A WTF State of the Union

We watched the speech. I wasn't sure I wanted to. President Obama has been a disappointment. I didn't want to watch him double down with his banker buddies, with the Billionaire Boys Club blundering about in education, with the generals and spooks with their boundless wars. I feared he'd repeat his neat trick of negotiating with himself, giving the Republicans their wish list, usually tax breaks for rich people, before getting anything in return.

Well, he did a a little of that latter -- a theoretical spending freeze, malpractice "reform" (that one means keeping injured people from getting their care them paid for). I'd worry about these more if I thought they would happen; even a few sensible or mercenary Dems can probably swat them away.

But he didn't offer to trash Social Security or threaten to invade anyone, so I wasn't horrified by the speech. That's the standard to which my judgment of Obama has fallen these days. If he's not bloody awful, he'll do.

Then I got this from Organizing for America this morning, asking me to sign on to the President's "vision":

We must out-educate, out-compete, and out-innovate the rest of the world. We must deal with our deficit and reform our government -- and it will only happen if we come together.

That work begins right now, with each of us committing to the work necessary to bring it about.

The future is ours to win, but to get there, we can't just stand still.

Join the fight to make the President's vision a reality.

WTF? The dude is pandering to our national addiction to a permanent war posture, a war against countries full of brown people where the populations are finally achieving living standards little dreamed of by their parents. Can't we figure out how to live with a rising China and India? Can't we learn how to be in the world, rather than try to run it?

For that matter, can't we turn our national attention to sensible projects to arrest and mitigate human-induced climate changes?

Naw -- we have to "Win The Future"! Vacuous nonsense from the Obama White House, again. You had me neutralized, but now I'm reminded that any human-serving accomplishments in the next few years will come despite "our leader," not because of him. The real future belongs to people(s), making it together.