The President will give his annual State of the Union address tonight. Expect two things:
1. Bogus promises:
(click on image for more)
2. An ‘extremely aggressive and partisan’ speech:
If it weren’t for Woodrow Wilson, I’d be able to watch ‘Vegas’ on Tuesday night. Citizen Kane‘s on TCM tonight, though.
If you read or watched the SOTU, all you can conclude is that the words spoken are out of touch with reality.
Fact Checking the SOTU: Corporate Taxes
Let’s do some fact checking on President Obama’s corporate tax comments in last night’s State of the Union.
Claim: “Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: There are no such breaks. Instead, we punish U.S. and foreign businesses for investing and creating jobs here.
Claim: “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it.”
False: There is no such tax deduction.
Claim: “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: America is not a prison camp. Besides, imposing a 40-percent tax rate on corporations that invest here is not a “fair share.”
Claim: “From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.”
False: We’ve already got a corporate “alternative minimum tax,” and it’s an idiotic waste of accounting resources that ought to be repealed.
Clearly, Obama can not run on his record,
And that doesn’t count the recycling,
So he’ll blame Congress, even when This President has been “obstructed” less than anyone since LBJ.
People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work.
(h/t Instapundit)
As for the energy part, check out what the Institute for Energy Research has to say.
While you’re at it, Warren Buffett profited from the Obama administration’s decision to deny the Keystone Pipeline. Guess whose secretary was sitting next to the First Lady?
UPDATE,
TigerHawk put the SOTU through the shredder. Go read it all
Chris Matthews Wednesday night,
The Daily Show last night,
Via Instapundit, Cato Institute Scholars Analyze the 2010 State of the Union Address
Meanwhile, Marc Thiessen looks at the national security question:
the president’s brief discussion of terrorism focused not on what he was doing to defend the country but was, rather, a vigorous defense of himself. His first words on the subject were a chastisement of those who would dare criticize his handling of terrorism, declaring that “all of us love this country” and warning his Republican critics to “put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.” It’s all about him. No acknowledgement of how close we came to disaster or praise for the brave passengers who subdued the terrorist. No, only this message for his critics: If you question the wisdom of telling a captured terrorist “you have the right to remain silent,” you are really questioning the president’s patriotism and engaging in childish taunts.The fact is, the American people have real concerns about Obama’s approach to terrorism. They do question the wisdom of eliminating CIA interrogations, closing Guantanamo Bay, bringing the terrorists held there to this country, putting Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and his cohorts on trial in civilian courts, and giving captured terrorists Miranda rights after 50 minutes of questioning. Instead of acknowledging these concerns, Obama dismissed them. It was strange, defensive, arrogant — and un-presidential.
Or, as Michelle Obama’s Mirror put it,
Summary of the big read in a half dozen wordsor less: insincere, preachy, condescending, immature, petulant and smirky.
And not what the Union needs.
NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK UPDATE
LANGUAGE WARNING – this link is not suitable for work:
Nobody can eviscerate a rara avis the way Ace can (h/t Larwyn).
And don’t bother reading Florence of Arabia, either.
From Obama’s speech:
It’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people.
Justice Alito mouthed “Not true” to that statement:
Bradley Smith explains why the President is wrong:
Tonight the president engaged in demogoguery of the worst kind, when he claimed that last week’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, “open[ed] the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”The president’s statement is false.
The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making “a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election” under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any “expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication… .”
This is either blithering ignorance of the law, or demogoguery of the worst kind.
It was certainly unexpected (to borrow a frequently used word) to have a President badmouth a Constitutional decision: Randy Barnett,
In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.
In that sense, you can call Obama’s speech “historic”.
More discussion on the State of the Union Address with special guest Moe Lane in this morning’s podcast at 11AM Eastern.
From Jawa, via Larwyn.
