Impact of the First Obama State of the Union

[Aemilius Paulus]

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Obama=Ayers

Tehehehee

What does Ayers have to do with anything being discussed in this thread? DD, did you take your medication today?

No, DD is absolutely fine. You see, there is talk of Ayers writing the Dreams from my Fathers book, which is why DD made that comment. Yes, the talk is mostly right-wing nuts, but it is not as if they are baseless - some of their arguments do make sense, and hell, I am a liberal and a staunch Obama supporter, so it is not as if I have any reason to support them.

Some of the arguments centre around stylistics differences between the first book and the second - Audacity of Hope. I read both of the books, and there is a large difference between them, although it is difficult to say if it was stylistic and not simply a result of different objectives for the two books. Dreams from My Fathers was the more sophisticated of the two, namely its beginning chapters. Then it simply turned into a narrative, but in the beginning, it was quite eloquent.

A few points to note are that Obama was rather an uninspiring writer while he was in the Uni and professor-ing, as well as the fact that his explanation for when he found time to write Dreams were quite fishy. I do not believe he simply let someoen ghost-write the book with Obama's guidance, but I do not discount this. Remember John Kennedy - and he got a Pulitzer for his fake autobiography. The truth could be in teh middle as well - Obama could have significantly collaborated with someone else for Dreams as well.

As for Audacity, it was his 'stump speech' book and indeed, it bore little difference from his speeches. The first chapters of Audacity are sickeningly non-confrontational, 'everyone is good, smart, blah, blah' but then the book takes a turn and begins real talk, which is somewhat rather inspiring.

[Vladimir]

As for Audacity, it was his 'stump speech' book and indeed, it bore little difference from his speeches. The first chapters of Audacity are sickeningly non-confrontational, 'everyone is good, smart, blah, blah' but then the book takes a turn and begins real talk, which is somewhat rather inspiring.

Sorry, but I had a mental image of the Koran when I read this.

[Lemur]

Some of the arguments centre around stylistics differences between the first book and the second - Audacity of Hope. I read both of the books, and there is a large difference between them [...]

That might have something to do with DOMF being penned by a freshman Senator nobody knew, who was darn lucky to get any book deal at all. AOH, on the other hand, was written as a campaign book.

Occam's Razor rips the conspiracies to shreds. Of course, If we're going to speculate about whether a failed '60s radical ghost-wrote it, why stop there? I hear Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy secretly services the president's wife. Can you prove he doesn't?

[Aemilius Paulus]

That might have something to do with DOMF being penned by a freshman Senator nobody knew, who was darn lucky to get any book deal at all. AOH, on the other hand, was written as a campaign book.

Occam's Razor rips the conspiracies to shreds. Of course, If we're going to speculate about whether a failed '60s radical ghost-wrote it, why stop there? I hear Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy secretly services the president's wife. Can you prove he doesn't?

Sheesh, as I said, I was merely speculating. Could have been anything. I find it unlikely he ghostwrote one of his books, but far from impossible. All politicians love to do it, especially when much is at stake.

If anything, the fact that Kennedy did it makes it only more likely for Obama to follow the suit. The two even share quite a bit of similarities (one that comes the quickest to my mind is that both had families with young children to take care of when not engaged in politics, thus leaving them with little free time).

[KukriKhan]

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union,

I believe he failed there. He did not give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union. The State of the Union is: fractured. A bit less than half of the Union objects to the Fed's direction, a bit less than half agrees with the Fed's direction, and 10 percent or so claim to not know (this is my understanding; CountArach may find polls otherwise).

Instead, he focused on the next part:

...and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;

50 minutes (or 5 pages of text) got devoted to that. To be fair, he's not the first to use the SOTU for this - it has a long and (respectable/notorious) history.

My objection to the speech is his assumption of the knowledge of american's needs, wants, and requirements. Just like Bush, he assumes that since he got elected, by whatever neferious means, he has some kind of mandate, an order he must perform, some obligation of action...

In my humble opinion, such perceived mandates are ephemeral. And manufactured. And America knows it. And Washington doesn't know it, or won't accept it.

We have our agents: soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, under fire on our behalf in much of the world. Yet scarcely 3 minutes of a 58-minute speech is devoted to their (OUR!) aims. Except to mention that "don't ask, don't tell" is going away - which he could enact singularly as CinC, needing neither Congress nor SCOTUS.

In short, I was not inspired. My just-laid-off-from-Wal-Mart-probably-gonna move-into-my-house son and just-deployed-to-Afghanistan-after-two tours-in-Iraq soldier/son, both watched the speech and found little hope for change. We're gonna keep fighting wars, and down-sizing , 'til we get it right. Apparently.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I didn't watch it, but reading it later, his remark about SCOTUS was unclassy, and wrong as well.

CR

[Devastatin Dave]

I didn't watch it, but reading it later, his remark about SCOTUS was unclassy, and wrong as well.

CR

So another "You Lie!!" moment....
This man is dangerous.

[Lemur]

The cool thing is that DevDave didn't address my simple question in that entire rant. A+ for energy, F for content. And you should ease up on the homoerotic stuff, it's gonna make your missus nervous. Does "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" ring a bell?