Once again we find ourselves at that point in time. The sitting president steps up to the podium, reads the teleprompter and delivers the latest fix of feel-good propaganda to try and soothe the masses.
It takes hardly any effort whatsoever to blow holes through practically every point that the selected spokesperson tried to make in this last State of the Union Address. It’s as though every statement is the exact opposite of reality. But sadly, Americans have grown so accustomed to sitting in front of their televisions and being told what to think that it seems many are still swallowing the steaming Bull$H#!TT that is being served up to them.
From Bloomberg headline summary…
- *OBAMA SAYS `THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS PASSED’
- *OBAMA SAYS BUDGET WILL BE PRACTICAL, NOT PARTISAN
- *OBAMA SAYS HE WILL VETO ATTEMPTS TO KILL OBAMACARE, DODD-FRANK
- *OBAMA CALLS ON CONGRESS TO EXPAND PAID SICK LEAVE
- *OBAMA SAYS HE’S SENDING CONGRESS PLAN FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE
- *OBAMA SAYS COST OF COMMUNITY COLLEGE WILL BE ZERO UNDER PLAN
- *OBAMA REITERATES CALL FOR TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY
- *OBAMA SAYS HE’S LAUNCHING INITIATIVE FOR CURING DISEASES
- *OBAMA CALLS ON CONGRESS TO HELP HIM CLOSE TAX LOOPHOLES
- *OBAMA REITERATES HE WANTS `FREE AND OPEN’ INTERNET
- *OBAMA: U.S. HAS LEARNED `COSTLY LESSONS’ IN FOREIGN POLICY
- *OBAMA SAYS RUSSIA IS ISOLATED, `ITS ECONOMY IN TATTERS’
- *OBAMA: IRAN SANCTIONS ALL BUT GUARANTEE NUKE TALKS WILL FAIL
- *OBAMA SAYS HE WILL VETO ANY NEW IRAN SANCTIONS BILL
- *OBAMA: NOTHING IS GREATER THREAT TO FUTURE THAN CLIMATE CHANGE
First and foremost, contrary to what has been trumpeted from the establishment and their PR mouth-pieces in mainstream media, nothing from the crisis of 2008 has actually been fixed. The issues have merely been papered over and patched up with band-aids, duct tape and gum. The malinvestment, leveraged risk, bad bets, insolvency of banks, derivatives, outrageous levels of unmanageable debt, blah blah blah… are all much worse now.
We are constantly being urged to believe that the economy is really starting to pick up steam and chugging along on all cylinders. This is what, year six? The stock market cheerleaders on the financial networks are constantly mis-quoting, mis-interpreting, massaging and twisting data to support their smoke-and-mirrors illusionary tale. The government and its agencies do a fine job of cooking the books and changing formulas to keep up appearances.
It is all rather Orwellian if you open your eyes wide enough.
Before we get into the State of the Union Address, let’s review the fallacies of the recovery tale.
(for more details and facts to back these points, please see numerous previous posts)
- Jobs & Unemployment – the establishment continues to peddle the false narrative of the unemployment rate at a ridiculously low level of 5.6%. That number, as it was once calculated would have meant “normal” maximum employment. They just don’t count everyone! Anyone with half a brain and cognitive thinking ability knows that with a Labor Participation rate at a 30 year low of 62%…..do the math!. It’s closer to 30% than it is to 5%.
- Most of the jobs created have been low-wage service jobs, such as waiters, bartenders and retail associates.
- Also a majority of new jobs have been taken by those in the 55 yrs old and older demographic, since many cannot retire with NEAR ZERO INTEREST on their savings.
- The financial networks’ stock market cheerleaders love to point to the inflated stock market. Again, anyone with a brain knows that this is due to the free & easy money from the Fed jacking up asset prices.
- Like unemployment, the calculation for GDP has also been reformulated to result in rosier-feeling figures- so that is also a load of cr@p. (last quarter’s wonderfully larger-than-expected number was due mainly to the added costs of Obamacare-they didn’t mention that detail very clearly on TV)
- As the lowest rates in hundreds of years (that are punishing savers), cannot resuscitate the real estate and housing markets, these same low rates are being used to juice car sales. To prop up the auto industry, tapped-out consumers who cannot afford the purchase prices of new cars are being lured in with no-money down, sign-and-drive leases or sub-prime loans extended out to 6,7 and 8 years. This is also starting to backfire, resulting in record numbers of delinquencies.
- And in a last-ditch effort to once again stir-up some cheap credit in the sub-prime housing market, mortgages are being offered to those with as little as a 3% down payment…………pathetic!
We could go on…………Let’s get to the Speech.
‘Everything Is Awesome’ SOTU Post-Mortem:
from zerohedge: Some color…
“The shadow of crisis has passed” – so why are Treasury yields at record lows and why does The Fed have ZIRP and keep threatening QE on every 5% drop in stocks?
“our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999”
“Wages are finally starting to rise again.” – well hope is…
“Wages are finally starting to rise”
“Middle Class Economics” – How’s that working out?
“Cost of community college for all will be zero” – yeah that didn’t work out so well did it…
“Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters.”
Countries that have “isolated” Russia shown in blue 
It’s ALL LIES
Star Tribune Fails to Reveal Local Woman Featured at SOTU Was Democrat Operative
What a sweet story. A local struggling mom writes a letter to the President and she gets not only a lunch meeting with him but later gets featured in his State Of The Union speech. A very touching story about a regular woman…who “coincidentally” was a Democrat operative. However, the Minneapolis Star Tribune very “mysteriously” left this very important fact out of the story about her written by Allison Sherry.
Unmentioned in the White House bio of Erler is that she is a former Democratic campaign operative, working as a field organizer for Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.)
…She was a plant. She’s a former Democrat campaign staffer for Senator Patty Murray. She has been used as a plant prior to this night by Obama for the exact same purpose. She’s not a real success story. She is bought and paid for by the Democrat Party. And she had a job last night. She was assigned to portray an average American citizen seated next to Michelle Obama during the State of the Union show. Why do I want to watch this garbage, folks?
• source: newsbusters.org
The Biggest State Of The Union Lies
from Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange
State of the Union: Barack Obama Rebutted!
from Stefan Molyneux of FreeDomainRadio
112 UNKEPT PROMISES FROM EARLIER OBAMA SOTU ADDRESSES
The numbers aren’t pretty. From 2009 through 2014, we count 112 promises that to date remain unfulfilled.
We should also note that many of these promises are duplicated from one year to another. For example, every year he has pledged to pass comprehensive immigration reform, overhaul corporate taxes, reduce regulations, and close Guantanamo Bay.
2009
1. The stimulus bill will create 3.5 million jobs over the next few years, 90 percent of which will be in the private sector.
2. Create program that will enable Americans facing foreclosure to lower their mortgage payments and save their homes.
3. Double the supply of renewable energy within the next three years.
4. The “largest ever” federal spending program on science will yield breakthroughs in energy, medicine, science, and technology.
5. Lay down 1,000s of miles of power lines to connect Americans’ homes to these new sources of energy.
6. Reduce Americans’ energy bills by “billions of dollars.”
7. Cure cancer “in our time.”
8. Use stimulus funds to spend on preventive health care, which will get federal health spending “under control.”
9. Use the savings that result from the stimulus’ reform of health-care to reduce the deficit.
10. Cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.
11. Go “line by line” through the federal budget to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs – saving $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
12. Never raise taxes “a single dime” on any family earning less than $250,000.
13. Stop the growing cost of Medicare and Social Security.
14. Make Social Security sustainable.
15. Create tax-free savings accounts for all Americans.
16. Close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
2010
17. Use stimulus funds to build a high-speed railway in Florida.
18. Research funds from the previous year’s stimulus will cure cancer, lead to “the cheapest solar cells.”
19. Building a new generation of nuclear energy plants.
20. Passing a climate-change law that will make clean energy profitable
21. Passing health-reform that lets Americans keep their doctors and their plans.
22. The health-reform law will reduce costs for “millions” of families and businesses
23. The health-reform law will bring down the deficit $1 trillion over the next 20 years.
24. Starting in 2011, government spending “ will be frozen for three years.”
25. Cut programs we don’t need to maintain a balanced budget.
26. Veto spending bills that don’t adhere to balanced budgeting.
27. Go through budget “line by line” to eliminate programs that we can’t afford and don’t work.
28. Create a bipartisan fiscal commission; the recommendations of which he’ll enact.
29. Restore the pay-as-you-go budgeting rules.
30. Create a website that publishes every lawmakers’ earmark requests.
31. Never give up “ trying to change the tone of our politics.”
32. Pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
33. Secure America’s borders.
34. Enforce existing immigration laws
2011
35. More nuclear power, more natural gas, more wind and solar.
36. Pass comprehensive immigration reform.
37. Secure America’s borders.
38. Enforce existing immigration laws.
39. Reduce unemployment by increasing the number of people working on infrastructure projects – ensuring these projects are “fully paid for.”
40. Recruit private sector financing to assist these infrastructure projects.
41. Projects will be prioritized by importance, not by politics.
42. Give 85 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years.
43. Within the next three years, enable 98 percent of Americans to receive high-speed wireless Internet.
44. Lower the corporate tax rate and eliminate loopholes.
45. Reduce business regulations restraining growth and investment.
46. Starting this year, freeze domestic spending for the next five years.
47. ObamaCare will slow rising costs of health-insurance premiums.
48. Enact medical malpractice tort reform.
49. Consolidating various federal departments to streamline federal bureaucracy and ensure it’s “more competent and more efficient.”
50. Create website that lists all federal spending.
51. Veto every bill that contains earmarks.
2012
52. Reduce corporate income taxes.
53. Consolidate federal jobs-training programs – creating a single website that makes all information about these programs available in one place.
54. Convert federal unemployment insurance into a system that focuses on finding the unemployed jobs.
55. Enact comprehensive immigration reform.
56. Force all high schools to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18.
57. Open more than 75 percent of off-shore U.S. territory to drilling.
58. Go “all out” on every type of energy.
59. Take “every possible action” to expand natural gas production.
60. Ordering “every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense.”
61. Create “financial crimes unit” to crack down on white-collar crime.
62. Work with Congress to procure power to consolidate federal bureaucracy.
63. “End the notion that political parties must be engaged in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction.”
2013
64. Reform Medicare and Medicaid to save as much as was proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission.
65. “Reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies.”
66. Raises taxes on the wealthiest seniors.
67. Bring down health-care costs by changing the way the federal government pays for Medicare.
68. Eliminate loopholes and deductions for the “well off.”
69. Enact comprehensive tax reform that brings down the deficit and encourages job growth.
70. Cut “red tape and speed up new oil and gas permits.”
71. Create an “energy security trust.”
72. Create a “fix it first” program that will direct the unemployed to the highest priority programs.
73. Make “high quality” preschool available to every child in America.
74. Require that aid to colleges be distributed according to the value they impart upon students.
75. Pass comprehensive immigration reform.
76. Raise the minimum wage to $9/hour.
77. Create a tax incentive for companies to hire the long-term unemployed.
78. Create a program to put people back to work by rebuilding vacant homes in rundown neighborhoods.
79. Enact new tax credits for businesses that hire and invest.
80. Eliminate the marriage penalty for low-income couples.
81. Encourage fatherhood through tax policy adjustments.
82. By the end of 2014, end the war in Afghanistan.
83. Never make promises the government can’t actually keep.
84. Keep the promises already made.
2014
85. Lower corporate income taxes, close loopholes.
86. Use the money saved from corporate tax reform to finance new infrastructure spending.
87. Slash bureaucracy through executive orders.
88. Create an additional six “high tech manufacturing hubs” in 2014.
89. “Do more” to help entrepreneurs and small business owners.
90. Use government research funds to create entirely new industries – like vaccines that adapt to evolving bacteria, and inventing material thinner than paper but stronger than steel.
91. Pass a patent reform bill.
92. Use executive orders to cut red tape to enable factories to be built that are powered by natural gas.
93. Reform taxes so that fossil fuel companies are taxed more and “ fuels of the future” are taxed less.
94. Enact new fuel-efficiency standards for trucks.
95. Pass comprehensive immigration reform.
96. Consolidate federal jobs training programs, helping match people with skills to jobs they can fill.
97. Reform unemployment insurance to encourage Americans to return to the workforce faster.
98. Assemble a coalition to help more kids access pre-K education.
99. Pass the “Equal Pay Act” for women.
100. Raise the minimum wage to $10.10
101. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit
102. Reform the tax code to help lower-class Americans save
103. Give every American access to “an automatic IRA on the job.”
104. Ensure Americans never have to wait more than a half hour to vote.
105. Pass legislation that will prevent mass shooting tragedies.
106. End the Afghan war by the end of 2014.
107. Reform NSA surveillance programs.
108. Close Guantanamo Bay Prison in 2014.
109. End the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
110. Ensuring the Iran will stop installing advanced centrifuges.
111. Be the “first” to call for more sanctions if Iran doesn’t abandon nuclear program.
112. Reform Veterans Affairs so that vets no longer have to deal with backlogs and instead receive the health care that they need.
• source: grabien.com