Monday, January 30, 2012

Playing catch up with President Obama's SOTU speech

Below is the beginning of today's column in The Times Herald. I want to use it as a jumping off point for a discussion here. Did we get a State Of The Union address from the president, or did he use up free network air time to campaign for re-election?
  • State of the Union address, or campaign speech.


  • You make the call.
    I know I already did.
  • President Obama spent a lot of time telling us everything he would like to do, without actually uttering the words, if I’m re-elected.
  • Some of the things he said he was going to do kind of puzzled me, though.
  • So let’s take a look back at the speech and try to determine the stump talk from the state talk.
  • He said he was going to have Attorney General Eric Holder look into what happened with the lending crisis. The Fannie Mae hit the fan back in 2008. Why didn’t he have the attorney general looking into what happened when it happened?
  • Could it be because Democrat Barney Frank, head of the House Banking Committee, chose to ignore the Government Accountability Office’s call for more oversight?
  • “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress and I’ll sign it,” Obama declared.
  • Isn’t insider trading illegal?
    I know members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are able to skirt a lot of the rules that apply to most of us mortals, but I’m pretty sure insider trading is one of those pesky little crimes that even the likes of Martha Stewart isn’t above.
  • 10 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Frank, Doud and Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac...What do they have in common? Go back - in the years of 2001 - 2009. Interesting... but we have not heard anything about their attachment to the four. Check it out before it appears in a history book and we did nothing about it.

    Anonymous said...

    Maybe they should check ole newter and his lobbying. Then they can go after duyba and his illegal oil wars with no WMD found, and the cardiac kid's no bid contracts with soldiers being electrocuted in the showers repaired by haliburton and the other incompetent contractors.

    Anonymous said...

    http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/06/18/news/doc4c1bd4a2aee3e602703725.txt?viewmode=fullstory

    Let's play catch up with Bruce Castor sleeping with the enemies, after being involved in the 2006 investigation of the Wise Guys Mastronardos, he now defends them when they were caught red-handed violating their 2006 probation requirements. Yep, another crooked fox in the hen house.

    Unknown said...

    Just to make sure we're all on the same page, The Times Herald ran the same story. http://www.timesherald.com/article/20100619/NEWS01/306199989

    Anonymous said...

    "It seems to me that Democrats in the Senate have sort of decided to link up with the Obama campaign and make sure that on any bipartisan discussions that occur, it actually doesn't lead to a bipartisan agreement,"

    No no Mitchy, that's actually what YOUR party has been doing since Obama was elected! And now you try to accuse democrats of using your own tactics against you because they are political? Gotcha.

    Anonymous said...

    I think we can play catch up with Bruce Castor being a commissioner and stonewalling, then coming in 3rd and now saying he wants to go over the budget in all departments in the county. What was he doing prior to this re-election?

    Then we can go into the Bush era with his being warned about the sub-prime loan problem about to crash and as usual, ignoring it, then as he is going out the door, having his finance buddy type up a notice that the wall street gang needs to be bailed out without any substance to it. Then throw in the illegal oil wars that cost how many billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to Cheney's buddies and countless lives ruined and lost as cannon fodder while Bush and the rest of the chicken-hawks got out of serving in real combat by ways of pimples on their rears and other schemes.

    Anonymous said...

    Repubs say: "Americans are not being given the choice whether or not they want to purchase health insurance, they are being forced to just because they are alive. The two scenarios are completely different, perhaps you should read a little about logic, then you would see how weak and ignorant your argument is."

    Don't embarrass yourself trying to belittle my logic or argument.

    As a moral and civil society we force you to pay for other people's health care now. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986, signed by Ronald Reagain, requires hospitals to treat people with emergency medical conditions and women in active labor even if they can't afford to pay. The cost of uncompensated care is recouped through taxes and charging paying patients more.

    Medicaid is taxpayer-funded insurance available to the very poor. There are public health clinics in most counties, funded by taxes you don't have the option to not pay.

    In truth, the difference between being forced to pay for insurance and being forced to pay taxes to ensure people who can't afford care can get is largely academic. Either way you you pay.

    Rather than admit the obvious, that you're going to pay one way or another, you rabidly oppose reforms that would dramatically reduce health care spending in this country, which currently consumes 18% of GDP and would defend to your last breath a system whose only real advantage is that it's so complex and has you paying for health care in so many different ways you can delude yourself into believing you're paying less this way and aren't being forced to do anything you don't want to. It is a textbook case of "voting against your own interests."

    Anonymous said...

    Jeff Sessions is only one of three former comrades of Santorum to recognize and endorse this caveman who would put the Pope in charge of the US if he was president. Jeff Sessions brings to his post some interesting baggage, he was rejected to an appointment as a U.S. district judge two decades ago over charges of racism. The decisive vote was from Arlen Specter. Two decades ago, the Senate rejected his nomination as a U.S. district judge by President Ronald Reagan over allegations that his career as a lawyer and U.S. attorney in Alabama showed a pattern of being racially insensitive. Ironically, it was Specter who helped seal his defeat by joining with Democratic opposition. Sessions’ dismal record on race — including a black former assistant U.S. attorney’s testimony that Sessions once said he used to think the K lan were OK until he found out some of them were pot smokers.

    Anonymous said...

    "I am socially conservative, I am a registered Republican voter and voted a strict Republican ticket in 2010 - but I am voting with Democrats in '12," said Brian Barnhart, 33, a lieutenant with the Columbus fire department.

    "The main reason is the attacks on workers that I have been seeing with the Republican Party," he said.

    Anonymous said...

    14 Trillion! How do you see the present President justify his spending spree. The Republicans are not to blame - When the "House" became Republican - the "Majority"- there was a "Hold", but Presidential Privilege has a way of getting things done with the people paying for his misjudgment.