6:40PM Shorter Biden: Barack Good. Not-Barack bad.
6:44PM You know what would have really saved GM? An honest bankruptcy where it could have shed thousands of pages of UAW work rules that make it uncompetitive versus the Japanese and Germans.
Just a thought.
6:45PM Oh, hi — I seem to have started tonight’s drunkblog without the usual introduction, foreplay, whatevs. Sorry about that. The Dayquil and scotch have combined to make something… evil.
Anyway, I’m sure President Empty Chair will be on soon, albiet not soon enough, given Biden’s mock-heartwrenching performance.
6:46PM Biden is stealing Romney’s “Great Guy But” routine? You’d think he had some sort of history with plagiarism.
6:50PM If Biden were any more heartfelt, he’d be reaching into Harrison Ford’s chest chanting “AB, USKI JAN MERI MUTTI ME HAI!.”
6:52PM “My mom.”
Drink.
6:52PM She used to call all her children “Joey?”
This explains a lot.
6:55PM One way or another, I’m totally looking forward to Biden’s run in 2016.
6:57PM WHOA! Biden was ballsy enough to reference the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which Obama turned his back on like prom date who wouldn’t give him even a little over-the-gown action.
6:58PM President Empty Chair isn’t even on yet, and already I have no idea how to top the Temple of Doom reference.
It’s gonna be a long night. Sorry.
6:59PM This “every father” pays the women in his own White House payroll less than the men.
7:00PM Ah, yes — the dignity of other people’s condoms.
7:01PM We got up? To vote for Romney?
Lord, I’m hoping.
7:03PM “I’ve got news for Governor Romney,” my pants are full of mayonaise.
7:04PM Man, I wish we could go back to 2008, when I controlled my wife’s healthcare.
7:06PM In lo-def, Biden’s nylon weave-thing looks… well, it doesn’t look good. But it looks slightly less like a nylon weave-thing.
7:06PM Crap. I should have saved the Temple of Doom reference.
7:07PM Barack has stoof up for me for four years? That explains the empty chair.
7:08PM So… that had a glancing connection to a parallel reality not entirely unlike our own.
#BIDEN2016
7:09PM Closing out Biden with Earth, Wind & Fire, because that’s sane.
7:11PM Dick Durbin has trouble pronouncing “Obama,” because of the syllables or something. Maybe the consonants.
7:11PM FORE MOAR YEERS!
7:12PM “These last four years have been hard,” says the man who won’t have to rely on Social Security or suffer the indignities of ObamaCare.
F*** you, Duck Durbin. F*** you.
7:13PM For. The. Last. Time. GM DID GO BANKRUPT.
That’s what Chapter 11 is, Dick.
7:14PM The “discrimination” of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was passed by a Democrat Congress and signed by a Democrat President.
Just FYI, Dick.
7:16PM Well, at least the Democrats kept Dick short.
7:18PM I’ll wager $20 that Young Empty Chair’s rusted-through car was built by GM.
7:21PM Gutsy call.
7:22PM “This is a guy who has a backbone like a ramrod,” as the Saudi King can attest. Even the harem girls do not bow with such grace.
7:23PM Here we go.
7:24PM Who did the theme musc, Vangelis?
So very #FORWARD!
7:25PM FORE MOAR YEERS!
7:26PM I have daughters! Daughters who have female! And also a woman wife! And birth control that is free!
#WarOnWomen
7:27PM “I accept your nomination.”
Crap. Anyone one to buy a lot of Biden-Squeegee Guy 2012 bumper stickers, cheap?
7:27PM In 2004, he was a younger man. That’s the kind of rhetoric which…
…I got nothin’. You?
7:28PM “I know campaigns can seem small.”
But he brought Biden on board to counter that with gravitas.
7:30PM The teleprompter ping-pong effect has already become unbearable. It’s like a metronome at the most evenly-matched Wimbledon set EVAR.
7:30PM “Everyone gets a fair shot,” provided they have big-ass connections at the Department of Energy. Or the UAW. The rest of y’all, on your own.
7:31PM I need to refill my drink. Try not to miss me too much.
7:33PM You know the big part of an incumbent’s speech, where he celebrates his accomplishments before he spends a moment or two denigrating the other guy?
Did I pass out?
7:34PM The Cold War? Vietnam? Korea? 9/11? Berlin Airlift? Berlin Wall?
That’s nothing compared to passing a stimulus, bitches!
7:35PM FORE MOAR YEERS!
7:35PM “We are making things again.”
And selling them to…?
7:36PM “Made in America” is not how we stamp our goods, Mr. Empty Chair.
7:37PM “We’ve raised fuel standards so far, that by 2025,” you won’t be able to afford to buy a deathtrap built by UAW cronies.
7:38PM Taking credit for the oil boom on private lands while he shuts down public drilling is a neat trick. Next, he has a miniature guillotine that will chop a cigaret in half while leaving an audience member’s finger intact.
7:39PM “Climate change is not a hoax.”
Hide the decline!
Oh, wait — that’s been the whole strategy since about the middle of last year.
7:41PM Oh. My. He’s defending the as-is student loan program.
If you’re under 30, you’re fucked.
(I hope my editor will fix that.)
7:41PM MADE IN MURRICA!
7:42PM “Students, you’ve got to do the work.” Do you see any Chinese kids studying womyn’s issues? Hell, no!
7:42PM So… pandering.
7:43PM He’s ending the war in Afghanistan! The one he escalated, and that will return the country to the Taliban after 2014, anyway.
7:44PM Question, and this is all snark aside: What is this speech about?
What is it about?
I have no freaking clue.
7:45PM So many themes, so little connective tissue. There’s nothing to hang on to here.
7:46PM “Stuck in a Cold War mind-warp.”
Um… reset?
7:47PM Man, after a speech like this there’s no way in hell I’d ever vote in November to reelect Mitt Romney.
7:47PM Four trillion dollars is about 2.5 years of Obama deficits — “cut” over a decade.
7:48PM FORE MOAR YEERS OF CLINTON!
He said that, seriously.
7:49PM “You do the math.”
Oh, wait: “I refuse to go along with that — I never will.”
Math is hard.
7:49PM I REFUUS TO FACE THE MATH! I’M NOT GOING ALONG WITH THAT!
7:50PM “Yes, we wil reform and strengthen Medicare,” by eliminating waste and stuff, like government does, because that what it does, because I said it a lot.
7:51PM The speech is more like ping-pong than the teleprompter effect. It’s Me-MItt, Me-Mitt, Me-Mitt.
What’s missing?
FORE LAST YEERS!
7:52PM Now he’s cribbing the old Think Different ad from Apple. Pretty sure Biden had input on this part.
7:53PM Sigh. It was Clinton’s — pushed by Obama’s — Community Reinvestment Act that got people into mortgages they couldn’t afford.
Remember that. Get a tattoo or something.
7:54PM Groups! Groups! Groups!
Get into groups so I can corral you.
7:55PM Our founding ideals…
You could lob our founding ideals into that room of 20,000 people (downsized from 74,000) and not hit a single one of them. Not even come close.
7:55PM “You are the change.”
#FORWARD! to 2008.
7:57PM “You did that” X 3.
Veterans did that. Veterans who came home and started a small business didn’t do that.
7:58PM I don’t mind women making their own decisions, abortion included. I do mind having to pay to keep Sandra Fluke’s feet on the ceiling 24/7.
7:58PM “I’m the President.”
That is the smallest line I have heard a President say in 32 years of listening to presidents speak.
7:59PM He has another place to go. Hyde Park. On January 20.
7:59PM “I’m hopeful because of you.”
Sorry, dude — gone Galt.
8:01PM This is a second-rate State of the Union address. But as an incumbent accepting his party’s nomination for President, it is a second-rate State of the Union address.
8:02PM “I ask you tonight for your vote.”
Can I think about it?
8:04PM “I’m the President.”
I’m not sure if that was meant as a boast or a complaint. But as I think back on the last four years, it is certainly an unavoidable fact.
And that’s as much of a summation as I can manage after watching an empty chair give an empty speech.
At least it was something short of long.
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