*The complete transcript of the speech can be read here.
*Statist Quo, at National Review.
“Everything changes except President Obama. His agenda doesn’t change. He has had no second thoughts about the wisdom of his health-care policies, or any of his policies; resistance is always and only a reason for redoubling. Also unchanging is the condescension with which he articulates his agenda: He faulted himself for not explaining health care well enough to the easily confused American public. The same familiar strawmen dot the landscape of his rhetoric. (Republicans want to “maintain the status quo” on health care. This president is willing to listen to Republican ideas, just so long as he can then forget that he has ever done so.) Narcissism, too, is a constant companion. The opening of the speech, and the end, invited us to regard Obama as the embodiment of the nation. But it is not the country’s future that has suddenly come under doubt. It is his administration’s. It is not the country’s spirit that is in danger of breaking. It is contemporary liberalism’s.”
*Justice Alito mouths “not true” when Obama said the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC opens the door for foreign contributions to campaigns. The left is predictably up in arms, but there is just one problem; Obama’s statement wasn’t true. Obama was either ignorant of the facts or lying his ass off. Which one, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
RELATED: How’d He Do? By Randy Barnett.
“In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen?”
RELATED II: Surprises, by Jennifer Rubin.
“Obama proceeded to minimize a serious debate over the centrality of the First Amendment to the robust operation of our political system by resorting to a silly argument, from which serious citizens should surely turn away. He conveys not merely a lack of respect for a co-equal branch of government (and ignorance about the ruling he was vilifying) but for the Constitution itself, which he is sworn to uphold. For a lawyer, his conduct is embarrassing; for a president, it is inexcusable.”
*Obama Perpetuates the Myth of Bush as Free-Marketeer, by Ilya Somin.
*The Usual Straw-Men, by Victor Davis Hanson.
*A President Who Says No, by Jeff Anderson.
“The takeaway from President Obama’s State of the Union address is that the disconnect between the president and the American people has never been clearer.”
*Ten Whoppers, from the AP.
*Obama’s Reality Problem, by Michael Gerson.
“After a series of political humiliations, Obama called on Republicans to change their course. Facing a general revolt against Washington, he proudly took credit for posting the names of White House visitors online. Promising to change the tone in Washington, he managed to be petty, backward looking, defiant and self-justifying.”
