation that won’t pass muster with a Republican party hellbent on the way of stupidity.

Biden’s speech had four main sections, by my count. The opening necessarily focused on the Russian Federation’s inhumane and inexcusable war in Ukraine. Biden, and most everyone (especially Ukraine itself) have done a good job in the face of a stupid and malicious Putin-patented war of conquest. Exceptions need not be mentioned. They know who and what they are.

Biden spoke of solidarity, and of attacking Putin’s regime with all measures short of violence. Heavy sanctions to drag on the Russian economy. Arms and aid to the victims. He reiterated the commitments to our NATO allies. But while the war in Europe took priority, it wasn’t the focus of the speech as Biden will have plenty more to say about it.

(The sanctions will quickly devastate the Russian Federation’s economy. When Americans urge the GOP to quit their insanity, both the atrocities of Russian aggression and the reaction of the world are what Americans fear the GOP will bring. The propaganda tactics, the calls for revoking media licenses or cracking down on social media that seeks to filter out malicious disinformation, the banning of books and harassment of librarians and school teachers, are all things that the GOP has emulated and supported in recent years. Americans must reject the Putin model.)

The bulk of the speech was a domestic one with three parts: patching the economy, the state of the pandemic, and building a healthier nation. It wasn’t big and bold. It was common sense. Addressing the problems we face, from climate to child care to cancer. It certainly wasn’t a laundry list of leftist wanna-ponies.

And the critics’ responses bear that out. They each focus on what they want done, while lying about Biden’s agenda. They want more defense spending, or Biden’s to blame for the border issues. Skip it. Biden mentioned those things and more. If the Republicans want to pass bills, the White House is open to doing business. Republicans only have to negotiate in good faith, if they’re so able. (They would prefer to take back control of either or both chambers of Congress first, so that what little gets by them will better enrich their donors. The fact that their party is scatterbrained on most issues doesn’t help make their case.)

America is a country in transition. We are moving away from the worst days of the pandemic, and the president’s agenda and popularity remain in question. The opponents only seek to block any solutions, while lying about damn near everything. The media continues to plague us with bad narratives, pointless fact checks, and appeasement for the GOP that has protected and has worshiped Donald John Trump. But if none of that changes, America will get nowhere.

Biden’s agenda can’t fix the broken record of the Republican party. He didn’t speak to that key issue at all. The Republicans sure as shit don’t acknowledge it outside of a few marginalized (nearly-cancelled) members. If we cannot have a Republican party that works with Democrats on things like drug pricing or climate change, and if a Brand New Party doesn’t come along to displace the GOP, then America will surely end up going down the same ruinous road that Putin has taken the Russian Federation on for a couple decades. And that’s scary.

SOTU 2018

Posted in society by Adam
Posted on

It was a weird speech. There wasn’t a lot of substance. There were a lot of human props.

Most presidents would at least try to unify. Throwing a few lines about bipartisanship and unity aren’t that. This president isn’t in a position to unify, mainly because this administration isn’t capable of that sort of behavior. You don’t expect a parakeet to play fetch.

Most presidents would push policy that they’d been working on already. Opioid crisis? Lip service only, which makes sense in the context of what the administration has attempted. They haven’t done anything worth listing.

So the real state of the union is slow deterioration as we wait for the midterms, wait for Republicans to rediscover America, wait for the adults to stop coddling this broken administration.

The overture to infrastructure is so half-assed and not what we need. Maybe if the Republicans had taken up Obama on infrastructure, it could have worked. What we need, realistically, is a permanent infrastructure system.

So some infrastructure is priority. Most is steady-maintenance. You budget to cover priority and emergency and then whatever is left over, that goes to maintenance.

But their plan? Throw a tiny amount of money and hope that municipalities and the private sector figure out the rest.

Or the nod to prison reform, which comes as we learned the Bureau of Prisons is rewarding donors by shunting more prisoners to private prisons.

Or the umpteenth time he says prescription drug prices are going to magically drop.

It’s pathetic that this is what passes as a good speech by this president. It’s inexcusable that his party applauded it and his supporters cheered it without any indication of how bad it was.

At best, it was a short distraction from the 50 other distractions that this administration unleashes on the world like it’s some genetic breeding experiment gone awry.