Comment on the Belmont Club: "The State of the Union Speech"

Winky, Blinky and Nod on the podium. “Community” banks? I suspect more cheese for insiders like Rezco and poverty pimps.

He is doubling down on AGW. This will cost him because it is so unnecessary. The idea that we have to do something stupid because the other kids on the block, those tres sophisticated Europeans, are doing it was a passing fancy that helped get him elected. Now it clear that it was largely media hype even in the case of Europeans, who have dropped Obama like a 3 days dead fish. The idea that we should swallow it because India and China might get there first is a bold faced lie that is so easily refuted that he must be counting on Republicans being afraid to say it.

The Republican response should be a workmanlike dissection of every proposal. They should lay each out on the table before the American public and ask three questions;
1. how did this problem happen?
2. cui bono?
3. who is hurt?
Go through the exercise on each case.

A. The Auto industry seizure & Cash for Clunkers;
1. Union cost padding and environmental cost inflation,
2. The UAW at $80K/job, short sellers,
3. Everyone who could use a working used car, stock and debt holders.

B. The Health Care/Insurance debate;
1. Tort lawyers and Regulators,
2. The SEIU,
3. Doctors & patients.

C. AGW
1. What problem or the size of Al Gore's house,
2. Fraudulent scientists, corrupt financiers and foreign agents,
3. Business, consumers and workers choked by taxes and regulation and unable to get investment in productive enterprises as $billions are siphoned away into shoddy green schemes and real scientists can't get research grants.

Point out at every step that the people hurt aren't the fat cats of Goldman Sachs but the widows and orphans whose savings were invested in insurance companies and auto companies and energy companies.

The Republican Governor of VA is good, he has a future.

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All his "tax cuts" are targeted grants to create or rent special interests to further divide and rule.

His treatment of the Court while a guest in The House is outrageous. In a parliamentary system where the Head of Government is treated as a mere politician and is not the Head of State such conduct would not be tolerated. People would have responded with cat calls and walked out on him.

The Republicans should say, "We expected a State of the Union address and received a campaign speech. If anyone wants to know where the atmosphere of partisanship and incivility come from we are happy to tell them. Here is a large file of statements by David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel and other members of this administration. We request that a candid world examine them."

Still I do expect him to get a 5 to 10 point bounce in the polls. That is not enough but it keeps his "Hope" alive for another month.

Ashen,
(who asked whiskey why power flowing to Congress was a bad idea)
Oddly enough Woodrow Wilson wrote a book, proving he was a more genuine academic than Obama is. It was called "Congressional Government" and after the Civil War the Presidents were generally seen as ineffectual administrators while the countries energies were devoted to internal development. Congress played a large role in setting the rules and skimming off the graft for the creation of the rail network and the opening of the frontier. Once in office WW forgot everything he had said earlier and became a champion of a strong centralized Executive.

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L3,
why we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran
A 300 page dissertation will be written one day on how that single sentence on Iran got into the SOTU speech. Hypocritical as it was it means something. I'd follow what Michael Ledeen reports about this.

Hot Air has the video of Obama attacking the Court and it appears that Alito is saying "Not true" or words to that effect. A commenter there linked to the pdf of the decision and pointed out where it says differently, pg 31 and 46-47.