SOTU 2010

A few items:
Obama took a shot at the Supreme Court's decision in favor of corporate campaign spending, and the "conservatives" have their panties in a bunch.  When he started the job as President, he didn't stop being a citizen - the guy has an opinion; he gets to tell us what it is.

"you're here to serve the needs of your constituents, not your own political ambitions"

Obama may have tricked the Repubs on the jobs thing.  He says employment is the top priority for 2010, which of course gets everybody on their feet, and then he tacks on the bit about wanting a Jobs Bill on his desk ASAP.  I'm thinkin' the Repubs need to be seen as favoring employment, but they don't wanna be in favor of a Dem effort to get The Gummint to provide jobs for people.

The best part tho' was when Obama talked about the proposed Transaction Fee to get some of our bailout money back from the banks. All the Dems were up and applauding, while all the Repubs were sitting on their hands.  True or not; stereotyping or not - the image was pretty stark.  Obama wants the banks to pay us back, and Repubs just wanna keep giving tax dollars to their rich buddies on Wall Street.

What If

We rearrange the borders of the states to reflect changes in population - the way we do it with Congressional Districts.  (click on the picture to enlarge)

SOTU 2010

One of the highlights:

Our most urgent task upon taking office was to shore up the same banks that helped cause this crisis. It was not easy to do. And if there's one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it's that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.

But when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn't just do what was popular -- I would do what was necessary. And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost.

So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable. As a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we have recovered most of the money we spent on the banks.

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn't keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

As we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.
That's why we extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans; made health insurance 65% cheaper for families who get their coverage through COBRA; and passed 25 different tax cuts.

Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95% of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college. As a result, millions of Americans had more to spend on gas, and food, and other necessities, all of which helped businesses keep more workers. And we haven't raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

Tricksterism And Thuggery

There was a lot of noise when a kid named James O'Keefe came into the light with his "ACORN sting" - he's the guy who went into a Baltimore ACORN office, posing as a pimp and asking questions about how to evade taxes - but of course, there was a lot less noise about how the video from his hidden camera had been creatively edited to make ACORN look as bad as Cluster Fox needs them to look.

(BTW: ACORN has some big problems and it's never a bad idea to bust people doing wrong things; I'm just saying we need to follow our own rules - Due Process keeps us all free.)

Now we have this from NOLA.com.

We should make a point of watching who steps up to take care of this guy.  In one way, he's the Henry Hill of conservatives - willing to do anything to get in good with the mob boss.  I wonder though, about the publicity.  If he gets too famous, it should be harder for him to pull off his tricks in future.  So what's he really up to?

Get Some Balls

What He Said

No particular reason for this right now - it's just good to remind ourselves that here in The US, the process is as important as the goal.

From Citizens To Prisoners

Democracy in America is a Useful Fiction - by Chris Hedges

Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury.

Get In The Fight

Knowledge

It's estimated that medical knowledge, for example, doubles every seven years, and scientific knowledge doubles every twenty years.

The total written knowledge in the world is said to have doubled between 1450 and 1750, and then to have doubled again between 1750 and 1900. 

Between 1900 and 1950, human knowledge doubled once more, and then again from 1950 to 1975.

Now, it is believed to double every 900 days. By the year 2020, global knowledge is predicted to double every 72 days.

plain truth = schooling never ends; education is never finished.

God Love The Onion

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