State of the Union 2012

In the interest of fairness, let me start by saying that I voted for President Obama, and i don't regret that i did. I haven't been entirely pleased with the course of his administration, and probably wouldn't vote for him again if i were given a better option (which it doesn't look like i will).

Let me also give the republicans some kudos here. One thing that really bugs me about the state of the union address in recent years has been the tendency of the senators of the party of the president to give everything that he says a standing ovation while the other party sits and looks dour. It's the same this year, but a lot of the time, although the republicans remain seated, they at least applaud a lot of these statements, which is more than the democrats did for Bush during his state of the union addresses. I still don't like it. Applause is fine, but i wish that they would stay seated to cut the running time of the address by ten or fifteen minutes.

As i type this, the speech is about ten minutes in, and so far what i've heard is a lot of the same kind of tough talk that we heard from during the 2008 election, which has, so far, turned out to be empty and meaningless. A lot of times, these issues that he talks tough on, like making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes, come to nothing. The president basically folds like a house of cards, like he did on health care.

I will say that i was glad to hear him mention Master Lock, and their plans to increase their American manufacturing base. He also talked about increasing taxes on companies that outsource and decreasing taxes on companies that remain in America. This is one of the main of his campaign promises that got me to vote for him in the first place, that he has done NOTHING on since he took the oath of office.

I will also say that John Boehner, for whom i have developed a grudging admiration, has found himself nodding at talking points that have become democrat issues, such as keeping American workers employed.

Looking at vice-president Biden, looking positively pasty beside the president and Boehner, with his glow-in-the dark spray-on tan makes me wish again that the president would dump him in his re-election campaign and offer the job to someone who could and would actually exert some authority in the role. A year ago, before his troubles, i would have said Anthony Weiner. Now i think either Corey Booker, or, to be a real ground-breaker, John McCain.

Now the president's talking about something that is long overdue... removing the ability of American students to drop out of school before they are 18. The stipulation was originally put in place during the agricultural times to allow older kids to be more help on the farm. Guess what? We don't NEED that anymore. In order for our economy to be strong now, we need these kids to stay in school, and get an education so that they can compete in a world market. For the record, i also wish that he'd end daylight savings time, which was started to give farmers an extra hour in the morning during planting season and an extra hour in the evening for harvesting. We don't need it anymore. It's also a little like a quote that i read a while back from an Indian chief, whose name i can't remember. He said "Only a white man could think that you can cut a foot from the top of a blanket, sew it on to the bottom of the blanket and think that he has a longer blanket."

"Higher education isn't a luxury, it's a necessity that all American families should be able to afford." Right on, brother.

It was nice to see the president greet Gabrielle Giffords before the address, too. I watched her internet address where she announced her resignation from congress and almost cried at the recovery she has made since she was shot a year ago.

It makes me a little angry, though, to hear the president and other people canonize Steve Jobs. The man only employed a handful of Americans, and the company that built his Ipods and Ipads in China, Foxcom, is one of the worst of the low-grade sweatshops in the world. In the first five months of (i think it was) 2010, ten Foxcon workers committed suicide. As far as i'm concerned, American companies that have their stuff made in a place like that deserve to be run out of business, not praised.

One quick note on a phrase that every president since president Reagan has used at the top of the address... "The state of our union is strong". Bush even said this in 2008, when our economy was falling apart like an American car. What president Obama said, which i admire a great deal, is that "the state of our union is getting stronger".

Now he's calling on AG Holder to start a "financial crime unit" to bust business people who are doing things like the crap that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Good luck, let's see if he actually follows through on this one.

Well, now he's just spouting a bunch of jingoistic nonsense about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, so i think that he's getting ready to wrap things up. I really start getting bored about this time in the speech every year, with all of the patriotic chest-pounding and "gee, ain't we grand? You should reelect us."

Okay, he wrapped up with the usual "God bless the United States of America". As a Christian, i really wish that ALL politicians, democrats and republicans alike, would quit calling on God to endorse their endeavors.

Thanks for reading. If you haven't, please click on an ad or two. It won't cost you anything, but will go a long way to helping my dream of making my living with my words.

Peace.

Randal

Reading List 2011

For anyone interested, here are the books that i read/listened to/started/finished in 2011.

I read a total of 58 books. Usually my fiction and non-fiction runs about 50/50 with the majority running to non-fiction. This year was a little different, partly because i read most of the Sookie Stackhouse books this year. So i read 37 fiction and 21 non-fiction.

Lamb by Christopher Moore
Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume 1 by Greg Cox
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume 2 by Greg Cox
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert
The King's Speech by Mark Logue/Peter Conradi
To Reign In Hell by Greg Cox
Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
The Next Decade by George Friedman
Dead To The World by Charlaine Harris
Why You Should Keep Your Farts in a Jar by David Haviland
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Neffinegger
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
Dead As A Doornail by Charlaine Harris
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Next 100 Years by George Friedman
The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan
Buried Prey by John Sandford
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Ur by Stephen King
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
White House Diary by Jimmy Carter
Skin Flutes and Velvet Gloves by Dr. Terri Hamilton
Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
Iron John by Robert Bly
Then Everything Changed by Jeff Greenfield
My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
Malcom X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
God, No by Penn Jilette
Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks by Richard Christian Matheson
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
007: Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Armageddon In Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
The Art of War by Sun Tzu translated by John Minford
Seventh Son: Alvin Maker 1 by Orson Scott Card
That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Red Prophet: Alvin Maker 2 by Orson Scott Card
Prentice Alvin: Alvin Maker 3 by Orson Scott Card
The Darwin Awards: Countdown To Extinction by Wendy Northcutt
The Litigators by John Grisham
Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth
David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer
Rant by Chuck Pahlaniuk