It was quite a night for President Obama last night, as he stood in the halls of the very Congress that has been acting as an impediment to his administration almost since day one (when he could still “count on” the majority Democrats), and both gave them a good shellacking for their egregious intransigence as well as a roadmap for lifting America out of its malaise and bringing a modicum of respectability back to our governmental institutions.
And good luck with that, Mr. President.
For all of the forward-thinking proposals the president made last night, the party in opposition has not even the slightest bit of interest in seeing any of them carried through. That’s because the Republicans have long since abandoned any pretense of love of country in favor of ousting this president. They don’t even talk about how great America is anymore, so important is the job of unseating this so-called socialist, Islamic, anti-business and therefore anti-job creator in the White House. If America gets a black eye in the process, the Republicans couldn’t give a good God damn.
Speaking of black eyes, John Kerry looked like he’d seen better days last night. His face was mangled, and he had two shiners. As bad as he looked last night, it has been three weeks since he got that way, which should give some indication as to how bad he looked when it first happened. Kerry, who at 68 is still a regular hockey player (OMT’s buddy Skippy is a hockey player, and so we know full well the dedication and commitment these guys have for their sport), was involved in an on-ice mash-up in a hockey game around New Years, in which he broke his nose, resulting in that raccoon face, as well as some stitches. He ended up at the bottom of a pile-up on the ice. Kerry is apparently still a good hockey player, and regularly takes on guys decades his junior. Still, that kind of bravado is not without its risks, as Kerry proved to the nation last night.
Kerry’s two black eyes almost made up for the three missing black robes last night. For the second year in a row, Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas refused to appear with the rest of the Supremes at the president’s State of the Union address, in a fit of pique at a passing remark the president made at his 2010 speech to which the three activist justices took umbrage.
Here at OMT, we think that this kind of temper-tantrum is beneath the dignity of the United States Supreme Court. Although as far as dignity goes, these three particular justices are responsible for the greatest assault on the dignity of the high court as any justice since Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and for many of the same reasons, since these three stooges seem to be cut from the same mold as that ignorant bastard. This is particularly ironic in the case of Clarence Thomas, whom Taney would no doubt recognize as only 3/5 of a justice — a figure which pretty accurately gauges the quality of the justice that Thomas has issued in his tenure on the court. Scalia and Alito don’t even rate that high. Since the three of them are acting like children, we would recommend that they be spanked and sent to bed, except that sort of thing fits perfectly within Thomas’ sexual proclivities, and would thus be no punishment at all.
This business of releasing the president’s speech to the media ahead of time has had the unfortunate consequence of allowing the directors of the live coverage to focus the camera upon people just seconds before the president mentions them in his speech, something which gives the entire proceeding a canned, rehearsed quality that undermines its spontaneity, if you ask us. Like when the camera showed the North Carolina woman with the diamond stud in her nose sitting right beside Michelle Obama just before the president talked about how she’d been unemployed but got training and is now in a new job. Or when the camera landed on Steve Jobs’ widow seconds before the president mentioned his name. Of course, what he didn’t mention are all of those Apple iProducts that are manufactured in China. But he did say that he wanted give tax breaks to companies that brought jobs and products back to the United States, which is something Jobs’ successors are going to have to consider very seriously, given their track record of outsourcing and third world manufacturing. Not to mention all of those iGizmos that are assembled by children overseas, which fits more squarely into Newt Gingrich’s proposed child labor overhaul than it does with President Obama’s vision for the future.
Our overall impression of the president’s speech last night was that if the Republicans think that this president is going to be an electoral push-over this fall, they’re more out of touch with reality than we’ve ever given them credit for, and regular readers of OMT will know that we’ve given them plenty of credit for being out of touch with reality. The president last night aimed his speech directly at the 99% of Americans that are feeling left out of the American Dream. And we think that once this race settles down into a face off between the president and whichever whack-job the Republicans put forward (please, please let it be pompous, erratic, undisciplined, angry, racist, arrogant, anti-intellectual, grandiose, authoritarian, bi-polar, half-man/half-pig mutant hybrid zoophilic microcephalic psychopath and sneering, preening, opportunistic, divisive, self-aggrandizing, all pie-in-the-sky and no follow-through, manic-depressive, ethically-challenged, spendthrift, open-marriage advocate, perennially unfaithful serial husband and all-around überhypocrite and fuck-wad of the first order Newt Gingrich) the American people will stand up for what is fair and just for all. For all of their sneering, posturing, and engaging in lies and innuendo, all the Republicans can do is to make Americans feel better without actually making them better.
The Republicans offer only the politics of intoxication. And while spewing invective may make Americans feel better for a while, eventually they wake up the next morning and find not only that they are no better off, but they’ve got such a hangover that they can’t function. The Republicans have won a lot of elections that way, but this year they just might have burned through whatever good will they have left, except among the junkies of hate who are hooked on their message. Americans by and large are no longer interested in drowning out their sorrows in Republican hooch. They’re still reeling from the hangover in 2010, and now they’ve got temperance on their mind. The time has come to put the bottle away and get back to the business of getting this country back on its feet.
It’s no accident that the most famous clinic for substance abuse rehabilitation is named after the wife of a Republican president.
If Jerry Ford was enough to make Betty take to pills and the bottle, this latest crop of Republican presidential wannabees is enough to make even the most stalwart among us reach for the gas pipe.
You’ve been on a killer roll, my friend.