Drunkblogging the State of the Union Speech

5:41PM Welcome to Super Union Address CCXXIII! It’s the unofficial relaunch of the President’s official reelection campaign, following the officially unofficial kickoff in Kansas last month, which topped off the President’s unofficially official year-long campaign that began when the GOP House was officially sworn in almost 13 months ago.

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I think even the non-drinkers are ready to raise one right about now. Officially.

5:42PM

5:43PM Dear Anderson Cooper:

It really isn’t necessary to announce in a stage whisper that the President is on his way.

Love,

-VodkaPundit.

5:47PM “The President is resonant on this.”

Wise words, my idiot liberal friend.

5:48PM Sorry, meant to attribute that last quote to Paul Begala, not to my “idiot liberal friend.”

Or did anyone notice the typo?

5:53PM In honor of the First Lady’s attendance tonight, I’m drinking martinis and snacking on a stack of thick-sliced crespone salami big enough to clog the Chunnel.

Don’t think I’m kidding you, either.

5:57PM There’s Gabby Giffords. Brave lady, incredible recovery. I’m curious why she chose to resign now, instead of months or a year ago — or keep at it and run for reelection next year. Either option I listed makes more sense to me than the path she chose, but that doesn’t take away from her struggle.

5:57PM Here come the Supremes — but how many?

5:58PM Justice Altio seems to have recused himself from tonight’s campaign rally.

5:58PM When Wolf Blitzer says Djibouti, I get a thrill up my leg.

5:59PM The First Lady looks like great.

6:00PM Here comes the cabinet. I haven’t seen that haircut on Hillary since 1993. Or anywhere else since 1973.

6:03PM Tonight’s debate-prep carboloading brought to you by Freddy’s Frozen Custard. I ordered the Classic Triple, large fries, and a large shake, and might not be eating again until lunch on Thursday.

6:04PM We’re going to be hearing a lot tonight about Warren Buffett’s secretary, who is smart enough to work for one of the smartest men in the world, but too stupid to hire herself a decent tax accountant.

6:06PM One more time, for the slow kids reading this. And by “slow kids,” I mean”Democrats, liberals, and damn-fool progressives.”

Payroll taxes are taxes you’ll get back tenfold, in the form of benefits. Income taxes — which you probably don’t pay, because you’re only marginally employable — pay for everything else Washington does, which means they’re mostly flushed down the toilet.

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Please remember that when talking about overall tax rates. Not that you will, you willfully-ignorant statists.

6:07PM My embargoed copy of the speech shows that Obama will open with a shootout to the troops he forgot to negotiate a longer presence for in Iraq.

6:10PM Joe Biden is holding a very large yellow envelope. They told him it has coupons for Chee-tohs in it.

6:12PM “Last month I went to Andrews Air Force Base…”

Isn’t it Joint Base Andrews now?

6:12PM Nice shout out to the military’s mission in Iraq, which Obama opposed.

6:13PM Osama dead. Good.

6:14PM “These [military] achievements are a testament… ”

Honestly? It’s a pretty quiet year, militarily. So what’s the angle?

We need to “follow their example.” It’s the militarization of the American Government.

Hold me. I’m scared.

6:14PM Bad sign: Biden already looks sleepy.

6:15PM “We can do this. I know we can because we’ve done it before.”

Not with ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the Vengeful EPA, and permanent trillion-dollar deficits, we haven’t.

6:16PM “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive.”

Yes, yes it is.

6:16PM “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive.”

Yes, yes it is.

6:16PM “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive.”

Yes, yes it is.

6:17PM “We have to reclaim” American values.

Well what the hell you been doing the last three years, buster?

6:18PM Whose policies led to the lending crisis in 2008?

6:19PM Three million new jobs in 22 months. Part-time, low-wage McJobs. Meanwhile 700,000 Americans have left the workforce out of despair.

6:20PM “The state of our union is getting stronger.”

“I will oppose any effort to return to old policies…”

Framing the election, as expected.

“No, we will not go back.”

6:20PM “A blueprint for an economy built to last.”

Um… subsidies?

6:21PM Some said Detroit ought “to die?” And what did some others say? That “Detroit ought to be given big blocks of gold and unicorns?”

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6:22PM “The American auto industry is back.”

Well, it’s back in the sense that American taxpayers are still losing money on it. But OK.

6:22PM We’ll get rich selling Masterlocks to people with very little property to protect!

6:23PM “We should start with out tax code.”

Amen. We have an amazingly corrupt tax code.

6:24PM “No American company should be able to avoid paying taxes by moving jobs overseas.”

A “basic minimum tax.”

An AMT for business? That ought to go swimmingly.

6:25PM OK, so he wants to make the tax code fairer by filling it with more preferences. Am I missing something?

6:25PM Eric Cantor looks like a shark with frickin’ laser beams.

6:27PM Toledo! Chicago!

I’m reminded of the radio version of Huey Lewis’ “Heart of Rock’n’Roll,” which featured dubbed-in shout-outs to cities in local markets.

6:27PM Toledo! Chicago!

I’m reminded of the radio version of Huey Lewis’ “Heart of Rock’n’Roll,” which featured dubbed-in shout-outs to cities in local markets.

6:29PM “Think about that,” that America has jobs going unfilled because workers lack decent educations.

Is it a rallying cry to take on the teachers’ unions?

Um… no. Duh. What was I thinking?

6:30PM Community colleges should be “community career centers.”

Hearing the President of the United State talk about community colleges fills me with meh.

6:31PM Debbie Wasserman-Schultz looks bored. Her body man must have forgotten to hand her the crumpled piece of tinfoil before the show.

6:32PM “Teachers matter.” So let’s give schools more money. “In return for passion.”

“That’s a bargain worth making.”

Actually, that’s a crock of horseshit. But you knew that.

6:33PM Longer mandatory primary education? Why, we might have to hire more of those passionate teachers who aren’t preparing their kids for real-world jobs. It’s geeeeeenius!

6:34PM “It’s not enough to increase student aid.” “States must do their part” to spend even more money to increase student aid.

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I’m so speechless I might have to turn in my blog and call it quits.

6:35PM DREAM Act time. Wake me when it’s over — I need the REM.

6:36PM “There are fewer illegal crossings” than when you took office, because there Are. No. Jobs.

6:37PM BTW, I’m no immigration hawk. I like Newt’s smaller DREAM-type plan. I like having a big, wide, welcoming gate — but there does need to be a gate.

6:38PM “Innovation is what America has always been about,” so let’s pass regulations to make more innovators.

I…

I have no words. This is the cheapest pandering I’ve seen in 30 years of watching cheap politicians.

6:38PM “Don’t let other countries win the race for the future!”

6:39PM A big promise to open more land & sea to oil production.

Great. Let’s approve some new refineries to go with it.

6:40PM More Solyndras, bitches! Give me more Solyndras!

6:40PM “We’ll be clean when the work is done. There’ll be Spandex jackets — one for everyone!”

6:42PM “I paid for your natural gas.” Give me more Solyndras. I got contributors with needs, people.

6:42PM I’m going to keep spending your money on my greenie friends.

6:43PM Where’s the plan to cut the deficit? Where is the promise to cut the regulations that are strangling job creation?

Everything tonight is spend, spend, spend — and we are broke. We are Greece broke.

6:44PM Wind farms on the Pentagon!

6:44PM Apparently, Navy ships are going to power our homes. Because that’s sane.

6:45PM Remember that the Democrats’ last plan to save energy move lightbulb production to China, to produce bulbs nobody wants.

6:46PM “During the Great Depression American built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Ten years after 9/11, Ground Zero still isn’t rebuilt.

6:47PM “Nation-building right here at home.”

The “peace dividend” is going to pay for an awful lot of stuff, especially since we’re still at war.

6:48PM Mortgage relief! “No more red tape!”

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Because that’s what DC does best: Reduce costs and red tape.

6:48PM I don’t have a mortgage, so can I get a cash rebate, or maybe just a “World’s #1! Homeowner” coffee mug?

6:49PM “I’ve order every federal agency to remove regulations that don’t make sense.”

Do they get to choose them themselves? Because if so, good luck with that.

6:50PM Can a farmer choose his own health insurance without someone looking over his shoulder? Because that would be cool.

6:52PM “I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning!” Unlike Mitt Romney, who was last seen pouring a mysterious silver liquid directly an inner-city public school’s milk supply.

6:52PM No more bailouts!*

(*Green companies, unions, favored industries, and Democratic constituencies excepted.)

6:53PM He’s going to hire Columbo to get medical on some… rich people or something.

6:54PM He says we’re looking to “pay down our debt.”

Folks, Obama doesn’t have a plan to reduce our permanent trillion-dollar deficits, much less pay down a cent of debt.

6:55PM “When it comes to the deficit, we’ve agreed to… make choices.”

6:55PM The guy who just proposed a bunch of loopholes in the tax code, is railing against loopholes in the tax code.

6:57PM “Tax reform should follow the Buffett Rule… no less than 30%.”

6:58PM “You can call this class warfare all you want,” but I’m going to tax the bejeebus out of some robber barons.

6:59PM “Our way of life will only endure,” if we tax the bejeebus out of some robber barons.

6:59PM “Nothing will get done in Washington this year.”

From your lips to God’s ears, Mr. President.

7:00PM “The corrosive influence of money in politics,” says the man dedicated to raising almost a billion dollars for his campaign.

7:02PM I want to tell the Senate how to conduct its business, because the separation of powers is so 19th Century.

7:03PM Is Obama really campaigning against the “permanent campaign?”

That’s so David Axelrod it hurts.

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7:04PM ObamaCare is privatization! War is Peace! Slavery is Freedom! Drunkenness is Sobriety!

7:06PM We must be getting close to the end, because he’s talking war again.

See, open with his (Bush-centric) successes in the War on Terror, then bookend the awfulness with his (Bush-centric) successes in the War on Terror.

7:06PM Hillary looks tired and maybe drunk. Theories, anyone?

7:08PM “I will take no options off the table” to prevent Iran from getting nukes.

Positively Bushian!

7:08PM Con… Neocon… Obamacon?

Where’s Andrew Sullivan when you don’t need him?

7:09PM Oh, and we’re repositioning our forces against China, because of the resets and the peacemaking.

7:10PM “America remains the one indispensable nation to world affairs… and I intend to keep it that way.”

Assuming China remains willing to fund all the rest of my stuff.

7:12PM “We’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President.”

As opposed to the vicious cuts Obama made everyone else endure.

7:14PM Obama is soaking up the Osama killing — and he should. He could have called an airstrike and gotten an iffy result. Instead he called in the SEALs, who took names.

That was a good call.

7:17PM “No one built this country on their own… we worked as a team… we get each other’s backs… as long as we are joined in common purpose.”

Well, there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of market economics right there — and it was the big close of a guy desperately trying to restart the economy.

So… good luck with that then, Mr. President.

7:17PM You want a wrap? OK, give me just a couple minute, I’ll give you a wrap.

7:28PM President Obama opened and closed with high praise — and well-deserved praise — for our troops. And he wasn’t wrong, near the end, to bask a little himself in the reflected glory of SEAL Team Six, for taking out bin Laden on his orders.

In between?

In between was nothing but promises to spend more, to regulate more, and to tax more. Nevermind that he can’t get any of his promises — threats? — through the GOP House.

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What matters is the Long Game.

Obama’s Long Game is this: Double down on Big Government, and hope the GOP nominates someone he can vilify enough to make unelectable. Then — even though the election will have been decided on personality — he can ram though the rest of his Big Spending, Big Regulating, Big Taxing agenda, all based on a non-existent mandate.

But President Obama is a smart player, always with his eye on the long game. If he loses in the fall? Well, good luck to the GOP at actually repealing anything he accomplished in his first (and only) four years. Obama will, as this Progressive progenitors, have put another brick in the wall of statist. And that’s no small feat for a guy with his eye on the long game.

Margaret Thatcher called it “the ratchet effect” more than 30 years ago, and for good reason. If the last four years are allowed to stand, Obama will rank high in the progressive pantheon of Washington statists. If he gets another four years… even my drinking might become illegal, or, more likely, taxed punitively. You know, like most of the rest of the human experience.

Practically, tonight’s SOTU was a an endless serious of non-sequitur non-staters. Politically, it was a declaration of business-as-usual in Washington — which is more than any of us, at any tax bracket, can afford.

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