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Settle in for the SOTU

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s showtime!

Talk amongst yourselves.

[ADDENDUM: It’s over, so now I could turn on my TV.

Watching Fox afterward, I heard Krauthammer—who sometimes praises Obama highly—say it was “flat” and “uninspired.” That’s certainly how I feel about most SOTU speeches. Krauthammer said Obama spent a great deal of time defending the expansion of government he presided over during his first two years.

Brit Hume says it was a rationalization for further government spending. But “How much borrowed money, sir, are you willing to spend on these items?”

So although the more upbeat Obama showed up, he apparently hasn’t gotten that old-time fiscal restraint religion (as I had incorrectly predicted here)—not much anyway, not even rhetorically.]

[ADDENDUM II: Reading a bit around the blogosphere, I see that Sputnik was a big theme.

Sputnik! That’ll pull the young folks in.

I remember it well, although I was just a little kid. It meant that big bad Russia had beaten us, or something like that. It meant we kids had to learn more math and science, faster and better than our elders, so it wouldn’t happen again. Sputnik was thrown in our faces for years, as though we were personally responsible. I hated Sputnik! Down with Sputnik!]

[ADDENDUM III: Jennifer Rubin also fails to find that elusive centrist Obama who is the One we’ve all been waiting for.]

Comments

Settle in for the SOTU — 64 Comments

  1. Don’t jump in all at once, guys.

    I have to admit that I’m not watching. Maybe the same is true for you?

  3. Some quick impressions of the last 20 minutes or so.

    Dull and intellectually dishonest in many places. No reform to SSI but we’re going to reduce the deficit: Read my lips, lots of new taxes!!!

    Cheap shot against Bush again: “America’s standing has been restored” Um, no, it’s been lowered under your graceless/spineless stewardship but the liberal tards will lap it up. Oops, was that too rhetorically violent?

    He was fast to credit the Tunisians for wanting independence. Why’d it take him 2+ weeks to say anything about the Green revolution in Iran? A word or two about Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon would’ve been sorta relevant here too.

    I loved the part on ‘resetting our relations with Russia’ Because they’re just so terrific now.

    Anybody else?

  5. I loved the part on ‘resetting our relations with Russia’

    Are you sure he didn’t mean “recharging?”

  6. I just found out that Obama went to the well of “high-speed rail.”

    What is it with the Reds and high-speed rail? Did Trotsky’s armored trains make that big an impression on them?

    Memo to American Reds: this ain’t Europe, where an extra base hit might land in another country (if they played baseball). We’ve got counties bigger than some European countries, and in general a much lower population density. Passenger rail, for most of the country, is just not practical here.

  8. Occam,

    Sorry I didn’t get the distinction between the two words although I do remember him saying ‘reset’.

  9. Hong, not to worry. I was just being snarky.

    You’d think he’d shy away from the word “reset,” given his Administration’s contretemps with it.

  10. Hong wrote “Cheap shot against Bush again: “America’s standing has been restored””

    Actually I am sort of glad he said that, I was afraid he would actually try and change and thereby stand a chance at re-election. Fortunately that comment reveals he is still the same old complete ass.

  11. SOTU — dull, boring.

    Extremely interesting: Frank Luntz’s focus group. Included 13 people who voted for Obama. 2 (of entire group) felt speech disappointed. Seems no one – NO ONE – believes a word he says anymore. That was recurring theme in focus group reactions. Amazing! And one of the most vocal was a Black man who voted for Obama. That’s the 3rd or 4th time in 2 days I’ve noticed blacks peeling away from their blind devotion to Obama. And I’ve been noticing more and more Blacks moving to right of center. A trend…? Or reality check? This is not to say other ethnic groups differ — seemed to be the case across the board. Amazing! Hope floats!

    My biggest fear since Tucson speech and the speech most felt was…well, pretty non-divisive – particularly for Obama — has been that this con man cons all the folks (or most). If he could appear to move toward center consistently, he could buy himself 4 more yrs. to wreak havoc during that time, with no worry about having to take responsibility afterwards. (Who would dare criticize him as he has George Bush?)

    Old news: Nancy Pelosi is well past LaLa Land & insists Obama is “taking the high ground.” Yadda, yadda, yadda…..

  12. Correction: ALL but 2 of focus group felt Obama disappointed them. Only 2 felt the speech was inspiring!

  13. I watched Obama, Ryan, and the Fox News Panel and Frank Luntz.

    Paul Ryan’s response was right on with me.

    I was surprised to see that Frank Luntz’s group which included 13 of 29 Obama voters almost all said (except 2) that they either do not believe Obama or thought it was political (not principle) in Obama’s speech.

    The kicker – I don’t know if anybody can find a video of it – is Nancy Pelosi being interviewed by Greta Van Sustern. God Bless Greta – she can’t win in that interview and she didn’t even try. I think she let Pelosi dig quite a big hole.

    Pelosi trotted out the line about Obama creating or saved 3 million jobs.

    I think the mental illness shown by Democrat leadership is over the top for even the average Obama voter.

  15. I watched Tru TV. Pawn Stars…All Worked Up. A lot more exciting. I did watch Ryan, short and sweet and to the point. From what I hear Obama was not wowing them. I guess that he just is not that inspiring without murder victims to exploit.

  16. “America’s standing has been restored”

    Right. That’s why DinnerJacket basically asked Obama for a shoe shine, and Hu & Co. went out of their way – for the second time – to stick a finger in our eye (first blowing Obama off at the summit meeting, and then playing an anti-American song after requesting a quintessentially American evening. Perhaps they were making a point?)

  18. Occam: The Reds love high speed rail for the same reason that ranchers value cattle chutes and corrals.
    Loss of our ad lib mobility in cars puts us right where they want us.

  19. Neo,

    I sat trying to figure out how San Franciscans think of her after that performance.

    Than again. San Fanciscanites don’t watch Fox News. Nevermind!

  20. Heh. Looks like that newsreel animation was recycled.

    Here is an earlier newsreel about Project Vanguard, which was intended to be the first satellite. The animations depict the Vanguard rocket and satellite pretty accurately. (The third stage really was carried inside the second stage housing.)

    A Moon is Born

  24. Yeah. I didn’t watch it either. If I feel the sudden irresistible craving to be lied to and have my intelligence insulted there’s always the weather channel.

  25. Didn’t watch, but I’ve followed the Sputnik hints for a couple of days, and I must say that’s not a real good metaphor if you take a close enough look.

    The real story there is that the US had been working on an Army satellite-launching proposal under the guidance of Wernher von Braun (remember him?) since the fall of 1955 that could have beaten the Soviets. It was rejected by Congress (the Stewart Committee) in favor of the Navy’s Project Vanguard which failed several times with spectacular results. (Youtube it.)

    However, I don’t think that story would argue too well for the notion of clear-eyed government guidance, though it does speak well of German-American cooperation.

  27. Baklava — think we were right in sync! (Too funny — right down the list….) I guess I was just faster on the “Submit Comment” button.

  28. Terrye — I did exactly same as you. I watched that Pawn show on TruTV. (And I hate reality shows!)

    But real reality happened to be worse if it meant listening to SOTU by Obama.

  29. I type crazy fast on this Pentium 3 – 1.2 GHz computer. 🙂

    I wonder if the left will become unhinged at Michele Bachman’s inclusion of the fight at Iwo Jima against the Japanese in her speech.

    There are certain ways to push the left’s button. That might’ve been one of them. We’ll see…..

  30. I’m part of the group that didn’t watch the speech. I’m actually part of the demographic that actively avoids every Obama speech. I can’t stand to hear the sound of his voice anymore, and I can’t believe that I know so many people who voted for him.

  31. Yes, I remember Sputnick as well. Just newly assigned to a Navy Squadron in San Diego, I remember President Eisenhower calling for more science and math education. That, unfortunately, was the beginning of the Feds getting involved in education. Trillion$ of federal dollars spent since then and Obama wants to spend even more. Money down a rat hole.

    Obama may have thought he was triangulating, but Britt Hume and all the TEA Party, Paul Ryan, and even Obama voters are not buying it. It is going tio be brass knucks and stilletoes in D.C. for the next two years. Let’s hope the Repubs are ready to rumble.

  32. If anyone wants to see how “America’s standing has been restored” they should visit the Rubin Report and see what happened to America’s allies in Lebanon.

  34. Sputnik! That’ll pull the young folks in.

    HA! That’s pretty much what I thought when he said “Sputnik moment.” He wasn’t alive in 1957, and neither were the majority of those who voted for Obama. And given that the US space program has fallen on “hard times” over the decades since, it was an oddly anachronistic image to invoke.

  35. /putting on my leftist hat

    you staunch conservative cool-aid drinkers are evil.

    President Obama is tackling the deficit and at the same time he will launching programs to invest in the infrastructure, education, and innovation for the next century.

    You wackjobs want to move the country backwards and put the money in the hands of the rich at the expense of working americans.

    And for that matter Americans means all americans – gay – straight – undocumented etc. We are all united against the backwards thinking righties of the world.

    /taking lefty hat off

    How’d I do? 😉

  39. I didn’t watch it, but the two best comments aside from yours, neocon about the Sputnik reference pullingin the young people in (LOL!) was Vodkaapundit talking about Sputnik-a point of reference-“an event that happened in 1957 in a country that ceased to exist 20 years ago”, and William Jacobson at “Legal Insurrection” calling the SOTU, “1000 points of trite.”

  41. I saw something yesterday talking about a New Yorker Mag piece on Obama. They talked about several (5?) cabinet members who have not met or talked with Obama in 2 years. Obama is not a leader; he is a delegator who becomes bored with his job because he is so brilliant. The SOTU is a distraction because it encourages people to think there is coherent thought behind it. In fact, Obama merely picks among flavors of the month. The fault lies not in the policies, but in the man who tells us to seek salvation in window caulkers, high speed trains, and Sputnik. If he does chance to get something right, that is no reason for saying he is on a learning curve. He can’t learn, not with a brain depth measured in nanometers. Critiques of his policies must serve the purpose of undermining trust in his judgement. Obama the phenomenon is kept alive by faith and trust that is totally unwarranted. We have to keep chipping away at it. He will always change policies based on polling, but we can’t let him get away with that anymore because it doesn’t signify an essential change in an incompetent, daydreaming narcissist.

  42. The Whatsit family turned off the TV at SOTU time and spent the evening reading. This morning I’m looking for reports and can’t find anything positive — except, of course, on the front pages of the WaPo and NYT. As for actual people, the liberal friends and family who burbled with delight on Facebook after the Tucson speech (“I love Obama as much as the day I voted for him!”) don’t have a word to say this morning.

  43. Anyone besides me realize that as an individual, and seen as an individual, there are no such thing as ‘races’, genders, etc?

    When seen as a class, they can be seen as only the sum of their defining class feature (the arbitrary point that one uses to filter what is part of a set and what is not a set).

    As long as women separate themselves out, and blacks, and gays, and so on… they will never be a part of something that by definition they define themselves apart from and distinct from and measured by those features they select.

    So by having women abandon their individual position in American life, the women lost family, culture, security, health, and a myriad of other things, all to be able to act in a way to be included in the set they want to be in (which is defined as presenting a better benefit than not being a part of that set — ie. predatory).

    By people of color defining themselves by color, we can see nothing else in them. for to do so is to then start separating them from that group that they think they want to be included in as a dot in a mass of atomic set points.

    A nation of individuals is a single set called a nation
    A nation of various sets competing for benefits they steal from each other, is a social war

    Any group created this way, and that dominates, is the largest army of destruction
    It doesn’t matter what everyone thinks or is told to think, that’s what they are

    They even know it if you pay attention. They will only be happy and believe in unity when they win, and so can turn all and everything to that sets will. Meanwhile, outside this animal farm are people who like children with some crumbs at an ant hill set two sets at each other, forgetting who positions them this way by making promises to groups and ignoring individuals and their personal power and rights.

  44. Sputnik was a wonderful scare tactic. The Soviets put a grapefruit sized satellite in orbit and we immediately committed to trillions of dollars of government spending.

    I have only known one Astronaut well enough to have a meaningful discussion–actually I just listened. Navy of course; and one of the lead guys with the initial joint efforts with the Russians. He frankly said over a drink or three , but never publicly, that we were giving away the store on that project because the Russians had nothing to contribute.

    I am one of the iconoclasts who does not worship at the altar of the manned space program. My take is “sound and fury signifying nothing”. I believe that unmanned exploration and exploitation pays much greater dividends. My wife beats me up about my attitude, so don’t bother. I have enough scar tissue.

    The manned program did bring us some nice moon rocks; and some super video. Also, we now know that the moon is not suitable for development as a golf course community.

  45. Artfldgr that point you make is important. I heard that fellow whose name I can’t remember who is the Christian’s best-loved intellectual (maybe you know who I mean?) make the same point about atheists. He began w/ the distinction between nihilists and atheists: a nihilist believes in nothing; an atheist does not believe in God or gods.

    OK – so if one does not believe in God or gods, then humans came from – well, 1.) muck of the earth and 2.) chance in the big survival of the fittest show. Hence, there are no standards. There is nothing … “absolute.”

    The thinking from the left and the “daydreaming narcissist” (as expat aptly labels him, above) does not clarify a path and cannot lead. Only STANDARDS bring us forth.

    The leaders in name, Pelosi and Obama, either lack basic intelligence or think they are leading people who lack it.

  46. What’s WRONG with me? The other day I admitted i like Masterpiece Theater and now, I confess that I *LIKE* Pawn Stars.

    Oh yeah…I found the comments by Frank Luntz’s group interesting (and encouraging) too.

    And Pelosi was a dippy as always…hair style and all.

  47. We have been advised by the Won that the world economic rules have changed, and so must we.

    It is so far passed the time we need to look at our educational system, and what it is trying to do – hell, what it has successfully done – to its people.

    Agreed. We are a nation of individuals. Only equal opportunity can be attempted. Equal outcome can never be guaranteed. Trust me, you wouldn’t want ME designing rockets with human beings as the cargo to space.

  48. bt549 bingo: equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

    The Won has succeeded in articulating nothing and getting more and more Americans to focus on the distinction between HOPE and FAITH, between vacuous words and natural laws. We have FAITH in American principles.

    It’s incredible how delusional he remains, thinking that he can state that economic rules have changed just as he believes that he – with the help of hair spray like Pelosi – can change human nature.

    God Bless America, which is the spirit of truth in the INDIVIDUAL heart. Long ago, we broke away from the notion of KING who can dictate laws.

    Thank you neo-neo, like so many of us: liberal as a young woman, conservative of truth as a mature one.

  50. Economic rules have changed…

    I know one basic economic rule that never changes – you can’t spend more than you take in. Hard concept for The One to understand I guess..

  51. SOTU was just another rerun. We may have to wait a couple more seasons to get some new programing.

  52. OK, here’s what I think I am entitled too in this country:

    1. The biggest bang for my buck.
    2. The freedom to try – and fail – and try again.
    3. The freedom to succeed. My rights stop where they infringe on another’s. The opposite is also true.

    Our elected officials at all levels create thousands of new laws yearly. It continues to crack me up that every single, solitary new law made is STILL completely covered, every single time, by the Ten Commandments. Maybe we should pay the House and the Senate NOT to work.

  53. “”Economic rules have changed””

    Liberals can’t handle the rules that produce prosperity.And they’re just too ignorant to know quality and equality are diametrically opposed concepts.

  54. Didn’t watch Odumbo, either.

    Baklava,

    The part of the Greta interview I caught with Madame Defarge was Madame wanting ‘bipartisanship’. This from the ‘woman’ who called Tea Partiers ‘Nazis’ and who passed bills on a strictly party line basis because she cut off the Republicans from any debate or even input. I found that disgusting and wished Greta has pressed Madame on her own partisanship while Speaker. I wnated this question asked of her: How could she demand that which she did not give? The ol’ ‘what goes around comes around’ theory.

  55. >>I confess that I *LIKE* Pawn Stars.>>

    Me too! Of course, they have lots of odd junk, but whenever something really interesting comes in, you get a bit of real education about something that never occurred to you to ask!

  56. Sputnik! That’ll pull the young folks in.

    HA! That’s pretty much what I thought when he said “Sputnik moment.” He wasn’t alive in 1957, and neither were the majority of those who voted for Obama.

    How many people under 50 have even heard of Sputnik? I can picture the entire Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert demographic looking at each other quizzically. Hell, it’s even money Barry didn’t know what Sputnik was until he was handed the speech.

    Only equal opportunity can be attempted. Equal outcome can never be guaranteed.

    Good. Equal outcome is not desirable. Equality of outcome vitiates the point of applying oneself.

    Trust me, you wouldn’t want ME designing rockets with human beings as the cargo to space.

    Depends on the human beings.

    liberal as a young woman, conservative … as a mature one.

    By definition.

    re Sputnik: always had the impression that once in orbit it was programmed to send beeps that really didn’t mean anything.

    No wonder Obama relates.

  58. Occam’s,

    I remember being more impressed by Telstar and the Tornados music. We even used it as a theme in my HS yearbook.

  59. expat, yeah, I liked that music too.

    Overall, however, I’m with oldflyer: the manned space program is a bit of a white elephant, particularly now that we’re broke and can’t afford prestige projects.

    I was incensed at the time of the Challenger disaster, even before learning of the managerial malfeasance that led to it, because of the circus atmosphere attaching to the launch. Putting a schoolteacher in space, to teach her class from orbit? WTF? Was that the best use of resources they could come up with, or was it budget appropriation time again?

    That’s the point where I decided we need to gut NASA, big time.

  62. I was 13 when sputnik came into our lexicon. Growing up on a farm I would go outside at night watching for that tiny blinking red light moving across a star studded sky. You could easily see it on a clear night.

    I remember thinking it was magical, not ominous. I had no doubts that we would soon have a bigger, better, faster, bright, more rapidly blinking sputnik of our own revolving around the earth. I was raised with the knowledge that the USA was a special place where anything one might dream of could be achieved.

    I don’t feel that way any more. 🙁

  63. Oldflyer Says:
    January 26th, 2011 at 10:23 am

    Sputnik was a wonderful scare tactic. The Soviets put a grapefruit sized satellite in orbit and we immediately committed to trillions of dollars of government spending.

    Actually, Sputnik 1 weighed 185 lbs., which was heavier than any existing American rocket was capable of orbiting. That was part of the reason for the panic in America. Both countries were working on ICBMs, and at that point in time it was clear that the Soviets were in the lead. Our Atlas ICBM had yet to make a successful test flight.

    The grapefruit-sized satellite was our own Vanguard 1, which wasn’t launched until March 17, 1958. I believe that Khrushchev needled the U.S. about only being able to orbit a “grapefruit”.

  64. effess Says:
    January 26th, 2011 at 11:14 am

    re Sputnik: always had the impression that once in orbit it was programmed to send beeps that really didn’t mean anything. The Kremlin’s aim was to wow the world by putting something in orbit.

    Exactly right. Sputnik 1 carried only batteries and radio transmitters. The “beep” signal was deliberately sent out on common shortwave frequencies, so amateur radio operators all over the world could pick it up.

    The Soviets were working on a much larger satellite which would carry scientific instruments, but it wasn’t ready yet and they were very anxious to beat the Americans into orbit. See the link in my previous comment.

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