Let me finish tonight with the president's new lease. I'm talking about his higher approval numbers.
Let me be blunt. I wish him well. I also know that he will not hold these new, high numbers if the jobless rate stays above 9 percent for too many more months. He needs to give business confidence that things are settled down in terms of taxes and regulation, that they can get their plans together knowing the lay of the land. I think the president knows that and will signal it next week in the state of the union.
He also must know that from here on out, certainly from here to the next election, we're looking at a sack race - one Democratic leg in the sack, one Republican leg. Nothing's going to move unless both parties are moving forward together. Whatever he talks about next week in his speech, it is essential that it be something that has a bi-partisan appeal - got to cut tax rates, not raise them in any reform, got to cut fairly in any long-term spending reduction. That's the deal; Dems’ the rules.
But right now, on the verge of the state of the union, the president's in good position with the American people. He got the tone right.
When you have a fire in the neighborhood, smart people start checking to see if you're following the safety rules yourself. You check the chimney to see if it's got hot spots. You have the wiring in the house looked at to guard against any electrical fire.
We've got no clear idea of what caused the horror in Tucson. But we're not completely in the dark. We know it was done with the handgun. We know it was done against an elected public official, a politician, okay, a Democratic politician. We know it was at a scheduled official event.
We don't know why that guy brought that gun to a political event and shot a politician and those other people. But it might make common sense, if you've got that, to cool it on speeches that bring together guns and politics, guns and the hatred of government officials, don't you think?
The president has caught that country's tone - and that could be the chief reason for his fifteen-point spike in job approval.
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Hey Chris, you worked as a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and an aid to Tip O'Neal. Before you go lecturing the world on civility in the arena of FREE speech, do you think you might want to contact the man from Plains and suggest he stop with his regular accusations of racism whenever he gets behind a podium and mentions somebody or a group that disagrees with him? Tip was partisan but civil; you apparently didn't learn much from him.
1. And why is political opposition now considered hate speech? If you don't know what motivated the lunatic in Tucson to destroy and hurt so many lives, how do you establish a link between speech and his actions?
2. Why is it acceptable for the DLC to use "target" maps, but not Sarah Palin?
3. Why is it acceptable for anti-Walmart protestors to distribute flyers in D.C., showing a crosshairs, urging people to organize at a developer's home, where his family will be endangered? I don't hear you or your collegues flapping your mouths about that.
4. Why haven't you condemned Rep Cohen from Tennessee for his linking Republican opponents to Joseph Goebells and the Nazis as well as blood libel, while you and your buddies at MSNBC didn't lose a second in condemning Palin for using the term "blood libel" in defending herself?
5. One of your collegues in the Carter Adminstration, Bob Beckel, said he created the concept of using target maps during campaigns, and good for him. Sane people know its use is metaphorical.
6. Along the way of "hate speech", why your regular and increasingly boring ad hominen attacks on Michelle Bachmann? For that matter if "hate speech" is an issue for you, why do you work at that vomit factory called MSNBC?
Ah, wait, I know the answer - you're an ignorant, hypocritical jackass. And yes, that's ad hominen.
Sincerely,
Mike C.
Don't worry Mike, some day you will wake up and understand Chris M. Way to go Chris M.!!!!
There will be mental healthcare coverage for you (and the Tea Party) under Obama's new healthcare plan.
Don't worry, nobody will be turned down for pre-existing conditions like Bigotry or Race, Skin Color etc.
Everyone is accepted and welcome! Help for you is on the way!!! I will say a prayer for you before I go
to bed tonight.
Travis
Mike C. nailed it above. He asked very pertinent questions. And good riddance to that bomb-thrower Olbermann.
We the people of the United States, in order to try and give off the image of a more perfect Union, have devised another public relations schema, to avoid really addressing the fact, that we have a gun problem. So, in order to kindle the vaguest notion of the principles of liberty, we shall sit at this State of the Union Address together. We shall show very little emotion, in order not to tip the scales of temperance, in the direction of the general welfare of the people, for that may adversely affect polling numbers. Finally, in order to preserve my occupational posterity as a representative, I shall go on either MSNBC, or Fox according to party and rank, following the State of the Union, and still not talk about the policy issues that affect the American people. There shall also be a CNN, for representatives to posture themselves as moderates, but still there shall be no talk about guns, the homeless, the violence against women, nor shall there be any talk about how to make college and medical care more accessible to everyone.
Resolved that the preceding artificial ideas be glutted through airwaves, so that people believe that we are making progress as a country.
Somehow, the 112th Congress got a sliver of the tone right, too, when they contemplated execution of the mixed party seating idea. Some got it right, some stayed in their office, some were game to try (or merely persuadable).
I do not want to hear, ever again, that 'Americans don't care where their Representatives sit'. This American has duly elected Congress-people who are charged with the responsibility of capital-R-Representing their State's Constituents.
The Elected Official's disdain for us, as herd-mentality lemmings whose only value is the occassionally-repeated one-time trip to the poll booth, has never been more clear than in the current era. Who are 'the people'? We are the people. That trip to the polls is all we have left, thanks to 'citizens United'.
Even if their jaded belief is only to pander to the voters, to give a patronizing nod to their employers; they should darn well pretend, then, that the source and the focus of their belief system resides mainly in the people of their State. It is so intuitive as to be fundamental.
Higher approval numbers? He's running a -14 on Rasmussen. Obama is freaking tone-deaf.
Obama has not changed his spots,he is still a wide eyed left wing liberal that continues to run down America every chance he gets and he still lives in the fantasy world of liberal make-believe.