Tuesday, January 20, 2015

State of the Union January 20, 2015: Immediate Reaction


Some of my immediate reactions to the State of the Union, I’ll stay away from the wonky stuff until more of the details come out tomorrow, but there was one stop down moment that I think was emblematic of why congress is the most dysfunctional and unproductive iteration in its history.

It takes a manner of juvenile sniveling insolence to mock-clap the president during the state of the union; I remember the direct boos from a few years ago, which is shit no president has had to endure. I think it's obvious why certain members of congress feel that this is permissible for this president.  Yes it has to do with race and yes it has to do with living in a bubble.  Even GWB had to go outside of America to get a shoe thrown at him.

Republicans all clap to "respect the office" on his walk in and during the show they forget the shit they say and do in the hallways and backrooms about him and the party bulimia creeps out. That is one level of it, but to for Obama to put that motherfucker in his place, "I won them both," should put whomever had the gall to basically heckle clap the sitting president in front of the whole world in ignominy; that was boss.  “Fuck you mother fucker,” came out my mouth on my sofa; there is no room for that, it's like he knows that crap is coming.  Obama has two years left, there are so many things in this speech he has not touched and a lot congress has derailed, which they will continue to ignore and sabotage.

The entire goal of this congressional body has been to paralyze the system and obstruct from day one of Obama’s presidency.  The state of the union is finally “strong.”  Fourteen years of combat and Afghanistan is “over.”  The amount of money the wars started by GWB has cost this economy should be the starting point any American views the issues of this speech and what the war on “terror” really is in comparing where the money has gone and what the mythical results are.  The idea that what has happened in Nigeria, France, Canada, and Australia recently could not just as easily happen in any city in America is laughable.  If anything we have shown that a small group of determined terrorists cannot be stopped from doing pockets of wanton destruction.  The safety is an illusion as it has always been.  The only thing that has changed is money in hands and bodies into graves.  Yes Osama Bin Laden is dead and terrorist networks are put on watch, but the idea that our drones and selective memory military aggressiveness do not extrapolate future combatants in the offspring of the day’s dead fathers is arrogance.  

The war is with fundamentalism and the greatest boom to global Islamic terrorism is global governments that still feel the need to invoke god to appease the citizenry in patronizing a subtle adoration to fundamentalism.  When we can get to a mature form of governance without the pandering we can treat each other like adults and see that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the type of fundamentalism, the same fundamentalism of why the president of the united states or any member of congress is afraid to leave out an acknowledgment to god in public speeches.  The lack there of would show a proper separation of church and state our constitution suggests but does not implement.  The type of Christian on Christian division that founded America still roots in many of the Islamic tribes in the Middle East that perpetuates the determination of today’s hot bed of terrorists.  America cannot change that, but America can change itself to properly react to that.

America’s lack of maturity to take a leadership position and show not only religious tolerance, but to sever preferential treatment as a manner of public policy to religious organizations confines us in an intellectual immaturity that at its roots fosters a hypocrisy that hinders our ability to apply a global level of political and social empathy to address the true issues of our world in climate change, economic consolidation of wealth, natural resource availability, and violence based on human prejudice.  Religion is part of the solution, but fundamentalism is not.

The Affordable Health Care Act will be repealed and the repeal vetoed.  The Republican response suggests an alternative is in the process of being hatched, which I took to be a positive.  The minority congressional Republicans have tried to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act umpteen times knowing that they would fail, knowing that the suggestion of an alternative was unnecessary.  The Affordable Health Care Act has always been Republican policy.  Fundamentally handing private health insurance companies millions of new customers without doing a fucking thing to address the true problems: exorbitant pharmaceutical prices going to Wall Street, giant hospital administration companies profiteering, the lack of tort reform, and the train wreck restrictions of health care flowing through an employer causing millions of separate negotiations where there is no group negotiation for patients to lower costs.  Obama Care is nowhere close to Single Payer or basically what the rest of the first world decided was the best option decades ago. Maybe forcing an alternative suggestion may actually show Americans what Obama care is for its flaws and show the potential Republican solution as even worse, but address the flaws suggested with single payer type solutions down the road.  Maybe in some perverse universe drug price negotiations could be a Republican idea because Obama didn't say it first, who knows.  

Obama has basically had to defend a Republican idea because he fell into the trap of knowing how obstructionist congress was.  Obama knew congress was only shifting more red and did what he could while it was still blue enough.  America is too absorbed in campaign ads and distracted by what we actually pay to feel like the citizenry has any say in the matter that we continue to vote against our economic and health interests.  Yes America we pay the most for shitty results just so when some rich motherfucker goes to the hospital he can buy his way into care he thinks is better because it costs more.  The vast majority of money doesn’t go to the doctors or the nurses it goes to drug companies including their army of sales reps and facility administrations that are using all the power they have to keep things the way they are.  If you vote what you think is red on this issue, at least understand why, and go look at how much fucking money Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies and HCA have made over the last decade or so.  Go look at 10k's. 

Obama asked congress to try living on a minimum wage, cricket chirps.  Republicans will just delay any labor cost increase, any wage increase because it is their game plan to keep the upper earners rich to give them money for their base to trick red state America to vote against their self interest in part using a game plan of pandering to fundamentalism.  Any novice in economics knows it is about the circulation of wealth and that spending by those on the bottom is more liquid than wealth retained in an oligarchy at the top.  Clearly the world is hardening its financial resources with the current path into a more finite exclusive few.  Outside of Warren's Buffet's giving pledge campaigns which is in many ways is just marketing, but is true good in a way many government's can not pull of, billionaire's say like Mr. Burns, "I think I'd be happier with the dollar."

This speech was post 2008 recession, after a verifiable recovery.  Even Republicans have to acknowledge the “these are good things" line.  That was a dose of political reality, however Wall Street’s success is not the people’s success.  All that line says is “Republicans the poor people you con into voting for you know the rich people are shitting gold coins so the old our pockets are empty we will have to start laying people off if you raise our taxes shit is not going to work.”   Obama may have needed to hold off on the talk of tax increases until now, will they happen, probably hell fucking no, but the conversation in facts needs to be thrust into the public consciousness.  Any giant company will hire as few people as possible and pay them as little as possible.  This is true no matter what minimum wage or tax rates are.  An across the board minimum wage increase is relative to the profit and options of operation given a skilled labor force in a global economy. 

Thomas Piketty’s global wealth tax or something like it coordinated by region is probably the best true solution, but as a species we will go extinct if we cannot move towards empathy rather than the hero-worship of the rich as if they are our saviors or our demons.  It is all of us together understanding that economics is fluid and it is most important that wealth move.  There will always be huge swaths of the superfluous poor Chomsky writes about to sustain the global economy. 

The reality is the standard of living in America is higher than it has ever been, but the costs are artificially inflated for basic health care, education, energy, national defense, infrastructure, etc. to create pockets of profit in areas highly subsidized by the working poor.  If the working poor don’t buy things the economy has a heart attack.  We can spend way less and get better results, only the profiteering will be cut out.  Whether we want to go that path is probably a function of how educated Americans choose to be and if they want to focus on facts or rhetoric.  Obama’s tax policy has been a Republican tax policy.  That has not changed up until this speech, because congress has not changed shit.  

Obama mentioned affordable child care is not only a woman’s issue.  He outlined what two parent working household reality is like because congress clearly doesn't want to acknowledge that.  He hinted at the de-funding of women’s healthcare by state legislative bodies across this country.  He called out that congress still has done nothing for equal pay for equal work by gender.  He openly used the word lesbian and transgender.  These are all empathy issues and ones Republicans sat down and did not clap for, why fundamentalism to a patriarchy are at the root of their power base.  Plain and simple fundamentalism is threatened by feminism and the cessation of patriarchy. 

Obama uttered facts, “I’m not a scientist, but guess what all the scientists agree climate change is real and 11 of the warmest 15 years on record are all in this century.” Fuck the planet no one stands up for the planet, because who can exploit the sun or the wind, that’s why.  The sun eliminates profiteering from fossil fuels and will be fought by the people making money off it as long as possible while they covertly sabotage policy and try to control the new technologies that emerge knowing that a future of a tax payer owned solar and wind grid more productive than any Tesla based technology grid is inevitable as a global standard, which will put all the Mr. Burns’ of this world in the poorer economic position.

That being said, what Obama actually plans to do is far in the future and slow and needs more immediacy to address the smart grid to expand solar and wind than anything else as an infrastructure improvement issue to transport renewable energy across regions.  Whether that ever happens who knows, but he did not go there in this speech.


I thought it was the best speech he has given in years.  Maybe that is because he has nothing to lose and could be more honest.  The Democrats have lost congress, and he cannot run again, but he did win them both. 

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