Taken on the State of the Union

Every year at the end of January, the TOR staff gathers around to
listen to the president try to convince congress and the American
people that the "state or our union is strong" and every year it feels
less and less true. I get that we've made some progress but if this
year has told us anything, it is that even a champion on liberal
causes used more drones than Bush Jr., is part and parcel to a
gigantic domestic spying operation which dwarfs anything anybody other
than Snowden had imagined and will leave a legacy of broken promises
and missed opportunities. Last year, Obama got up on stage and spent
the better part of the SOTU on school shootings with all that vigor
and for a brief second, you thought that there might be a chance that
we were finally on another track. Of course, nothing changed,
mainly because a president has no power to do anything anymore. He
can't change perceptions, he can't change gridlock and he can't change
the laws. This year he laid out some interesting and needed concepts
like fixing income inequality between men and women and raising the
minimum wage to a livable number but also spent most of the hour just
droning on about the same issues he's had no effect on going into 6
years on office and nobody believe he has enough political ammunition
or political will to get any of it to change
So we'll wait another year and we'll get another speech and we'll get
to see John Boehner looked bored and see Joe Biden look horny and the
president make promises and edicts and lay our policy and then we'll
go to sleep