"Notes and Quotes"

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. - Elbert Hubbard

Thursday, January 28, 2010

The SOTU Obama should have given (but didn't)

The SOTU Obama should have given (but didn't)

By Nick Fitzgerald

01/27/10


Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans:

Last January I stood outside this historic building and took a sacred oath, armed with my principles and confident in my ability to deliver on the change and hope on which I campaigned. And though I failed to grasp this when I first took office, I understand now, a year later, that often we must adapt and sometimes completely alter the ways we originally intended to address the challenges before us. It is with this refreshed mentality that I come to you tonight to discuss the current state of our union.

The American economy is little improved from when I took office a year ago. Unemployment rates have risen well beyond what my administration’s top economic advisors assured the American people they would. Unfortunately, and despite our best intentions, the stimulus package has not worked. I know that many in my party will be disappointed to hear me say this, but, when the politics are removed, only the facts remain. And they are not positive.

The bottom line is that our current unemployment is well above 10 percent, and my administration promised you that it would not rise above 8 percent. Thus it can be said, fairly, that our initial plan to tackle the economy, and specifically unemployment, has failed.

We have put forward billions of dollars for a swath of unprecedented government spending programs that have ultimately proven ineffective. I ask the Congress to look plainly upon the matter—they will see, then, that none of the strategies we implemented to tackle the economic crisis have reduced our country’s unacceptable unemployment rate, nor have they improved the economic situation of the average American family. One could fairly argue that, in fact, they have made it worse.

These are the facts—and as president it is I who must take responsibility for them.

And let me be clear—the answer to our continuing economic problems is not more of the same.

Simply put, Americans need work. I will not rest until we cut our unemployment numbers by one-third before I see you again in a year. I will repeat that for the benefit of the members here tonight: in one year, when I address you in this chamber, I expect that we will have made it possible for one-third more Americans to have jobs.

I ask Congress to help accomplish this goal by lowering taxes on small business and investments; by reducing the capital gains tax to encourage the taking of calculated, responsible financial risk to grow our businesses and industries; and by keeping a watchful eye—not an iron fetter—on America’s financial markets.

And let me speak for a moment on transparency. While I was campaigning for president, I promised the American people no less than eight times that I would insist, without equivocation, that all debates and legislative processes surrounding the creation of the health care bill would be broadcast on C-SPAN for the benefit of the American people. I must now admit that I did not follow through on this promise.

Many of you in this chamber have accused my predecessor of running an administration shrouded in secrecy and lacking transparency. I second this notion. And I am telling you tonight, in no uncertain terms, that as long as I am president, history will be unable to accuse me of the same.

Therefore I would like to inform the Congress that, in the true name of the transparency on which I campaigned and for which I was elected, I will not sign any bill that comes to my desk that has not gone through a televised, public, formal conference process. Because democracy is more important that partisan politics, and because the people should only get this bill if they want it. That is the spirit of American government. And as elected representatives, we have nothing to hide from the American people.

Second only to the issues of the economy and transparency is our continuing struggle against radical extremism. The attempted attack on Christmas Day of last year has communicated to us that, despite my original and deeply-ingrained belief to the contrary, reason and mutual interest are impossible to attain with those who would wish to destroy our people and our way of life. As president, I have made it my duty to extend America’s open hand—not our clenched fist. And yet, still, we continue to be rebuffed by those who hate us.

It is now time to face reality.

To help protect Americans at home and abroad from threats like those which occurred on Christmas Day, I wish to announce a freeze on the closing of the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I have already ordered the halting or recalling of all deportments currently in progress. This policy will remain in place until our investigation yields further information into the Christmas Day bomber and until all of the leads obtained from that investigation have been fully pursued.

I know that this is not the course that many, including myself, had hoped for—but the circumstances have changed, and therefore our policies must also change. It would be irresponsible for my administration to chart a course based on information that no longer reflects the current reality of our national security concerns.

Rest assured, there will be a time when we can say, proudly, that we have shut down Guantanamo—but such action will only be possible when we are no longer threatened by poisonous extremism. To act with undue haste would fly in the face of my sworn duty to protect the American people and our Constitution.

Further, when I spoke at West Point a few months ago, I announced an increased redeployment of our troops to the mountains of Afghanistan to provide continued assistance in securing the country and defeating al-Qaida. At the time, I issued a tentative timetable for those troops’ withdrawal—and I see now that this may have been a hasty decision. After further consideration, and in light of recent attempts from al-Qaida to attack us again on our own soil, I believe now that such a hard-and-fast date for withdrawal will only embolden those we are trying to defeat. Further, it sends the wrong message to our troops overseas, our allies abroad, and, most importantly, to the American people here at home.

Finally, I would ask you, fellow citizens, to consider the words of another American president from Illinois: “A house divided cannot stand.” And so it is today.

We are an imperfect country, but a great one. Ours is the noble work of progress—we must redouble our efforts as a people to move boldly forward into this new age of American accomplishment. We have overcome challenges in the past through oneness of purpose and looking ahead to a common goal, and it is again time to rally behind this sense of unity that has brought us and kept us together throughout our nation’s storied history.

This is our path—the one that will lead us forward to a better and more hopeful tomorrow.

Thank you. Goodnight. And God bless the United States of America.

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"Notes and Quotes" Archive

  • **“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
  • **"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
  • **"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
  • **“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
  • ** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
  • ** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
  • ** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
  • ** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
  • ** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
  • **"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
  • **If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
  • **The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
  • **Political correctness is an approved form of censorship.  Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet.  Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot.  The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent.  Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
  • **Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
  • **"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
  • **“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
  • **No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
  • **'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • ** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
  • ** I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. --Ronald Reagan
  • ** "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • ** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • **Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.--Ronald Reagan
  • ** A final word on Tea Party numbers.  The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up.  And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair.  Saturday’s Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S.Open.   The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided.  And police reported zero arrests.-- William Campenni
  • ** There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress. --Mark Twain
  • ** What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. --Edward Langley
  • ** To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
  • **"Free speech does not include the right to deceive". --Author unknown
  • ** Although racism certainly exists in this country, it has become blessedly rare and marginalized. Some of the best evidence you can find for that is Barack Obama's election as President. Only in a country as colorblind as America could a black man easily win the Presidency when 75% of the votes were cast by white Americans. --John Hawkins
  • **I think we need a Constitutional Amendment that says: 1.  Congressional salaries are tied to increased jobs, per capita income and increased GDP. 2.  Any raise for any member must be approved by a super majority in his/her home district or state. --Tom Hall
  • **There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities. So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it's a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves. -- Charles Krauthammer
  • **Government does not solve problems... it subsidizes them! --Ronald Reagan
  • **When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President -- I'm beginning to believe it.’ - Clarence Darrow
  • **The liberals will give free medical care to illegal aliens who are on welfare but will deny it to American citizens who have worked all their lives and made their contributions to American society.-- Charles Hakes
  • ** Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. -- Virginia Postrel
  • ** You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
  • **We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. --The Talmud
  • **You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
  • **We're getting too much lip service and not enough action from the Obama administration on nuclear power, and the impression is being left that we can run this big, complex country on electricity from the wind, the sun and the earth. ...Climate change may be the inconvenient problem, but nuclear power is the inconvenient answer. -- Lamar Alexander
  • **The government may very well come up with a health insurance product that is cheaper (to the consumer) and more effective than those offered in the private sector. Think about this though ... Could that possibly be because the government will be under no pressure whatsoever to make a profit on its health insurance? When you can operate at a loss indefinitely you have no problem undercutting your competitors. When you can call on endless government subsidies you can run anyone you chose out of business. -- Neal Boortz
  • **I'd like to quote from an e-mail I recently received from a reader named J. Pyle. In response to a piece I had written ridiculing the state of higher education, he wrote: "I remember when 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies' meant trying to figure out what's wrong with those people. In fact, if your child is majoring in something that ends in 'Studies,' you better not turn their bedroom into a den, because that one is coming home after college." --Bert Prelutsky
  • **People are gushing over the late Michael Jackson. I suppose they will honor him on a postage stamp, in a new “Famous Child Molesters” series, to go with Elvis from the “Famous Drug Abusers” stamp series. Meanwhile, men and women dying to protect an America pass with little but perfunctory notice. One wonders, in the black hours of the night, if this nation deserves protecting. -- Robert Hall
  • **I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran. --Bert Prelutsky
  • **"Even if the majority agrees on an idiotic idea, it is still an idiotic idea." Sam Levenson
  • **The most hilarious thing about the Democrats' attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that -- what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs. Obamacare would lead to health care with the compassion of the IRS, the competence of FEMA, and the well staffed work force of our border patrol at a much higher cost, but on the upside, you won't live as long, so you'll have less time to complain about it. -- John Hawkins
  • **President Obama wants greater transparency from businesses, banks, the government — everyone except the union movement. This clearly benefits the union leaders, who will become less accountable to their members. But it’s hardly the change Obama promised to bring to Washington. — James Sherk
  • **Being politically correct is, unfortunately, not the same thing as being correct politically.-- Bert Prelutsky
  • **If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a "stimulus," then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power. -- Thomas Sowell
  • **“The big mistake of Republican leadership is thinking that going through the motions of listening to their ‘base’ is the same thing as actually listening to the base. They keep trying to drag us to where they think we should be instead of joining us where we are.” -- John Hawkins
  • ** Torturing prisoners should never be our policy, both because it's immoral and because it's usually ineffective. But it's madness to declare that there can never be exceptions. Forget the argument about the "ticking bomb" and the terrorist who might have information that could save numerous lives. Let's make it personal. Whether you're left, right or in between, ask yourself this yes-or-no question: If torturing a known terrorist would save the life of the person you love most in the world, would you approve it? If your answer is "no," you're not a moral paragon. You're an abomination. And please make your position clear to your husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter. Just tell 'em, "Sorry, honey, but I'd rather see you dead than mistreat a terrorist. It's a moral issue with me. --Ralph Peters
  • **The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. -- Teddy Roosevelt
  • **The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today. -- William Henry Harrison
  • **The price of a postage stamp has gone up to 44 cents. The government says they had to raise the price because fewer people are using the mail these days. That's government thinking for you — "Hey nobody's buying our products . . . let's raise the price!" --Jay Leno
  • **If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. -- Milton Friedman
  • **Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?
  • **"The world is controlled by those who show up." --George Allen
  • **John Maynard Keynes, responded to a challenge about his changing views, saying, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”