Comments

1
Obama has set up a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario for Republicans. Do what he asks, Obama campaigns on bipartisan success while their base shrivels. Stonewall his agenda, and Obama campaigns for populist/middle-class policies and against "do-nothing" Republicans.
2
McDermott succumbed to the Chicago hustle, the fairy dust, the bamboozle, the hope and change rhetoric.
3
@2: Go ahead and post it in every thread.
4
I live in a rural area with few job opportunities and plentiful natural resources. When you have a family to feed, fracking doesn't look so bad.
5
@4 - Your family doesn't just have to eat, they have to breathe too.
6
It was classic President Obama, not State Senator Obama. So neutral that nobody could have been offended. I listened to it on the radio, so I don't know how many Republicans didn't clap. But it seemed like mostly: These are things that if you boo, you hate America.
7
@5 You mean drink, but the point is the same. Have to say that the speech was fairly underwhelming; thought he could've more strongly framed the part on inequality. SOTUs are hard to make much of, but this country needs a grand narrative not more piecemeal legislation.
8
@4: resource extraction jobs are ultimately temporary. the need for drinking water is eternal. if they can avoid contaminating the water table, fine. but so far it looks like they can't, and they don't give a fuck.
9
So what are we supposed to do? Migrate to cities and look for service jobs?
10
I understand the need for conservation. But people who are desperate for work don't really care about the long term. What passes for common sense in an urban setting seems precious and unrealistic to people in places where resource extraction has been integral to the economy and culture for generations. I'm not saying that fracking isn't terrible, or that it's a viable long-term source of jobs, just that I can't blame people for wanting it.
11

In that sense, we might have been saying Vada a bordo, cazzo, since about 2010!
12
McDermott needs to step down and let a real Progressive - one who can enact change without pissing everyone off and making themselves irrelevant in the process - take charge.

-jw
13
So David Icke was right?

kekekekekekekeke!
14
That Costa Concordia remark made no sense.
15
@10, And when the resources run out, then what? As a liberal, I think the government should be proactive with these regional economic issues. But people need to have a plan as well. My dad's family mined coal for generations, but my grandpa was smart enough to get the hell out before my dad had finished high school. The mine closed, and the people who stayed? They're "lucky" to make $7 an hour at Walmart, selling Chinese things that they should be making here for $20/hour. Government should make sure whole regions don't have all their eggs in one basket as far as jobs go. And individuals shouldn't have to choose among environmental destruction, Walmart or welfare to feed their families.
17
""He's like the captain of the Costa Concordia," says McDermott of Speaker John Boehner: "He can either steer clear of the rocks, or stay on course and watch his ship roll over on its side."

Only trouble is the captain of the Concordia got in trouble because he did vary from the charted course.
18
@15: amen. I agree with everything you're saying. But I also have sympathy for those whose financial insecurity, and the fear that it engenders, makes them amenable to environmentally destructive practices. I no longer see this as a black and white issue of people being ignorant and callous.This is why we need government involvement.

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