Obama has come unstuck in time
Okay, I watched the stupid speech. And goddamn if it wasn’t one of the weirdest SOTU addresses I’ve ever seen. What on earth was Obama talking about? Was there any point of contact between the speech and what’s actually going on right now in this country?
The whole first part about how we need to retool to compete for the future was straight out of the 90s. Wasn’t that speech in Primary Colors? The shuttered steel factories, the loss of pensions and job security, the need to invest in new technology….it’s like Obama just saw Roger and Me.
Then he dials the time machine back another 30 years and starts talking about Sputnik! “This is our Sputnik moment,” he says. What is our Sputnik moment? This speech? This speech is our Sputnik moment? Christ, and I thought Bush was off-key when he talked about Mars.
And how are we going to meet our Sputnik challenge? By cutting spending! By continuing the asinine pretense that the federal government is like a household that has to “live within its means.” Oh no! Is the federal government also like a minimum-wage employee at the local 7-11? How on earth will the federal government ever save enough money to buy a car, much less a rocket?
Oh, hey! The Iraq war is over! Again!
32 Responses to “Obama has come unstuck in time”
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caseyOR says:
Obama’s time machine went waaaaay back. Sputnick happened more than 50 years ago. Ike was president. And while, yes, the U.S. government at that time did ramp up on funding education and science and math, I’m having a very hard time picturing this President and this Congress making the same kind of financial and policy commitments.
Sputnick is the reason I got to go to college in the early ’70s with student loans that I got from the federal government, not from my local loan shark (excuse me, financial institution.) And my interest on those loans? A whopping 2%. The student loan program was called the National Defense Student Loan Program. At that time we believed that an educated citizenry was essential to our future.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Obama meant to reference Sputnick. Maybe he meant to say our space program or our Apollo program or our race to the moon. It seems more likely that he would go for a JFK reference, rather than Eisenhower. Still, I don’t for a minute believe he will exert the type of leadership required to put education for everyone front and center.
January 26th, 2011 at 2:36 am EST -
Violet Socks says:
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Obama meant to reference Sputnick. Maybe he meant to say our space program or our Apollo program or our race to the moon.
Of course he meant Sputnik. Sputnik was a galvanizing event for Americans, panicking us into thinking we were being outrun by the Soviets and needed to catch up. The investment in space and technology followed.
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tinfoil hattie says:
But … Sputnik. Sputnik? Huh? What’s next? The Cold War against the Soviet Union?
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Gayle says:
We all need to train ourselves to work in the next big industry, which for a half a second was green technology but now ??
Once we each pay small fortunes to train ourselves for the next big unknown industry, those jobs will outsource or the “bubble will burst” and we’ll have to start all over again. On our dime, of course.
We must forever train ourselves because our government hasn’t the slightest interest in protecting our job base. None. Nada. Zip.
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tinfoil hattie says:
Sputnik. Are we going back to outer space? Huh?
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Val says:
Amen to that, Gayle!
The scariest movie I’ve see in a long time was something Hubby pulled up on Netflix by mistake a few wks ago, “Collapse”. Even my 12-yr old was disturbed by it – it gives a structure to my inchoate fears/paranoia about how things are going right down the tubes, & we’re just pushing the lever! -
Val says:
Oh, & I gave up on the speech after the first few min; couldn’t bear to listen to such NONSENSE.
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votermom says:
Thank god a sensible reaction to the speech.
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Teresainpa says:
We must forever train ourselves because our government hasn’t the slightest interest in protecting our job base. None. Nada. Zip.
I remember when employers trained employees. They used to call that internship. Now internship means free summer labor.
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kiuku says:
it’s slavery
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lambert strether says:
“Obama told us tonight that with work and sacrifice, we can have the richest criminal banks in the world.”
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votermom says:
kiuku @ 10 — but they can’t fire slaves…
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Grace says:
Obama the copycat, in order to “inspire” the masses, kept referring to the past, sometimes with indirect allusions to Bill Clinton’s “building a bridge to the 21th century.” There were also some subliminal allusions to JFK (the need for work and sacrifice, it’s not what the country can do for you but…)
It’s also very convenient that Obama the Great doesn’t blame the current situation on the “excesses of the 60′s” and the need to “turn the page” any more, like he did back in 2008 in order to picture “the Clintons” as the older irrelevant boomers. Obama needs to be reminded that next August when he turns 50, he will officially become a member of AARP.
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Violet Socks says:
But, wait — it turns out that Obama’s not proposing a true Sputnik response, like Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson produced in the 1950s and ’60s. They launched such public efforts as a national program of science education and the Apollo moon landing. Instead, Obama is trusting Corporate America to “win the future” for us, offering deregulation and more tax breaks to entice them.
Obama is a Republican. And not even a moderate Republican, or a paleo-Republican like Eisenhower. He’s a supply-side, trickle-down, Reaganite Republican.
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Violet Socks says:
But, wait, no! An Obot explains that it’s not Obama’s fault at all:
But this morning, I’ve mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it’s not like anything can be done with the den of wingnut weasels the country just elected to Congress. All he’s got left is admonishing us to try harder, while knowing we totally plan to fail and fail hard.
Poor Obama. He’s so powerless! Never has there ever been a more powerless president. He just can’t do anything. All that nonsense about his being the most powerful person on earth, or about his having taken office with massive goodwill and booming majorities in both houses — nope. He’s just powerless. Always has been. In fact, all we and Obama can really do is just wait for the Republicans to die:
Sometimes I feel like America is just in a holding pattern. We’re basically waiting for all the people who are still bitter about modernity to pass away in large enough numbers that those of us willing to move into the future can actually capture the electorate.
Thank God there are people like Amanda, just brimming over with self-awareness and a clear-eyed grasp of the situation.
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Violet Socks says:
But back to sanity: here’s Black Agenda Report on the speech, with some hilarious snark in there:
Remember Sputnik! says Obama. Of course, the shocking 1957 Russian leap into space prompted the United States to embark on the greatest educational spending spree in history. There will be none of that under the Obama/GOP austerity regime. Instead, Obama’s “Race to the Top” program will force ever larger slices of the public education infrastructure into the privately-managed but publicly financed alternative national charter school system – a multi-billion dollar “market” for hedge funds and other speculators.
By bringing down the corporate tax rate – a substantive promise from Obama that only the wealthy can truly appreciate – additional profits will accrue to companies that have already hoarded over two trillion dollars, but who were doubtless awaiting Obama’s coded signal, “Sputnik,” before investing in productive, job-producing enterprises. These investments might also be delayed until Obama has, as promised on Tuesday night, reorganized the federal government to the Republicans’ satisfaction, and purged offensive regulations from the public sphere.
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Sameol says:
At least he didn’t do any pearl clutching about human-animal hybrids. Unless he had a whole anti-chimera section and I just tuned it out.
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RalphB says:
Great analysis. Knocked it out of the park!
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Nessum says:
I […] basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that.
Huh! Talk about delusional. Wish it had been “disillusional” instead.
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kiuku says:
I know it’s like they had a party at the frat house, Obama didn’t have time to do his essay the night before the due date so they reached into the fraternity cabinet and dusted one off.
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Gayle says:
I remember when employers trained employees. They used to call that internship.
True. Companies don’t want to make long term investments in employees anymore. But when entire industries move to other countries simply because it’s cheaper to do so, that’s when our government should step in and protect its citizens.
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Gayle says:
Opps- I forgot to close tag. Sorry!
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julia says:
Is this what we get for not rising up? Well, it’s never too late. And maybe the rest of the world will be cheering for us, for a change.
Have people already forgotten that we are in this mess because of the ’08 Bank Bailout that candidate Obama pushed for? How dare they cut spending – that’s OUR money!
Andrea Dworkin wrote that a country with amnesia, like ours, is the ‘perfect playground for perpetrators’.
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Carmonn says:
I’ve mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it’s not like anything can be done
Too bad we had to go through all of this only to discover our true ideal is the Ethan Hawke/Winona Ryder’s brother Reality Bites, Dude Where’s the Weed ticket.
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djmm says:
Love the post, Violet, and your comment 15. Unlike the commenter you quote, I could only respect the President for giving up if he offered his resignation with it.
djmm
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monchichipox says:
Obama’s not a Republican. The problem is he’s a nothing. He’s what the polls say at a particular moment.
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Teresainpa says:
OT, women in Peace corp raped and murdered and the Peace Corp is not only partially responsible, but they cover it up.
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cellocat says:
Violet, thanks for your comment #15. It made me laugh out loud and picture the thumb/forefinger, “Here’s the world’s tiniest violin, playing just for you.”
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kiuku says:
I love the ‘WTF’ acronym as well. I didn’t pick up on that the first time. Like TNA. I can’t help but think that, it’s so out of touch, back in time..maybe the President is trying to tell us something subtly by putting wtf in there. It was definitely a wtf speech. Sputnik? wtf?
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votermom says:
We’re basically waiting for all the people who are still bitter about modernity to pass away
How charmingly ghoulish.
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bob c says:
Yup! It seems that just putting another roll in the
“Player Piano” is supposed to give us comfort. Being Unstuck in Time wouldn’t be so bad if it also allowed us to move into a real NEW future, not a sorry-ass attempt to recreate a sorry-ass past. -
kiuku says:
and we better get going on those “high speed trains”
