This will forever be one of my favorite pictures. Come back soon Gabby.
Oh Joe.
What do some of the GOP presidential hopefuls have to say about tonight’s State of the Union Address?
“This is the most activist, big government leftist president that has ever served in this country.” - Rick Santorum
Santorum called the President’s address tonight “a bunch of flowery rhetoric and all this stuff about all the things he has done.” He criticized President Obama’s time in office by drawing attention to Dodd-Frank, the nation’s debt, unemployment, “Obamacare,” and our country’s bond rating. [ABC News]
“Tonight, the president will explain it was all George W. Bush’s fault. This is the fourth year of his presidency, he needs to get over it.” - Newt Gingrich
He dropped another “Saul Alinsky radical” mention on the President, saying he “taught radicalism in Chicago.”
Gingrich couldn’t pass up another opportunity to bust out his professor creds, saying, “And unlike the president, I studied American history.” [LA Times]
“What he’s really offering are partisan planks for his re-election campaign. As I’ve traveled across the country, I’ve heard similar stories in virtually every corner of America, high unemployment, record home foreclosures, debt that’s too high, opportunities that are too few. This is the real state of our union. But you won’t hear stories like those in President Obama’s address tonight. The unemployed don’t get tickets to sit next to the first lady.” - Mitt Romney
In a “prebuttal,” Romney today called President Obama “divisive” and a “desperate campaigner-in-chief.” Like Gingrich, he said the President should not blame others for “how we got in this mess.” [CBS News]
Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly one trillion dollars more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest two percent of Americans. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, or do we want to keep our investments in everything else? Like education and medical research? A strong military and care for our veterans? Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both.
The American people know what the right choice is: so do I. As I told the Speaker this summer, I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors. But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me — and an awful lot of members of Congress — pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the ‘Buffett Rule’: if you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.
To close out, Obama again pulls out the Bin Laden hook he used at the beginning:
One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.
All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.Think this was totally the right way to intro — and end — his speech.
President BARACK OBAMA.
It’s like Tumblr wrote that joke, Mr. President. :-)
-
I’m confident that Tumblr would have written a better one
(via queenofthenorths)
Re: the Hill, President Obama says he wants to:
- ban insider trading by members of Congress (“send me a bill… and I will sign it tomorrow.”)
- “…limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.”
- require an up or down vote for all judicial and public service nominations within 90 days.
Not hard considering what Bush did to our reputation.
Love this line on personal responsibility: “They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit. That’s an America built to last. “
(via shortformblog)
