The Obama You Voted For
Jan 31, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Consensus, Obama White House, Obama's communication strategy, Republican tinfoil hattery, Republicans Meet The Teabag Terror, republicans, republicans suck
On the left, response to the president’s pantsing of House Republicans has been universal relief. Finally, more than one commenter has declared, this is the Obama I voted for. We’ve all been frustrated by the wishy-washy wishfulness of bipartisanship, haven’t we? I mean, come on. Obama’s been holding out an olive branch to the GOP for a year and kept pulling back a bloody stump. Right?
During his SOTU last Wednesday night, he made sure to remind the country that he would be meeting with House Republicans Friday. The same encounter one year ago saw TV cameras turned off after the speech, but this time the White House asked for them to stay on:
We’ve got to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America. (Emphasis mine)
But that’s the exact same Obama. A full year of Republican obstructionism and Wall Street profiteering are the only difference; nothing else has changed. The paragraph above may sound frustrated, but there’s actually a renewed call to bipartisanship amid the presidential smashing of stupid.
The emphasis on Republicans having left themselves no room is yet another example of his brand of consensus politics. The object isn’t to shove Republicans away but to let them choose whether to be a part of the consensus. Which brings me to the Republican National Committee’s meeting in Hawaii that same day:
The Republican National Committee, pressed to find a way to more clearly distinguish itself from Democrats, on Friday adopted a rule that will prod GOP leaders to provide financial support to only those candidates who support the party’s platform.
This was a “compromise” from an earlier proposal to apply a “purity test” on candidates, which says much about their willingness to reach across aisles. But why would the party of no feel pressed to distinguish itself from Democrats? The answer, of course, is that the party’s new astroturf-fueled movement is ideologically rigid, is busy seizing control of the precinct apparatus, and has them completely terrified.
Which brings me back to the “pivot” Obama recently made on Wall Street. The president has staked out the political center and yanked the populism out from under the teabaggers at the very moment their “movement” is cracking up and Sarah Palin, the default GOP candidate for 2012, is disappointing the right by keeping her appointment in Nashville this week. Some Republicans are warning the party that being painted in this corner is bad electoral strategy, but I don’t expect they will listen.
I also don’t think the tea party movement can last — at least, not as a potent political force. Factionalism is ruling the day among the angry right. Obama’s strong move to pin down Wall Street will prove enormously popular and steal much of their legitimate thunder, leaving only birthers, healthers, and other assorted nuts to scream “socialism!” That word didn’t work in 2008, it didn’t work in 2009, and I expect the tea parties will not only descend into self-parody by November 2010, but will very likely exhaust the patience of middle America.
Which brings me back to the president’s emphasis on maneuvering room. Obama’s habit of “formless” positioning is a constant irritant to the left, but it also leaves him political space. Having rejected such nuances for clear, yet extreme positioning, the minority party is giving us a case study in why the president is able to hit their question-time fastballs out of the park: he’s smarter than they are, and his strategies reflect that.
As I said, I doubt they will learn anything except that direct, public confrontation with the president is a bad idea. Most, if not all of them will probably choose to stay painted in a corner. You can see it in their complaints about Obama “lecturing” them Friday. But that is the point: they make the choice. Obama doesn’t have to beat them if they beat themselves.
Great Point
Jan 31, 2010 Citizens United, nontroversy
It’s hilarious when Republicans mutter about politesse and complain about “lecturing.” Jamie Holly of Intoxination puts the kibosh on the “Obama shouldn’t attack the Supreme Court!” meme:
The Constitution specifically sets up three equal branches of government. The very basis of what the Supreme Court does is criticizing the other two branches. As matter of fact this very case is an example of that. They criticized law enacted by the other two branches by overturning it. That’s the very basis of how our system works. So acting like Obama violated some sort of rule or protocol is showing that you don’t understand the very bedrock of our form of government. Now if we can get Democratic operatives to call them out on this, then we will be doing great. (Emphasis mine)
I say the Dems should start there and then call out the GOP for judicial activism.
No Excuses For Rahm or Harry
Jan 31, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Harry Reid, Obama vs The Media, President Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, health care reform, public option
Everyone hates Rahm Emanuel. Even Bob Cesca’s calling for Rahm’s head over supposed “mixed messaging” on health care. Perhaps Emanuel was inartful, but I think he might have been thinking of “the pivot” when he spoke. Which brings me to Paul Volcker’s long op-ed in the New York Times today, which has been Huffington Post’s lead story since noon Saturday. That’s the full force of Teh Librul Media Machine™, folks, and I don’t think it’s accidental.
Writing with the tacit approval of the president, Volcker writes that reform must end the days of “too big to fail:”
To meet the possibility that failure of such institutions may nonetheless threaten the system, the reform proposals of the Obama administration and other governments point to the need for a new “resolution authority.” Specifically, the appropriately designated agency should be authorized to intervene in the event that a systemically critical capital market institution is on the brink of failure. The agency would assume control for the sole purpose of arranging an orderly liquidation or merger. Limited funds would be made available to maintain continuity of operations while preparing for the demise of the organization.
To help facilitate that process, the concept of a “living will” has been set forth by a number of governments. Stockholders and management would not be protected. Creditors would be at risk, and would suffer to the extent that the ultimate liquidation value of the firm would fall short of its debts.
To put it simply, in no sense would these capital market institutions be deemed “too big to fail.” What they would be free to do is to innovate, to trade, to speculate, to manage private pools of capital — and as ordinary businesses in a capitalist economy, to fail. (Emphasis mine)
Thus Volcker repeats Obama’s three consistent talking points about financial industry reform. As in his SOTU speech, Obama is deliberately raising the subject of Wall Street to grab the political center — and pull the populism rug out from under the tea party movement at exactly the right time. He read the post-Brown polls as a mandate for change, and what’s more he needs a convenient distraction from health care reform.
One of the best-known tricks in show business is to get the audience favorite off center stage for a while; the triumphant return in Act V is a staple of storytelling. There’s some staging at work here: just as Obama moved Geithner and Summers to the background and brought Volcker to his side the day after Massachusetts, financial reform is taking the spotlight.
There may also be some filtration going on; Emanuel said Thursday:
“The good news is, nobody is saying ‘Drop it.’ Everybody is saying, ‘Take the time to figure out how to get this done,’’’ Mr. Emanuel said Thursday in an interview about how the president intends to pursue his legislative agenda this year. “Not doing it is not part of this conversation.’’ (Emphasis mine)
Then the next day, this ran in the Times:
With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.
But just look at the second ‘graff after that one:
One day after the president upbraided Congress in his State of the Union address for excessive partisanship, Senate Republicans voted en masse against a plan to require that new spending not add to the deficit (it passed anyway as all 60 members of the Democratic caucus hung together). (Emphasis mine)
Deficit reduction? Check. Also, after “the pivot” and the SOTU, there’s new bank tax on deck and a set of new jobs proposals that can be passed quickly. We’re not talking about The Finance Reform Bill or The Stimulus Part II here, which is what Ezra Klein said that set everyone off about Emanuel’s interview with the Times.
Meanwhile, the process of passing a public option through reconciliation — the one measure that would guarantee House Democrats pass the Senate bill as-is, finishing the 11-Dimensional Chess victory called “health care reform” — begins, and calls increase. Which brings me to Harry Reid, who — for all his spinelessness — has a secret: there are 50 votes for a public option today.
Constitutionally, that’s all you need. Realistically, it’s important to get as many as you can on board, and it takes time to arrange for reconciliation. Reid won’t rush the process, and more importantly he shouldn’t. In the meantime, a few easy victories can fill the stage while health care reform, which isn’t even the number one issue among voters, gets a costume-change in the wings.
I’m not making excuses, but then again I don’t think any are needed. The liberalatti have once again confused “win” with “victory.” Reid is no LBJ, but you begin reform with the Senate Majority Leader you have, etc.
Sick Day Link Dump
Jan 30, 2010 Programming Notes
Am fighting off a bad cold. In the meantime, enjoy a link dump:
A Las Vegas Sun story on the history of paranoid politics opens with the original FEMA death camps nontroversy…from the 1950s. Sarah Palin’s scheduled appearance in Nashville next week is threatening to tear apart the tea party “movement.” ThinkProgress has put together an embarrassing list of Republicans touting stimulus spending in their districts. Karl Rove is one of several GOP flunkies putting together a new political organization called “American Action Network.” European bankers are calling for a global fee system to deal with future bailouts. Scott Roeder was convicted of killing Dr. Tiller; the jury was out for all of 37 minutes, and Devin Friedman observes the fantasist mind:
Scott had a keen interest in and hunger for learning about terrible conspiracies that lay, as he believed, just beneath the fabric of society. He went to meetings where people discussed how the Illuminati were controlling the country and the world and feeding innocent women into a satanic sex cult. He believed the fluoride in drinking water was there to render the masses more docile, which is why he wouldn’t drink from a tap. He believed federal tax laws weren’t laws at all – and so they needn’t be followed. And he believed in the information about George Tiller fed to him through websites and literature and conversation by the most violent fringe of the pro life movement. He believed Dr. Tiller intentionally tortured babies. He believed that once, when a fetus had been delivered still breathing during one of Dr Tiller’s procedures, Dr. Tiller killed it with his bare hands. (Emphasis mine)
Oddest news of the week is a tribal war in Papua New Guinea sparked by a cell phone text message and fought with axes, bows and arrows.
Oh, and like I keep saying: the public option isn’t dead. In fact, impetus is growing.
Sarah’s appearance on Greta, confirming her intent to show up for the tea party convention:
Last, but certainly not least: Coal River Mountain, the last pristine peak in a region destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, is being defended by some very brave people. If you want to help, then click here.
Manufacturing Nontroversy
Jan 29, 2010 ACORN, Breitbart, James O'Keefe, nontroversy
Everyone wants to know whether Andrew Breitbart was involved in “Whodatgate,” the attempted wiretapping of a Senator in a Federal building. I say this is not mysterious; of course Brietbart is involved. After all, he admits to paying O’Keefe a salary (or “life rights,” whatever those are); and James O’Keefe hasn’t produced any new content for Brietbart’s BigGovernment.com since November, when he posted the last of the ACORN videos.
Basically, O’Keefe needed a new scoop. For some reason, he got the bright idea to involve himself in a really stupid scheme to access the phone lines of a federal building — an act that has resulted in the 25-year old being ordered to live with his parents while awaiting trial. Perhaps that is the most fitting punishment he could have received, since he evidently hasn’t finished growing up.
And poor Andrew, who has basically spent his entire life riding on the work of others, was going broke without a big source of traffic. After all, Victoria Jackson will only get you so many page loads. He needed a big score — a Drudge link. Which brings us to the excuse the defendant’s lawyer gave the AP, which Breitbart then dutifully reported as “news:”
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with a senator’s phones were just trying to record embarrassing undercover video of her staff ignoring phone calls from constituents angry that she supported health care reform, one of their attorneys said Thurday.
The four, including activist James O’Keefe, known for posing as a pimp and using a hidden camera to target the community-organizing group ACORN, were arrested Monday after targeting Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in a New Orleans federal building.
Attorney J. Garrison Jordan denied they were trying to disable or wiretap the phones in Landrieu’s office.
“You’re dealing with kids,” he said. “I don’t think they thought it through that far.”
Instead, Jordan said, they hoped to get embarrassing video footage of Landrieu’s staff handling constituent calls. Her office received complaints last month that callers opposed to her health care stance couldn’t get through.
Really? Callers couldn’t get through to a busy office in December, when everyone’s on Christmas vacation? Really? Scandal! Stop the presses! These lovable kids are heroes!
Just one question: why would they need to access the phone closet to do that, when you can just as easily hook up $20 worth of Radio Shack gear and record the phone calls from home?
Ponder that a minute, because it’s absolutely true. It’s also perfectly legal. Brietbart only made speculation worse with his epic breakdown on MSNBC yesterday:
Breitbart later posted an angry admission that he’d done no homework on Shuster prior to the interview. Unintentional hilarity is his forte:
So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”
It’s not Watergate junior, it’s Whodatgate. And oddly enough, Breitbart once hosted an entire series of dishonestly-edited and dubbed videos calculated to attack the reputation of a community service organization, then went on national television to suggest they contained evidence of criminal activity — and never once opined that Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity ought not to presume as they pleased.
Breitbart and O’Keefe were up to something, but it wasn’t journalism. They were out to make the news — to manufacture nontroversy. It bit them in the ass, and that is all.
Grabbing the Center
Jan 28, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Obama's Speeches, Obama's communication strategy, President Barack Obama, health care reform, republicans suck
Obama grabbed the political center last night — and Republicans played right into his hands with boorish behavior. They sat on their hands; as he spoke about tax cuts and banks and small business, the Democrats leaped to applaud. The Republicans realized the error only after being publicly ribbed by the president. They finally took part once Obama mentioned big business, at which point they became more enthusiastic than Democrats for several minutes.
The optics are awful for the Grand Old Party, but terrific for Obama. Video bites from last night will hammer the GOP from here to November; they are now on the wrong side of the populist zeitgeist. Justice Alito mouthing “that’s not true” as Obama decries the Citizens United decision is political gold: the conservatives are now the judicial activists. Rush Limbaugh will tell us today why Alito is right and Citizens is the greatest blow for freedom since Dredd Scott, but it won’t resonate. How can it, if Goldman-Sachs is a “person” now?
Losing the 59-seat Senate majority seems to have inspired a new approach to health care reform as well as financial reform. Ironically, “success” in Massachusetts may mean the GOP stands by helpless in February as a public option passes through budget reconciliation. But the subject was only a brief section of the speech, which brings out the usual complaints on the left. Michael Lind calls Obama’s extended passage about tax cuts in the stimulus bill
a complete rhetorical capitulation to the Right. To listen to Obama, the tax cuts were what saved the economy, not the Keynesian spending. This raises the obvious question: maybe instead of a stimulus, there should have been only tax cuts, as the Republicans argued all along! Maybe we should have elected John McCain after all!
Or, Obama understands that few Americans understand basic economics but they know tax cuts are good, and Republicans are supposed to like tax cuts but evidently don’t, which helps Democrats win. Here’s Jason Linkins on energy policy and the Republican response:
While Obama professed nominal support for his cap and trade plan, the fact that the President had also enumerated an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy independence sort of stole the wind from McDonnell’s sails in advance.
Indeed, that very passage has greens foaming at the mouth today. But once again, taking the center lets you do things like steal your opponent’s wind in advance; and in time, I’m sure the details of offshore drilling and new nuclear plants will turn out to be every bit as nuanced as the supposed “budget freeze” Obama promises. In a phrase, it’s more of that 11-Dimensional Chess the left hates.
The GOP watched its 2012 hopes begin to fade last night amid the ongoing tea party debacle, but the last people to see it are the progressives.
Bob McDonnell’s Tortured Response and the Origins of Cheneyism
Jan 28, 2010 The End of History, Underwear Bomber, dick cheney, torture
In his response to the president’s SOTU last night — before a curiously packed and well-coached statehouse — Virginia’s new governor took up the anti-Obama mantle. Not only did his remarks remarkably seem off-key, considering the president’s actual speech, but McDonnell’s message was utterly tone-deaf and media-blind. Overall, it was a good argument for the tradition of the SOTU response time being changed to allow a prepared rebuttal, or else simply allowing this tradition to die.
But McDonnell pushed a personal button, about which I must rant this morning:
We agree that victory there is a national security imperative. But we have serious concerns over recent steps the Administration has taken regarding suspected terrorists.Americans were shocked on Christmas Day to learn of the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit. This foreign terror suspect was given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen, and immediately stopped providing critical intelligence. (Emphasis mine)
Bullshit. Worse, it’s transparent bullshit stinking of Cheneyism. It’s a naked invocation of post-9/11 paranoia and the Pavlovian fear response: we can’t give the terrorists rights, or else they’ll blow up the United States with nukes. And of course, it’s also a flat-out lie: Abdul Mutallab immediately gave the intelligence that linked him to Yemen. That was probably about all he knew, since he hadn’t been a volunteer for martyrdom all that long. The boy’s something of a useful idiot, to all reports.
To be sure, he knows more than he thinks he knows. But not all that he knows is useful, and not everything he might think is true will turn out to be true. This is why the US Army’s Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogations (PDF) has always been quite clear about torture: it doesn’t work. Instead, professional interrogators are trained to ask questions. Not in a fantasy-TV Jack Bauer confrontation kind of way, but in a simple conversation. In short, to make a prisoner talk you just get them talking. It’s how suspects are interrogated in every police station in America — not because we’re too nice to torture Americans, but because it works a lot better than torture. Exhibit A:
“The quickest way to get most (but not all) captives talking is to be nice to them. But what does it mean to be “nice” to a subject under interrogation? … It means, ideally, getting to know the subject better than he knows himself and then manipulating him by role-playing, flattering, misleading, and nudging his or her perception of the truth slightly off center. The goal is to turn the subject around so that he begins to see strong logic and even wisdom in acting against his own comrades and cause.”
The information is then checked. When proven reliable, you can follow up with the detainee, who may still be ready to trade information. In other words, you establish a kind of relationship with the captive.
Cheneyists say this response is the wrong approach to an act of underpants terrorism. Instead of immediately processing and interrogating the street-level al-Qaeda volunteer about his contacts, we must bind him, fly him to points unknown, and visit him there with medieval tortures. We can only trust information that comes from putting the underpants bomber to the question instead of just asking the bloody questions.
On what planet does that make a damn bit of sense? In what universe?
The truth is that torture’s only benefit is visceral punishment — that endures until the subject breaks and confesses. But by this time, the object of their confession is to make the torture stop. Meanwhile, the severe and prolonged stress damages the detainee’s brain, especially his memory functions, leaving him prone to fantasy. This renders any information you might actually gain by the torture unreliable and probably useless. The detainee is going insane; he is no longer a source of intelligence — just confession.
One need look no further than the example of John McCain, who experienced waterboarding himself. As we all know, he gave up no useful information; and given that he’d been healing for a while before they dared do it, whatever information John McCain might have had was already irrelevant or out of date. So he made shit up; but the Vietnamese kept torturing him. Eventually, he confessed to being an “air pirate,” at which point they stopped.
That is the awful truth about torture: its objects are always, forever, and inevitably political. Cheney insisted on torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad several times a day until he gave up the Iraq-al Qaeda “link” the vice president so desperately wanted to have Powell deliver at the UN. The price has been thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars in debt in Quixotic pursuit of global fossil-fuel supremacy.
Torture is a sickness of mind that had supposedly been banished from the American world, and not just because it’s wrong but because it doesn’t provide useful or timely information. If you don’t believe me, then ask John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who once championed waterboarding and now admits it doesn’t work. Ask Matthew Alexander, whose interrogations resulted in the locating and killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Or juist read the damn field manual like I did.
Furthermore, the idea that Abdul Mutallab will somehow be more dangerous inside a Supermax prison than a cage in Cuba…well, it just doesn’t stand up to rational scrutiny. Moreover, I am past patience with media figures who entertain Cheneyan worries about the suspects turning their trials into media circuses when the media itself, and not the American court system, has the editorial prerogative to prevent that scenario.
The central tenet of Cheneyism comes from the Pentagon’s 1987 decision to stay out of the terrorism-fighting business. Until September 11th, 2001, American military culture considered terrorism a law enforcement problem — even as the American serviceman paid a price in blood throughout the nineties. Army and Navy brass practiced “force protection,” a wholly-defensive posture in which we took fire but offered none. This, too, will be a surprise to most minds raised on a diet of popular culture, but until 2001 the much-vaunted special forces had never, ever carried out an anti-terrorism mission. So the Cheney doctrine went to the opposite extreme: there was to be no more posse comitatus, the legal separation of military and civilian power the Pentagon invoked in passing up the war on terror prior to 2001. In fact, the entire legal and constitutional apparatus of American life — habeas corpus, the Geneva Convention, etc. — was cast aside, and to no good end, even as good old-fashioned interview and investigative techniques were breaking up plots.
But upon surveying the most recent successes in the “war on terror,” one finds that they are mostly a result of good law enforcement; Predator drone strikes are second. There are today thousands of terrorists being held safely in jails around the world, with hundreds in the United States. What part of this doesn’t make sense to the Cheneyists?
It is disturbing to realize that Cheneyists are still getting their bullet-points into the GOP agenda. It is even more disturbing to realize there are still idiots out there who think this extreme shift remains the only alternate option; the military has a role in combating terror, and it is to go where civilians cannot…when it is absolutely necessary to go there.
ADDING: Last night, lefties on Twitter snidely suggested Gitmo’s continued existence is a sign of bad faith by Obama. Actually, Obama was talking to the reason why Gitmo remains open; like much else, the problem is a Congress where reform goes to die. Anyone who counts themselves a “progressive” should realize the president is the least of our problems, especially when it comes to politics at the water’s edge.
Stupid in Alabama
Jan 28, 2010 Alabama politics, alabama, alabama constitution, alabama constitutional reform
Here’s an example of what I’m on about: the city of Florence, Alabama and the surrounding Lauderdale County rely on a 7-mill property tax to fund local education. This tax has to be re-voted on every so often; teachers always overwhelm the ambitions of anti-tax zealots and opponents of public education, yet hundreds of those people manage to show up at the polls and make things interesting in what ought to be a slam-dunk.
Mind you, Alabama has the lowest property taxes in the country. In order for Alabama to climb to the 49th place nationally, we would have to TRIPLE our millage rates. Meanwhile, ours is the most regressive income tax in the world — a flat tax would actually be more progressive than the current law, which taxes the poorest at ten percent and millionaires at three percent. Meanwhile, Alabama faces a gigantic hole in the state education budget due to an over-reliance on sales taxes.
But raise these issues in a public forum, and here’s what you’ll get: Alabama is a poor state. We can’t afford taxes. Never mind that education is the single most important factor in economic growth; this attitude has been passed down by the landowners behind our racist 1901 state constitution, who simply didn’t want to fund education for black children and poor whites. Never mind that Alabama’s poorest residents could certainly use an adjustment to the income tax scales — taxes’re bad, m’kay? is a constant refrain among reactionaries here.
So maybe you can understand why I have no patience for the progressives who whine that Obama hasn’t farted a socialist green-energy paradise out of his armpits yet. Anyone who’s lived in the Heart of Dixie for a while gains a new appreciation for the meaning of “progress.”
Morning Video
Jan 28, 2010 Morning Video
I’m kind of creeped out by this, frankly. The LAPD is running an ad campaign that elevates all crime to the level of terrorism. It’s the new reductio ad Hitlerum.
State Of The Union
Jan 27, 2010 Obama's Speeches, President Barack Obama, climate change, health care reform, public option
I’m fighting off some really nasty upper-respiratory tract stuff at the moment, but I’ll be watching the SOTU with interest. There’s been some developments in the health care battle today, with Ben Nelson flipping on reconciliation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities releasing a very interesting paper on the history of reconciliation (PDF), and sources in the House reporting that Pelosi has the votes to pass reform if the Senate steps up. Obama can rally his party with poll data showing that passing reform in general, and the public option in particular, are the way to win reelection.
Two-thirds of the speech will be on the economy and jobs creation. I expect Obama will refer to his discretionary spending freeze and perhaps a couple of programs that don’t work and ought to end (abstinence education, for example). But when he discusses green jobs and climate change, I wish the president would become the first SOTU-deliverer with an overhead projector:
Someone should challenge the denialists: are NASA satellites in on Teh Evil Plan™ too? How about the astronauts in the ISS taking pictures of the melting polar ice?
