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Obama’s ‘Free Stuff for Everyone’ State of the Union Speech
National Review ^ | 01/21/2015 | John Fund

Posted on 01/21/2015 6:47:16 AM PST by SeekAndFind

A pollster at last week’s GOP congressional retreat summarized the proposals President Obama made last night as “free stuff for everyone.” Indeed, on everything from enhanced child-care tax credits to free community college the president was in a Santa Claus kind of mood in this month after Christmas. All of the proposals enjoy majority support in polls — although that support tends to fall after people weigh the price tag.

Take paid sick leave. Obama mentioned that wherever the issue was on the ballot this fall it passed when people voted on it. But he was careful not to mention that the only state where it was on the ballot was Massachusetts. Yes, the state that hasn’t sent a single Republican to the U.S. House in 20 years and consistently votes Democratic for president by about ten points more than the rest of the country. Question 4, the Massachusetts ballot measure that mandated paid sick leave in the state, did pass but with only 60 percent of the vote — meaning that after a real debate the issue might be an even split nationwide.

Republicans need to make a sustained argument that paid sick leave is yet another mandate on small- and medium-sized businesses that they can ill afford just as they are being buffeted by the gales of Obamacare.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: freestuff; gimmedat; obama; sotu
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To: LostInBayport

“She’s Dead Jim”


21 posted on 01/21/2015 7:18:52 AM PST by NativeSon ( Grease the floor with Crisco when I dance the Disco)
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To: SeekAndFind
You can sum it up with the following:


22 posted on 01/21/2015 7:20:49 AM PST by Old Sarge (Its the Sixties all over again, but with crappy music...)
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To: SeekAndFind
Why 3 Supreme Court Justices Didn’t Attend the State of the Union.

They were too intelligent to attend.

23 posted on 01/21/2015 7:25:00 AM PST by Cincinatus (Omnia relinquit servare Rempublicam)
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To: Cincinatus
FROM TIME:

Justice Antonin Scalia’s absence is no surprise. It was the 19th State of the Union in a row that he’s skipped since he considers the speech a “childish spectacle<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Justice Clarence Thomas’s empty seat was also unsurprising. In 2012, Thomas said he doesn’t attend the annual event because “it has become so partisan and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Thomas’s remark gets to the heart of why the State of the Union has become a painful event for the justices: the address has become a “political pep rally

24 posted on 01/21/2015 7:27:07 AM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: SeekAndFind

There was a highly staged media moment where Obama shamed everyone who disagreed with gay marriage and then cameras zoomed in on the Court members as democrats roared with approval that gay marriage was uncontroversial.

The message was clear: The supreme court must establish gay marriage as an absolute right.

Clear breach of separation of powers.


25 posted on 01/21/2015 7:28:12 AM PST by lonestar67 (I remember when unemployment was 4.7 percent / Cruz 2016)
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To: manc; cripplecreek
There was a black family in my county a few years ago and they had a house built for them as they had a bunch of kids and never worked.

It is a familiar story.

There was a white family in my home town. The father was a Registered Nurse. He had a job in a hospital about 40 miles away.

He decided that he no longer wanted to work. The family went on welfare and Habitat for Humanity refurbished a house across the street from my bother.

The guy was perfectly capable of working and supporting his family but just decided he was tired of working. I don’t think he even worked on the house himself.

That bit of stupidity just put me off Habitat for Humanity. That and Jimmy Carter’s involvement. There are plenty of deserving people that need their homes repaired, especially the poor elderly. Why waste your efforts on someone perfectly capable of helping themselves.

If someone is too lazy to help themselves you can but delay their demise for only so long. Your charity is better spent elsewhere.

26 posted on 01/21/2015 7:33:57 AM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bread and games, keep the focus off of the real problems, lie through your teeth. Hitler and most other dictators were eloquent speakers who could capture the attention and acclaim of the masses who were focused on the bread and games the benevolent leader brought to them.

Nobody will pay any real attention to the problems, only to the national problem of cheating football teams, who won The Voice and whether or not their immediate personal desires are satisfied.

Bread and games. It worked way back then and it obviously works today.


27 posted on 01/21/2015 7:36:34 AM PST by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: LostInBayport

Roberts trying to look serious.

FAG actor’s workshop.


28 posted on 01/21/2015 7:44:34 AM PST by onedoug
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To: SeekAndFind
Inquiring minds might find a examination and comparison of the following excerpted portion of Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural with the "talking points" of last night's performance to be revealing.

Whereas the current focus is on petty "progressive" partisan political power plots, the world looks for Jeffersonian clarity and leadership on the ideas essential to liberty.

In this moment, France, and the world, needs such clarity in order to understand the battle between the ideas of tyranny and those of liberty.

As the 2016 Election approaches, Republicans might consider what The Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address--considered to be ". . . the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration." Clear articulation of these principles to citizens might, once again, trigger a "new burst of freedom."

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;

- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;

- enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;

- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter

—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,

- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.

- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;

- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;

- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;

- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;

- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;

- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;

- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;

- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;

- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;

- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;

- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;

- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;

- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.

These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."


29 posted on 01/21/2015 7:45:24 AM PST by loveliberty2
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To: Bitsy

Did he create Secretary of Islam yet?


30 posted on 01/21/2015 7:45:54 AM PST by onedoug
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To: cripplecreek

And Oprah used her own damn money when she gave away cars.


31 posted on 01/21/2015 7:47:38 AM PST by uncitizen (When's the last time you heard: "It's a free country"?)
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To: Pontiac

I always thought Habitat for Humanity would help far more people by doing general home repairs rather than building complete houses. The money could be spread out much further.


32 posted on 01/21/2015 7:48:29 AM PST by headstamp 2
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To: SeekAndFind

Video here too ...

Obama State of the Union 2015 Text Transcript and Full Video
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3248982/posts


33 posted on 01/21/2015 7:52:02 AM PST by Star Traveler (Remember to keep the Messiah of Israel in the One-World Government that we look forward to coming)
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To: onedoug

Did he create Secretary of Islam yet?

I think he just let all the Secretary of Islam prospects out of gizmo so I don’t know who’s up for the job.


34 posted on 01/21/2015 7:55:02 AM PST by Bitsy
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To: Army Air Corps

Put a 10-20 minute time limit on it.


35 posted on 01/21/2015 7:55:18 AM PST by Resolute Conservative
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To: Pontiac
The family went on welfare and Habitat for Humanity refurbished a house across the street from my bother.


36 posted on 01/21/2015 8:03:52 AM PST by mountn man (The Pleasure You Get From Life Is Equal To The Attitude You Put Into It)
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To: headstamp 2
I half suspect that it could be building codes.

When you do home repairs yourself you can do most anything internal yourself without a building permit.

Habitat for Humanity will always end up getting a building permit. Therefore everything they do will have to be done to state and local building code because it will be inspected by the local building inspectors.

So depending on the house it may end up being cheaper to build a new house than try to bring an old house up to code.

Even repainting an older home’s interior now is a nightmare because of Federal Regulations. (Lead)

37 posted on 01/21/2015 8:10:31 AM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: mountn man

The Spelling Police are coming to arrest me!


38 posted on 01/21/2015 8:12:04 AM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Obama places more bananas on stick for the chimps to chase after.


39 posted on 01/21/2015 8:12:14 AM PST by Vaduz
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To: KC_Lion

” The Devil always collects his Due. ”

Yes - but by that time we’ll all be in hell.


40 posted on 01/21/2015 8:16:54 AM PST by aquila48
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