state of the union

PolitiFact is back at it again, showing that they don't even know the meaning of fact. Tuesday night they gave President Obama a half true for this statement in the SOTU:

in the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005

PolitiFact originally called that only half true but now have changed it to mostly true, with this editor's note:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our original Half True rating was based on an interpretation that Obama was crediting his policies for the jobs increase. But we've concluded that he was not making that linkage as strongly as we initially believed and have decided to change the ruling to Mostly True. The original article is archived here.

Here's what they originally nailed Obama on:

As for whether 2011 was the best job-producing year since 2005, he’s right if you’re counting private-sector jobs, and slightly off if you’re counting all jobs.

But the President specifically said business, meaning private sector. He didn't at all mention government jobs. This is back to the definition of what "is" is.

So what is PolitiFact dinging him on now? Here we go back to the updated article:

Finally, there's another dimension. In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs "before our policies were in full effect." Then he describe the subsequent job increases. This suggests that he’s taking a degree of credit for the job growth, which runs counter to the reality that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the blame or all the credit for changes in employment.

Last night’s State of the Union address by President Obama received some of the highest marks ever. One poll has 91% of the viewers approving of what the President said, while another had the approval at 84%. A vast majority of this country likes the plans the President laid out and that’s a number you just can’t ignore.

Or can you?

Well if you look around at the right wing sites today, you will quickly see them dismissing the speech:

If you were expecting a moderate Obama or a bold Obama, you were disappointed, most likely, by Tuesday's State of the Union Address. In a nutshell: Obama proposed a ton of new domestic spending, promised to freeze discretionary spending (attained by savaging defense), abstained from offering specifics on entitlement reform and largely ignored major foreign policy changes. Moreover, the delivery was so listless that this State of the Union address likely garnered less applause than any address in recent memory.

I didn’t know the “applause-o-meter” was the key to success in SOTU addresses. The last SOTU address that saw poll numbers like this was in 2002, right after 9/11.

President Obama laid out a clear plan for a successful America last night. The Republicans won’t have anything to do with it simply because Obama laid it out. Numerous polls have already shown that the honeymoon is over with the Republican controlled House, and with the support the President saw from his speech, fighting the plans laid out will help keep the newly found Republican power in check. As matter of fact it could lead to a one term win for them.

Rob Diamond, a Navy veteran and Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, noticed something interesting with the Republican response to the State of the Union address:

Notice who is sitting directly behind McDonnell on his right side? You have an Army Staff Sergeant in full dress uniform. As Rob points out:

Slight problem, you see. That is probably against the law.

Look it up for yourself right here in the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive entitled "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces." The purpose of this DoD Directive is to mirror the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in partisan political activity in an official capacity. Since a DoD Directive is considered to be in the same category as an order or regulation, and military personnel violating its provisions can be considered in violation of Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our Republican friends may have just caused this brave young soldier to break the law. Thank you for that, Governor McDonnell.

This really seems like a game of politics to me:

resident Barack Obama will call in his State of the Union address for a three-year freeze on spending for many domestic programs as part of his strategy to rein in the deficit, administration officials said.

The proposal, which wouldn’t affect spending on national security, would save an estimated $250 billion over a decade and reduce the deficit by $10 billion to $15 billion in 2011, according to the two officials, who briefed reporters on the plan. Last year’s budget shortfall was a record $1.4 trillion.

Obama will unveil the plan in his address to a joint session of Congress tomorrow night and include it in the fiscal year 2011 budget he’s set to deliver to lawmakers Feb. 1, the officials said.

Then you got the Republicans questioning the move:

It’s looking like the health care bill may not hit the President’s desk until after the State of the Union address:

The White House privately anticipates health care talks to slip into February — past President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address — and then plans to make a “very hard pivot” to a new jobs bill, according to senior administration officials.

Obama has been told that disputes over abortion and the tight schedule are highly likely to delay a final deal, a blow to the president, who had hoped to trumpet a health care victory in his big speech to the nation. But he has also been told that House Democratic leaders seem inclined, at least for now, to largely accept the compromise worked out in the Senate, virtually ensuring he will eventually get a deal.

If they are planning on conference to take this long, then there must be some serious differences anticipated between the House and Senate. All I can say is “Go House!”

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It’s been over a week now since some hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit surfaced showing that researches sexed up some data; something the right is calling “climategate” and proof that global warming is a hoax. Since then the right has complained nonstop about the lack of media coverage on this non-story.

Let me take a moment and remind everyone of an actual event of lying. This act didn’t involve some scientists locked up in an office somewhere, just trying to make their data show a stronger case for what it already proved. This is a case with much more dire consequences.

George Bush engaged in the biggest act of lying to the world in history. He and his administration mislead the entire planet into believing that Saddam Hussein had the weapons to destroy the planet, as well as some how being involved in the 9/11 attacks. One of the basis of their lies was even a forged document that George Bush used in his State of the Union Address, saying that Saddam was trying to get yellow cake uranium from Niger.

Congress can give the telecom companies immunity from criminal and civil prosecution for illegally tapping the phones of millions of citizens.

So why can’t Congress offer a sort of immunity to AIG for not paying up on these so called “contracts”?

I guess our constitution just isn’t as important as the people who helped run AIG into the ground. Now that is a sad state of the union.

Ok I am impressed:

Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:

Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...

More like this please?