Patterico's response

Patterico has posted the following about the SOTU:

The GOP has entrusted me with the solemn responsibility of responding to the remarks of the President of the United States in his State of the Union address. My video response is below.

Well put, sir.  Sums it up nice and quick.  Accurate, too.

CPAC

Daniel Hannan delivered a very timely and important speech at CPAC this week.  Though it is long, it's worth the time if you care about America.  Which this Englishman obviously does.



It is getting close to the time when it will be too late.  Remember that in November - and before.

The logic within the SOTU??

From Hugh Hewitt comes this logical arrangement of initiatives put forth in yesterday's State of the Union speech.  It's a bit long, but worth following.  Because it truly points out that the SOTU was nothing more than a laundry list of political talking-points and campaign slogans.  This was written by Clark Judge:


But let me get this straight:

1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky,

2) and they will be required (by the same committee) to give more home loans (meaning, it must be, to people who would otherwise not qualify for the loans, or else the government would not have to be involved) at lower rates (which means rates that do not compensate them as much as the market says they need to be compensated for the risks they are taking, all of which sounds like a new edition of the policies that brought on the financial collapse),

3) which must mean that they will have to pull back on risky lending someplace other than homes,

4) the only place that most banks would be able to pull back on riskier customers would be loans to small and new businesses,

5) but these are the businesses that have created just about all the jobs over the last 20 years and he said early in the speech he wants to encourage them,

6) so maybe their growth capital will come from selling stock to the kinds of people who invest in new and small businesses,

7) but through the Buffet Rule he’s going to double the tax rate on investment income for those people, meaning that, like the banks, they can’t be fully compensated for the risk of backing small and new businesses,

8) so they will not invest more in small and new companies but in big established firms,

9) so more of those small and new firms will have to turn to the government for capital,

10) which luckily he said would up its investing in early stage businesses with “the best” ideas,

Same ol', same ol'

Same old themes, same old rhetoric, same old "government is the answer" message.

Good thing he wore a different tie so we could tell the difference.

Juxtaposition

Sundancecracker over at The Last Refuge has this observation:

February 2nd 2012, Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address will occur on the same day.  This is an ironic juxtaposition of events.

One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to an increasingly insignificant creature of questionable intelligence for prognostication.

The other involves a groundhog.

Why couldn't I have been so observant?