Part of the problem is that probably more than half of our generation doesn’t know what a Sputnik is.
….
I had the speech on in the background while dealing with kids, kitchen, etc., but occasionally I stopped to watch. I missed the Republican rebuttals, both the official one and Michelle Bachman’s which was only aired on CNN (no, not Fox!). What I noticed was that the clapping and cheering were a bit subdued. Was it because of the inter-party mingling seating arrangements? A speech that in terms of specifics was even vaguer than usual (the last real substantive SOTU I watched was in 2003 when President Bush presented made up facts to support the case for the existence of WMD’s in Iraq)? A GOP on edge about additional Joe Wilson moments? Did the network (I was watching MSNBC) keep the volume down?
…..
My nine-year-old son came out of his room and asked me how long it would be before the SOTU was over. I said, “It’ll be all night. First people will talk about the speech. And then people will talk about the people talking about the speech. And then they’ll talk about the people talking about the people talking about the speech. A half hour into the panel discussions as I flipped across the networks, my son who was sitting on the couch said, “You were serious!”
…..
Josh Marshall’s coverage of Bachman’s rebuttal is entitled “Bachman Trainwreck Blogging.” The entire entry consists of one sentence:
I’m not even sure what to say about this.
An article has since been posted on the TPM site.
….
Looks like it went over well with viewers, though I don’t trust snap polls.
….
TPM has some fun stuff on its wire.
….
Addendum: TPM has a slide show so that you can see who was sitting next to each other and all that. Just click on the photo.
29 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 25, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Mitch
Why, I do believe it’s the moral equivalent of war.
January 25, 2011 at 10:08 pm
moviedad
He didn’t really “Wow” em’ this time out. You’re right about “Sputnik”. He must have been talking to the old dudes in the box seats.
All in all just another BS speech filled with platitudes and pandering nationalism. I really do wish they would stop with constant “We’re the greatest” while we kill worldwide; “America is special” while we follow the same ol’ self-destructive path of every previous incarnation of imperialism and greed.
Where is the shame.
January 26, 2011 at 12:27 am
WTF
“First people will talk about the speech. And then people will talk about the people talking about the speech. And then they’ll talk about the people talking about the people talking about the speech”
So then this thread would fall into which category?
January 26, 2011 at 7:46 am
shankar-wolf
well said moviedad, my wife is British, and all this America is the greatest nation on earth stuff is a real turn off, for her and me!
January 26, 2011 at 7:53 am
shankar-wolf
I find it pretty funny that congress was forced to mix up the seating. It’s just like high school when everyone sits next to their buddies and then the teacher comes in and mixes everyone up.
January 26, 2011 at 7:58 am
Eric Kirk
So then this thread would fall into which category?
People talking about people talking about people talking about people talking about the speech of course.
January 26, 2011 at 8:17 am
WTF
It was that “look of love” by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now that was priceless.
January 26, 2011 at 8:27 am
Eric Kirk
That was pretty funny WTF.
January 26, 2011 at 8:43 am
Joe Blow
Eric, How does it feel now to have helped vote in a Ronald Reagan Republican?
You going to answer my other posts? Or am I supposed to read your mind?
January 26, 2011 at 9:24 am
Anonymous
the dow tops 12,000,
had it’s highest jump the day after a sotu,
calling it a most favorable opening.
that says a lot about how big corporate, big bizness feels about obama.
January 26, 2011 at 9:44 am
Anonymous
Investors are not necessarily “big biz.” Big biz is sitting on trillions of dollars which could create jobs and spending loads of money to elect republicans.
January 26, 2011 at 10:34 am
Mitch
Anonymous 9:24 has brought up something that’s always struck me as remarkable, if rarely remarked upon.
In theory, the Dow represents the return of stocks — the higher the amount that a mix of stocks will return, the higher in theory the Dow will be. The return is the profit to the shareholders, given them in order to convince them to risk their money to fund a business to operate. To make up some numbers, if banks will pay 2% and the risk of a stock is worth an additional 2%, an industrial stock ought to return 4% of its cost to the buyer, making it worth 25 times its earnings. The price to earnings is usually called the P/E ratio. Higher returns would theoretically lead to a higher stock price, until the P/E was back to 25, lower returns would similarly lead to a lower stock price.
When the average Dow stock goes up, that means that the profitability has gone up. But that profitability either came from productivity increases, the company’s ability to charge its customers more, or the company’s ability to reduce the share of output that goes to its workforce. So, if productivity hasn’t increased, an increase in the Dow must mean either that consumers are getting charged more or that labor is getting less.
Isn’t it amazing that we’ve all been taught that a rising Dow is the sign of a healthy economy? We’ve all been taught to cheerlead for shareholders, at the expense of labor and consumers. The next time you wonder how neutral the “objective” news is, think about it.
January 26, 2011 at 10:50 am
Dave Kirby
Am I the only one who sees the Republican sudden concern with the national debt as the height of hypocrisy? When G.W. Bush was president they said it didn’t really matter that his two terms increased the debt by 4.36 trillion, more than all the increases since Reagan combined. Or that in relation to the gross domestic product it was the biggest percentage increase in the history of the country. Oh by the way a CBS poll of folks who watched the speech ….91% approved up from 83% last year.
January 26, 2011 at 11:02 am
Mitch
Dave,
No. But hypocrisy is so common it’s not even mentioned any more.
January 26, 2011 at 11:04 am
Eric Kirk
Mitch – you also have to distinguish between long term investors and short term. Obviously the long term investor will be driven by an increase in money to the laborer, who is the consumer ultimately, rather than short term productivity. And by several prominent accounts, most of the companies have reached their points of diminishing returns in terms of productivity as the result of layoffs, and now need to hire labor in order to remain competitive. But they’ve been saying this since last June at least.
January 26, 2011 at 11:58 am
Mitch
Eric,
For any given company, all those things apply. My point is more about the Dow average, which seems to me to represent not the health of the economy, but the portion of economic activity that goes to the shareholders. Even though many of us play all three roles — consumer, laborer, shareholder — the way the Dow is celebrated reflects the relative advantage of shareholder over the other two. Even were it reflecting productivity, productivity may often mean less of a share for labor, and more for shareholders and consumer. I’m not sure whether productivity is typically measured in hours or dollars per dollar output.
January 26, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Anonymous
obama has given more $$$ to wall street than bush. unfortunately, wall street is like poker, and there has to be a winner and a loser. in this case, wall street won at the expense of the housing market. wall street is so seductive with all the perks, no taxes, they are talking about taking the interest you pay on your home note and NOT making it tax deductible, obama has completely sacrificed the housing market in the u.s. to benefit wall street, and wall street has nothing to do with main street. oh ya, and the banksters, let’s not forget them.
January 26, 2011 at 6:20 pm
anon
I guess allowing military recruiters on college campuses was the trade off for DADT repeal.
What a crock.
January 26, 2011 at 7:00 pm
tra
Re: letting military recruiters back on college campuses that had banned them as a result of DADT: When the work is complete, and DADT is no longer in effect, that would be the appropriate time for the administration too make that request. At this point it seems a bit premature.
January 26, 2011 at 7:06 pm
"a"nonymous
Eric, the way youdescribe this event seems that you expected it to be a show. As if cheering somehow makes it more interesting, maybe like a sporting event. I thought the applause was distracting and awkward at times.
January 27, 2011 at 8:00 am
Anonymous
I was so inspired that I’m going to be an astronaut!
January 27, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Joe Blow
Eric, I noticed that your “moment” didn’t include realizing something other people are beginning to notice about Obama. I asked you: “Eric, How does it feel now to have helped vote in a Ronald Reagan Republican”? Chris Mathews on Hardball (MSNBC) devoted a portion of his program to this phenomena today. He’s not the only one talking about this either. Me thinks somebody got sold a bill of goods.
January 27, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Neville A. Ross
Would it be bad of me as a Canadian to say that you all should have voted for Ralph Nader?
AS for this being a ‘Sputnik moment’, the ‘Sputnik moment’ is that of the famous sattalite of name going into orbit and launching the Space Race and all of the technological stuff that we depend on like the internet, long distance phone calls, texting, etc. That can’t be taken away by what you said in this post, and to be brutally frank, the ‘moment’ still hasn’t happened; when it does, then we can say that it’s a moment like Sputnik.
January 31, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Not A Native
GAME ON ! Oh my, that wily judiciary again.
FLA. JUDGE STRIKES DOWN OBAMA HEALTH CARE OVERHAUL
By MELISSA NELSON, Associated Press
PENSACOLA, Fla. – A federal judge declared the Obama administration’s health care overhaul unconstitutional Monday, siding with 26 states that argued people cannot be required to buy health insurance.
Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new law violates people’s rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties. He went a step further than a previous ruling against the law, declaring the entire thing unconstitutional if the insurance requirement does not hold up.
January 31, 2011 at 4:40 pm
tra
There have now been a number of contradictory rulings in different federal courts. This thing is headed to the Supreme Court.
The conservatives are no dount feeling smug about their prospects for defeating Obamacare. But their new Congressional majority will not last for ever, and someday they may come to regret opposing this approach. If there’s no way to achieve anything close to universal coverage in the private system because the individual mandate is found to be unconstitutional, then next time around, about the only option left would be some kind of single-payer approach — basically Medicare for All.
In a single-payer, or Medicare-for All system, revenues would be raised directly from taxes, rather than by mandating that we each pay premiums to a private insurer. The Medicare system has been in place for many decades, and it’s constitutionality would appear to be more or less unassailable at this point.
January 31, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Eric Kirk
Yeah, I’ve been reading up on the decision. It’s a Reagan appointed activist judge, and pretty much everyone expects Justice Kennedy to uphold the law’s constitutionality.
But it really should piss people off that President Lieberman made sure there was no severability clause which might impose the regs on insurance sans the mandate.
January 31, 2011 at 5:07 pm
tra
Lieberman is one of my least favorite Senators…and there’s some stiff competition for that honor.
But I don’t remember reading that Lieberman was specifically the one responsible for the failure to include a severability clause.
Wouldn’t surprise me if it was true, though. The “Senator from Aetna” rarely misses a chance to run interference for health insurers, and in return, they’ve lined his pockets with millions in campaign cash.
January 31, 2011 at 6:14 pm
tra
“…President Lieberman…”
Shudder.
Thankfully that will never happen. But if Gore and Lieberman had won in 2000, Lieberman would have been “a heartbeat away” from the Presidency.
So, for those folks who like to get all pissy and resentful about Ralph Nader’s 2000 candidacy (despite the many thousands of Florida Democrats who helped put Bush over the top…kinda-sorta) you should at least give ol’ Ralphie credit for saving us from ever having to pronouce the phrase “President Lieberman” in earnest.
January 31, 2011 at 7:19 pm
tra
In today’s TPM post about the backlash against this judge’s ruling, there was no mention of Lieberman, or indeed of any intentionality with respect to the failure to include a severability clause. All they say is:
“As the result of an apparent oversight, the final version of the health care reform bill did not include a severability clause.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/heavy-hitters-rip-florida-federal-judge-opinion-striking-health-care-law.php
Perhaps what you are getting at is that some earlier version of the bill DID include a severability clause, but that version was defeated, with Lieberman as part of the opposition? I do remember hearing something along those lines.