He came, he saw, he read a speech. In an atmosphere that can most charitably be described as 'muted', Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union speech to a chamber that for the first time in it's history, had everyone sitting together in a display of 'civility'. In reality it just made for some good television viewing for those of us at home, as we watched the attendees fake sincere smiles and handshakes, some of whom looked genuinely uncomfortable sitting with their opposite numbers. This novel seating arrangement also meant that the usual partisan jack-in-the-box standing ovations from one side of the room or the other at the designated moments in the speech were not going to happen. Instead we were blessed with the sight of what seemed to be a series of half-hearted standing ovations by folks that at times looked seriously confused as to whether it was their turn to stand or not.
The speech itself was a mish-mash of watered-down generalizations, with a discouraging amount of red-meat thrown in for the repubbies to get moist over, including Tort reform, lowering corporate tax rates and simplifying the tax code. At one point I wondered if someone from John Boner's office had switched the speeches loaded into the tele-prompter and replaced it with the one that the Weeper of the House is scheduled to give at an insurance lobbyists luncheon next week. For all of the republican wish-list items that were checked off in that speech it made me wonder just what the hell Paul Ryan (R- Eddie Munster look-alike asshole) was going to criticise in the official republican rebuttal? Maybe the colour of the President's tie?
As with the previous Obama SOTU addresses, the real fun begins when the right-wing spin machine goes into overdrive afterwards, starting with the official opposition's response. After the disaster that was Bobby Jindal's coming out speech two years ago, they tried to play it safe with Paul Ryan from Wisconsin this year. I watched him for a few seconds at the end of his "Everything that guy just said is bullshit" routine only to be struck by how stoned he looked. Paul Ryan either hadn't changed his contact lenses in a year or two, or he was high as a kite. Seriously, his eyes were so red you wouldn't use Visine to clear them up, you'd have to use White Out.
Not wanting to be left out, the lunatic fringe of the gop, the TeaBaggers, had their own rebuttal that no-one but the Comedy News Channel (CNN) covered. It featured the walking punchline that is the spectacularly stupid Rep Michele Bachmann (R- Batshit Insane). Actually that's a slur on stupid people, Bachmann is more like 10lbs of crazy stuffed into a 5lb bag. Her presentation featured charts, graphs, and the picture taken at Iwo Jima. The gist of her psychotic rant was, apparently, that Obama is Satan, the IRS is going to use Health Care Reform to tax you back to the stone age, and the the birth of America was 'a miracle' (and there was me thinking it was a bunch of folks trying to escape religious persecution getting on some rickety old boats whilst telling The Crown to 'fucketh off').
If the subject matter wasn't whacky enough, the delivery of it was completely bizarre. It appears that the Teabaggers didn't want to pony up the extra dollars for a professional-grade tele-prompter that allows the person reading it to look directly into the camera, but instead opted for one that was off to the side of the camera. This resulted in the speaker looking completely mental as she appeared to be earnestly addressing someone that was standing off camera. (This also raises the question of why she using a tele-prompter in the first place? I thought that was a clear violation of the Tea Party Code because they continually attack the Socialist/Nazi/Commie from Kenya in the Whitehouse for using one?)
In conclusion there was very little for the Dems to get too thrilled about, we've heard alot of these promises before, and instead of being a true assessment of the 'State of the Union' (there were only two paragraphs about only one of the two wars being fought, and bugger-all about the chronically unemployed) it was more like a republican speech delivered very eloquently by a centrist who apparently thinks that invasive TSA pat-downs are hysterical.
*As an aside Mooselini has reappeared from her self-imposed exile to chime in with her two cents about the speech, and said that the President's use of 'Win The Future' is the wrong use of 'WTF'. This would be amusing if A) she had come up with that line herself, and B) if her entire politicial career wasn't the biggest WTF of all time.
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