A Short Guide To Obama's 2012 State Of The Union Speech

This was an actual State of the Union speech rather than an obvious campaign speech. The surprise of the night - straw men survived as a species with only a few set alight by our Campaigner in Chief. Poor Pinnochio, however, his nose grew so long that he can no longer raise his head. And the number of elephants in the room ignored by Obama (trillions of them and increasing by the minute) was really quite amazing.

 At any rate, to keep this short, let's go down the checklist of the obvious:

Blame the economy on prior administration - Check

Wall Street greed caused the economic meltdown - Check

Meltdown caused by a prior administration - Check

 3 Million New Jobs - Check

 Equal Pay For Equal Work - Check

 Fairness as the key to all of our economic woes - Check

 GM Success - Check

 Oil Bad, Green Energy Good - Check

 Making Our Navy The World's Largest Consumer of Biofuels - Check

 Libya - Check

 Bin Laden - Check

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 Now for some of the Notable Omissions:

 Hope and Change - No

Entitlement Reforms - No

 Obamacare - No

 Stimulus - No

 Dodd Frank - No

 Unemployment Rate - No

 Real Unemployment Rate - No

 Number of Long Term Unemployed - No

 Massive Inflation in Food and Fuel - No

 $16 trillion in debt & growing by the minute - No

 GM failure to payback billions of taxpayer funds - No

Keystone Pipeline - No

Nuclear Energy - No

 Solyndra - No

 Gutting our National Defense - No

 Making Our Navy Purchase Grossly Expensive Biofuels - No

 Egypt - No

Arab Spring - No 

Obama Administration opposition to most recent Iran central bank sanctions - No

Cancelling Military Training Ops With Isral - No

The failure of the Democrat Controlled Senate To Pass A Budget For Three Years - No

Recovery Under Obama compared to recovery from all other post-WWII Recessions - No

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 Big, Massive Screaming Lies:

Obama taking credit for increasing oil production, reduced oil usage, and making 75% of our offshore areas available for oil exploration and development.

Obama Claims that he is reducing the regulatory burden.


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Request Masses of New Spending For:

Education (must keep the public sector unions in cash)

Federal employment center and Community Colleges

Green energy

Federally funded R&D for everything

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 Insane Proposals -

 1. Tax multinational corporations on their overseas profits not brought into the U.S.

 2. Son of Stimulus - "Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."

 3. No Cost Refinancing Of Loans - To be paid for by a new bank tax . . . which will be paid for by you and I.

For a full discussion of many of the issues raised by Obama's inclusions and omissions, see the Heritage Foundation's Round-up

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Krauthammer On Obama's 2011 SOTU Speech

"From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?"

Dr. Krauthammer dissects Obama's SOTU speech, observing that it shows a President who refuses to modify his profligate spending or statist policies, the election of November 2010 be damned.

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Obama's 2011 SOTU Theme - WTF

Heh. The theme of Obama's State of the Union speech, repeated at several points, was "Winning The Future." But, as American Glob points out, team Obama probably didn't thoroughly consider the optics of this theme.



And as Instapundit wryly adds, there were several WTF moments during Obama's speech.

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State Of The Union 2011

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SOTU 2011 Post-Game Analysis - Spend Spend Spend

To summarize Obama's SOTU, stay the course on spending and don't change the substance of the agenda. As Rand Paul noted, Obama still sees government as the solution to all of our problems (both real and imagined, I would add). If anyone heard in Obama's SOTU speech a move to the center, they were listening to the mellifluous tone of Obama's voice and not paying any attention to the lyrics of his siren song.

Obama stepped up to the teleprompter at a time when our economy is in deep trouble. Growth is tepid and far below where it should be coming out of a recession. A record forty one million people in the U.S. are on food stamps. Housing prices have sunk faster and lower than Katy Couric's Nielsen ratings. The cost of basic commodities - oil, gas and food - are going through the roof. Real unemployment, UH-6, is at 16.7% - and that is actually up from a year ago. So how does Obama address these problems in the opening of his SOTU speech? He puts a happy face on it:

“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”

It was a disingenuous start to a disingenuous speech.

Two days ago, I forecast what Obama would say in his State of the Union speech with fair accuracy. The majority of Obama's speech was given over to justifying more spending for his radical green agenda, to hire more teachers, and to pay for another stimulus under the guise of infrastructure spending. And when it came to deficit reduction, Obama tried to portray Obamacare as the heart of deficit reduction. To my surprise, he mentioned entitlements, but he did so only in passing. Obama also offered a freeze of entitlement spending in an act of symbolism over substance. Lastly, when it came to “reforming government,” Obama hyped reducing the regulatory burden, yet said nothing about the tsunami of regulations waiting in the wings.

To give the devil his due, Obama did make some very good proposals in his speech:

: Reforming the corporate tax – As a general principal, this is a positive step. Obama said he wants Congress to reduce our corporate tax from the current rate of 35%, the highest in the developed world. He did not propose a new rate, but said that any such reform should be “revenue neutral." That is bad news, as it means it will not promote growth. That said, if it means getting rid of ALL the subsidies that special interests have worked into our tax code, then great. But Obama made crystal clear that he wants to heavily subsidize his favored industries, particularly the green ones. So it would seem that Obama's call for tax reform may in reality be a backdoor way to soak businesses in America to fund Obama's version of crony capitalism. We have to see the details on this one.

: Medical Malpractice reform – this is incredibly important if we are ever to bend down the cost curve of medical expenses. I am glad that he mentioned it, but it is likely a red herring. The left, owned in part by the trial lawyers lobby, would sooner chew off their right arm than pass national med mal reform. To date, neither Obama nor Congressional Dems have shown the slightest interest in anything beyond lip service to med mal reform.

: Race to the Top – this relatively inexpensive program program, $4 billion, is in fact a good program aimed at encouraging reform in state educational systems. It deserves full support from both sides of the aisle.

: Earmarks – Obama announced that he won't sign any bills with earmarks in them – weeks after the House promised not to send him any bills with earmarks. This was like watching the movie Dragonslayer, where at the end of the flick, the King walks up to the recently slain dragon, puts his sword through it, and has himself proclaimed "King Casiodorus, Dragonslayer." What a tool.

: A Reorganization and streamlining of our regulatory agencies – On the surface, this sounds like a very good idea. But I suspect there will be an infinite number of devils in the details.

Okay, now on to the ridiculous assertions and other low points of the speech:

I. Innovation -

Obama called for “innovation,” using the symbolism of a “Sputnik moment,” the point when America turned its attention to manned space flight and a lunar landing. He then stated that government spending was a necessity for innovation and made clear that his main concern was funding his radical green agenda:

"This is our generation's Sputnik moment."

The irony here is amazing. Our efforts at manned space flight did pay a lot of dividends for America – velcro, teflon, robotics, scanning technology, and scratch resistant lenses to name just a few. Yet Obama, who now calls for a “Sputnik moment,” is the man who killed off our manned space program so that he could spend more money on Obamacare – no doubt to increase innovations in socialism.

Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need . . .

Apparently our corporations are incapable of conducting research and coming up with ideas without government intervention and massive infusions of our tax dollars. One, Obama wants to pick winners and losers in our economy – he fully embraces crony capitalism. Two, the proposition that our scientists and businesses cannot innovate without government subsidies and direction is simply too ludicrous to seriously entertain. Perhaps Obama should do some research on the issue over his I-pad, or make a call to the patent office on his cell phone.

In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology . . .

Already, we are seeing the promise of renewable energy. Robert and Gary Allen are brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard.

Today, with the help of a government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles that are being sold all across the country. In Robert's words, "We reinvented ourselves."

The left destroyed our housing industry – and with it, many of the businesses involved in that industry. Yet Obama has the audacity to hold out two failed roofing manufacturers as shining icons of our new economy. These would be green entrepeneurs had the sense to take some of the massive government subsidies Obama is passing out like candy to open up a solar panel manufacturing plant. Solar power, which provides less than 1% of our energy needs and is not price competitive, is a massive boondoggle. Heavily subsidized solar power has nearly bankrupted Spain and is having negative impacts throughout every other economy in Europe. And the day the subsidies for solar power end in the U.S. is the day Robert and Gary Allen declare bankruptcy and close up shop.

With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

One, electric cars are not going to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. The electricity to run them has to be generated by . . . hint, its not unicorn excreta. Two, a major concern with electric cars is the destabilizing impact large numbers of these vehicles would have on our energy grid.

Biofuels are another major boondoggle (well, but see here). None have proven cost-effective at scale and, in the case of ethanol, Obama has us pitting fuel against food. Over a fourth of are farmland is now given over to producing fuel that is inefficient, expensive, ecologically worse for the environment than fossil fuels, and driving food prices to world records. It is insanity. And that is what Obama wants more of?

[J]oin me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. . . .

Is this guy nuts? We should be embracing nuclear power for the future of our electrical needs, but we haven't broken ground on a new nuclear plant in decades – and Obama insured that we wouldn't be doing it at any point in the future when he closed off our only nuclear waste repository. Clean coal is both untested and looks to be far too expensive. Wind and solar are absolute pipe dreams. The bottom line is that, if we are getting 80% of our electricity from “clean energy sources” by 2035, our nation will be broke and half of our nation will be blacked out.

And as predicted, Obama is continuing his brutal war on our domestic oil production:

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.

Regardless of Obama's radical green dreams, we aren't getting off oil at any point in the near future. Obama's policies will only make oil and gas prohibitively expensive in America and make us ever more dependent on foreign oil. In the not too distant future, that will prove catastrophic for our economy.

II. Education:

I said Obama would make a pitch for sending even more money into the black hole of public education, and lo and behold . . .

over the next ten years . . . we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

We desperately need better teachers in each of these areas. But the answer is not to hire more teachers – as I pointed our here, we know empirically that neither more teachers nor more per pupil spending have improved the quality of our science and math education. We need people competent in their fields and who perform well as teachers. To get there, we need to end the stranglehold of teachers unions on our public school system. Obama studiously ignored that point.

Obama's call for more teachers is nothing more than a push to further strengthen teachers unions and, thus, the Democratic Party. Expect this issue to be demagogued to the fullest over the coming months.

III. Illegal Aliens – Obama made a one paragraph pitch for amnesty. It was a shout out to the Hispanic Caucus.

IV. Infrastructure:

Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I'm proposing that we redouble these efforts.

Yeah, let's do that again since it worked so well in 2009 to help our economy. This is just Obama wanting to do more Keynesian spending without mentioning the word "stimulus."

V. Deficit Reduction:

Obama is a magician at deficit reduction - all misdirection and illusion. His points and proposals were one joke after another. Obama did as predicted, pointing to his regulatory review and Obamacare's fairy tale CBO numbers as "proof" that he is focused on deficit reduction.

Beyond that, Obama added a promise to freeze current discretionary spending – 7% of our spending – at current levels for five years in order to save $400 billion. Given that he increased discretionary spending by an incredible 20% over the past two years, that is like an alcoholic saying he won't pay for another drink after he just stocked a 5 year supply of rum.

Our deficit is over $14 trillion and is on a trajectory to hit a crisis number of $20 trillion in less than a decade. What we need is deficit reduction. What Obama offers instead is a slightly slower march to Armageddon. Not exactly a profile in leadership.

Obama did manage to work in a criticism of the right's proposal to save $2.5 trillion by actually reducing discretionary spending:

“let's make sure that we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”

Let there be no doubt of the new Democratic meme – any and all cuts proposed by the right will hurt the poor and/or the children.

That is just so insane. What poor people need are decent jobs, low fuel prices, low food prices and reasonable housing costs. EVERYTHING this administration is doing is falling heaviest on the poor. We are hemorrhaging good jobs, fuel and food are going through the roof, and housing is a mess. Obama and the left are the enemies of the poor. They give a little with the left hand and take away twice as much with the right.

VI. Entitlements:

Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare

In the only prediction I got wrong, Obama did mention entitlement spending and the need to reform entitlements. He mentioned the need to make savings in Medicare and Medicaid, then segued into a claim that Obamacare would reduce the deficit. What he didn't say was that every bit of savings he just made in Medicare and Medicaid is being pumped into Obamacare. It was a shell game, just like the Obamacare CBO numbers.

Entitlements: Social Security

We should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

Someone explain to me how, under those conditions, any reform to Social Security is possible.

Charles Krauthammer, in his post-speech analysis, noted that Obama paid only lip service to entitlement reform, thus indicating that Obama would not initiate any effort at entitlement reform over the next two years and that any attempt by the right to do so would be demagogued. Bottom line, Obama has no intention of doing anything to reduce our deficit and is daring the right to even make an attempt.


VII: Foreign Policy:

Obama's comments on foreign policy seemed like they were appendix to his speech. We face real foreign policy challenges, but you wouldn't get any of that from the SOTU speech. Are we in the Afghan war to win it? Obama gave no answer. He did not address the problem of nuclear proliferation. The Middle East is on fire. Lebanon just became a satellite state of Iran. Iraq may yet become a satellite state of Iran. China is arming at an alarming rate to challenge us militarily. And what about Wikileaks and the greatest assault on our state secrets in the history of our nation? If you expected Obama to substantively address any of that, you were sorely mistaken. Obama considers foreign policy a mere annoyance. He sees himself as Clement Attlee, not Winston Churchill.

Conclusion: Two years ago, the general consensus was that Obama, if elected, would serve out Jimmy Carter's second term. That was overly optimistic. Obama makes the disastrous Carter seem a paragon of Presidential prudence and competence in comparison. 2012 can't get here fast enough.

Update: Patterico makes a great point:

Obama said . . . in the speech . . .:

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.

(emphasis added).

You got that? When you are allowed to keep your money, that is considered “spending” by the Federal Government. Because in reality all of the fruits of your labor belong to us, the government.

Is it wrong to say it almost the attitude of a master toward his slaves? . . .

Also see the AP, that surprisingly has a passable fact check of SOTU: "The ledger did not appear to be adding up Tuesday night when President Barack Obama urged more spending on one hand and a spending freeze on the other."

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A Preview Of The SOTU: Obama's 5 Pillars Of Deceit

Update: Post-speech analyisis here.
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Tuesday night, Obama will give his State of the Union (SOTU) speech. So what can we expect? According to the NYT, Obama will present as a newly minted centrist, focusing on "five pillars for ensuring America’s competitiveness and economic growth: innovation, education, infrastructure, deficit reduction and reforming government."

So let's predict what he means by all of that.

"Innovation." When Obama talks about "innovation," he invariably does so in the context of pushing his radical "green agenda." He is systematically disassembling our energy infrastructure, both coal and oil, while pushing "alternative energy." Yet alternative energy, even heavily subsidized, provides just a few percent of our energy needs. Unable to get Congress to pass a "cap and trade" bill to put his destructive policies on hyperspeed, he now has the EPA doing it unilaterally. When Obama mentions "innovation" in the SOTU, what he really means is that he has no intention of backing off of his destruction of our energy infrastructure, and that he intends to ask for even more money to toss down the black hole of subsidized green jobs and alternative energy.

"Education." Obama will wax eloquently about the need to increase spending for education, but what he really means is pushing more money to the teacher's unions that provide perhaps the major foundation of the Democratic Party power structure. States and their public union employees were the primary recipients of the $787 billion Stimulus, but that money started to dry up in 2010. Yet many teachers' unions refused to negotiate lower salaries or benefits, banking on Obama to come through for them. And he did. Recall the passage of the $26 billion XXXX Act of XXXX that Obama stumped for on the grounds of "education." It was "designed to keep teachers unions flush with taxpayer cash . . . [and] to insure that states don't negotiate down teacher salaries in the coming year." Now he wants to do it again.

Yet little is more clear than the fact that tossing more money into the black hole of public education has done nothing to improve the quality of education. Education spending, adjusted for inflation, is now more than twice what it was four decades ago. During those four decades, we have seen a massive expansion in the numbers of teachers - thus expanding union dues and unions corresponding spending in support of Democrats. Yet test results are showing zero student improvement in reading over that timeframe - and we are actually regressing in math and science to critical levels:

In short, the tests showed U.S. fourth-graders performing poorly, middle school students worse. and high school students are unable to compete [internationally].

There is an answer to this. Step one through one hundred is for Obama to call for an end to teachers' unions. No single entity has proven more destructive to quality education in America than teachers' unions. They are far more concerned with teachers salaries - and thus their union dues - than they are with improving the quality of education. But there is as much of a chance of Obama announcing that step in his SOTU as there is of Michael Moore passing up a cheeseburger.

"Infrastructure." Now two years removed from the stimulus, we can say with virtual certainty that John Maynard Keynes has lost the argument on how to "stimulate" an economy. Obama just refuses to admit it and now wants to double down on more "stimulus spending." Obama earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in the Stimulus with nothing to show for it. So why does Obama want to repeat the process, now under another name? It is because Obama, like all left-wingers, refuses to admit that their policies have failed. Even when faced with reality, they think that any lack of success is only because of some unforseen pitfall that can be fixed with just a bit more money and/or a few more regulations. To the committed leftie, the problem is never the fatal internal contradictions of the statist policies they embrace. (See also this post on the topic from Gay Patriot)

Deficit Reduction - Obama is to deficit reduction what Tiger Woods is to monogamy. Recall Obama's idea of proving he was a deficit hawk was to have the government cut $17 billion on the heels of the $787 billion stimulus. I expect Obama to make a defense of current spending levels, to justify his new planned spending in "innovation, education and infrastructure," and then to wax eloquently on how Obamacare will reduce the deficit in ten years based on the fairy-tale CBO numbers. He may also throw in a paean to that most cynical piece of legislation, Pay-Go, just to add insult to injury. In any case, don't expect this deeply disingenuous man to say word one about reforming the entitlements that are a mortal threat to our economy.

"Reforming Government." This is another laugher. He is going to talk about his utterly meaningless Executive Order to have regulatory agencies review their regulations, yet he will not mention the tsunami of regulations yet to be written as a result of Obamacare and Frank-Dodd. Nor will he mention that there are now over 100 federal agencies each issuing reams of new regulation annually (See CRS: Federal Regulatory Reform). Nor will he show the slightest concern about of the vast overreach of the EPA in unilaterally deciding to regulate carbon dioxide or the FCC in assuming the authority to regulate the internet. Reform of government, to Obama, is Orwellian code for the vast expansion of government in every aspect of our economy and our lives.

Obama just spent two years ignoring our severe economic distress while he tried with much success to turn us into a socialist country in the European model. As a consequence thereof, we stand today in deep economic trouble. As I outlined in The State Of The Economy: oil, gas and food prices are going through the roof thanks to Obama policies; jobs are increasingly rare; small businesses, the engine of the economy, are not expanding as everyone waits to see how bad they are going to be hit with the tsunami of new regulations; jobs are increasingly outsourced overseas as Obama taxes investment income and keeps our corporate taxes near the highest in the developed world; and, Obama's profligate spending coupled with massive entitlements has us on a quick trajectory to a sovereign debt crisis - i.e., bankruptcy. As to the entitlements - medicare, social security, and now, Obamacare - Obama's deficit commission, which issued its report in December, highlighted the need to take quick and decisive action. Unfortunately, expect Obama not to address the substance of any of that. Obama is not, and never will be, a centrist, no matter what disguise he puts on for the SOTU.

Update: Some additional posts on the SOTU and its various aspects:

Hot Air - Obama to propose an earmark ban, budget freeze tonight

Hot Air - Video: Inhofe frames SOTU on regulatory adventurism

Instapundit: Heh

A reader emails: “If I were more conspiratorial and Islamaphobic, the ‘five pillars’ mention with regards to the SOTU speech would send me on a You Tube bender. But I’m well adjusted, so I just going to get back to work.” Well, good.

Q&O - Obama And The Anticipated Move To The Middle

Welcome, readers from Larwyn's Linx; Pundit and Pundette; Gina Cobb; What Bubba Knows; Nice Deb;

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Racial Politics Of The Left

About two months ago, in a post discussing how, while conservatives in general have long been on the right side of seeking equality for all in America, identity politics and racism pervade the left, I wrote:

As to the NYT decision to provide gift ideas based on race, it is at once a tempest in a teapot and a window into the soul of the left. When they see a person, their natural reaction is to attempt to categorize them into a victim group which, thereafter, becomes their defining characteristic. It is in itself a form of racism - more belevolent then that practiced by Democrats of old, but a form of racism nonetheless. That fact is lost on the left, but it is easy to spot as it manifests in so many ways, the NYT decision to run a seperate but equal page of gift ideas being but a minor one. Affirmative action is another, as is the left's fanning of the flames of reverse racism discussed in the quote above.

I would love to see a poll that asks what it is you think of each time you, for example, look at Obama. I see a man. The fact that he is black never makes it into my consciousness unless brought to my attention by an outside source. I would imagine that is what the vast majority of conservatives also experience. On the flip side, I wonder how many on the left see a "black man." It would be interesting to know from a psychological standpoint, would it not?

File this one under the heading of "ask and ye shall be answered."

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SOTU - The Gulf Between Word And Deed, Fact and Fiction

On most things of consequence, the gulf between Obama's words and his deeds is large indeed. But few are so obvious and blatant as listening to Obama demonize lobbyists in the State of the Union Speech only to see his administration on the next day inviting the lobbyists to a private meeting to "discuss issues raised in Obama's speech." This from the Hill:

A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.

The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.” . . .

This is getting comical.

On a related note, the AP fact checked Obama's speech, finding several questionable Presidential claims. They include

- Obama seeks a freeze on certain items of discretionary spending as a means to lower out out of control deficits. The AP notes that, while Obama made this the centerpiece of his new pose as a fiscal hawk, Obama neglected to mention that, even if fully enacted, his plan will only cut the budget deficit by 1% in ten years. AP doesn't go far enough, though. The reality is that Obama and the Dems already raised discretionary spending by 25% last year, so freezing such spending at current levels is kind of like cutting off the alcohol only after the patrons are already drunk.

- The AP opines that Obama's call for a "bi-partisan" commission to recommend changes to the economy will be "toothless." That said, the AP ignores that this was always about politics rather than fixing the economy. The left wants to tax us so that they can continue to spend. Congress is required by the Constitution to make all binding decisions on taxing and spending. The only reason to toss up a "bi-partisan commission" to duplicate this function is to protect Congressional Democrats - to give them some cover for their decisions. It is not exactly a portrait in moral courage.

- As to Obama's health care claim that "[o]ur approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan," AP gives a post speech shout out of "you lie."

- As to Obama's claims regarding two million jobs saved by the stimulus, the AP notes that there is reason for cynicism. What the AP does not note is that even of the jobs claimed, they are virtually all in the public sector, with a few in heavily subsidised "green jobs" that could not exist in the private sector without government largess. They will fade away the moment the government tit drys up. Update: Gateway Pundit runs to ground Obama's claim of the Phoenix "small business" that is tripling its work force thanks to the stimulus. It is Ecotality, owned by a Democratic donor whose company received $100 million in stimulus funds - for which it added 27 jobs in 2009 and is planning on adding another 15 in 2010. That is well over a $2 million per job. So do you feel stimulated yet?

- Obama shamelessly repeated his calls for "transparency" in government - after giving us a year of the least transparent government in decades. Even hard core Obamiacs had to be doing the face-palm on that one.

- As the AP lastly notes, Obama claimed to have killed far more al Qaeda members than the Bushies did in 2008. But, AP points out, this is a claim that is impossible to verify. They also note that drone attacks, which are likely the basis for the claim, "increased dramatically in the last 18 months." Hmmmm, let's see, eighteen minus twelve . . . . what do you know - the increase started on Bush's watch. So Obama's claim to being superior to Bush in the war on terror is predicated on . . . carrying on a Bush policy.

There were a lot of false or unverifiable claims made by Obama last night that the AP missed. Hot Air notes that Obama's blame of Bush for the deficits is one. Another is Obama claiming credit for "ending" the war in Iraq. It mystifies me that any commander of U.S. troops could sit stone-faced listening to that one. And then there was Obama's claim that the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United would open up the flood gates for foreign influence in our elections when the reality is that the laws pertaining to foreign money in campaigns were explicitly left untouched by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision.

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