SOTU: It’s Not Just A Drinking Game Anymore

I’m sorry for misleading you on the SOTU – I was so anxious I got ahead of myself. Of course Big Guy’s first, historic, third the State of the Union speech is tonight! How could Big Guy give the most important speech of this campaign season on the same day he entertained the Stanley Cup winners (minus their goalie)?

What? All I get is a puck?  How about one of those Stanley Cups? 

Seriously, I’m sorry for misleading you yesterday. If I had just checked Lady M’s schedule it would have been obvious that the big Speech wasn’t until today: her special detox and body wrap session is booked for this morning and Derrick Rutledge isn’t scheduled to perform his $15k/day artistry on Lady M until this afternoon.

       

      

The results of Derrick’s handiwork (with as assist to the in-house ‘shoppers)

He’s already lined up for next week too when Lady M will be appearing on the Jay Leno show (officially to talk about our No Child’s Fat Behind program, butt unofficially to kickoff of our official campaign season.)

Anyway, back to Big Guy’s speechifying. He kept his calendar free today in order to put the last minute spins recommended from the final round of input from our team of pollsters who were still busy as of late last night testing ideas for CHANGE with likely voters. You may wonder how we can incorporate such last minute ideas into Big Guy’s speech. Let’s just say we’re all professionals around here, and with the benefit of a staff of professional writers and TOTUS we can hang loose and be flexible. Something that George W. Bush was never able to do because his ideas seemed to be set in stone.

I can’t give you a draft of the speech, butt the talking points are already out there for our media lapdogs to start writing supportive copy. Here’s the Cliff Notes preview of his Teddy Roosevelt “Do-nothing Congress, so I’ll do it myself” speech:

• In Osawatomie, Kansas, the president talked about how this is a make or break moment for the middle class, and about how we can go in two directions. Less opportunity and less fairness — or where the president believes we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.

• Building off the themes of the Kansas speech, the State of the Union will lay out a “Blueprint for an America built to last.” The blueprint will be supported by four pillars: 1) American Manufacturing; 2) American Energy; 3) Skills for American Workers and 4) American Values.

• American Manufacturing: He will lay out proposals for how we’ll bring about a new era of American manufacturing, with more good jobs and more products stamped Made in the USA. Proposals will include tools that will help American small businesses to compete and grow.

• American Energy: He will present a new era for American energy — an economy fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources that will be designed and produced by American workers.

• Skills for American Workers: The speech will include new ideas for how we’ll make sure our students and workers get the education and training they need so that we have a workforce ready to take on the jobs of today and tomorrow.

• American Values: And most importantly, the president will call for a return to American Values – of fairness for all, and responsibility from all.

What to expect: populism on steroids. It will include broad-based tax reform (tax the rich more, everyone else, less – that’s a fair shake) mortgage refinancing (Eat the banks, that’s fair), higher taxes on upper earners (duh!), and an expiration of the Bush tax cuts (hello - “Bush” tax cuts?).

Whew! It’s going to be another doozy. And I’m not just talking about Lady M’s frock.

I’m sorry, I’ve got to run as it’s a busy day for me too, as you might imagine. The big reveals are always tense.

And sometimes they’re downright scary:

I see that many of you are too busy this evening to watch Big Guy’s book report, so I’ll do my best to recap tomorrow. Butt if you want to have fun, play the hot new game, “Name Big Guy’s First SOTU Cliché: 2012 Edition.” I’m sure the prizes are spectacular, and they are even giving odds! Butt remember, it’s not a drinking game, although I don’t believe the rules prohibit a martini or two while playing. Just be careful out there.

To busy to watch Big Guy’s SOTU speech this year

We Are Not Worthy.

Believe me, I’d like to let this drop. Butt apparently no one else does.

This time it’s MoDo over at the NYT.  Did you see this? It’s Maureen off her meds again. We haven’t seen this level of fear and loathing from her since the unhinged “Bushie" bashing days.

It’s a long hard road for some people without anti-depressants and wrinkle cream

As far as I can tell her only point is to vent. Big Guy hasn’t turned out to be precisely the savior and messiah she had invested in.  Which is odd, because with BO, past performance WAS, indeed, a guarantee of future results. It’s just that so few people of her acquaintance ever bothered to check out his past.

Butt I digress. Apparently no one ever warned MoDo to beware of false gods. Here she is at her finest, whining that everything she had projected onto America’s Savior turns out to have been just that: shadows on the wall of the cave.

Watch Maureen go rogue:

For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected.

Some worry more about what it is he’s connected too

She’s referring of course to Big Guy’s decidedly un-presidential impersonation of Al Green to his “fans” at the Apollo fundraiser last week (here, if you were fortunate enough to have somehow missed it and wish to end your lucky streak).

“I, I’m so in love with you,” Barack Obama crooned to a thrilled crowd at a fund-raiser at the Apollo in Harlem on Thursday night, doing a seductive imitation as Al Green himself looked on. (snip)

The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal, dragged down by W.’s recklessness and his own inability to read America’s panic and its thirst for a strong leader.

Poor Maureen, she can’t help herself: the “Bushies” started this ruination of America for her, and she will never let you forget it.  Butt we move on.

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria for this week’s Time cover story, the president is maddeningly naïve.

I will smite all things I deem to be evil with my light sabre. I am awesome.

How could he not be naïve, at least politically? After all, he arrived at the top of the heap with only 2 other political victories, and both of them were bought, paid for and delivered by the Chicago Mob. Big Guy never even had to get his hands dirty. Even Lady M  pointed out that “he was a man, not a prophet, and he hadn’t yet achieved much.” Maybe MoDo should have listened to MO more, and BO not so much.

Asked about his cool, aloof style and his unproductive relationship with John Boehner, Obama replied: “You know, the truth is, actually, when it comes to Congress, the issue is not personal relationships. My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties. And as a consequence, the Washington press corps [ed. let the record reflect that he did not refer to the press corps as press ‘corpse’] maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof. The fact is, I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter.”

Boy, I hope other people don’t read that as a cold, aloof reproach of the press. If you wanted to get picky, you could even describe it as dismissive, sometimes even derisive. It seems to imply that the press ought to be spending more time with their families as well.

MoDo doesn’t mention that not chatting up the press at various soirees around town was one of George W Bush’s capital offenses too. Instead, she rewinds back to Ronnie who didn’t swill cocktails with the press either.

Reagan didn’t socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can’t condescend.

Ouchie! Did she just infer that Big Guy is…condescending?

What do you want now, little man?

The portrait of the first couple in Jodi Kantor’s new book, “The Obamas,” bristles with aggrievement and the rational president’s disdain for the irrational nature of politics, the press and Republicans.

Let’s see; “disdain for the irrational nature of politics, the press and Republicans.” Some might call that sort of thing peevishness. Or maybe it’s just naiveté. 

Is “just wanting to eat your waffle” peevish? Or naïve?

And then there’s this:

Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own,

Whoa! That one stopped me dead in my tracks. I thought I might have written it myself! Thank goodness I hadn’t.

…and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated. We disappointed them.

As Michelle said to Oprah in an interview she did with the president last May: “I always told the voters, the question isn’t whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we’re ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves.”

They still believed, as their friend Valerie Jarrett once said, that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Now that’s won I can get onboard with. Big Guy took a demotion to accept the job of POTUS, and, in spite of Lady M reminding us almost daily, we just don’t seem to appreciate how big a sacrifice that is.

What a bunch of ignorant, shallow, self-absorbed ingrates! Shame on us!

I think MoDo will probably feel better after Big Guy’s SOTU speechifying tonight. Instead of blaming the press, he’s going to blame the Do-Nothing Congress. Who can’t get on board with that?

The Professor is in: Tonight he will explain how things work in Washington, and why nothing is his fault.

 

H/T Blonde Gator

Get out of here! And take your little dog with you.

Heavens, it’s nearly impossible to keep a good, sordid story under wraps in this new media age.

I’m not talking about Marianne Gingrich dishing on Newt’s swinging days, nor Newt’s dishing on Mitt’s tax returns (Which, I understand, when finally released will reveal that he paid all his taxes, on time. Which begs the question: is America ready for a President so straight he doesn’t even cheat on his taxes?).

No, what I’m talking about is Ms. Jodi Kantor’s ongoing ode to all things Obama. I know - it almost seems like a regular installment now. Butt Jodi’s book, originally written as an in-kind gift to Campaign Obama 2012, seems to have been woefully misinterpreted – most notably by Lady M herself. I guess Ms. Jodi, in her zeal to make MO appear like a real person inadvertently sandwiched a bit too much truth between the fatuous layers of awesomeness that make up the Wons.

So lets not fret over the Republican primaries when we can be entertained by a few more fun facts from the little Obama book of HOPE. This time, compliments of the ever vigilant Daily Mail: seeking out the most salacious gossip from around the world so you don’t have to.  Let the sniping begin:

Most political wives would give their right arm to be chatelaine of America’s most famous building. But Michelle was far from enamoured with the prospect of moving to the White House.

It’s okay, butt it needs a little makeover

Big White, under wraps for renovations

Her decision to hire trendy designer Michael Smith — who had decorated houses for Steven Spielberg and Rupert Murdoch — to refurbish the White House caused tension.

Michael Smith with his post-racial “family” – he was a natural for the job of redecorating the Big White

In fact, she was considering living in Chicago with their daughters Sasha and Malia for six months, commuting to Washington for occasional official duties.

The new leader of the free world was aghast. The woman he had lauded in his speech for her ‘unyielding support’ and described as ‘my best friend for the past 16 years, the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation’s next First Lady’ did not see the need to be at his side in the White House.

Big Guy unexpectedly runs into his best friend returning to the West Wing on her birthday last week and Time photographer captures the warm, touching (almost) moment.

As they say: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. I don’t think I better say any more.

 

Although not wanting to move into the Big White with Big Guy shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, we’d already established that he was stinky and snorey; not to mention hopey, changey – and sometimes kind of dopey too.

But those who had known the couple through occasionally rocky times and constant friction over the demands of his political career found this latest conflict…easier to understand.

Its revelations about tensions in the Obama marriage — and how they reverberated through the White House — have gripped America, even more so after Michelle went on a CBS talk show this week to claim the book was just the latest attempt to portray her as ‘some angry black woman’.

When in fact we all know that MO is really just a very schtrong woman.

Bring it, sucka!

It was Michelle who had decided the family would join the church of the notorious pastor Jermiah Wright, who has been described as having anti-American and anti-white views.

Obama family at the Reverend Wright’s Trinity Church, back when he was still considered a political asset: Rev. Wright that is

Here are some of the lesser-known quotes from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I guess I can see why some people would describe him as having “anti-American” views. Butt remember, Big Guy didn’t really listen while he was sitting in the pews anyway. A habit that he later brought to Washington with him.

Oh, and here’s a little seen photo of a lower profile member of The Rev’s church: also working on the Won’s campaign.

The Rev greets church member Bill Ayers at the Won’s rally. (Note: apparently membership at Trinity does not require belief in God. It’s more of a political thing.)

Still, both Big Guy and Lady M were surprised by this:

She was also depicted as a Sixties black radical clad in Army fatigues and with an Afro and AK-47 — though the image was on the cover of the liberal New Yorker magazine and was intended to be ironic.

The only ironic part was that it was intended to be ironic.

Speaking on the stump during the election campaign, she sounded like a firebrand in comparison with her detached technocrat husband.

          

Good cop, bad cop. It’s their thing.

 

But to some observers this week, her protestations rang hollow. Some felt that she was playing the race card to stifle criticism.

During the presidential campaign, staff had nicknamed her ‘the Taskmaster’ and been in constant fear of what one adviser termed ‘the wrath of Michelle’. 

That’s not where I told you to put it Buh-rock! I want that building relocated to the other side of the street. By tomorrow. Got that David?

Though she had thrown herself into the campaign, she had been sceptical from the outset about the very notion of her husband running for president.

Buh-rock President!? Stinky, snorey, dopey Buh-rock!? That’s a good one!

Butt Big Guy has always had aspirations. Some called them illusions of grandeur.

Barack Obama had been constantly dissatisfied with where he was in life.

Well, who wouldn’t be, when you’ve always know that you’re the Won?

“I have a gift, Harry. I can get the sheep to follow me anywhere.”

When he was elected to the state senate in Illinois, he immediately began complaining that the body was not serious and referred to his colleagues as idiots.

And I guess he would be in a position to know an idiot if he spotted one.

Seriously. It’s a mirror.

As soon as he entered the U.S. Senate, he felt frustrated.

At his first hearing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he sat listening to a long-winded address by Senator Joe Biden — later to become his vice-president — and passed a note to an aide that said: ‘Shoot. Me. Now.’

The same sentiment expressed later by a lot of ordinary Americans. And no longer just about Joey.

Brushing aside advice to bide his time, Mr Obama immediately decided he wanted to run for President. The main obstacle in his way was his wife.

Hee hee. Those big butt jokes never seem to get old do they?

She had hated him campaigning for the Senate, startling his staff by phoning him up on the campaign trail to remind him to bring home eggs and milk.

Though she came from a humble background, Mrs Obama was a lawyer educated at Princeton and Harvard. [ed. in case you forgot]

A former editor of the Chicago Tribune who had met the Obamas years earlier recalled: ‘If someone had said to me ‘‘One of them is going to grow up to be president,” I may have bet on her.’

Of course, she wasn’t the first FLOTUS that was said of.

Michelle was uncomfortable with the role of politician’s wife, the silent, smiling appendage, and felt her husband’s ambitions were selfish. [ed. something else she has in common with Hil]

‘What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but “me” is first,’ she told a reporter in 2004.

‘And for women, “me” is fourth and that’s not healthy.’

I’m not sure that view of men IS healthy. It sort of makes Lady M sound -  well, you know – like “an angry black woman.”

After Mr Obama shot to international attention with a scintillating speech at the Democratic National Convention that summer, she had made a point of telling people that he was a man, not a prophet, and he hadn’t yet achieved much.

Well by God, somebody did notice! Even if it was only MO. And her saying so out loud does, again, make her seem like…”an angry black woman.” Who may just have an issue or two with her husband always puttin himself first.

 

Our overpraised President receives his first international award – for NOTHING! He does have a gift.

 

Abandoned by his father and sent by his mother to live with his grandparents in Hawaii for his schooling, Mr Obama had little sense of what ordinary family life was like.

Michelle had to teach him basic things, such as phoning home every day from a trip.

…as well as how to use the phone

Her coolly intellectual husband didn’t see much point in calling if he didn’t have anything to say.

Nothing to say? Like, uh, uh, when did that happen?

 

When he baulked at posing for pictures with strangers, she would tell him ‘Do your job’, with the subtext: ‘This is what you wanted.’

Finish your homework. You can eat your damn waffle when you’re done.

As Miss Kantor’s bombshell book reveals, once there (the White House) she was far from happy. Clothing had long been her ‘compensatory pleasure’ for dutifully enduring the demands of her husband’s political career.

And so began Lady M’s long commitment to sacrificin’ for her country.

‘If I have to go, I’m getting a new dress out of it,’ she would tell neighbours before flying to Washington when he was a senator.

When she became First Lady, White House advisers cringed when she wore a $515 pair of trainers by French designer Lanvin during a trip to a food kitchen for the poor. 

What? Did you expect her to wear - a pair of ugly ass Bruno Mali’s?

They were furious when she broke the White House rule of no foreign holidays and went on a four-day trip to Spain.

 

            

They forgot: we came here to CHANGE the rules.

There was almost another rift when Michelle decided she wanted to appear on the cover of Vogue. During a biting recession, there were fears she was projecting a Marie Antoinette image.

Fears!?!

Her reluctance to attend charity lunches and political events became a standing joke. An adviser noted airily that ‘this is not a First Lady who just does lunch’.

You can say that again. No sir! Lady M does breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks!

The official Lady M Shake Shack Snack Pack

For her part, Michelle resented her husband’s aides. Her objections to them, Miss Kantor writes, ‘tended to sound a lot like her personal complaints about her husband over the years’.

There’s a word for that, what is it again? Oh yes, “transference,” poor babies.

Charges of ‘not planning, not keeping her informed, focusing on  his needs and taking on risky projects without seeing their potential  for failure’ had all been ‘levelled against him since the beginning of their union’.

Bemused West Wing aides noted that Mrs Obama complained about being out of the loop, but had made it clear she wanted to work only two days a week.

After all, that was the schedule she had when she was a very important executive at the University of Chicago Hospital. If you’re good you should be able to do everything expected of you in two days or less.

All that bending over…it takes a lot out of you

His staff, she felt, should be lightening his workload and letting the vice-president and cabinet secretaries shoulder more of the burden.

     

Are you kidding? Joey’s already got his hands full.

At the same time, she felt her husband had lost direction and was not bringing about the political change he had promised.

 

They began to feel that life in the White House was something to be endured rather than savoured.

Enduring and sacrificin’ for the ungrateful Americans in fly over

Such hints of feeling victimised and misunderstood will lead many to conclude she can’t get out of the White House fast enough.

Yes, I would agree. Many have concluded that she can’t get out of the Big White fast enough. And why don’t you take your little dog with you?

C’mon Buh-rock, we gotta go. They don’t appreciate us anyway.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, Thanks!