HE SHO DO SPEAK GOOD, DON’T HE?
In as resounding smackdown to those who said Harry Reid is a racist, President Obama used his state of the union address to speak in a very “non-dialecty” kind of way, thus exonerating Reid’s unsavory comments regarding Obama’s skin color and speaking skills made earlier this month.
Now to the speech.
There can be no discounting Obama’s oratorical abilities. He can deliver a speech and while it was delivered well, I felt it was pretty uninspiring, at least until his closing remarks. The content of the speech, however, was the same argument we’ve been hearing for the last year. It was Bush’s fault, but government can fix it. He talked mightly of his faith in the resilience, tenacity and decency of the American people but offered little in the way of spelling out how his administration would get out of their way and let them rebuild the nation.
JOBS
He devoted most of his speech to jobs. It’s about time, but let’s take a look at some of what he said. At one point he said that there were roughly 2 million jobs now that would not have been here had it not been for the stimulus. He even mentioned 300,000 teachers and 200,000 firefighters and policemen as I recall. Well we already know this unprovable statement is somewhat in doubt and as for the teachers, policemen and firefighters, last time I checked it was your local taxes that paid those bills.
He talked about helping small business through various incentives, but then took it back when saying that taxes on “those who make over $250,000″ would be going up. A real jobs bill, which Obama called for, is what his administration and this congress should have been focusing on for the past 6 months. Instead, Obama and the Democrats were busy cutting deals and having secret meetings and 1:00am votes on health care reform.
HEALTH CARE
I hope the Republican party was inspired by Obama’s challenge to bring him a better idea. It’s time for the Republican party to issue its own health care reform plan in a format that people can understand and comprehend. Most sober thinking conservatives are all for reforming health care, but doing it in a common sense way, incrementally fixing components and testing new ideas. ObamaCare is pieced together mess. For example, a key component of paying for ObamaCare is using nearly a half billion dollars of “money that is going to waste and fraud” in the medicare system. Here’s an idea. Why not identify and eliminate the waste and fraud first? That should be a plank in the Republican health care platform, one that will help demonstrate how silly a proposition this has been all along. Here are some other ideas, Obama. How about tort reform? When an OB/GYN has to come up with $150,000 in just one year, just to pay malpractice insurance premiums, no wonder it costs so much to have a baby. That’s about $12,000 per month, $400 per day just for malpractice insurance because a lawsuit could cost $20 or $30 or even $100,000,000. How requiring all insurers to offer common sense plans for a variety of pocketbooks, in exchange for opening up competition for all insurers in every state. How about letting insurance premiums be tax deductable? What about working with states to strengthen existing public health clinics and offering incentives to doctors, nurses and hospitals to participate? There are a lot of great, conservative ideas out there that can make our health care system better. As a side note, I find it laughable that of the millions of people this health care overhaul is supposed to help, a huge percentage of them don’t really want to spend money on health-care because they just don’t need it.
THE SUPREME BACKHAND
It was rude to admonish the supreme court justices for their decision. It was also hypocritical for Obama, of all people, to bemoan the influence of special interest money in elections. This from the same guy agreed to take public funding, which would limit contributions, but changed his mind when the money started rolling in from….wait for it….
special interest, lobbyists and foreign countries. Politicians have balls. It was nice to see Justice Alito mouth the words “not true” right back at Obama. Good for him.
Obama’s state of the union address was nothing more than an attempt by Obama to pull himself out of the fray that is brewing in the 2010 election season. He blamed Bush for the problems and congress and banks and insurance companies and so on, and so on. The problem with the speech tonight was Obama has lost trust and he showed no signs of trying to earn it back….but he sho do speak good don’t he?
The Other Side Says: February 2nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
obama’s sotu was the first time that he directly addressed his critics, and he was strong. he has lost the message on a lot of issues and needs to show true leadership from the top. obama needs to expose the republicans for the obstructionists that they are.
and bush caused many of the problems that obama is forced to deal with (national debt skyrocketing, the economic downturn, two wars, an extreme supreme court, a hyper-partisan congress, etc). and that is why his poll numbers are decreasing and why democrats will lose many seats in congress during the 2010 elections. the party in power in charge of fixing many problems gets a bad rap, and that’s whats happening with democrats.
and the whole obama addressing the supreme court’s decision wasn’t out of the ordinary. how many times have republican presidents admonished roe v wade?
what obama did during the sotu and his address to the republican house caucus is finally exposing republicans as being obstructionists. they are in the minority and need to accept that democratic policies will be passed. republicans cannot expect to be listened to on all issues.