Obama on a revised take on some of the least believable words in the English language
“Let me repeat – nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime. It’s not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.”
That’s followed by
“Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.”
Much of this is predicated by Obama’s ignorance in attributing the recent Superstorm Sandy and severe drought to human induced climate change when all the evidence is that hurricane activity has declined, global precipitation is unchanged and in the face of increased carbon dioxide emissions temperatures have not increased for 16 years. Wind power is and will remain the cheapest of the exotic renewables but is three times the cost of coal/gas and will remain so. China plans to generate just 0.3% of its electricity from wind/solar by 2020 but will sell windmills to anyone stupid enough to buy them. The US may be saved from its President’s wastefulness by its entrepreneurial initiatives in shale oil exploitation. But this will be in spite of the administration which has steadfastly refused to allow the activity on federal lands and has blocked the major pipeline from Canada
Then, notwithstanding that nothing he proposes will increase the deficit by a single dime, he introduces new spending with
“I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.
“The states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make it happen.”
And he proposes to have Washington take on the risk that interest rates might rise by offering free insurance opt home buyers with
“Right now, there’s a bill in this Congress that would give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today’s rates. Democrats and Republicans have supported it before. What are we waiting for? Take a vote, and send me that bill. Right.”
My prize for crass obfuscation and idiocy is his statement
“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets.”
Wow. If an increase to $9 an hour can mean more money for businesses why not try $18 an hour? Come to think of it let’s solve world poverty by giving everyone $30 an hour!
Ahahahahahaha.
C.L.
13 Feb 13 at 2:53 pm
Well, Obama, as he promised, is generating lots of wind! I’m still waiting for him to walk on water, though!
Nuke Gray
13 Feb 13 at 3:02 pm
This was the only decent line from that deadbeat commie layabout:
Infidel Tiger
13 Feb 13 at 3:05 pm
IT, better have another read of that last sentence – the implication is that being a man isn’t about cenception, but raising a child as a man…….in matrimony with another man ??????????????????? perhaps.
Hardly a decent line, I would aver.
Louis Hissink
13 Feb 13 at 3:08 pm
Under Obamacare any employee who works 30 hrs or more a week, which is defined as ‘full-time’, must be offered health insurance by the employer at the employer’s cost (for businesses with 50 or more employees, which is most of them).
Therefore no full-time jobs will be offered henceforth, all jobs will be for 29 hours or less per week. Businesspeople are not stupid.
So he’s right. No American who works full-time will live in poverty because no American on low wages will be able to work full-time.
Bruce
13 Feb 13 at 3:09 pm
Interesting that there was no talk of a carbon tax or trading scheme. There was plenty of speculation that a carbon tax would be Obama’s price for approving the Keystone pipeline.
Good to hear no mention of it.
tgs
13 Feb 13 at 3:18 pm
Who bothered to watch such a sycophantic audience clap all the time and Obama lie through his teeth? Seeing that makes me glad I am an Australian.
Andrew
13 Feb 13 at 3:24 pm
tgs
Not quite abandonning a carbon tax, just putting it on some sort of back burner with
“if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
Alan Moran
13 Feb 13 at 3:30 pm
A want to laugh at this gibberish Obama spews out but it really is too serious. He and his lefty friends really don’t understand the free market at all. It’s still hard to believe they’re so out of touch with reality. And America just swills along. Amazing.
Marty McBeth
13 Feb 13 at 3:37 pm
Is this one of the speeches left over from the DNC convention? It is of that standard.
Token
13 Feb 13 at 3:41 pm
Just once you’d like one of them to stand up and say:
“The State of the Union is shithouse. We are a deeply divided rabble. A country filled with moochers, spivs and kleptocrats. I give it 10 years tops until the whole damn place craps out. Now tap the damn keg and let’s get our drink on.”
Infidel Tiger
13 Feb 13 at 3:45 pm
I’m genuinely puzzled. What are these ‘financial deterrents’?
cuckoo
13 Feb 13 at 4:08 pm
Obama, proof idiots vote.
MattR
13 Feb 13 at 4:14 pm
Statism really has reached late Roman comical hubris when a communist idiot like Obama claims that he’ll now use the government to encourage fatherhood.
And this from a man elected on a platform of discouraging motherhood.
C.L.
13 Feb 13 at 4:15 pm
Has the statist been hanging out with Bubba Clinton? Does Michelle know what he is suggesting?
Token
13 Feb 13 at 4:19 pm
Look, correct me if I’m wrong, but won’t the States with the best ideas for creating jobs not actually need additional funds to create jobs? Due to having very low unemployment anyway?
Oh… he means money to the best ideas not the actual best results. So money will be taken from those who actually create jobs and given to those with super neat ideas for how jobs might be created.
The free market works better than political direction, and would outperform it better on this one simple basic rule: it gives money to people who prove they can handle it, not to people who prove they want it.
wreckage
13 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
Wind and solar DO NOT WORK; none of the cost comparisons deal with that fact; the comparisons are worthless.
Wind and solar do produce power but the grid is orientated to supplying base demand and regular and non-recurrent peak demand; the intermittancy of wind and solar means that the power produced by wind and solar is not capable of being converted to grid electricity at either a base or peak demand requirement.
This is why the gillard and greens having been rabbiting on about ‘gold-platting’ and excess infrastructure; they want to change usage and demand; the role of smart meters is part of this scheme to wean people off their current lifestyle and the electricity demand which supports that lifestyle.
Gillard and the greens know that for wind and solar to be effective there needs to be about a 60% drop in demand across the board.
I wish people would wake up to this and realise how insidious the power aspect of AGW is.
cohenite
13 Feb 13 at 4:29 pm
I think he has been observing Julia’s carbon price with envy and admiration.
Another courageous move by Obama.
Grey
13 Feb 13 at 4:31 pm
Grey is pulling lines from Sir Humphry Appleby now. Very courageous.
Token
13 Feb 13 at 4:34 pm
Lol, this actually made me laugh. Kind of like when my son kicks an inflated ball against the wall and it knocks him in the face.
MattR
13 Feb 13 at 4:41 pm
I doubt you mean that Grey, just trying to wind people up, but seriously, envy and admiration from the Sun King is an infallible contra-indicator.
Toiling Mass
13 Feb 13 at 4:43 pm
Perhaps he’s been observing something else of Ms Gillard with admiration … they seem pretty touchy feelie.
candy
13 Feb 13 at 4:50 pm
… new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good …
Heck, wind and solar can’t produce enough reliable energy to make wind turbines and solar panels.
manalive
13 Feb 13 at 4:52 pm
I always wonder what is going through Obama’s head when I see those sort of photos.
Grey
13 Feb 13 at 4:56 pm
Obama likes CAGW because at core he’s a socialist and a Statist, but I repeat myself.
Carbon emissions are ubiquitous and so their compulsory “abatement”, lest the world be destroyed, is the perfect permanent excuse to micro manage lives……… it’s every socialist’s dream.
There’s nothing complicated about his politics at all.
Alfonso
13 Feb 13 at 5:02 pm
Ugh, this speech really does annoy me. Obama is talking like we don’t already have a tried and true way to grow an economy and keep people out of poverty. It’s called small government, low taxes, free-markets and individual enterprise.
He is basically prescribing the opposite of what we know already works, that being he wants bigger government, more taxes and more regulation more taking from the productive and giving the the unproductive. We’ve tried that before, it failed miserably, many times.
How can one person be so pompous and so ignorant of reality yet manage to become President of the worlds largest economy is beyond comprehension and says a lot about how broken the political system is.
MattR
13 Feb 13 at 5:30 pm
I always get nervous about nice rhetorical tricks – such as a school girl who had played at his inauguration has been murdered by gun just in time for the State of the Union address. Just in case she had been murdered to give him a rhetorical flourish.
Still, this is Chicago, I expect if you took a 100 school kids, the chances of one of them being murdered within 3 weeks is quite high.
Grey
13 Feb 13 at 5:33 pm
Obama is famed for his manly courage:
http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2009/09/16/image5315829x.jpg
C.L.
13 Feb 13 at 5:39 pm
On the plus side, the GOP SOTU Repsonse was brilliant:
Sen. Marco Rubio Delivers Republican Response To State Of The Union
Video and RTWT
JamesK
13 Feb 13 at 5:53 pm
“where people can risk their own money”
Indeed.
My bit of Aust. is full of salary punters who lust after my profits but refuse to take my risks…… and with true Australian convict genetic heritage they then resent me bitterly for their own risk inadequacies.
T’was ever thus.
Alfonso
13 Feb 13 at 6:12 pm
You mean the Americans were stupid enough to re-elect this Irish fraudster?
I thought it was a joke.
People stupid enough to elect O’Bama also have nuclear weapons!?
I feel safer with Kim Wrong-un from Korea.
WhaleHunt Fun
13 Feb 13 at 6:22 pm
Let me repeat – nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.
I thought that was true because Congress won’t let him.
Adrien
13 Feb 13 at 7:22 pm
Listening to this Marxist hack is like listening to a nail scraping against glass.
Ant
13 Feb 13 at 7:29 pm
The Magic Negro show is losing its appeal rapidly. Not that it had much to begin with.
H B Bear
13 Feb 13 at 7:34 pm
Erick Erickson: Healthcare Paid for With Unicorn Farts
There will be many words from many people about much of the President’s State of the Union speech from last night.
I will only focus on one line, which distinctly highlights again just how out to lunch the man is when it comes to real healthcare reforms in this country.
During his speech the President said this:
In other words, we should stop paying for tests based on the number performed and we should stop paying for hospitals based on the number of days in which a patient stays in the hospital. Instead, we should pay based on the quality of care given, which I guess means if suddenly your stool sample turns to gold, we’ll charge more.
His approach makes no sense. Healthcare cannot be paid for based on quality of care without introducing subjective standards that will themselves drive up the costs of healthcare. He might as well claim he does not want to pay for healthcare at all or, at best, will cover the costs with unicorn farts……
JamesK
13 Feb 13 at 8:04 pm
Cuckoo, low income married couples in the USA have effective marginal tax rates of over 100% in certain weird circumstances, mainly because of the large amount of welfare programs all phasing out on the same thing.
This is be of the main reason people are getting stuck on welfare, you literally have to live on less money as your household income rises. Naturally not many get out of the hole.
Munro
13 Feb 13 at 10:48 pm
Fuc-king hell.
If governments knew how to “invest” they wouldn’t need taxation..
Ooh Honey Honey
14 Feb 13 at 12:01 am
The man is a worthless fucking dropkick, and I hope he lives another fifty years to witness his utter execration by history.
perturbed
14 Feb 13 at 12:46 am
Agree.
And Chicago already has strict gun control. So how does Obama’s example make any sense?
Cy
14 Feb 13 at 7:58 am
Obamas real problem is his tiny reduction in deficit. he plans to reduce $1T by $0.05 to $0.1T per year. This doesnt leave him much room, and it doesnt really matter because either way he is likly to pile on at least $3.5trillion in new debt through his second term.
The question no one seems to answer is: how much debt is to much? When will they enact poor tax laws? When will revenue collapse causing people to demand higher rates on government bonds? To me it seems like they could continue to run trilliokn dollar deficits for decades yet.
mundi
14 Feb 13 at 8:59 am
Presumably it works the other way. Cut the minimum wage to $1.00 an hour and productivity will increase. In fact, bring back slavery.
Andrew
14 Feb 13 at 6:05 pm