SOTU Six: Ladders of Opportunity in 6840 Words (just words).

Well, that was painful. To quote the VodkaPundit:  “I miss James Buchanan.”

Focus groups nixed our “income inequality” altogether and didn’t like our “ladders of opportunity” a whole lot better so we had to pull most of those references too. Leaving us with just this:

“But what I offer tonight is a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class, and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class. Some require congressional action, and I'm eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still - and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do.”

“Opportunity” tested positively so we used it as a stand alone 12 times. In fact, it worked so well, that “opportunity is who we are.”

So since I’m sure you were too busy to watch Big Guy and TOTUS, here’s my synopsis of the speech, in no particular order, complete with the ladders of opportunity Big Guy envisions for his stalled upward mobility:

“Build ladders of opportunity into the middle class:”

We still need to fight against the War on Women: they need more ladders to make as much money as their male counterparts:

Unemployment: (Not my fault!) We need more safety nets under the ladders we pulled out from under you.

Upward Mobility: Stalled! (Not my fault!)

Time to cut to some of the human props; we’ve got one for every special interest group.

“But America does not stand still.” Thanks to Michelle, we’ll leave No Child’s Fat Behind™.  Everybody’s moving! Next, let’s try putting that ladder upright.

Mastering the agility ladders; like for dogs.

Action! I’ll take action! With or without Congress:

Action!

Unintended consequences to be addressed at a later date:

Come on! That’s a ladder of opportunity I tossed you!

Obamacare! We’re fixin’ it! (and that’s all I’m going to say about that)

Here, I’m tossing you a new IRA squirrel: MIRA? MY IRA? MyRA? Even I’m confused.

How exactly does this help if I don’t have a job?

"I'll act on my own to slash bureaucracy." The Pen and Phone ladders of leadership:.

Regarding energy: Natural Gas! Love it! All of the above! Love it! (except fracking, coal, drilling in the gulf and the Keystone Pipeline)

Need to replace a few missing rungs on that “All of the Above” Ladder

JOBS!JOBS!JOBS! Roads, Ports, Government Jobs! (that’s standard boiler plate for all speeches now)

Government ladder of opportunity jobs

Butt wait! I’m not done yet! (just pay separate processing and handling)

“But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by - let alone get ahead. And too many still aren't working at all.”

Again: not my fault! Okay? Can we get somebody in here to fix these ladders!

I need this mess straightened out.

let’s get these empty chairs all lined up.

And while you’re at it, make the ladders a little taller:

Raise the minimum wage. “It will give businesses customers with more money to spend.”

Which is good, because businesses will all have to raise their prices.

And of course: Marriage Equality!

Gay ladders march for marriage equality

Education: American students are Racing to the Top, where, once there, they’re “trapped by student loan debt.”

Climbing out of debt would be a lot easier with a job

“The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”

Yep, in some places it snows every winter.

Hey! Come down from up there: hot air rises you know.

And that was about it. Here’s your Obama Sixth SOTU speech take-away:

Or bad things may happen to you

And now a message from our sponsor: Get your own copy of the complete SOTU address along with a copy of our new rainbow ladder of opportunity logo! Yours free for a donation of only $10 or more!

 

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Patty Bride, Barbara White Borden, Dave Jones, Mireille Buser. Far North Dallas Tea Party Patriots, Janet Moorhead, Abby L Call, Dave Starr. Jerry Smith on facebook, and @FarNorthDallasT on twitter, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

A Pen, a Phone, a Ladder, TOTUS: Can Leadership Be Far Behind?

I have to make it short today, as I need to ensure that my batteries are fully charged and that I have plenty of backup. I need to be prepared to handle anything, as I never know what I’m going to need to contend with at the SOTU.

Plus, it always seems like the SOTU runs for hours - sort of like a Hollywood awards show.

Come to think of it, the SOTU is an awards show!

“And the prize goes to…BARACK!!!!”

 

“I’d like to thank anyone who helped me kill Osama bin Laden, butt I can’t remember who you are.”

I’ve got to run now: Raj has been tasked with providing the props for tonight’s SOTU and I promised to help. He’s trying to locate a Pen-in-a-Phone that Big Guy can wave around on the podium to illustrate his new leadership style.

“With a pen and a phone, I will rule you.”

It’s not that Raj hasn’t been able to find a pen-in-phone, he’s actually lined up several different models:

Butt they’re all made in China, and Big Guy specifically requested one that’s union made.

We’re still efforting that request.

Be sure to tune in tonight when we will answer the question: “Can POTUS and TOTUS sell the public on a Pen and Phone President?”

“I think we need to add a few rungs to your pedestal, TOTUS; that’ll turn you into a ‘ladder of opportunity.’ We’ll call you the “Stairway to Heaven.” 

Linked By: The Crawdad Hole, Scott Wayt, Abby L Call, Swan Spirit, Clint Counts on facebook, and @petefrt on twitter, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Video Killed the Radio Star.Teleprompters Killed…

Yes, I stayed up late and watched the 56th Annual Grammy Awards so you didn’t have to. You’re welcome. I felt that watching the annual freak show would be good conditioning for tomorrow’s State Of The Union (SOTU).  I was not wrong…about the freak show anyway.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge the prescience of the Buggles who accurately predicted the migration of the music industry from being about the “song” to being about the “performance” back in 1978 with their  hit “Video killed the radio star.”  To this day, their jingle-tune is best remembered as the video that launched the nascent MTV network.

So, in honor of the totally transformed music industry, allow me to present the highlights from last night’s self-serving honors program. We begin with Beyoncé's behind:

Bey, Channeling Flashdance

Right out of the box, Beyoncé owned the night. After a solo, sexed up version of Flashdance she and Jay Z

Getting ready to twerk for the money 

twerked to their hit, Drunk in Love (expletives deleted). Bey – the woman Lady M considers a great role model for her girls – began by singing - well, “grinding” might be more accurate - in some sort of a black cage that also served as a costume. Here it is in motion:

The artists formerly known as Beyoncé and Jay Z will now be referred to as Beyon-Zay

Yeah, no. The entire act was even more disturbing than the gif, butt that’s the point: music as art, art as music and art isn’t art at all if if doesn’t offend somebody. What is it they call that kind of art again?  Oh, right; pornography.

Someday Baby Blue Ivy will be so proud. As for Lady M and that role model thing, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Mommy doesn’t want Malia and Sasha to be sluts and whores, so maybe it was just her way of crediting Bey with providing the second time in her adult life that she was proud of her country.

Butt that was just the beginning. The award show originally dedicated to musical recording artists proceeded as more of a nod to the visual arts than the audial ones. Take Pink’s bizarre act which was a cross between the flying Mirandas and Cirque de Soleil: more acrobatics (she’s flexible butt mediocre) than singing. Let’s face it, even lip syncing while hanging upside down doesn’t sound or look natural.

Although I do admire her flexibility and strength: maybe she should just can the singing career and go for Olympic endorsements.

And then there was “Pharrell” who you knew was going to win everything because he kept popping up all night long with nearly anyone who performed. Apparently it’s “black tie optional” at the Grammys these days: Pharrell wore red leather and a really, really big hat:

Which immediately prompted this Tweet:

Pharrell, who is a singer and a producer, performed with his robots (just like BO will tomorrow):

Daft Punk’s electro-techno robots

And of course, the material girl was there: Madonna practically invented the modern musical version of sex as performance art.  She came with her son.

 Okay, that’s disturbing.

As if that poseur wasn’t bad enough, Madge later changed into a wedding white Ralph Lauren tuxedo to serenade the 33 newly married (by Queen Latifa!) couples (gay AND straight, because we’re not bigots) with her classic "Open Your Heart."  Her act followed the performance of rap duo Macklemore &  Lewis singing their gay marriage anthem "Same Love."  Yeah! 33 couples hitched, right there at the 56th Grammy Awards! Now that’s music!

Is it just me or does anyone else think Madonna is beginning to look like Marlena Dietrich? 

And I almost forgot! This is huge: Sir Pall McCartney actually performed, on stage, with Ringo! Starr! It was the First Beatle Reunion- evah! Unfortunately there are only two of the Beatles left.

Although Jon’s son, Sean, could have sat in for his dad:

What was especially cool about the reunion was that after their respective White House visits, everyone decided to give peace a chance: after 30 years of feuding, Paul and Ringo have buried the hatchet and forgiven Yoko Ono (so maybe it will work in the Middle East after all!) And you can tell this made Yoko very happy as she was groovin’ to the ex-Beatles music. Although, I swear, as I watched her, Yoko looked for all the world like the fake signer at Big Guy’s speech at Mandela’s funeral. What do you think?

Butt I nearly forgot the very best part of the show! In a homage to Lady M, Ryan Lewis (of the rap duo Macklemore and Lewis, above) wore a nearly identical outfit to the smashing one MO sported at the Nickelodeon People’s Choice awards last year! How incredibly cool is that?

Okay, I think I’m in shape for the SOTU tomorrow. I’m renaming it the “Teleprompters Killed the Orator Guy”

NOTE: For more on this topic be certain to read Mark Steyn’s vintage essay, Twenty Years Ago Today in which he shares his, and Harold Bloom’s, take on “popular culture.” 

“What happens when, instead of beautiful men making beautiful statues, angry men make angry songs? “Keepin’ it real,” in the current black vernacular, means the rapper Nelly making a video in which he swipes a credit card through his ho’s butt. “Keepin’ it real” means songs in which men are “angry” (as John Kerry says) and violent and nihilistic, and women are “sluts, bobbing chicken heads, and of course bitches.” “Authenticity” is surely a more reductive view of the black experience than your average nineteenth-century minstrel show ever attempted. I think we can guess how Nat “King” Cole would have felt about gangsta rap.”

ANSWER TO TITLE CLIFF HANGER: Teleprompters killed…who? Or, more accurately, what? Great communicators: they communicate from the heart, not the scrolling page.

Caption This

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Neo-Neocon, and DeniseVB on The Crawdad Hole, and Abby L Call, Kent Clizbe, Fred Hopkins, Sally Culp on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

No Racism, No Sexism: Just Dancing in Our Judgment Free Zone.

Wendy Davis – The Most Judged Woman in America?  Certainly NOT! That distinction belongs exclusively to Lady M.

A woman who – from the time she became FLOTUS-in waiting - has been judged on everything:

From her posture:

h/t Cripes Suzette

To her, uh, “grasp” of proper protocol:

Quelle horreur!!

And her fashion decorum, whether at work:

Posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony in honor of Sergeant First Class Jared Monti.

on vacation,

or at play:

Butt who wouldn’t want to be this haut??

 

Then there was all the judging done about her new hair:

Quelle horreur!!

and the endless judging of her dancing skills:

A Titanic Twerk

as well as her Kardashian-esque clothing selections that showcase her, uh, greatest asset:

(I realize I haven’t come close to doing this category justice, feel free to post your own fave.)

Of course all this judging is due solely to the sexist Republicans. Just like it is with that sweet, sweet Wendy Davis. Just because she ditched her kids - an ultimately the husband who raised them - to pursue her own ambitious goals doesn’t make her a bad person. That is altogether something else.

So let’s be clear: the only reason people criticize Lady M or Wendy is because, 1) RACIST! or, 2) WAR ON WOMEN!

Because it’s not repeat, NOT, a reaction to the fawning media that had made Lady M into a Fashion Icon and Busy Mom™ and turned little Wendy into a world class heroine and role model. As LukeHandCool commented on Professor Jacobson’s fine post:

“We all know many, if not most, politicians exaggerate and embellish their life stories. We get that.

But (and this is a big, big, butt^*) … the media made her into a huge, huge heroine, like they were heroin addicts who couldn’t get enough Wendy and wanted to forcibly inject Wendy into our veins, also.

As with Barack Obama … if the media is going to try to transform some mediocrity into the greatest political figure since Churchill and shove her down our throats … expect some huge pushback.

For every action there is a reaction. And when the media subjects us to a huge action of its cheerleading … there will be a strong reaction … especially in the wake of the Obama “smartest leader ever” debacle.”

^* footnote: You don’t suppose LukeHandCool is one of us, do you?

Butt don’t forget:  RACISM! SEXISM! WAR ON WOMEN!

And if you’re thinking “hypocrisy” right now, it’s probably because you’re a SEXIST! Or, worse, a RACIST! So let’s try harder people: do we really need to be so judgmental?

I think not.

So just knock it off! And dance.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Teri O’Brien, and Abby L Call, Kent Clizbe, Susana Patrick, Bob Hettinga on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network