What Will Obama Say Tonight?
I do not know – but I would bet my last dollar that, just as he rejected the speech I wrote for him last year at this time, so he will reject the draft speech I posted on BigGovernment.com this morning.
To begin with, it is for the most part the same speech – with a tweak here or there – and it is hardly reasonable to expect him to acknowledge faults that he thought great virtues in the recent past. But the obstacles are greater than that. I cannot imagine him embracing the one extended passage that I added:
There is one more matter that I need to mention, and it weighs heavily on my heart. This last week in Philadelphia, a grand jury issued a three-hundred page report detailing the conduct of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his staff at the Women’s Medical Society in that city. I have read that report. It sickened me, and it made me profoundly ashamed. I have long been a supporter of abortion. As a state senator in Illinois, I did what I could to prevent the outlawing of partial birth abortion, and this past Saturday, on the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, I issued the following statement:
Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women's health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.
I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.
And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.
I regret my deeds and I regret my words. The massacre of the innocent does not, as I so cynically claimed, fall within the sphere of “private family matters,” and no one has the right and no one’s daughter or son should have the freedom and the opportunity to kill another human being simply because the existence of that human being is an inconvenience. I apologize for my conduct and I call on Congress to frame a constitutional amendment restoring moral police in this particular to the states and the localities where, I am confident, this matter will be properly dealt with. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
As I put it in my piece, “if the President were to do as I suggest, I have no doubt that his speech would really be a game-changer. My bet, however, is that he opts to continue playing the same old game and that his rhetoric this evening will be no less disingenuous than that found in his statement commemorating the 38th anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that has sanctioned by now our bringing to an abrupt and violent end more than 50 million human lives.”
Am I being unfair?
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
And as Sebelius jumps from her seat to cry "You lie!", she is quickly grabbed and escorted from the chamber by fifteen members of Emily's List.
A beautiful vision to dream of though, thank you.
Dec '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
Paul, you are not being unfair, but your suggestion in turn suggests an alternative course that Obama could take to make political hay out of the horrors in Philadelphia. If he sets up Gosnell as the boogeyman alternative to legal abortion, he can make it seem that Roe v. Wade is the only thing standing between women and vampires like Gosnell. A number of abortion advocates are trying in this way to twist this episode into a defense of legal abortion -- William Saletan of Slate being one of the few who is willing to look honestly at the carnage at the Women's Medical Society and ask how anyone can defend and even support late-term abortions.
May '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
Maybe he'll channel George Washington with "I cannot tell a lie" and seize our 401(k)s.
It doesn't matter what the President should say. It matters what he will say.
Recall that he signed the bill to extend GOP tax cuts but could not hide his resentment of having to do so. If the President tries to appear respectful of his opponents' concerns, he will fail.
There will be yet more talk about his laser focus on jobs. There will be a reference to heathcare. There will be some reference to civility or the Arizona shooting. There will not be a reference to abortion. He will lie big and lie often, as always.
Honestly, I doubt this SOTU address will have any significant effect. It will be generally ignored and forgotten, like his last one. My only worry is that I will again have to listen to Republicans praise a habitual liar for his pretty words.
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
Paul, you might be interested in this column on Politics Daily by former NYT reporter Melinda Hennenberger. Melinda was a classmate of mine in college, and there's not much we agree on, but this took some courage to write -- especially in her (liberal) world: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/23/kermit-gosnells-pro-choice-enablers-how-clinics-become-death-t/
Dec '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
From Bill's link:
In California, there's a "handicapped rights activist" that harrasses local businesses with ADA lawsuits claiming inadequate access. We've lost a couple of businesses in our small town from that regulatory overkill. And the abortion-rights people have the gall to claim that safety regs are a political weapon against abortion?
Edited on Jan 25, 2011 at 3:06pmAug '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
Stuart Creque: And the abortion-rights people have the gall to claim that safety regs are a political weapon against abortion? · Jan 25 at 3:04pm
Edited on Jan 25 at 03:06 pm
Killers have plenty of gall.........
Dec '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
...and then Professor Rahe woke up from his dream and alas, Obama was still president and the abortion mills ground ever on.
Aug '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
Fun..Guy Your statesides lobbyists ought to push for a law mandating funerals for late term babies being killed. Fed would never pay, shame might step in, and you miht save some lives.
Edited on Jan 25, 2011 at 8:43pmJul '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
If one does not respond to horror and atrocity with passion and willful defiance, why bother with reason at all.
The Gosnell case seems to live almost entirely on the blogs. NPR posted a story. Townhall and Weekly Standard and the San Francisco Examiner have chimed in. I listened to the Walter Pincus lecture from 2007 in the Hoover Institute iTunes U collection, and he raised an interesting point that, I think, bears on how poor the coverage of this has been.
From the revolution through the early 20th Century, most presses were small, family run businesses. Some families grew quite wealthy, but the papers carried the POV of that family and its leader. Pincus cherishes that and considers it central to the organic function of journalism in a community. He celebrates that that is journalism as it is practiced at his home paper, the Washington Post. He salutes Rupert Murdoch for getting it, and providing such an influence to his media assets.
Most of these other media assets have been swallowed into corporate arrangements that defeat this POV effect, replacing it with a risk averse, complaint dodging corporate environment that just finds a path of least resistance.
Jul '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
(Cont.)
In this view it seems to me, over time, the average news reader internalizes an ethic and world view that avoids offending the professional grievance industry rather than reflecting a family or community-held world view, with at least two and sometimes ten or more local media families covering some range of the spectrum. In 1940, this is huge. X covered it so Y has to cover it. Pittsburgh picks up the story and a paper assigns someone to look into their local situation for similar issues.
And it was all driven by consumer demand for classified ads, coupons, ball scores, and stock information. Modern media and the finance boys challenged and started eroding this model by the 70s. Take away the localness, make everything national, and that civic competition we enjoyed in mid-Century becomes this unfortunate national level tug of war between corporatists and a minority POV that are non-PC according to this odd corporate POV.
Jul '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
(Cont.)
Pincus howls about the press release-based stories and the dearth of original reporting, families would let reporters dig on their dime to support, or even test, their POV; corporations set a budget, this goes to wire service, pinch the local coverage some more and we can squeeze another percent out of the old geezer.
The Internet "barons" are dividing up the world in much the same way that the old newspaper families divided up cities and towns. The problem is that the resulting relations are in many ways less functional. In the 20's, if there was a movement like the Tea Party, a local newspaper would adopt or arise to carry that banner and those values, that POV, into the journalism realm. There are journalists out there, there are journalists here, who are more than capable of providing journalism, not content, journalism, to any local interest that can make an attractive offer for those services and convey their mores and values as a POV that that journalist can interest.
Of course the corporates are mostly ruined for honest work.
I see the journoRicos pulling together a kind of journalism for this Ricochet community, they cannot stop themselves.
Jul '10
Re: What Will Obama Say Tonight?
(Cont.)
Journalism without POV and community is sterile. Journalism without a strong POV foundation will be molded by the grievance industry. They will not print Mohammed cartoons and consider this a virtue because the grievance industry does not come and blow them up. (We can't say/print that, someone will be upset!!!)
A community without journalism is undefended. Values are never tested, threats go unidentified, corruption and sedition goes unchallenged. Community is local first, where you live and work. Subsidiarity, the Roman principle of pushing responsibility for social functions down to the lowest level that could effectively accept the responsibility. The bloggers, the political sites, almost everyone seems to be gunning for the national story, the national spotlight. That's where the big money is, and that career path to the big time is not as wide as it used to be for paleomedia.
I am not trying to hijack your thread Paul, sorry for the ramble, but I think the challenge is to find a business model that reintegrates journalism and communities. We no longer need printing presses or linotype or pressmen or paperboys. But we need fact checkers and editors and journalists and servers. Everyone should know.