Discussion: What Obama Didn't Talk About In His Final State Of the Union Address

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Discussion for article #244607

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“He condoned making political targets out of people “because of race or religion””

Think you meant “condemned” here.

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This speech was a big verbal spanking of the GOP, in public for all to see and I have a feeling most of it went very far over their heads.

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And therefore over the heads of the people who need to reached. Marquis of Queensberry in a bare-knuckle world.

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A republican I work with was bitching about Obama and one thing he complained about was that Obama got nothing done because he wouldn’t compromise. And he’s a VP in our company(son in law of the CEO!) and has an MBA from Duke. All I could think was, goddamn republicans really have the wool pulled tightly over their own eyes and they are doing it to themselves.

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They are also “doing it” to the rest of us who are not GOP. Such is life in the decline of the Empire - it sucks.

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I doubt it did

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I am posting this here, since there are no comment sections for Josh Marshall’s op eds.

His piece on the SOTU address contains a false statement that should not be allowed to pass unchallenged, since it is a central talking point of the right wing.

“It is going to be pretty hard to be as dominant as we were in the 1950s when most of the world was in ruins and we were basically manufacturing everything for everyone.”

This is absolutely untrue. We were manufacturing far more than anyone else, but it was almost entirely for domestic consumption. US exports in 1950 represented only 0.3% of the GDP, Germany imported essentially nothing from us. The notion that we were flooding the world with goods is actually absurd, since the rest of the world lacked money to buy them with.

This is very important because this falsehood is a mainstay of the right-wing’s claim that the rise of Middle Class in the 1950s and 1960s is an historical anomaly - never to be repeated, and useless as a guide to policy. It is easy to find Heritage Foundation papers making this a central talking point.

I wrote an extended piece on this with references and sent it to Josh. If anyone is interested I can repost the whole thing here (but since I sent is a “memo” to Josh, I thought perhaps that would not be kosher).

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Post it, careysub. I myself have taken many liberties with long, detailed posts.