.Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
Sound good.
But sounding good has always been an Obama strength and why he is president. But actually doing good, hasn’t been an Obama strength.
Why, because Obama doesn’t have a mind or convictions of his own, instead he is presiding more as a judge (listening and swayed by “winning” augments from wall street exec, war eager chicken-hawks, citizen phone tapping advocate, keeping Gitmo open, not prosecuting Wall street criminals,).
Barking under wrong tree you are…
Obama has strong convictions, which he hides as much as possible (want examples of no one swaying him: gay marriage 2008 vs. 2012, gun control pre-2008 vs. 2008 vs. 2013…). He has Progressive convictions. They include (your list):
-Public-private-partnership (fascism) when it comes to business. Wall street pays him to get to office, he gives them benefits as long as they patronize his business directives… The root danger to economy from Progressives.
-Perpetual state of war as an excuse for Progressive control agenda and police society they want. No war, no danger, no power over us.
-Progressives are the ones who want to know what everyone does and thinks 24/7 so that they can control it and mold it to their vision.
-Keep Gitmo open as a testbed for what can be done to disobedient citizenry if they are not Progressive enough as observed in the previous point.
-You mean like John Corzine, man he wanted to appoint as most trusted on economy… Man who by every law in the books should be in jail without bail. Who is not even prosecuted (as he contributed to Obama and followed orders). They are his pals. Just he is good pretending that they are not. Except in action.
Absolutely. The guy is no fool.
>Public-private-partnership (fascism) when it comes to business. Wall street pays him to get to office, he gives them benefits as long as they patronize his business directives…
Yup. Here’s JP Morgan:
In Dimon’s eyes, higher capital rules, Volcker, and [over the counter] derivative reforms longer-term make it more expensive and tend to make it tougher for smaller players to enter the market, effectively widening JPM’s “moat.” While there will be some drags on profitability – as prices and margins narrow, efficient scale players like JPM should eventually be able to gain market share.
It sounds good, because Obama has now come in as the second dumbest State of the Union president, just ahead of George Bush, the older one.
James Madison was #1 with a score of 21.7, while Obama is a 9.2. Bill Clinton was third worst at 9.8, LBJ and GWB were right there at 10.
New suggestion that annual physicals are a bad idea. First we were told that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit. Then we were told that by increasing preventive medicine you would lower costs. Instead we are seeing preventive care declared not cost effective, predictable in an environment where you want to restrict the amount of care provided due to lack of supply.
Still watching it but as expected, a powerful SOTU that is action specific and covering all the issues we care about.
Still waiting for his message on gun control to see if Ted Nugent, a draft-dodger who threatened the President is sitting in the audience in his filthy jeans and farm hat.
Watching Marco Rubio, hand picked GOP bot to put a new face on the old angry white man party.
And the Democrats continue to fool the simple mind that they are not racist. The DNC is the party of the KKK. Free your mind.
Yes. In your bubble , I’m sure that’s the case
“The era of big government is over”
Bill Clinton, 1996
“The era of big government is here again”
Barack Obama, 2013
The era of big government was created long before either of them and is not party dependent.
I don’t recall those Obama quotations. According to my fact checker, that’s a lie . If so, anything you say for now on is suspect.
Oh please don’t hold everything I say suspect. What will I do if Dallas doubts my veracity?
Don’t make me go all CAPS LOCK ON YOU
On global warming/climate change/ now climate chaos, Obama misrepresents the science, as there has been no increase in hurricanes and other disasters. It’s not even clear Sandy was a hurricane rather than a tropical storm.
$9 an hour minimum wage would cause even more unemployment on top of the unemployment created by his health care law and regulations.
Expanded pre-school is a bad idea. Better idea is to eliminate Head Start, as studies show it makes no difference long-term.
A $9 an hour minimum wage would cause even more unemployment
Did Obama actually propose that in the speech?
Right now, young people have a hard enough time getting jobs.
If you don’t give kids jobs, they don’t learn work-ethic and working as a team and the idea of showing up on time. And instead many of them will be disaffected and end up doing the wrong things and we spend a fortune in police/prison/etc to avoid that.
If you don’t give kids jobs, they don’t learn work-ethic and working as a team and the idea of showing up on time.
Interesting. I’ve noticed that the younger engineers I hire typically do need more “training” these days in the work ethic arena. I’ve never understood where the lack of basic work skills came from.
I’ll have to consider this. It might change how I approach things in the future. I’ve always know that a high minimum wage discourages hiring temporary workers but I’ve never connected that to a lack of a basic work ethic.
Why would anyone have a work ethic at all in this environment when the Progressives throw all kinds of benefits out to people.
The new generation doesn’t give a shit about working because they know Uncle Sugar will give it to them for free.
Which progressives are those? The repubes or the dumb-o-craps?
Sincerely, someone who knows what the word actually means?
Whaaaa. The negro is responsible for our kid’s shitty work ethic. Whaaa
D, you can only pull the race card so many times before it gets monotonous. You aren’t doing the negro any good by doing this all the time. If anything, you are pointing something out society, in general, is trying to overlook.
Do you WANT people to look at him that way? If so, don’t be bashful about it — make your case without any question of what you are trying to do. Call him nappy headed, flat nosed, and liver lipped.
From a personal perspective, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what his true color is because all I see is red, as in the commie shade.
Coming at the very end of the season. “Sandy” wasn’t as massive as it was because of more heated air, than usual. It was the result of mixing with much cooler air, coming from the northwest. Causing massive amounts of rain. But NOT, stronger wind velocities. And this tends to contradict blaming its strength on Global Warming. But not Climate Change, if that also includes the planet cooling down more than is seasonal. Frankly, I think it was all just a case of bad timing, for humans that is.
Classic George W. Obama speech (i.e. Nothing to See Here).
Partisan idiots will love or hate it. Rational people realize it was a waste of their time and they didn’t watch other than entertainment value for all the drinking game possibilities.
Rational people tune into what the world’s most powerful person of the world’s most powerful nation has to say.
Dumb ass sheep tune out and wait for someone to think for them.
And what did he say? Anything new? The speech is released prior to the event and every sentenced is analyzed by people from all sides.
The best description of this speech and most SOTU’s going back 60 years is “meh”.
“Won’t add a dime to the dedficit.”
We heard that when he was campaigning the first time for president, and he added a trillion dollars to the deficit.
When you have deficits of over a trillion dollars, you don’t brag that your proposals won’t add a dime to the deficit. That means you still have deficits of one trillion dollars.
Whaaa. The communist POTUS won’t suspend entitlement payments and pay bills to fix the deficit. Whaaa
You said Republicans should stand for fiscal responsibility like in the old days, but never answered the question as to whether they should support Obama’s budget with a deficit of a trillion dollars, give or take a few hundred billion.
Never mind your nonsense ” trillion dollar deficit package”.
They won’t support Obama in any case because they’re hamstrung by their pledge to the 1% for continued tax breaks and their desire to give the military an open check book.
True fiscal responsibility in these difficult times is to raise revenue (taxes) and to cut spending – including all the sacred cows like the military and yes, entitlements.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/
As you can see, spending has dropped, on average as a percentage of GDP, in every category EXCEPT entitlements.
Your argument doesn’t scan.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-gov4/16fivethirtyeight-gov4-blog480.jpg
We don’t have a revenue problem.
We have a spending problem.
You do realize that we have an aging population problem, right? I’m assuming you’ve heard of the baby boom and the like?
So, the bottom line is that choices have to be made on where we prioritize spending, how we tax the wealth (which is concentrated at the top) and how many places we’d like to be the world policeman.
Yes, we have a revenue problem in addition to a spending problem. We’re in a time of high unemployment, meaning less people are also paying taxes and more people are drawing unemployment checks.
The notion we don;t have a revenue problem only exists in the Teapublican bubble.
I believe that you believe that. It’s like the religious nuttballs. I also believe that they believe in ghosts.
You do realize that this aging population is fucked no matter how you look at it, right?
If you think that taxing is the solution, you are in for a rude awaking.
Companies (and their owners) don’t pay taxes. Consumers do.
So by increasing my taxes, you are only making those who buy from me pay more. That aging population is in that group you feel so strongly about.
You want trickle down? That’s your trickle down.
If you want people to be able to afford things, then you need to stop taxing so frakking much.
Everybody I know in my industry just raised their rates an average 10% starting Jan 1. When’s the last time you bought a loaf of bread or gallon of milk or lb of hamburger? Have you noticed how the prices have gone up? Do you think you are the only one paying for the increased prices?
Well I was responding to your discovery that “spending has dropped, on average as a percentage of GDP, in every category EXCEPT entitlements”.
No that we agree that we don’t have a spending problem because it has actually dropped, then we address the reason why entitlements have gone up. It’s because you and the rest of baby sheeple boom are getting older.
So, it’s a matter or reallocating resources. We can rebuild Iraq and buy shit from China (or) we can pull back on protecting the world empire, build infrastructure so Alabama isn’t a shitty place to build an iPhone and raise the sheeple min retirement age.
No that we agree that we don’t have a spending problem because it has actually dropped, then we address the reason why entitlements have gone up. It’s because you and the rest of baby sheeple boom are getting older.
Actually, it’s gone down because the entitlement sending has quadrupled. It had to come from somewhere.
The spending problem is in the free stuff.
Did you even look at the graphs?
So, it’s a matter or reallocating resources. We can rebuild Iraq and buy shit from China (or) we can pull back on protecting the world empire, build infrastructure so Alabama isn’t a shitty place to build an iPhone and raise the sheeple min retirement age.
If we cut out ALL non-entitlement spending, it still wouldn’t pay for what we have promised. There is no more money. Where are you going to get it? The bottom tiers (I’ll let you decide what they are) are tapped. Raising their taxes is not going to make things easier. Unless you plan on nationalizing all corporations, you can’t control what people charge for their goods and services. And those people who make things are not going to do it for free so they are going to raise their prices. This is going to put even more pressure on the lower tiers.
Combine that with the inflationary tactics of the Fed and their buddies and you have the perfect storm.
You really don’t see that? I have a hard time believing that you don’t understand greed enough to put two and two together.
Tea Party response to State of the Union
http://youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7iEJ75z13Ao
Didn’t see it. Is it pretty much no government and more guns?
I love those “freeblogpolls”.
Damn.
Somehow I missed this speech.
I must have been busy having a life.
-1.
I missed it as well, don’t you guys ever tire of being lied to, or has it become the national pasttime?
Sheesh.
Didn’t watch it or miss it. New boss same as the old boss.
Yep. Speech was aspirational and game changing moving in the direction all good people know is in their own best interest….
….IF…..
you pretend the Puke Party is not going to continue their TeaParty ways.
I saw no recognition of Obama’s failures and what he was going to do to correct them. He pointed to a bright future but will remain lost in the thicket of power politics and corruption that will leave us hardly starting on the road.
We are waste deep in the big muddy and the big fool doesn’t react accordingly.
The SUPER RICH have won the CLASS war. Can’t really tell why Obama didn’t respond in kind. Hillary won’t either.
So…another 10-15 years before the leader we need will arise.
Tick, tock.
Let me see if I can summarize some of the things I learned from reading these comments:
* Forcing us to pay our workers causes unemployment
* Schools are bad for our children
* The word “Progressive” stands for all that is evil, wicked, mean, nasty, twisted, fascist, communist, war-mongering and smelly
* Pedro has devolved into an annoying monomaniac who only posts to call Dallas names
I think that sums it up.
If it were not for the Progressives of their era, our founding fathers, we would all be subjects of the British crown today and drive a lorry instead of a truck. And we would have tyres on our lorry instead of tires.
The thought is frightening.
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few …. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
— James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
Pretty typical dog and pony show from Obammy.
I dont expect the most useless president in US history to actually accomplish anything.
Fortunately for us, a President is not a monolithic dictator.
A President must work within the confines of three distinct branches of government.
A dictator would simply issue an Executive Order to accomplish certain things …
Oh, wait a minute …
Based on the reaction of the people at this site to his state of the union address it would appear that nobody posting voted for BO. I distinctly recall that he won the election so he has to have some worshipers somewhere.
If this is what the public at large thinks about him, BO doesn’t have a public mandate to do jack. Almost nobody likes him and almost nobody trusts him as far as they can spit upwind in a hurricane.
Slightly bemused
You dont have to worship Obama to vote for him. You only had to realize Rmoney would have been an even bigger clusterfuck.
Id stop being bemused and wonder why the opposition only seems to be able to field nutjobs. A moderate Republican could have handed Obama his ass.
this blog is not a good enough sampling to come to such a conclusion. Just because a bunch of blow-hard republican and tea-baggers are bitching on this site doesn’t mean jack sheet.
I didn’t see, really didn’t have to. I can pretty much tell what he wants. He probably wants to spend more, while at the same time using some funny math about how its not going to add to the deficit.
Probably be some bull about global warming, and how he needs to give the EPA more power over something.
Oh and I am sure he will throw in a few jabs at the “Rich”, probably used his favorite words about “paying their fair share”.
FOX will email you the appropriate outrage. Stop pretending to form an opinion on something you already admitted you didn’t see.
Must have hit a sore spot huh dallas? I wonder if you have the same outrage towards MSNBC or CNN.
Without getting off subject, I really didn’t watch it. In the reports I have read afterwards, about the only thing I didn’t see coming was the pre-school thing. Which is yet another thing that should be up to the states. But hell, its not like the democrats really pay attention to the constitution any more right?
The rich do not pay their fair share of income taxes.
Our tax code is gamed to favor the wealthy.
Have you been living under a rock?
What is “rich” and what is their “fair share”?
It seems to be anyone that makes more than someone else (class envy) and 98% of their money.
Meanwhile we will NEVER satisfy the governments insatiable need for funds.
Yet our leader continues to buy votes with unfunded programs like this. (Love the part about working with congress)
“The President is proposing to work with Congress to provide all low- and moderate-income 4-year-old children with high-quality preschool, while also expanding these programs to reach hundreds of thousands of additional middle class children, while also incentivizing full-day kindergarten policies, so that all children enter kindergarten prepared for academic success.”
You’re confused.
The tax system is about taxing the transfer of wealth. In sheeple speak, when money goes from one pocket to another, you tax it. That’s sort of the way it works.
Since the majority of wealth is accumulated at the top, that’s where you tax it. Why do we need to tax the wealthy 1% more than the not so wealthy 99% ? Because that’s where the money is!
Sutton’s Law!
Yes, it’s a brilliant taxation system only to be accompanied by brilliant loopholes that only apply to the top.
Where’s the “I fell asleep while watching it” option?
All Obama really said was: “Let the people have a vote.”
The people won’t get that vote though. Congress will continue with its paid off ways defeating the majority will in favor of the minority status quo.
The downward spiral continues. Progressive Obama “trying” to get something done, the Republican Teaparty Controlled Congress only able to say no to everything. Pathetic how OBVIOUS this anti-government/people band of Hypocrits is about how they view the world.
Silly miserly self centered little people of no insight at all. Marco Rubio–wants to cut all the programs EVEN AS he lauds them for the help he personally has received from them.
Only people can be so blind.
Is there a law prohibiting the POTUS from presenting his SOTU in French?
tcc3 normally reasonable says:
2/13/2013 at 1:10 pm
….. A moderate Republican could have handed Obama his ass. ///
How so?
Not unless he was willing to continue entitlements. Face the facts, Obama won mainly because of this, a huge base of voters who are dependent on government assistance.
Rightly or wrongly it can’t be denied. And with immigration reform, call it amnesty if you will, rightly or wrongly this will only continue.
In a sense it was well played, but to the detriment of those in the middle class and the future generations of your children who will be (unsuccessfully) forced to pay for it.
The GOP could have won if they weren’t such tools as a whole and picked a religious wacko elitist gay and women hating billionaire who hides his money somewhere in the Caribean. You think that might have swayed the voters that count – the swing voters?
Not really. The majority of people vote with their wallets, “What’s in it for me?”
By the time the election came, 51% of Americans were on some kind of government assistance.
Do the math.
I’ve said it numerous times: there were too many people getting too much free stuff for the election to have gone any other way.
We’ve reached the tipping point.
Because many of his policies are not popular even with his base.
Hes not the leftist extremist Fox wants to paint him as – a moderate or Liberal Republican could actually attack him from the left on many issues.
All of this is academic though. As you can see below, the right is far to busy convincing them selves “Its not our fault” to actually bother to get past their failed dogma and appeal to voters.
I can’t say that I object to curbing pollution. If that’s what all this political posturing is really all about. And no one person should be forced to comply with environmental edicts, against their will or ability. When so many large corporations have (and will) avoided complying with them, in the past. How is it that corporations have more rights, than individuals? When corporations have the deeper pockets to finding alternatives to polluting the environment, the way it’s always been cheaper for them to do.
And why are the individual car owners, the ones that get piled onto, with air quality edicts? When it’s the automakers, who supply them the highest polluting vehicles they can get away with making (SUVs, MiniVans, and huge trucks). Taking advantage of loopholes, that Congress allowed to exist, for the automakers to exploit. Thus even Hummers get to pump out more pollutants, than any “economy” class car can. Which means if you’re rich enough, you can do want you want.
And that’s the biggest problem with the environment. Not the millions of citizens, just scraping by, who still manage to recycle and keep their small car running ride. While the Hummer and Jaguar owners bletch it all out, making up for them others.
And don’t forget the pollution sources being ignored by all this clever politics. Like what’s dumped into the soil and the oceans.
Interesting.
I guess you could say the rich people are paying for their carbon credits in the guise of a more expensive vehicle.
Again, interesting.
As it should be. Polluting the environment used to be free. Now you would pay for it under a liberal and environment conscious administration.
In my administration (not likely but would be interesting), polluters would pay much more and the free military protection of oil wells in Persian Gulf would end and billed at $20 per barrel.
Didn’t watch. Why bother. Am I a bad American for not caring about a SOTU speech.
Politician politicking.
3,270,000 results on a googly search.
New Honey Boo Boo episode ?
Meanwhile, in Canada, the Parliament was debating the zombie apocalypse. American politics sucks.
That’s coming next year. Canada is just a little ahead of the US with these topics.
Again you avoid the question. Of course Republicans WILL oppose Obama. You said you wanted them to change, return to fiscal responsibility. So SHOULD they oppose a budget that is not in balanced, even 10 years from now?
“We buy less foreign oil than we have in 20 years”
We buy 33% more than 20 years ago, but hey it’s just basic math.
Along with his deficit talk, he forgot to include, ‘Any company that dares to downgrade the US credit rating will be punished by my administration.’
S&P gets an SEC fraud suit, but none of its competitors who did the same thing.
Egan Jones was stripped of its accreditor status. It’s crime was that it advertised as providing ratings since 1995, but they did nto put their stuff on the internet in 1995.
“The people of Newtown deserve a vote”
So have Harry Reid schedule one.
From Philip Roth
The lying. A river of lies. Translating the truth into a lie. Translating one lie into another lie. The competence people display in their lying. The skill. Carefully sizing up the situation and then, with a calm voice and a straight face, delivering the most productive lie. Should they speak even the partial truth, nine times out of ten it’s in behalf of a lie.
From National Review:
Anyone who has been through this annual exercise at the White House would recognize the tell-tale signs. The phrase “I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take,” which came quite early in the speech in relation to energy and environmental policy, is the policy staffer’s worst nightmare in a State of the Union address. It’s your boss saying you failed. It means that after months of meetings and dozens of memos, the White House, OMB, and the relevant cabinet agencies couldn’t even agree on executive actions to take, let alone on a proposal to include in the budget or to press for in Congress. I thought it was strange that Obama would put that declaration of failure so early in the speech. Why not raise your key 2014 budget proposals first—that’s generally what the State of the Union is for—and then do cleanup on the issues that some constituencies want to hear about but that you weren’t able to pull off? If you look at State of the Union addresses from the past few decades, that’s usually how they work.
As the speech went on, though, the reason became clear: There were no 2014 budget proposals. The president didn’t even mention his forthcoming budget—again, that’s usually a big part of what this speech is for. And he didn’t make any significant proposal for reforming any government program, for launching any new one, ending any old one, or doing much of anything in particular that he hasn’t been pushing unsuccessfully for years. It was like an eighth-year State of the Union address, not a fifth-year one.
You have to try to cover up such things, of course, especially if you’re a Democrat, and so the president did speak of all manner of obnoxious federal micromanagement initiatives with fancy names—manufacturing hubs, a “partnership to rebuild America,” a challenge to “redesign America’s schools,” an “Energy Security Trust,” and so on. But you know what these things are? They’re nothing. They’re the headings that the wonks in a Democratic White House put at the top of otherwise blank memos at the beginning of a process that, months later, is supposed to end up with a budget and a State of the Union address. And here they were at the end of that process with barely more meat on their bones than when they started. Some of these proposals might “happen” and some of them will not, but there won’t be any difference between the two.
Whaaa . I found a write up from a republican rag website and cut and pasted enough to make it look important and official. Whaaa
You sure do cry a lot.
No silly, I’m translating and helping to zero in on the key message. You’re welcome
You are doing a poor job of it then. Sounds like you are upset at our Führer.
Actually, I think that is a very fair review. Obama should have pulled out all the stops to get the filibuster vote changed back to what the Constitution imagined. He didn’t do that. He should have required what’s his name worthless bag of shit to prosecute the Banks. He didn’t do that.
Not being as bad as the Republicans, still is not very good as played out by Obama. He really is just a Republican Light. Thats sad. Country needs change…. hoping and rhetoric doesn’t cut it.
Tar Sands Pipe Line is line in the sand between Rhetorical Political BS… and the minimum standards for a leader to keep loyalty with those he leads. I do hope he vetoes it. Be nice if he annouced a series of Green Energy initiatives at the same time. Solyndra may be a dog whistle to the Right, but it is part of the bumpy road to energy independence and protecting the earth. Afraid of Bumps?===Then you are a Puke.
Tick Tock.
There really ought to be another choice: “Started to watch, but fell asleep.”