SOTU 2015
Internal links, defunct video removed.
Here's the full State of the Union address:
Jerry Markon & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "In a wide-ranging address, the president called for tax reform that eliminates corporate-friendly loopholes, highlighted his earlier proposal for free community college and delivered a forceful zinger aimed at conservatives and other critics of his plans to tackle global warming." Story has been updated.
I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what -- I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.
The transcript of President Obama's speech, as prepared for delivery, is here.
Charles Pierce's liveblog of the SOTU speech.
Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "Tuesday's State of the Union was ... a single component of a project that's much more meaningful than budget brinksmanship or the 2016 campaign -- to establish the parameters of the economic debate for years and years, the way Ronald Reagan's presidency lent supply-side tax policy and deregulation a presumption of efficacy that shaped not just Republican, but Democratic policy for two decades."
Jeremy Peters & Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times: "Republicans immediately rejected most of the proposals that were central to Mr. Obama's address, saying he was obviously not serious about working with them to pass consequential bipartisan legislation.... The Republicans may have the greater burden after promising to prove that they can govern productively after years of being mocked by the president as the Party of No.' The president's address signaled not only that he will make that transformation difficult, but also that he and fellow Democrats may adopt a form of the 'No' strategy as their own. The parallels may not be exact, of course. Mr. Obama points out that many of the Republicans' priorities seem designed to provoke him into issuing veto threats because they would dismantle popular pieces of his legacy." ...
... CW: In my view, President Obama begged Republicans to get off their white asses & do something for the American people. Yes, they're attacking the President's policies, but they're also defiantly refusing to do their jobs.
Ezra Klein: " Imagine if Mitt Romney was giving the State of the Union address amidst [today's encouraging] economic numbers. The cheering wouldn't stop long enough to let him speak.
Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post livesketched the SOTU.
Winner -- Most Tasteless Comment by a Congressman:
#Obama perverts "prosecutorial discretion" by inviting a deportable to sit in place of honor at #SOTU w/1st Lady. I should sit with Alito.
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 20, 2015
Gabriela Baczynska of Reuters: "Russia hit back on Wednesday at U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, saying it showed the United States believes it is 'number one' and seeks world domination. Obama said his country was upholding 'the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small' by opposing what he called Russian aggression and supporting democracy in Ukraine, and that Russia was isolated."
The White House page for viewing the State of the Union address is here.
The New York Times has live updates here. 8:13 pm ET: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has been named the "Designated Survivor," so will not attend the SOTU speech.
If you don't have access to teevee, you can have the pleasure of watching Sen. Joni Ernst (RTP-Iowa) deliver the GOP response to the SOTU address here. ...
... Here's the transcript of Ernst's non-response, as prepared for delivery. Akhilleus has provided the transcript of the non-response as delivered in today's commentary. ...
... the constant praise and self congratulations on her volunteer years in the military makes me sick. Great, you were part of the largest and most successful socialist organization in the world. Guess what? The rest of us wrote the check. -- JJG, in today's comments
... Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: "This year, the Republicans chose the freshman senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, who seems a lot like Sarah Palin except that her aw-shucks life story is genuine.... The sincere part of Ms. Ernst's speech came when she talked about how pretty much everything Mr. Obama has done so far was a failure and acted as though Republicans had nothing to do with stagnating wages and mortgages that long ago went under water. But the best measure of how Republicans feel came during the president's speech, when he noted that he has no more campaigns to run, and there was a smattering of derisive applause on the G.O.P. side of the aisle. Mr. Obama's response was excellent. 'I know, because I won both of them,' he said."
... And, yes, Carlos Curbelo must feel totally foolish delivering Ernst's response in Spanish. (See Paul Waldman's comment below.) ...
UPDATE:
Bi-lin-gual.ˌ/bīˈliNGɡwəl/ def. When you say one thing in English & the opposite in Spanish. -- GOP American Freedom Dictionary
... Ben Schreckinger & Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Republicans sent mixed signals on immigration in their two official rebuttals to President Obama Tuesday night: Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's rebuttal made no mention of the topic, but the Spanish-language version of the rebuttal, delivered by Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, said Republicans wanted to work with Obama to fix the immigration system. 'We should also work through the appropriate channels to create permanent solutions for our immigration system, to secure our borders, modernize legal immigration, and strengthen our economy,' said Curbelo in Spanish. 'In the past, the president has expressed support for ideas like these. Now we ask him to cooperate with us to get it done.' Earlier on Tuesday, House Republicans had described Curbelo's response as 'the Spanish-Language translated address of Sen. Joni Ernst response.' That language was later removed from the release, according to Mother Jones. Curbelo has bucked many in the Republican Party to support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while Ernst opposes that."
... Rep. Curt Clawson's (D-Fla.) Tea party response is here. (The link is not specific; content may change.) CW: I couldn't get past the first 15 seconds where he thanked his dad & especially his mom, his hero. Outreach to women! Representing a district that includes many undocumented Hispanics, Rep. Clawson paid special attention to bashing undocumented Hispanics for stealing jobs from nice American white people.
President Obama discusses giving the SOTU addess:
Things the White House thinks you don't know about the State of the Union address, accompanied by annoying music:
Julie Davis & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama plans to use Tuesday night's State of the Union address to call on Congress to pivot from an era of terror, war and recession to one of expanding economic opportunity, outlining a wide-ranging agenda intended to address income inequality and help working Americans. 'Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?' Mr. Obama will say, according to excerpts from the speech distributed in advance." ...
... New Lede: "President Obama claimed credit on Tuesday for an improving economy and defiantly told his Republican adversaries in Congress to 'turn the page' by supporting an expensive* domestic agenda aimed at improving the fortunes of the middle class."
* CW: Make that "modest." See Jordan Weismann's post below. I suggest Shear & Davis provide disclaimer: "We are not economists." Or better yet, they could write a lede that is accurate.
A Modest Proposal. Jordan Weismann of Slate: "Combined, Obama's [tax] hikes [on the rich] would raise $320 billion over a decade, or $32 billion per year. That's just a smidge more than 1 percent of last year's federal tax revenue — more than a rounding error, but not much more. Obama isn't looking to soak the rich at this point so much as lightly spritz them." CW: Hmm, maybe if Obama did go Swiftian & propose the poor sell their children as food for the rich, Republicans would finally come around to making a bipartisan deal that would please Ron Fournier (see Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. below)
Latino Outreach, GOP Style. Tim Murphy & Patrick Caldwell of Mother Jones: "The GOP has also announced it will be offering a Spanish-language rebuttal, which will be delivered tonight by freshman Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a young conservative from a diverse Miami congressional district. But there's a wrinkle. According to a press release from the House Republicans, Curbelo will not be sharing his own thoughts and words with the public. Instead, he will only be reading a Spanish translation of Ernst's speech.... By the way, Ernst has endorsed English as a national language and once sued Iowa's secretary of state for offering voting forms in languages other than English." ...
... Paul Waldman: "I look forward to the part where Curbelo relates how as a young farm girl he learned how to castrate hogs." CW: ¿Cómo se dice en español "Make 'em squeal"?
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Reader Comments (21)
Could Cheeto Man have looked any more bored or annoyed? He's like an eye rolling adolescent little shit who refuses to set aside the sneering puss during important family functions, not even for the group picture with the grandparents.
Also, he must be spending his victory lap time in the tanning salon. He's at least three shades darker than the president.
Boehner's smirks and smart-assery must be an example of the sort of comity and collegiality that Ron Fournier insists that both sides display.
Oh, my mistake. The comity and collegial attitude is only demanded of Obama and the Democrats. Republicans are free to be the sneering assholes they've always been.
And now, the Republican response from Joni (I've been a senator for all of three weeks!) Ernst.
"I don't want to respond to a "speech", I want to talk about me. I had one pair of shoes growing up. Now Obama wants to take my shoes away so undeserving poors can have healthcare. You all (fewer than 30% of voters ) gave Republicans a huge mandate to take over. I served in the military to fight with Jesus against Mooslims. The president hates Americans and wants them all to be unemployed, be taxed silly and then drop dead. And that is my response to a speech I couldn't be bothered responding to.
God bless everyone like me. The rest of you can go to hell.
@Akhilleus: While I was listening to the President's SOTU speech, I was doing a jigsaw puzzle from last year's SOTU address that of course featured the same cast of characters on the dais. Mind you, this was before the Boner bought his "luxury" Marco Island condo. And it occurred to me, as I was pulling out pieces of the faces of the three men, that Joe Biden was the only white guy on the podium. And, no, he didn't look happy to be there then, either.
By the way, you too can make your own jigsaw puzzles here.
Marie
I'm not crazy about speeches in general, but always listen to SOTU's ––it's a little like having to endure all the thanking that Oscar, Emmy, and Tony winners do in order to see the real spectacle. But I loved Obama's speech––it had gumption, grit, optimism, and included all the points of an agenda he'd like to implement if only those buggers who want to bring him down would stop trying to bring him down and WORK with him.
And thank you Akhilleus for expressing my thoughts exactly about our man J.B.––perfect!!!
As far as Joni goes–-so goes the nation (just kidding). She's attractive, delivered well yet had that stinky smell of "I'll hog tie you and split you open" if you dare cross me. She's one scary lady.
Re; Pig's balls. Joni was speaking to...? If the camera had panned out and she was wearing plastic bags over her K-mart shoes I would have liked the moment better. "Plastic bags over your shoes? I had plastic bags FOR shoes. Hand-me-down plastic bags from my older brothers who wore them as underwear first. So they came with holes, holes that filled with snow as I walked to and from school, uphill both ways. You had a bus to school?...I lived in a bus, an old bus, no glass in the windows, we would hang our plastic bags over the windows to keep some of the snow out...."
So who was she addressing? Poor people know what it's like to be poor. They also know what the barricades are they are keeping them poor. Education, healthcare, prejudice, privilege; all the power points that the Republicans fall on the wrong side of.
So who was she reaching out to? I know, the same group that invited her to give the response.
She must have had an extra set of pig balls in her purse to claim it's been the President who is responsible for the do nothing but obstruct government.
Finally, let me be the first to say the constant praise and self congratualations on her volunteer years in the military makes me sick. Great, you were part of the largest and most successful socialist organization in the world. Guess what? The rest of us wrote the check.
For a historical perspective on the childish dream of the "bipartisanship" we will not likely see in the next two years (as we have not in the last six) see Sam Tanenhaus' piece published in last week's New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/power-congress
And aside from Obama's plumping of "fast track"--which is far too corporate-friendly and worker- and consumer-unfriendly for me--I did like the speech. His smile and wink still wins me over.
Re: the Curbelo translation of the Ernst non-response which wasn't really a translation as much as it was another response which wasn't really a response either.
The meta index here is enough to stagger a post-modernist/post-structuralist academic who reads at least three ridiculously recondite articles each day before breakfast.
So we have Ernst giving a response to a speech she had not heard and then a translation of that non-response into a language she feels has no official standing in this country, but less a translation than a separate response to Ernst's non-response to a speech she had not heard and didn't have any interest in, which addressed elements detested by Ernst and most Republicans but which the translator felt needed to be included in a semi-response/translation to a non-response to a speech the first speaker had not heard.
And this is not even taking into account the 17 other response/non-responses run up the flag pole by other Republican/Teabagger/Libertarian/Exceptionalists.
I need a drink.
Joni Ernst...My favorite part of her non response to problems
mostly caused by her own party, was changing the Keystone
Sludge Pipeline to " the Keystone Jobs Bill". Guess eating all
that cheap white bread just for the bags makes one really stoopid.
And please, will someone kindly advise the President to stop saying
"some folks" and tell it like it is: "some f&%#ing republicans".
As commentary on Joni Ernst’s poverty struck youth, I offer Monty Python’s “we were so poor… “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
@ Forrest Morris, maybe we are not hearing the Prez and he is really saying,"Mofolks" rather than "Some folks". Bet he's thinking it.
@ James Singer, thanks for catching the reference.
Forrest,
It's actually ALL fucking Republicans.
James,
I was thinking of the exact same sketch.
"We had to live in a corridor."
"We dreeeeamed of living in a corridor. We lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road and had to get up every night and lick the road clean with our tongues."
Try telling Joni Ernst that, and she won't believe you.
Only she had hard times. And plastic bread wrappers for shoes which she wore while clearing 17 feet of snow off the interstate so her dad could get to his job making toothpicks out of bent twigs, with nothing but her bare hands and using as a shovel a faded post card from her mom who had run off with the Fuller Brush man when she was only 30 seconds old. Before her old dad came home, she'd have cleaned the single room they all lived in with the horses and cows and pigs and her 32 cousins, fed them all with food she grew herself in her backyard, taught everyone a new Bible verse everyday, and gone out hunting for fresh meat with a six shooter handed down from her great, great grandad who fought with General Lee and George Washington at Iwo Jima.
But she she grew up and learned how to clip nuts and lie with the best of them. And now she's invited to the State of the Union where she doesn't respond to a speech she never heard, but gets plenty of credit for all of it.
PD Pepe: "She's attractive ..."
And all these years of reading your comments, I have imagined your tastefulness and good judgment.
Whenever I see an image of Sen. Ernst, I get a flash impression of a plastic person. Now that she has brought her bread bags to the national arena, I'm getting an overlay of a plastic person swaddled in Saran Wrap.
And when I was a kid, our 20 mile walk to school, in the snow, uphill ... well, the nuns made us do it ON OUR KNEES!!
Well, well.
There may be no scientists in the GOP, but they are not lacking for Bowdlers.
The GOP has posted their own version of the SOTU on youtube, minus stuff it doesn't like such as references to climate change and torture. The postee is listed as Orangade Man who looks for all the world, in the little picture next to the video window, like a guy who has just downed his fifth cocktail and looking forward to the next five.
The video is described as an "enhanced" version of the SOTU. Graphics accompany the president's words that basically say "this is a lie", "that's a lie", "that's not true either", which they are certainly free to do. What they don't do is let viewers know that they aren't getting the entire speech. There is no mention that this is closer to the speech Boehner wished had been given.
These people are such unremitting bounders, they must wake up in the middle of the night thinking of newer ways to be devious douchebags.
Is anyone surprised that would expurgate things that don't sit well in Right Wing World?
Assholes R Us.
Just had to watch Obama's "I know 'cause I won both of them" line again. If you didn't see it, check it out.
It's sublime.
Like a great boxer or quick-draw stand up comic, he sets 'em up, lures 'em in, let's them enjoy their instant of snark, then with excellent timing, smacks them on the beezer.
Heh-heh-heh.
Such shitheads.
Akhilleus,
One of the large differences between the Repugs and the Demos is that were progressive truth tellers to expurgate all not to like about today's Repugs would leave...nothing, nothing at all.
Ken,
Not even The Wonder Bread bags.
Good point.
Our guys had such fun today with Joni––loved JJG's take–-laughed so hard–-and then James' Monty Python bit finished it off, but not without Ak's take. And @Patrick: Yes, I think she presents as attractive, but attractive in a fiftish band boxy sort of way––she has lovely blue eyes––but that attractiveness only makes her more sinister message wise. She would have shined in commercials along with Ronnie advertising GE's newest refrigerator or on a cooking show showing us all how to make her grandmother's fruitcake. Last year we had Cathy McMorris Rogers who sat on a couch with Jesus on her shoulder saying nothing of consequence; this year we had Ernst standing tall and boldly saying nothing of consequence. The former is always standing behind the guys in charge; the latter wants to shove them aside. Watch out, boys, she may have good shoes now, but she'll milk her poor beginnings, her military prowess, her ability to lie with such sincerity (keystone/ACA last night) while maneuvering her fellow conservatives to block anything Obama puts forward. As I said––she is one scary lady.
The article I read about federal farm subsidies was written by Jen Hayden in Daily Koz. The author did not charge that the Senator Ernst gained personally from federal welfare. You look rather odd in taking sides with one of the most extreme Republicans on this issue. Here is the final paragraph of the article, which rings true to me. A computer dummy, I don't even know how to send a link to you so here is what I copied:
So, Joni Ernst can talk about other American families "living within their means" and having to use bread bags to cover her only pair of shoes, but she's willfully ignoring the assistance the U.S. government gave to her own family. No doubt her family worked hard, but they didn't exactly succeed by pulling themselves up alone. We, the American taxpayers, certainly gave them a hand-up when they needed it. Something Ernst would do well to remember as she works to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and the very subsidies that saved her family more than once.
Would you call Hayden a dick for this?
I use your website often and appreciate your work, but I don't have time to read it in full everyday, which is what you seem to expect. You're being pretty rightwing like in using denigrative terms for people you disagree with, even people who agree with you about 95 percent of the time.
Dave Southern