Live-blogging the State of the Union address

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(photo source: whitehouse.gov)

Hello, everyone!  This evening is something more pleasant, or at least easier to take than the endless GOP clown fests — the annual address to Congress by the President regarding the state of the union.

Fun fact: You know that whole process wherein the guy says “Mr Speaker, the President of the United States,” and then the President makes his way to the podium, shaking hands along the way?  Apparently there’s a formal protocol to that process.  Very interesting!

It’s been a busy year for the President, if not for Congress, since he’s actually interested in doing his job.  It should be an interesting speech, since it will double as his first campaign speech of the 2012 election season.

If you’re wondering what President Obama has accomplished during his presidency, here’s a handy dandy list (it might be a bit dated).

If you’d like to tune in to the speech online, you can watch it on whitehouse.gov.  They’ll be providing chart, stats, and data that helped the President make policy decisions over the last year.  That could be distracting, but we’ll see.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will be giving the GOP response this evening.  That’s always good for a laugh.  John Boehner has already declared the speech “pathetic,” and that’s a topic with which the Speaker is quite familiar.  I don’t know about you, but I anticipate misbehavior by the GOP members of Congress.

Join us in the comments section to do your own live-blogging, or simply enjoy the efforts of the other commenters, either way — HAVE FUN!!

322 thoughts on “Live-blogging the State of the Union address”

  1. Oh the wonder, oh the joy – I’m first!!!!

    Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker!!

    You need one of those real time vote meter thingys that I can play with while I don’t listen to the speech 🙂

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    • I always wonder how people can be so hateful all the time.

      I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I acted like that all the time, and if it’s an act, that’s even worse.

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      • She’s never had to own anything that she has said or done. That has turned people with far more innate integrity into sociopaths. It also gives her an opportunity to turn on a bunch of old white guys without having to take the time to learn how to twirl her tassels.

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    • Ooh, I would really like to smack her snotty little face. Evil?

      I do love it when the wingnuts claim the President is divisive. “Oh, we’ve been trying so hard to come together with those shitheads on the Left. Er. He’s just campaigning.”

      The fat joker in the beginning was the only honest person up there: All SOTU speeches are campaign speeches. Especially in an election year when presented by a one-term president. Other guy slipped in a heavy “but should they be, that’s the question.” It’s the question because Obama is a Democrat!

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      • The “fat joker” is their token “librul”. On the one hand; I admire his restraint in the face of such vile little freaks. On the other; he’s just a patsy who is there to be ridiculed, talked over, disregarded, and shouted down. He’s a tiny bit more assertive than Alan Colmes but he’s always in a four against one setting so his points get buried even faster.

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  6. Is this going to be the speech where President Obama rips off his mask to show his true identity – Captain Commie from the planet Fascism in the Elite quadrant and then an army of gay Kenyans descends on the congress critters and critiques their attire?

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  9. Btw, Mitch Daniels will be giving the GOP rebuttal. He’s nominally more exciting than T-Paw and Bobby Jindal but will still have all the buzz of depressed bee in a Tupperware container.

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  10. Okay, I had to log in just to share my joke of the day, as it got lost in all the HuffPost traffic. Are you ready? Here goes…

    Newt’s tax returns were made public today. Newt paid $81k to Charity. In return, she promised not to tell Callista.

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    • Even more offensive is that Newty the Grinch would propose to eliminate capital gains tax entirely. In Newt’s world, Mitt would collect $20 million per year and pay zero taxes. In South Carolina, this is an applause line.

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      • And the Estate Tax – more like an $80m boon for Mitts kids and an $8M boon for the Angel Moron(i) from the Planet Bollocks

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    • He would rather support an organization, the LDS church, that is 100% devoted to marginalizing gay people than to an organization, the U.S. government, that might eventually be forced to accept them.

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  13. QOTD:

    “This is a president who said I’m not going to be a divider, I’m going to be a uniter, and running on the politics of division and envy is – to me it’s almost un-American,” – John Boehner, on the day of the State of the Union.

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  14. I cannot stay and play… I shall return later to see the mayhem that has transpired. Y’all play nice now, y’hear?

    Sticky Gumbo signing off.

    Oh, and nice to meet you Gorn. Funny joke.

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  16. My apologies for going so far off topic but I might forget again. I have new breeding activity in my aquarium. This time it’s one of my Yellow-tailed Blue Damselfish who is excavating and guarding a nest. Unlike my dearly departed “Scooter Blenny”; damselfish have been successfully reared in captivity. I don’t think my mean old clownfish can get at the nest site so there just might be some hope for offspring.

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  22. I’m watching on Current. Is anybody else?

    Keith has Eliot Spitzer on, talking about a task force headed by the NY AG, that will go after mortgage fraud.

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  34. It will begin and end with foreign policy. The center will be fairness. And a whole bunch of programs to help the unemployed. I hope no one forbids applause.

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  45. A segueway from the end of World War II to the end of the Iraq war – and the era when government was respected and believed in. This tour of history is now a recurring feature of Obama’s speeches. Notice?

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  56. Obama saves 1 million jobs at GM and it cost taxpayers nothing. McCain would have let them go out of business (Romney too).

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  58. Obama says “obstruction” and Boner looks like he’s passing a kidney stone. I’m also pretty sure that I heard the heads at FAUX”News” exploding from here in Minnesota.

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  75. My daughter the special needs teacher thanks you, Mr. President.

    Republicans sit on hands. SHOT.

    Dis the teachers.

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  81. He isn’t talking about unleashing the free market through tax reform. Tax breaks and subsidies to keep jobs at home. It’s spitting in the wind of the global economy.

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    • Seriously. There is massive dessert land here on the left coast owned by the Feds for the military, drenched by the sun daily. Why not capture that energy?

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  102. Removing the subsidies for Big Oil – but adding new tax credits for green energy. More tax credits! Sigh…with each minute of this speech, the tax code gets more dense and the government’s meddling in the economy more entrenched.

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  117. I think I know why the audiences for the GOP debates have been so vile. They are following the lead of the GOoPers in Congress. Obama could walk on water and they would whine about him not being able to swim.

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  119. So far, nada on debt; nada on tax reform; nada on healthcare reform. He really refuses to sell Obamacare, doesn’t he? Is it coming?

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  142. This whole speech feels like he’s pandering to the GOP and its voters. It’s lacked any big sustaining argument about the inequality and unfairness that has marked the last few years. And so all of this sounds like a series of shameless panders that someone has to pay for.

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  144. Almost every single proposal in this speech has been a tax break for something or other. What an awful way to run an economy.

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  150. I’ll say it again. It wasn’t a perfect speech but it might have been perfect for this moment in time.

    I didn’t see it as pandering to the GOoPers; I saw it as disarming the inevitable attacks. Case in point; the first words from ABC were “it was a very political speech”.

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  153. That military analogy near the end was creepy. I don’t want to be a citizen trained like a member of the Navy SEALs. Nor should anyone. This isn’t Sparta. It’s America. And to use the raid on bin Laden as the model of our future cooperation struck me as a weird analogy.

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    • It’s bad enough already, with government agencies filling up with veterans preference. They tend to bring their authoritarian killer training into the work place.

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  156. Steve Jobs’ widow is sitting there as guest while Obama rails companies who send jobs overseas. Ummm, Apple has 500,000 jobs sitting in China and $52 billion in cash in offshore accounts.

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  162. I think the Outer Limits idea was the best one of the evening. I chose to watch Forbidden Planet on Sat night last, it was cool.

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  167. Good Night Jane! Sleep tight.

    Hi folks, what’s up? That some fricking 300 something comments here. Loads of reading to do. 🙂

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