State of the Union thread
Here we go.
“Hoping we will govern not as two parties, but as one nation.” The Democrats stand late, but they stand.
What is the chance of that actually happening? Close to zero, I’d say.
Later Trump announces Buzz Aldrin—who salutes, wearing a big American flag tie.
The big theme so far is compromise. Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez, looking glum, stays seated.
Many (most? all? I’m not sure) of the Democratic women are dressed in white, in some pretense of victimhood:
“Today we stand together wearing white in solidarity with the women of the suffrage movement who refused to take no for an answer,” said Representative Brenda Lawrence, who is also the leader of the Democratic Women’s Working Group. “To an administration that has closed its eyes to women, we will be seen.”
Trump makes a clever ad lib right before saying that we have more women in Congress than ever before. Addressing the Democratic side (who were standing for a previous comment about women, but are starting to sit down), Trump says something like, “Don’t sit down yet, you’ll like this one, too.”
Those white outfits look kind of creepy and cultlike. And white is not a flattering color for most people. Too stark.
Absolutely adorable little girl, cancer survivor. Everybody claps with sincere enthusiasm this time.
Trump reminds us about how things are seemingly looking up regarding North Korea. That’s something easy to forget; like the dog that didn’t bark.
Ringing endorsement of liberty vs. socialism. Camera goes to Bernie, who has a poker face.
Very moving tribute to a Holocaust survivor and one of the American soldiers who helped to liberate the camp, sitting next to each other tonight.
In sum, I think it was an exceptionally clever speech, very well-delivered. The emphasis on unity and the things he wants to accomplish that Democrats could and should approve of made them look small if they didn’t stand up and applaud. Sometimes they stood, and sometimes they didn’t.
My guess is that it also is a better speech—and probably a different speech—than he would have delivered if it hadn’t been postponed till now.
Probably won’t change a single mind; certainly not many. So many people are set in stone. But it’s the best SOTU speech I can recall, and a strategic one as well. I usually start watching the SOTU speeches, but I usually can only last a few minutes before incredible boredom sets in. This was great theater, among other things, because it put the Democrats in the really interesting position of having to applaud—and then applaud again—a man they hate, or else look like sour America-hating fools.
Alexandria Occasionally Cogent
Ah, Democratic woman – See nothing but evil Trump, Hear nothing but evil Trump, Say nothing but Evil.
Pretty good SOTU.
ken:
I think it’s actually very clever. The emphasis on unity and the things he wants to accomplish that Democrats could and should approve of makes them look small.
Not that it matters. Probably won’t change a single mind; certainly not many. So many people are set in stone.
He’s knocking all of them out of the park!
The dems can’t stay in their seat!
They can’t not applaud Trump!
One of the best SOTU I’ve heard. As Neo says, clever. The Dems must know they are being painted into a corner.
Wow, just wow… I like this guy when he stays with the script, he can deliver a speech as well as anyone I have ever listened to.
He hit the right points and slammed it on the medical costs, jobs more for the regular blue collar, taking care of black people who got slam dunked in the legal system, lots of good stuff and hard points on how walls work.
Keep your white jacket women sitting to show they don’t give a shit and…
God Bless America.
The Democrats hated every word of it. You could see it in their eyes. But Trump made them stand.
They thought they made him cave over the government shut down. They just made him up his game. The Democrats, on the other hand, haven’t had to up their game since the nineteen sixties. I look at Pelosi and Schumer and I realize that Trump has them so outmaneuvered. They’re not capable of deviating from their half century old play book. Trump doesn’t have a play book.
Game’s gotta respect game. I look at Melania sitting there with the cancer patient and I’m thinking, she’s not sitting there just because Trump is rich. He’s got a lot on the ball and she knows it.There are a lot of rich guys in this world.
Did you notice. DJT and Melania actually liked the cancer patient, ICE agent, et all. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-burger-king-mc-donalds-binge-scores-fast-food-companies-over-15-million-in-free-impressions-225813306.html
I hate how I’m calling the little girl sitting next to Melania “The Cancer Patient.” She came across as so sweet and so brave and I delight in the fact she has finished chemo. But I’m sufficiently man primeval that I didn’t get her name.
Grace Eline. Learn the power of Bing. Duh. I can get five hundred ponies out of a small block Ford or Chevy so I should at least know how to work a search engine.
http://image.popularhotrodding.com/f/enginemasters/1102phr_2010_amsoil_engine_masters_challenge/30115166/1102phr_41_o%2b2010_amsoil_engine_masters_challenge%2bsmall_block_ford.jpg
You don’t want to know what I can do with a Chrysler Slant Six. It’s…
unnatural.
1.
Great State of the Union Address by President Trump!
And poetic and spiritual, too.
I cannot remember a better SOTU!
2.
Is US Sen. Joe Manchin (D) West Virginia about to become US Sen. Joe Manchin (R) West Virginia
If you think about it, hoist one for the maintainers. I used to like reading about they could turn an F4F Wildcat into a wilder wildcat.
https://www.flightjournal.com/the-wilder-wildcat/
An extra hundred horsepower might just be enough to turn the tables on a Japanese pilot. And the maintenance chiefs who used to race their V8 Fords on the dry lakes could eke out an extra hundred ponies. It wasn’t really a game changer. The game changer was the F6F. The Ace Maker. It looked enough like the Wildcat that Japanese pilots would go into a loop expecting the American to stall and would have an easy kill. Imagine their surprise when the American had more power due to their P&W R2800 than they did.
The American planes also had more speed in the dive. Which may not seem like much but speed is life.
Noticed Liz Warren scowling in the audience, and scowl she might, since the WaPo just released a copy of her Texas Bar Association membership Application that Warren filled out by hand, in which she wrote in the box for Race that she was an “American Indian,” and signed her name.
I guess Leftists the WaPo–but I repeat myself–decided that Warren was just too great a liability, and it was time to dump her over the side.
See https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/elizabeth-warren-identified-herself-as-american-indian-on-1986-document
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/death-ball-turret-gunner
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”
Yes. And, during the postponement the Democrat governor of Virginia gave the President fantastic ammunition against the “it’s not a human entitled to protection against murder until it’s home from the hospital for 90 days” crowd. [Yes, I’ve engaged in exaggeration.]
“Alexandria Occasionally Cogent”
My pet name for her is Occasional Cortex.
But, that’s good, too.
Oh…so we don’t forget…and I’m gonna do smug…
Trump is President and NOT Hillary, who will NEVER be President.
So all you NeverTrumpers….you know what you can do.
It is a game being played out over four quarters. Trump’s resiliency, his refusal to quit, his willingness to compromise (some) with the hostiles all speak to a most presidential president.
I hope some of the millenials will see him as a desirable model.
Steve57: “The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner” by Randal Jarrell was one of the first modern poems I broke my brain on. The words were vivid but I was sixteen and I didn’t even know what a ball-turret gunner was.
The poem was in a programmed learning book. You would read the poem then a question about the poem, then select one answer out of three and turn to the appropriate page and see if you were on catching on or not:
_____________________________________
Recognizing that the death of one man, an aircraft gunner, is the occasion for the poem, what is the poem’s subject?
The effect of war on humanity. page 188
The terrors of aerial combat. page 198
The individual’s identity in contemporary society. page 202
_________________________________
The correct answer, according to the book, is page 202.
https://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Modern-Poetry-J-Pratt/dp/B0017DMZDO/ref=sr_1_1
I suspect that Nancy is very sorry she postponed the SOTU.
In that interval, the Virginia kerfuffle took place.
And the democratic women will never want to appear as a rank of white suits again, for it looks too much like something that the public is now attuned to.
Did anyone take in the rebuttals?
Streaming the speech was enough…couldn’t take the 2 wannabe-but-never-will-bes.
Ed…
Nancy does not even remember tonite’s speech.
Grrrr.
What is this CR**!!!?? WE’RE the ones who’re supposed to be doing the manipulating! NOT YOU!!
Grrr.
We’re the MASTERS of manipulation. (And don’t you forget it!)
OK, we may have been outplayed tonight. Outfoxed. (MAY have.) But we’ll just ramp up the media—actually, they’ll do it all on their own—and then we’ll see who’s boss around here.
And when election time comes around, heh, we’ll just do what we do best!! (Get this straight: in 2020, we won’t be fooling around.)
Yeah. You’ll see!!! Along with all those deplorables who support you.
MAGA our backsides!!
Grrr.
= = = = = =
“…liability…”
As for Warren being “too great a liability” (due to her lie-ability?), name one of those clowns who isn’t—once the Truth that the MSM is sitting on somehow seeps out. (With the exception of that governor of Montana, who seems like a truly decent person. Well, there might be a few others… I certainly hope so.)
Snow on Pine on February 5, 2019 at 11:39 pm at 11:39 pm said:
Noticed Liz Warren scowling in the audience, and scowl she might, since the WaPo just released a copy of her Texas Bar Association membership Application that Warren filled out by hand, in which she wrote in the box for Race that she was an “American Indian,” and signed her name.
* * *
The Examiner article did not mention WHEN the WaPo became aware of this little document; I wonder how long they have been sitting on it, because it was an obvious place to look*. And why didn’t any Republican think to go there? (Didn’t we have this discussion earlier?)
By this time, every politician and wannabe in the country (on the planet?) should know that everything they ever did is available somewhere, and it’s being found and hoarded until needed to support the Narrative du Jour — almost exclusively by the Left. Bombshells dropped by the Right (aka newsworthy results of actual journalistic investigation) don’t seem to get any response other than “Republicans Pounce” from the MSM.
*Wikipedia: “She is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School. Her career as an academic focused on bankruptcy law, where she focused primarily on empiric decision-making of the public following legal changes. Warren taught at several law schools, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University.”
Steve57 on February 5, 2019 at 10:50 pm at 10:50 pm said:
The Democrats hated every word of it. You could see it in their eyes. But Trump made them stand.
They thought they made him cave over the government shut down. They just made him up his game. The Democrats, on the other hand, haven’t had to up their game since the nineteen sixties.
* * *
Good point.
PS
He still should have served some Chik-fil-a among the hamberders.
“…is available somewhere…”
Wouldn’t mind seeing the “Khalidi video” (AKA “Khalidi tape”) that is purportedly somewhere deep, deep, deep in the vaults of the LA Times.
(Assuming it hasn’t been destroyed…. Ah, such is the stuff of which conspiracy theory is made!!…)
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/21/news/la-pn-khalidi-video-not-for-sale-20120921
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_fTtDMF-7M
Trump’s masterful SOTU made the democrats so uncomfortable that they literally bolted for the door immediately after he finished speaking. He did not even get off the podium before the democrat seats were emptied by the stream of lemmings who had to be signaled when it was OK to applaud.
“…uncomfortable…”
No doubt they would have preferred to be somewhere else…where they could really express themselves. (And it’s not easy to throw a tantrum in such a situation, so one really must admire—even if grudgingly—their collective self-control, everything being relative, of course.)
True, one might hope for a more adult demeanor. Perhaps, even a little bit—a tiny bit—of dignity. To be fair, maybe those white dresses were really, really scratchy (in keeping with the inspired sophomoric metaphor they were so subtly foisting).
But since the Democrats are “the intrepid resistance” who fantasize continuously about Trump’s impeachment, I suppose such adolescent behavior ought to be understood, and perhaps even forgiven. I mean, they do, after all, hate the man and everything—and everyone—associated with him.
So try to imagine just how uncomfortable those poor souls were, scratchy dresses and all.
Anyway, for a more mature take on the evening, here’s the always insightful and discerning Van Jones:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/cnns-van-jones-calls-trump-speech-cookies-and-dog-poop-press-doles-out-snark-sarcasm-and-opposition
Have to confess I didn’t watch. (Husband watching UNC basketball.) But I followed it, and have watched clips.
He made the Democrats look small, childish, and nasty.
The decision of the Dem women to wear white, and the men, the white ribbons, only emphasized the Northam KKK photo. Bad optics.
“… wearing white in solidarity with the women of the suffrage movement.. ”
Oh, so that is what it that was about. I thought it was a nod to equality; Glad decided to balance the Glad garbage man in the ad with an ad with women as well.
They were supposed to be representing the suffragettes. Susan B. Anthony was anti-abortion. Instead, their heroine is really Margaret Sanger, a racist and eugenics advocate.
Did the ladies in white not foresee the KKK memes? Maybe white is the new red. Think Handmaid’s Tale they were so enamored of last year.
I don’t think of SOTU speeches as tearjerkers nor Happy Birthday singing as a reason to get weepy but it happened last night. Thanks to whoever started it. It was a moment that would touch even a heart of stone.
The last trench defense of a dying ideology: stonewalling of reality and increasingly theatrical posturing. All those white dresses and sour faces.
Neo, since you’re a fashionista and I’m a typical nerd, can you explain lipstick fashion?
Too me the bright red lipstick on AOC looked more Cesar Romero than anything attractive.
The big theme so far is compromise. Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez, looking glum, stays seated.
No husband, no children, no trade. She has her health and the gig as a parody member of Congress pays well (as well as allowing this histrionic young women to get her kicks from having an audience). Still, a dearth of authentic accomplishment. Of course she’s glum.
As they say, very bad “optics,” that lead to a chain of associations.
So soon after the appearance of VA Governor Northam’s yearbook page–featuring one young man in blackface and the other man in a full White KKK costume–all those white dresses inevitably brought to mind the KKK, and KKK gatherings, rallies, and processions.
That, of course, brought to mind the fact that it was Democrats who founded the KKK, and Democrats who consistently voted against full rights for Blacks and against desegregation.
Which brought to mind the fact that one of the most honored Democrats, West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd, who served in Congress for 51 years, was a member of the KKK, in fact, a “Grand Exalted Cyclops,” who led his local chapter of the KKK.
Of course, you wouldn’t have been able to have this chain of associations–make these connections–if you had never been taught all this information in school, or discovered it on your own.
That is the whole idea of the Left’s control over the Educational Establishment, and the MSN–making sure that you are never taught this information and/or that you are unlikely to run across it in “mainstream” sources and commentary.
Make that “MSM” not “MSN.”
Great speech, thanks CBS for having it available (for us in EU-land).
Unity and optimism. And not any partisan attacks, altho CNN claims there are.
Especially glad the middle class is getting
9:20 on Instapundit, good photoshop of the white dressed women with pointy KKK hoods added.
I now call them the Democratic PC-Klan, and suggest all conservatives note their PC-Klanish behavior, when they do it. Like against Kavanaugh, and Nick Sandmann of Covington High, and even at Google against Jim Damore.
The PC-Klan, looking to keep the PC-Klan tribe pure.
I’m glad Trump is fighting against the PC-Klan.
And I often call it the Dem media which is doing most of the Fake News.
One of the moments that really hit me was that the women in white didn’t stand for the lower unemployment numbers for blacks and hispanics. I didn’t think many of them got up for the improved employment numbers for women. If they did, it seemed that there was a delay and a muted response, until President Trump mentioned the women in Congress. I think he did do a good ad-lib about staying standing.
Then, they got very giddy in their cheering with high-fiving, lots of turning around to everyone, etc. It looked like your high school team just scored the game winning points. It was a contrast with the clapping and cheering from the rest of the gallery on other points.
The ladies in white looked like a herd of sheep. Conform or be cast out! Nice message, ladies.
any real conservatives still lamenting that Jeb Bush, Rubio or Ted Cruz weren’t the president? Donald J Trump is a bigger man than the whole eGOP combined.
“I don’t like trump because he is not a real conservative, he bad, he calls superhero captain america John mccain not a hero, he criticizes the iraqi war, he questioned Saint Bush’s competence, he calls Jeb low energy, he su*ks Putin’s d***, he bad he bad he bad”
“I don’t like trump because he doesn’t lie to me sophisticatedly like a career politician should be”
“I don’t like trump because he is so vulgar and he is mean and he says bad things about people…”
not kidding going into the election I kind of preferred Rubio but now comparing to Trump he is so beta and smallminded he makes me want to puke. There is not one guy besides Rand Paul and a distant may be ted cruz that i would prefer to be the president over Trump, Trump makes everyone else looks so petty in comparison
I was talking with a guy the other day whose mom is the widow of a Korea/Vietnam veteran. She has significant health issues, and as a *widow* of a veteran, she’s been able to use Tricare For All (I believe that’s its name – what they used to call CHAMPUS, the military health care system) all along – a circumstance that this guy told me has saved her untold thousands out-of-pocket over the years. (He said that veterans themselves, until recently, have been restricted to the VA if they had no other insurance or source of funds.)
He then said that Trump had radically changed the game for veterans’ health care by making it possible for veterans themselves to use Tricare (or to go to any doctor they want to or are able to see – I wasn’t clear on which of these is the case), instead of only the VA. Implied was that Trump had done this through EO, and that any president could’ve done it, but none did until Trump. He and I talked for a few minutes about the advantages of this – that it reduces the load on the VA, gets veterans more quickly into care (and possibly into better care), etc. (I now remember hearing about this EO, I think, but had forgotten all about it.) And THEN he went on a little rant about John McCain, and how the Arizona VA system was notoriously bad, yet McCain did nothing about it all those years. He was not a fan of the Senator. It was very interesting.
Dave, you need to add:
“He’s so gauche! He ordered fast food instead of sending out for Zabar’s!”
“He actually likes those coal miners and construction workers and factory workers. And they like him!”
Avi:
Dark red lipstick is very very fashionable, although it’s not easy to wear. But quite popular these days. It gives a kind of retro look that is very dramatic. At last night’s SOTU, Ivanka wore it as well (scroll down here for a photo).
Women in white must have checked their Handmaids’ red cloaks at the door.
Thanks Neo!
Do you believe in reincarnation? AOC in a previous life:
http://royalrio.net/wp-content/uploads/carmem-miranda-3.jpg
Funky…nope Carmen Miranda was hot & she really could dance.
;-D
I don’t know about other women, but I gave up dressing like my friends in about the 7th grade. “Hey, tomorrow, let’s all wear pink.” If one didn’t get the memo, she was labeled “queer”. I rarely got the memo so was often labeled “queer” even though none of us in the late 1950’s had a clue what that meant. I thought it meant “odd” and I didn’t feel very odd even if I wasn’t wearing pink, or blue, or le couleur du jour.
I guess the female congress-critters are stuck in their tween years or something. Does none of them have the gumption to refuse to be one of the in-crowd? I guess not. Childish, that.
Scott Robinson on February 6, 2019 at 1:03 pm at 1:03 pm said:
Women in white must have checked their Handmaids’ red cloaks at the door.
* * *
Zing.
However, in the context, Red would have indicated affiliation with the Evil Republicans, rather than Resistence to their Evil Republicaning.
Kind of a delicate choice in couture.
Instaapundit summarizes:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/320923/
Prof. Reynolds also notes the pundits deriding the ostensible Fact Checkers.
Like in this post:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/fact-checking-is-broken-the-petty-pedantic-pointless-picking-at-trumps-state-of-the-union
Jonathan Last makes some interesting points:
https://thebulwark.com/the-next-flight-93-election/
The Political-Industrial Complex is already on it:
https://store.breitbart.com/products/neversocialist-usa-t-shirt?utm_source=Sidebar&utm_medium=Sidebar&utm_campaign=BB-301
Tweet from The Donald shows CBS approval poll of speech:
Reps: 97%
Dems: 30%
Independents: 82%
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
The 2020 campaign will be about those independents, perhaps with some real attempts to get bipartisan stuff done, but mostly what Trump thinks is good for America.
The Rep NeverTrumpers also, in a strange way, provide support for Trump among independents who are against both Dems & Reps — so is Trump. Some.
There’s a critique of Trump that he’s the most “socialist” Rep Pres. ever, in terms of favoring Big Gov’t. His huge tax cut and regulations cut show that he’s half anti-socialist, or OK 2/3s, but his willingness to spend on almost all gov’t stuff is a 1/3 HUGE gov’t sort-of socialist. At least populist. And gov’t spending is, actually, a long term problem (Free money, Free lunch — or at least paid for with Other People’s Money, OPM)
Call Trump what you want. (It’s a free country.)
He’s still light years better than the current alternative.
And the challenge for the confabulating MSM will continue to be how to ensure that “We the people”—that is, those of us who haven’t already figured out this simple, obvious fact—WON’T be able to figure it out.
Pingback:2019 SOTU by Pres. Trump – Great – Tom Grey – Families, Freedom, Responsibility
AesopFan, you read The Bulwark so I don’t have to. Last’s comments are a bit odd, given the utter failure of ANY Republicans to control federal spending in decades, except for the “sequestration” deal with Obama. Trump is attempting to freeze federal employment and federal pay, which is only nibbling around the edges for sure. Someone would have to confront Social Security to actually stop the fiscal bleeding. It could be done, and other countries have done it.
From Daniel Henninger’s op-ed this morning in the WSJ:
And this from Conrad Black (H/T Instapundit):
https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/06/donald-trumps-annihilation-of-the-democratic-party/
Cogent commentary? Or mere wishful thinking?… Key graf:
“…Faced with a Trump they could not defeat and cannot destroy, Democrats appear to be entering a frenzy of primal extremism. If the Democrats go to the voters next year as the party of infanticide, open borders, a 70 percent top personal income tax rate, and the practical abolition of private health care, they will vanish more quickly, and with less distinction, than the Whigs….”
Tom Grey on February 7, 2019 at 3:16 am at 3:16 am said:
… but his willingness to spend on almost all gov’t stuff is a 1/3 HUGE gov’t sort-of socialist.
* * *
Hey, they Fact Checked that and he’s only 31% socialist…..
Kate on February 7, 2019 at 8:05 am at 8:05 am said:
AesopFan, you read The Bulwark so I don’t have to. Last’s comments are a bit odd,
* * *
My first time to visit that site; I skimmed a few of the recent articles and can’t say I really have a handle on their ideological stance, although it is to the Right of Lenin.
I think.
At least they present reasonably cogent arguments in literate rhetoric.
I kind of like the off-beat netizens; they’re a change from the eternal round of Slate/Salon-NR/Federalist quasi-centric punditry.
Barry – I liked The Conrad’s opening as well as his closing. He is a master of Red Meat Rhetoric, with serious politico-historico-philosophical trimmings.
“The nadir of the amoral egotism of what might broadly be called “Me-ism” has been reached by the avant garde of the Democratic Party in their race to the bottom of the electoral depths. The renunciation of any notions of sacrifice, patriotic pride, the spirituality of life, or the recognition of anything except the smash-and-grab politics of endless atomized grievances and instant gratification of convenience, has reached what must, in its way, be the end of history.”
Barry Meislin on February 7, 2019 at 9:11 am at 9:11 am said:
And this from Conrad Black (H/T Instapundit):
https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/06/donald-trumps-annihilation-of-the-democratic-party/
* * *
I wanted to give this part of Black’s post its own comment, because there was another interesting article I’ve been hanging onto for a week now that’s very important.
It seems to me that most people outside the Beltway support all of these to some extent. However, because the Democrats have balked at securing the border and deporting criminals (or interdicting them before entry), the Republicans are wary of giving them the other two (having been burned before by putting generosity before security).
Trump won the immigration debate in the election because the rational people in the country could see that all four parts of the solution have to go together.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/01/president-trump-makes-extensive-remarks-during-white-house-roundtable-on-human-trafficking-video-and-transcript/
AesopFan, The Bulwark is where Bill Kristol and the never-Trumpers went after The Weekly Standard folded.
Kate – in re Bulwark – thanks; that explains some of the stances I read.