OFA Wants to Know What You Want to Hear at the State of the Union

Well?

Obama for America

Organizing for Action, formerly known as Obama for America and still located online at BarackObama.com, is a 501(c)4, which is allowed to do political advocacy but prohibited from supporting a specific candidate, has joined in the pre-State of the Union propaganda push. They want to know what you're most interested in hearing the president talk about. The OFA e-mail:

Edward --

In a few short days, President Obama will lay out his plans for 2014, but before that, we want to know what you're most interested in hearing from him on Tuesday.

Take this quick, one-question survey and let OFA know:

http://my.barackobama.com/State-of-the-Union-Survey

Thanks,

Abby

The e-mail follows an official White House e-mail from Valerie Jarrett where she talked about how much work she's putting into an address that for nearly two more than one hundred years was merely sent as a letter to the Congress. It's a "hectic week," she wrote, with busy policy advisors and speech writers.

Joe Biden sent a White House e-mail, calling the Constitutionally-mandated update the President has to give Congress a "plan for the upcoming year of action," calling the State of the Union "part of a tradition that dates back to our founding fathers," without mentioning, naturally, that from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson all the way through Woodrow Wilson, presidents were able to meet their constitutional obligation without the pomp and circumstance introduced to it since Wilson brought back the live reading.

The State of the Union will be next Tuesday. You'll be able to watch it on any of the networks and most of the cable news channels, or follow along as we livetweet here at Hit & Run.

Comments

[creech]

My answer: "The President's immediate resignation, even if it means Joe Biden becomes president."

[Ted S.]

That was my first thought as well. My second would be a general pardon for Edward Snowden, followed by a comment that Snowden should probably stay in the Soviet Union anyway because the NSA will probably try to have him killed if he returns to the US.

[jester]

Snowden for write in candidate.

[Rod Flash]

Damn! I went there and wrote "Legalizing Marijuana/Ending the War on Drugs (for real this time)" before I checked in here. Snowden would have been even better.

[darius404]

Add "and immediate arrest for conspiracy to commit murder." and it's perfect.

[darius404]

Mine was a bit longer:

How great and nonpartisan he is, unlike "those" that he shall not name (*cough*Republicans*cough*), and how people can disagree but anyone who disagrees with him has no good reason for doing and and must be ignored, how he's totally gotten us out of the recession even though there's no evidence his work has done anything and we still appear to be IN the recession, how he plans to save the world by the end of his term, and how humble and narcissistic he is.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

I've said before and I'll say it again: the only way to make this horseshit worth watching (besides playing drinking games and live-blogging here) is if they adopted the British format where the other party can heckle the PM as he/she gives a speech. I know they do it because of the parliamentary system, but it would be nice to ditch this faux-civility shit.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Maybe we'd even get some cross-aisle brawls like we see in South Korea and Japan once in a while.

[Ted S.]

That's an insult to the good people of Taiwan.

[Apatheist ?_??]

Yes, we Texans should definitely go back to picking our political leaders based on whether they needed to flee the feds for beating someone with a cane.

[CE]

You mean like the guy on the twenty?

Lawrence's unsuccessful (assassination) attempts were noticed by Jackson, who proceeded to beat him down with his cane. The crowd (which included Congressman Davy Crockett) eventually intervened and wrestled Lawrence into submission.

[Apatheist ?_??]

No, I mean like the first president.

After Stanbery refused to answer Houston's letters about the accusation, Houston confronted him on Pennsylvania Avenue and beat him with a hickory cane. Stanbery drew one of his pistols and pulled the trigger?the gun misfired.
On April 17 Congress ordered Houston's arrest. During his trial at the District of Columbia City Hall, he pleaded self-defense and hired Francis Scott Key as his lawyer. Houston was found guilty. Thanks to highly placed friends (among them James K. Polk), he was only lightly reprimanded. Stanbery filed charges against Houston in civil court. Judge William Cranch found Houston liable and assessed him $500 in damages. Houston left the United States for Mexico without paying the judgement.

[Brett L]

Flinging horse pucks at particularly egregious falsehoods would be awesome.

[Homple]

What became of Joe "You lie!" Wilson?

[Spencer]

I'm still most interested in hearing a logical, legal validation for using taxation as a behavior modification device vs. revenue generation.

That's literally it. If he can answer that, I'll eat my hat.

[R C Dean]

Take a gander at the Tax and Spending Clause:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;

I don't see anything in there about behavior modification.

There are three and only three purposes for which COngress can impose taxes: to pay debts, to pay for defense, and to provide for the general welfare.

[wareagle]

look at the last of those three purposes. It has been bastardized as badly as the Commerce Clause.

[Pelosi's Rabbit]

You must have accidentally left out the penaltax part.

[Loki]

I don't see anything in there about behavior modification.

The general welfare clause, of course.

You see, you're too stupid to know what behavior is in your best interest, so Congress (i.e. TOP. MEN.) have to use whatever means are at their disposal to force you to modify your behavior. That means throwing some people in a cage for consuming certain substances, or taxing economic non-activity such as failing to purchase government approved health insurance. Because that's what's best for the "general welfare."

[The Last American Hero]

So he's outsourcing his speech?

[jester]

Don't be a stupid truther

[Red Rocks Rockin]

without mentioning, naturally, that from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson all the way through Woodrow Wilson, presidents were able to meet their constitutional obligation without the pomp and circumstance introduced to it since Wilson brought back the live reading.

Just another in a long list of black marks against that pompous authoritarian Wilson.

[John]

What is funny is that Obama plans to use this organization to change America after he leaves office. When his sorry ass finally leaves power, he is still going to be out there hustling hope and change.

I am thinking all but his really low sloped forehead supporters are going to have had enough of Obama by then. He is going to turn into the black Lindon LaRouche. It is going to be pathetic but really funny.

[Brett L]

I'm hoping there's a secret society that takes presidents aside and explains that if they don't shut up and play nice for the next presidency after leaving office, they'll be gelded. Even Carter and Clinton managed that level of decency.

[John]

I don't think the Black Messiah has that in him.

[Brett L]

Thus the secret society that threatens gelding.

[John]

Michelle already beat them to it.

[Homple]

Ha!

[jester]

Not really.

[CE]

They do that between November and January, when they're first elected.

[Marc F Cheney]

Crickets. That's what I'd like to hear.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

And the sound of rotten tomatoes smacking Obama, Biden, and Boehner in the face.

[Episiarch]

There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that I will watch a State of the Union, or actually anything where Obama speaks. He's insufferable.

[Killaz]

I'm hoping that Gearbox drops some DLC on us to help me miss this crap.

[Episiarch]

Good idea. I haven't purchased all the little DLCs other than the Haunted Hollow one. Maybe I can do that.

[Killaz]

Hey, I don't have that one either. Forgot about it.

So, Brick, wiger or Mulatto? And are those things necessarily exclusive?

[Episiarch]

I have no idea. I'm more concerned with the fact that I still have over 100 Golden Keys.

[Killaz]

I played him on an afternoon run through of Borderlands. Fun character. The best realized of the original cast in the second. Man, did they turn my fun, kill thrill psycho Siren into a dour comic book convention geek girl in the worst way.

I say, DAMN on the keys, Like a Butt Stallion harvest without the horse shit. Okay, there is not horse shit, but he poops aplenty.

[Episiarch]

As much use as I get out of Phaselock, I still miss being able to Phasewalk. I got myself out of a lot of trouble that way.

And it's so many Golden Keys I don't even know what to do with them. I guess I should probably allow myself about 5 per level.

[Killaz]

My shield went down, I hit the action key. That was my basic set up on my first run with Lilith. Then I respeced her points to emphasize melee combat, where phase walk got you close, and fireburst plus kung fu palm hit bonuses could fuck a bassass leveled spiderant queen's day up something fierce.

[Killaz]

bassass -- er, that would be a terrible monster. Make that badass.

[SugarFree]

BL2 is Gunzerker all the way. I manically laugh the entire time.

[Killaz]

Commando got boring due to hiding all the time. Gunzerker, the skill where you stack the excess damage from one hit and carry it over to the next -- sorry midgets, but you gotta die first!

[Killaz]

If anything, load up Axton so you can hear his log. It's funny. He also has the best quips, but again, his skills are boring.

[PH2050]

Commando got boring due to hiding all the time.

Vehemently disagree. I run, but my build has me constantly throwing out turrets that slag everything while I do insane amounts of damage. I call it "Gun N Run N Fun".

Gunzerker is amazing, though.

sorry midgets, but you gotta die first!

Wholeheartedly agree.

[Ted S.]

TCM is showing a night of Michael Caine movies, with Gambit at 8:00 PM and, since the political speech is going to be intermniable, Get Carter at 10:00 PM. Unfortunately, they're not showing Victory.

[PD Scott]

If you haven't seen it, Get Carter is a heckuva good movie.

A few weeks ago TCM Underground showed a blacksploitation version called Hit Man (which I had never heard of).

[Killaz]

I also have Dark Souls on Steam, but have yet been in the mood to play it.

[Remnant Psyche]

Make sure you get the DSFix mod before you start playing, if you don't have it already. The DS PC port is atrocious and contains no native way to alter graphics settings.

Also, you'll need a controller. The keyboard and mouse controls for DS are almost unusable.

[Brett L]

"My fellow Americans, members of Congress, distinguished guests.

"Let me be clear. I have been governing by equal parts fear, arrogance, and ignorance for the last five years, and I have no intention of changing now. "

[Anonymous Coward]

The e-mail follows an official White House e-mail from Valerie Jarrett where she talked about how much work she's putting into an address that for nearly two hundred years was merely sent as a letter to the Congress.

Yes. Now all of the nobility and peasants are summoned to attend the king in his bloviating and dissimulating.

[sarcasmic]

"I quit."

[Episiarch]

I wish.

[The Last American Hero]

No. Then he becomes a political martyr, a man so principled and awesome that he was forced to leave office before it corrupted him. I want him in office as his health plan sends his party into the wilderness and I want him in office as a 2 year lame duck with plummeting approval ratings. And I want other politicians to see him as a cautionary tale.

[Episiarch]

You make a good point.

[Killaz]

True all of that, but if there ever was a man that in spite of all expectations to the contrary, who rose to the occasion to turn things around on a disaster when his over praised incompetent boss quits and leaves him with the mess to sort out that man is Biden. This movie writes itself. We supplied the cast, so why are we not in that movie?

[CE]

Chicago politicians don't get corrupted by high office. They bring new levels of corruption to it.

[GILMORE]

"They want to know what you're most interested in hearing the president talk about"

Because the president is far more worried about his political party's public perception than actually bothering to fucking do his job and make any reasoned decisions about what might be of particular priority for the country at this given moment in time. Leadership: How does it work?

But, since he asked: how about 'throwing people in jail for political-speech-crimes'? I always find that interesting.

[PapayaSF]

Thank heavens the IRS is cracking down on inappropriate political activity by 501(c)(4) non-profits!

[Brett L]

Its not like they illegally purchased influence by backing a candidate who lost!

[PapayaSF]

Or are trying to teach people about the Constitution. Extremists!

[CE]

We all know this Constitution love talk is just a smoke screen for anarchists to tear down the government to a shell of what is needed for good governance.

[Zeb]

I want to hear him say that he actually is a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya. Not because I think there is any good reason to believe that those things are true. I don't. But wouldn't it be hilarious if it turned out that they were true?

[Brett L]

When has the truth ever been an impediment for a 21st century president? Epically trolling the Birthers in a SOTU Address is perhaps the only thing that could improve my opinion of the man.

[John]

Something is up with his childhood. The media refused to look into it for a reason and that wasn't because there was nothing there.

My guess is that during his college years he effectively renounced his citizenship by claiming to be foreign on his college applications and traveling on a foreign passport. We know he had duel citizenship at least with Indonesia. The rule with duel citizenship is that you keep it until you do something that affirmatively renounces one citizenship or the other. And claiming to be of that citizenship for the purpose of college admission and student aid would I am pretty sure do it.

[Ted S.]

What weapon did the citizenships fight with, and which one won? 😉

[CE]

+1 razor edged passport book

[PapayaSF]

That's what I suspect: he claimed foreign citizenship for the leftist cred and for discounted tuition. His publisher's promotional material for his first (aborted) book is a HUGE piece of evidence. I know first-hand that publishers do not write bios for authors. Authors provide them to publishers, then publishers show authors any such material in final form before it goes out. So Obama wrote that, and approved it. He was either lying then, or he's lying now.

[Pro Libertate]

Yes, I'm convinced he falsely claimed to be foreign born for some reason when he was younger. He obviously must've really been born in Hawaii, or proof otherwise would've shown up long ago.

[PapayaSF]

Well, I try not to get too conspiratorial, but I still say there's a very slight chance that he was not. There are some odd things about the official timeline, and it's not out of the question that a fudged birth announcement was placed in a Hawaii paper to help ensure citizenship.

In any case, the people who think the birth certificate is at least partly fake have some points that sound somewhat convincing, though I have not researched it in any detail. One odd thing is that the document released was a multi-layer PDF, and AFAIK there is no reason that a single image needs to be released in that form, unless there was digital manipulation. Though I don't know why the manipulation wouldn't have been done in Photoshop, and exported as a simpler PDF or a JPG or PNG. And the manipulation could have been something like the name of the father, or the religion of the mother, or something else that would still not have disqualified him as President.

[CE]

Hey, the guy thought there are 57 states. Maybe he still thought Hawaii was an independent kingdom, because he had visited the palace there when he was a kid. Or his brain was so addled by drugs in college he got confused. But none of that fits the media narrative.

[PapayaSF]

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is 57 states! AHA!

But this is the best explanation.

[Loki]

I want to hear him say that he actually is a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya.

At this point if he were to say that, my first instinct would be to assume he's lieing.

[Zeb]

I can see that. But even then, as Brett says above, it would be an epic trolling of the Birthers.

[jester]

Does Michelle like anal?

[jester]

Sorry. Forgot which union.

[Andrew S.]

This is not only grounds for being banned from Reason, but possibly tarred and feathered. Now I'm in desperate need of some mind bleach. Or maybe I want to drink bleach. One or the other.

[wareagle]

both...it's the only way.

[Loki]

Take off and nuke your mind from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[HazelMeade]

How can we spike the punchbowl?

Should we make him babble on about universal pre-K and raising the minimum wage to $20/hour, or should we make him defend ObamaCare?

[John]

What do you want to bet he spends less than two minutes talking about his signature accomplishment?

There were will be a lot of babbling about the evil rich, pre K education and the minimum wage. There will not however be much talk about health care. I mean really, only racist Republicans who won't face reality talk about health care anymore.

[HazelMeade]

I wonder how much time he'll spend talking about climate change.
It hasn't been high on the Dems agenda lately, but the Keystone XL pipeline is still outhere, waiting for another approval.

Whether or not he approves Keystone could be a barometer of how badly ObamaCare has hurt the Ds.

[John]

Tuesday night is supposed to be near zero in Washington. Talking about Global Warming would be rich. I bet he does it.

[CE]

My money's on the "growing gap between rich and poor" and how it threatens civilization itself. Even if the only people actually threatening civilization are the greedy progressives who want to take money that others have peacefully earned.

[HazelMeade]

When has the gap between the rich and poor not been growing? Is it ever?

If it was declining in percentage terms they would just talk about it in real dollars.

Tired standard-issue pablum for the masses.

[Andrew S.]

"I hereby tender my resignation as President"

There, that's what I want to hear.

I will, however, only be following here, and drinking heavily while doing so.

[Andrew S.]

Also, is it paranoid of me to think I should use a throwaway e-mail, a fake zip code and spoofed MAC address when filling out that form?

[jester]

'I am calling for martial law. Too many right-wing tea party-types are questioning my integrity!'

[Bardas Phocas]

Last year's SoU was the usual blather - does anyone remember what he said/promised/entoned?

The biggest news was Ted Nugent attended and a republican drank water.

So what washed up musicians should attend then one? Doesn't have to be a 70s one. 80s could work.
Are Heart chicks still alive? How about Billy Idol?

[John]

The Captain and Tenille. They could talk to the Messiah and Michelle about marital problems.

[HazelMeade]

Universal Pre-K for everyone.

[Bardas Phocas]

that's a terrible name for a band

[Pro Libertate]

Universal pre-natal-daycare for everyone.

[jester]

'Train your future ejaculate with proper massage. Go to massage.gov today!'

[wareagle]

I'd like to hear the SOTU has been cancelled, due to lack of interest. On the part of the speaker who realized that he has nothing new or interesting to say, realizing what more than half the country has known all along.

That, of course, won't happen. Obama will speak if only for the pleasure of hearing his own voice. The Prompter could have the alphabet, the script for any tv show, or the Gettysburg Address. The result will be shit, false promises, strawmen, non sequiturs, and every other rhetorical fallacy.

[HazelMeade]

I want to hear that the SOTU has been replaced by an awards show.
Instead of talking about politics, instead Obama will hand out prizes. He will then make all the acceptance speeches himself, just because.
There will be intermittent song and dange numbers.
The paparazzi will gather outside and comment on everyone's clothing.

[Invisible Finger]

If I wanted to hear an hour of lies, I'd stay at work and sit in the sales department for a hour of paid "training".

[Pro Libertate]

I believe the last State of the Union speech I saw even part of was the one where I was told that the "Era of big government is over." Since then, I've viewed the United States as a minarchy with free markets and very broadly exercised freedom. Appearances otherwise must be some full-immersion VR experience gone bad.

[Loki]

"Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution."

[Ayn Random Variation]

"I humbly submit to the nation my, uh, realization of the impossibility and immorality of centrally planning the lives of 300 million people. As such, I request that Congress compose a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act, Federal Drug and Gambling laws, and all Income Taxes, and I will sign that bill into Law. I will spend the rest of this year pardoning unjustly incarcerated American citizens, and working with Congress to defund those Federal Agencies, Cabinet and other unelected and unaccountable Officials and Offices not enumerated in the US Constitution. Thank you."

[jester]

Go back to the MJ postings. There were several today.

[CE]

Just two words:

"I resign."

[LarryA]

"The most transparent government in History!"

[jester]

The most cellophane government in a couple of years.

[jester]

'Nobody move or the......'

*everybody moves *

[jester]

Sorry...'the next man makes a move...'

[JD]

I want him to refute 539 lies.

http://danfromsquirrelhill.wor.....obama-252/

[RishJoMo]

Jacka Macka Mo Mo aint gonna like that.

http://www.AnonWork.tk

[Mike Laursen]

Re: "You'll be able to watch it on any of the networks and most of the cable news channels"

Better yet, I'll be able to not watch it.

[ConstitutionFirst]

I want to hear why he refuses to honer his oath to the Constitution.

[plusafdotcom]

I want him to explain whether he's ever understood the definitions of words like "Legislative" and "Executive" and "Branches" and how they might apply to him and his job.