Joni Ernst: I’m watching it too.
Painful.
ETA: Blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah.
The most wooden political speech I’ve ever seen.
Yeah…Even as a conservative, I had to like that one. A great response to the heckling, and he played it well…
“You’ll see a lot of more important work in this new Congress.”
[sigh] Joni/GOP, I wish I could you believe you this time, I really, really do. 
The way she stares into the camera, she’s really giving Michele Bachmann a run for her money.
Oh, good fuck, some intern wrote that three days ago. It’s okay, Joni. Just do what the men in the GOP tell ya ta do. It worked for Palin and Bachmann, you betcha! :rolleyes:
SIR BEDEVERE: And therefore?
I was going to force myself to listen to the whole thing, but when she referred to the ACA as a “failed policy” about three minutes in, there wasn’t much point in going further.
Burn her!
Believe her-It’s not like they could do any less.
hic
It’s a fair cop . . .
Complete transcript of 2015 SOTU address.
Highlights:
Obama promises to veto any bill that would repeal the ACA, repeal the new Wall Street rules, or “refight past battles on immigration.”
Proposes a budget that will lower middle-class taxes and allow tax credits for costs of children’s medical care.
Asks Congress to pass a paid-sick-leave bill.
Asks Congress to pass an equal-pay-for-women law.
Asks for a higher minimum wage (amount not specified).
Asks Congress to authorize free community college.
Calls for a “bipartisan infrastructure plan” to upgrade America’s ports, bridges, etc.
Asks for “trade promotion authority.”
Announces a new Precision Medicine Initiative, which appears to be mostly about funding new medical research.
Promises to “protect a free and open Internet.”
Calls on Congress to close tax loopholes regarding outsourcing/offshoring.
Asks for an AUMF against ISIL.
Calls on Congress to end the embargo on Cuba.
Promises to continue negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program, and to veto any bill imposing new sanctions.
Asks Congress to pass legislation to stop cyber-attacks and identity theft.
Discusses his Admin’s efforts to combat global warming, including deal with China; promises he will not let Congress “turn back the clock” on that.
Says he is determined to shut down Gitmo.
Concludes by generally calling for a “better politics” where “we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears.”
“Equal pay for equal work for women” could be a problem in that they would need to define “equal” work. Should the minimum-per-game WNBA wage be the same as the minimum-per-game NBA wage? IIRC, the guaranteed minimum NBA per-game salary is more than twice the maximum (as agreed by the WNBA Players Association) per-game WNBA wage. In the past, the demand has been “equal pay for comparable work”, but again, there’s no definition of “comparable” or even who gets to determine what comparable work is.
As for the infrastructure plan, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one get through Congress, but only if it includes Keystone XL authorization. Then it will be up to Obama to decide just how much he wants to “compromise”. (My guess; if he feels that it’s a choice between this and “no infrastructure bill, period,” then he’ll sign it.)
Hopefully, the Republicans won’t do something stupid like attach a repeal of ACA to it, although I don’t think it would get past a Democratic Senate filibuster if it did. Besides, they need to save the shenanigans for 2016, when they need to make Obama (and, by association, the Democratic Presidential nominee) look bad.
Equal pay legislation put forward in Congress generally excludes unionized employers and state agencies. It also usually exempts “highly compensated” employees, like most employment legislation. So the NBA and WNBA shouldn’t be affected in theory.
I thought Obama did okay. It was no “A More Perfect Union”. My wife (who is not political, just very annoyed at Republicans these days) was practically jumping up and down, though.
Ernst was bad, but she was superb if you compare her to Rubio and Jindal. I didn’t see her go for the off-screen water once.
Here’s the most important thing about this SOTU address, I think.
Put that way . . . Wow. Just, wow.
Critiquing Obama from a decent LW perspective, I have often found him wanting. Why didn’t he demand a “public option” in the ACA?! Why didn’t he prosecute the Wall Street malefactors?! Why the indefinite detentions and drone-strikes?!
But this explains a lot. Sometimes “the art of the possible” that is politics finds a truly great artist. I recall some pundits early in this Admin asking whether Obama was just flailing or “playing some seven-dimensional game of chess only he understands.” Well. There, above, is your seven-dimensional chess game, and Obama is winning it, which means we the people are winning it.
Because of the equal-pay-for-women thing, or something else?