JED BABBIN: OBAMA’S SEVENTH SOTU- PLAYS UP THE PARTISAN
http://www.epictimes.com/londoncenter/2015/01/obamas-seventh-sotu/
President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night brought to mind the opening scene in “Cabaret,” when the garishly made up nightclub entertainer begins – in 1930s Berlin, against the backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power – by proclaiming “In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful!”
To Obama, congress is the orchestra. And he means to force them to play his tune.
Obama spoke in full campaign mode, alternately charming, humorous and caustic. But his attitude was triumphant. He spoke as a man convinced that he is still in charge, essentially daring House and Senate Republicans to prove him wrong.
Near the beginning of his speech, Obama promising to veto anything that would change immigration policy, Obamacare, or the Dodd-Frank anti-business law, as well as any new Iran sanctions. He dusted off his old tactic of placing blame on the Republicans for anything that he believed could be characterized as a financial showdown or a threatened government shutdown. He said those actions – which are the only way congress can stop him from abusing his power through executive action – would slow down business or risk the economy.
Speaking about the wars and economic crises that have plagued America since the start of the century, Obama said, “The shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong.”
Obama claimed credit for all that’s going right, even when it wasn’t (and for a lot of things that are benefitting our economy which neither his policies nor his executive actions caused, such as lower gasoline prices.) Time after time, he glowed with satisfaction, especially where there was nothing to brag about.
Though the White House had said the speech wouldn’t be just a laundry list of proposals, there were so many that it was hard to keep track of them unless you had Joe the Plumber in the back of your mind.
In 2008, in an Ohio campaign stop, Obama – in answer to Samuel Wurzelbacher’s question – inadvertently gave us a clear if small view into his political ideology. He told Wurzelbacher – known by his business name “Joe the Plumber” – that he was someone who believed in redistributing wealth, a prime tenet of socialism. He said, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” And that’s just what he proposed to do in the speech.
Among the long list of proposals he voiced, Obama wants to: raise the minimum wage; provide everyone with two years of free community college education; and raising taxes – especially the capital gains tax – to pay for them, as well as for another “stimulus” of infrastructure spending.
This is the sort of redistribution he has always advocated. It is precisely the same policies and actions which are proposed by French economist Thomas Piketty in his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” It’s not for nothing that Piketty is known as the Karl Marx of the Twenty-First Century.
Among Obama’s proposals were policies that are already in law, and he raised them for the specific purpose of demonizing his opponents, though he specifically said he wasn’t doing that. He called for legislation that would mandate that women get equal pay for equal work, even though gender discrimination has long been illegal. He called child care a national economic priority and wants to lower taxes on working families, another reason to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for them.
President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night brought to mind the opening scene in “Cabaret,” when the garishly made up nightclub entertainer begins – in 1930s Berlin, against the backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power – by proclaiming “In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful!”
To Obama, congress is the orchestra. And he means to force them to play his tune.
Obama spoke in full campaign mode, alternately charming, humorous and caustic. But his attitude was triumphant. He spoke as a man convinced that he is still in charge, essentially daring House and Senate Republicans to prove him wrong.
Near the beginning of his speech, Obama promising to veto anything that would change immigration policy, Obamacare, or the Dodd-Frank anti-business law, as well as any new Iran sanctions. He dusted off his old tactic of placing blame on the Republicans for anything that he believed could be characterized as a financial showdown or a threatened government shutdown. He said those actions – which are the only way congress can stop him from abusing his power through executive action – would slow down business or risk the economy.
Speaking about the wars and economic crises that have plagued America since the start of the century, Obama said, “The shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong.”
Obama claimed credit for all that’s going right, even when it wasn’t (and for a lot of things that are benefitting our economy which neither his policies nor his executive actions caused, such as lower gasoline prices.) Time after time, he glowed with satisfaction, especially where there was nothing to brag about.
Though the White House had said the speech wouldn’t be just a laundry list of proposals, there were so many that it was hard to keep track of them unless you had Joe the Plumber in the back of your mind.
In 2008, in an Ohio campaign stop, Obama – in answer to Samuel Wurzelbacher’s question – inadvertently gave us a clear if small view into his political ideology. He told Wurzelbacher – known by his business name “Joe the Plumber” – that he was someone who believed in redistributing wealth, a prime tenet of socialism. He said, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” And that’s just what he proposed to do in the speech.
Among the long list of proposals he voiced, Obama wants to: raise the minimum wage; provide everyone with two years of free community college education; and raising taxes – especially the capital gains tax – to pay for them, as well as for another “stimulus” of infrastructure spending.
This is the sort of redistribution he has always advocated. It is precisely the same policies and actions which are proposed by French economist Thomas Piketty in his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” It’s not for nothing that Piketty is known as the Karl Marx of the Twenty-First Century.
Among Obama’s proposals were policies that are already in law, and he raised them for the specific purpose of demonizing his opponents, though he specifically said he wasn’t doing that. He called for legislation that would mandate that women get equal pay for equal work, even though gender discrimination has long been illegal. He called child care a national economic priority and wants to lower taxes on working families, another reason to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for them.
Obama spent about three minutes of his hour-plus speech talking about foreign policy, never even saying the word “al-Qaida.” He still wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and promised relentless action to accomplish it. He bragged – without any factual basis – that we were succeeding in diplomacy with Iran, effectively fighting ISIS with a coalition of allies, and said there was no greater threat to our future than climate change.
He bragged about his action to partially end the Cuban embargo and asked congress to take action to end it altogether.
In short, the mess around the world caused entirely by his failed foreign policies – from the intervention in Libya that replaced a defeated dictator with a nation that is a safe haven for terrorists to Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine – was something to brag about.
There was none of the drama we’d seen and heard at previous State of the Union speeches. Cong. Joe Wilson (R-SC) didn’t shout “you lie”, as he did in 2009 when Obama said his healthcare plan wouldn’t cover illegal aliens. (It does, the so-called “DREAMers.”) And Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito didn’t mouth the words “not true” as he did in 2010 when Obama said the Citizens United decision would allow huge campaign donations by foreigners. (It doesn’t). Alito wasn’t there. Neither were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. They’d had enough of Obama.
Obama’s speech came after a year of resounding failure at home and abroad. He and his attorney general have spent a year sowing racial discord at home, throwing their lot in with Al Sharpton. He didn’t back away from any of that. Instead, he went out of his way to back New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for alienating the entire New York Police Department by labeling them as racists. Obama said, “We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York. But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can’t walk home without being harassed.” And he called for reform of the criminal justice system so that it can protect and serve everyone. The subtext of that remark is the same as de Blasio’s statement that he cautions his mixed-race son to fear the police: that the criminal justice system is inherently unfair to minorities.
Obama spoke to a newly-Republican dominated congress that appears intent on abandoning the mandate it received in the November elections. Its leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) and Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) have made it clear that they won’t shut down the government to enforce a spending bar to Obamacare, executive amnesty, or anything else. And, of course, they won’t dare to impeach Obama. They’ve abandoned the only two tools the Constitution provides them to rein in a runaway president.
Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Ia) gave a decent speech which she said wasn’t intended (!) to answer Obama directly. Instead, she chose to outline, in very general terms, how Republicans intended to work for a stronger America. It would have been much better if she had chosen to answer Obama and challenge him directly. For example, she never mentioned what congress would do about Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal aliens.
There was very little to learn in Obama’s speech, only that the in the next two years he intends to govern as he always has, as if congress has no voice in American law and policy.
Obama didn’t threaten executive action whenever the congressional orchestra fails to play his tune. He didn’t need to. He knows as well as we do that as long as congress refuses to fight, he’ll always win. The only question remaining is how much more damage he can do to our economy and national security in the next two years.
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