A Tale Of Two Presidents. Obama’s SOTU Speech VS LBJ

In their own words:

 

 

LBJ
LBJ

 

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope–some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.

One thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can return $40,000 or more in his lifetime.

(On automation of manufacturing) If we have the brain power to invent these machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane to humanity.

(W)e must take new steps–and we shall make new proposals at Geneva–toward the control and the eventual abolition of arms. Even in the absence of agreement, we must not stockpile arms beyond our needs or seek an excess of military power that could be provocative as well as wasteful.

(W)e must expand world trade. Having recognized in the Act of 1962 that we must buy as well as sell, we now expect our trading partners to recognize that we must sell as well as buy. We are willing to give them competitive access to our market, asking only that they do the same for us.

We shall neither act as aggressors nor tolerate acts of aggression. We intend to bury no one, and we do not intend to be buried.

Excerpts from LBJ’s first State of the Union speech 1964

 

Now for excerpts from President Obama’s fourth State of the Union speech:

BHO
BHO

The lowest unemployment rate in over five years. A rebounding housing market. A manufacturing sector that’s adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s. More oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world ? the first time that’s happened in nearly 20 years.

We need to work together on tools like bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped ?Made in the USA.?

The all-of-the-above energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today, America is closer to energy independence than we have been in decades.

Today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.

I will reform our surveillance programs, because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.

And with the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay ? because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military actions, but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals, and setting an example for the rest of the world.

A few months later, on his tenth deployment, Cory was nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

 

 

President Barack Obama stood before a joint session of Congress, military leaders, the Supreme Court, invited dignitaries,and guests to deliver his fifth State of the Union address. No mention given or attention paid to the fact that fifty years ago this year, another Democratic President stood before a similar assemblage ostensibly calling for the many of ?the same things our current President claims to support. Fifty years ago, after LBJ gave his War On Poverty speech the United States cut it’s level of poverty in half in a decade. If we implement only the “fast track for trade” authority President Obama sought in his “income inequality” speech we will double our already record high poverty rates. ?Yet President Obama claimed the theme of his speech was about reducing income inequality. ?He is either getting very bad economic advice or is already planning his $500k per speech circuit for after his presidency.

While his desire that the low pay women get be at least equal to the low pay that men get and that the minimum wage should be raised to $10.10 an hour is better than nothing. “$10.10 its easy to remember” we were told. It is easy to remember. It is easier than pointing out that if the minimum wage were simply linked to the already under reported inflation numbers that it would be $10.55 an hour. It is easy to find out that if it had kept up with executive “CEO” pay, which is the real measure of income inequality and lack of social mobility, that the minimum wage would be $22 an hour! But an easy to remember sound bite, 10.10, is worth more mileage than the $864 dollars a year workers will lose by not raising it to the $10.55 rate which is the bare moral minimum it should be.

If President Obama had simply read President Johnson’s 1963 and 1964 State of the Union addresses he would have realized that we as a nation are battling similar, if not the same foes, we battled then. Of course that would take acknowledging the failure of every trade agreement signed in the past thirty years, and the immoral and unethical morass we have made of our financial sector.

In 1963 and 1964 President Johnson called out the country, without attacking either party, on it’s failures economically, 1963, ?and racially, 1964. President Obama tip-toes around those issues and offers band-aids where surgery, if not outright amputation, is needed.

Let me be clear, President Obama has had a Republican led Congress that has stymied his every attempt to cut Social Security, engage in perpetual war, and now kill the remainder of what is left of our “people’s economy” with the Trans Pacific Partnership. The only thing that has saved this country from complete neo-liberal disaster is Republican racism. Their hatred of this president has kept them from accepting his unflailing desire to adopt their health care policies and economic ones. His relentless assault on “the deficit” during an unprecedented era of “cheap money” will go down in history as stupid if not criminal. Yes we cut the deficit in half while our country fell apart. Republicans believe deficits don’t matter if they are the result of tax cuts. Which is stupid and deserves no comment. But what do you say to a Democrat who doesn’t understand the basic idea of investing in the commons? Build world class infrastructure and you will have world class business. Build world class schools and you will have world class citizens. But if you put your treasure into the Military Industrial Complex or the National Security Agency then it becomes commonplace to think every problem can be solved by war, espionage, or preferably both.

President Obama preaches austerity, and practices it, all the while never questioning the Pentagon that admits it has “lost” 2.3 TRILLION dollars, as of September 10,2001.

The criminality and racism of the Republican Party towards this President should not ever be forgiven or overlooked. However, the failure of this administration to jail one banker, when Reagan took thousands of bankers to trail and jail, and hand them billions upon billions of dollars in order to prop up a stock market that is so obviously broken is inexcusable as well and cannot be forgiven.

To pat yourself on the back for taking five years to end two wars we didn’t have to fight should be embarrassing. To timidly speak about immigration reform while also breaking all deportation records is disingenuous at best. ?To praise bipartisan support for a restored Voting Rights Act while ignoring the crimes committed by the states making the act necessary is wrong.

Corey Remsburg, the young man almost killed on his tenth deployment, is a hero. The problem is he should never have had to be a hero in Afghanistan. Not in 2009 when even the CIA admitted there were fewer than a hundred Al Qaeda in the entire country.

The state of our union is not strong. It’s people are broken. ?Capitalism is broken. Government is broken. The military is broken. Perhaps President Obama gave the speech he had to give because the truth is simply too terrible to bear. The American Experiment is over and the feudal age is back.