Thursday, January 28, 2010

LAST NIGHT'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

I said I wasn't going to watch it and I did not. However, I did replay a part of the recording I made of it and I have one comment before getting into substantive critiques of the speech. Why didn't someone have the foresight to put Krazy Glue on Nancy Pelosi's seat? The speech would have lasted 20-30 minutes without her constant unhinged popping up out of her chair and applauding! She looked like a demented Jack-In-The-Box!

For starters, this from the speech:
It’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people.

Justice Alito mouthed “Not true” to that statement and who would know better?

The Court actually held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional.

Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication… .”

This is either blithering ignorance of the law, or demogoguery of the worst kind. I thought this bozo was a constitutional lawyer!

What I could see of the speech was more of the same "blah, blah, blah, blah" with a little bit of substance thrown in to appease the tea party crowd! And while he was at it, he was rude and infantile enough to insult the entire Supreme Court on national television. I hope he never goes back to practicing law. And he'd better hope he never has to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. They'll eviscerate him!

Your speech wasn't good enough Mr. President. Not nearly good enough! The one quality of yours that you could count on, your rhetorical chops, have totally deserted you.


UPDATE: Under the heading - his father would have cringed at his son's lack of critical thinking and Chris-Matthews-like Kool Aid consumption (but no leg tingles, thank heavens):

Writing for The Daily Beast, Christopher Buckley offered similar praise, calling it "one hell of a speech":

Tonight Mr. Obama proved—once again—that he hears the American music and can play it like a maestro. As well as Ronald Reagan. Both presidents had—have—have music in their souls. The other people in the room where I watched the speech were in tears by the end—the kind that stream down the face. I managed to hold those back.

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