Once again, Obama was on stage, yapping away about nothing. By my count, he said “I” 45 times (not surprising) and “fair” only 7 times (very surprising). Of course, he used the words “freedom” and “liberty” once each. Not surprising, but highly disappointing for people like me who believe this country was founded to ensure freedom and liberty for her people.
Guess what? I’m not the only one that thinks his speech was crap. No, indeed. According to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, this fine speech came in at about an 8th grade reading level. The third most “dumbed down” State of the Union blathering of any President since they started tracking this stuff in 1934. Congrats, Mr. Obama, another new record to be proud of.
In case you missed it, the full text of the speech can be found at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71920.html. Don’t worry, it’s an easy read, just a little long winded.
I’m truly curious why the speech was so low on the scale. There are only 3 possible options I can see. First, Obama and his speech writers just suck that much. I don’t think so. Obama is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. Ignorant of a lot of things, but not stupid for sure.
Next, it was intentionally dumbed down to allow our dear President to more easily read it off the teleprompters. I can believe this. Even though it was a low reading level speech, he still managed to screw up. For instance, in the last few months, we’ve added 2 point 2 million jobs, not 22 million jobs (pretty easy to miss a decimal, so I’m not going to pick on him TOO much, but if he’d actually read through the speech and practiced like we all had to do in Middle School, he likely wouldn’t have made that mistake). That also ignores the 5 million jobs that we lost in that same three month time period, for a net loss of 2.8 million jobs.
Lastly, it was dumbed down for his target audience. Again, I can believe this. EASILY. Target voters for Obama aren’t going to be the brightest group of people. If they were, they likely would be able to see through some of the bullshit. I think this is by far the most likely of the three, and therefore I’m going with this one. Our dear President believes (correctly) that his voters are stupid and will buy into his bullshit and lies. Like Buffett paying less in taxes than his secretary, or how we need more taxes and more regulations in order to grow this economy and get everyone jobs. HA!! If you buy that, I’ve got a bridge for you.
If you’d like to read about Obama’s low readability score, you can do so at http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html.
Once again I have to agree with you on all points. I also would go with option 3. It WAS dumbed down for his target audience. Afterall, he didn't want to waste a lengthy speech, telling his audience what they wanted to hear, only to have it go straight over their heads. I must say his speech was somewhat convincing, if only we could believe a word he is saying. How does the saying go? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Yet, there will be plenty of people who are naive enough to vote for him again. My only concern now is the choices of candidates running against him in November. None of the potential nominees for the Republican side are particularly appealing, save one: Ron Paul. And even he comes with some baggage. But to me he still seems like the most viable person to hold the office of president. If he doesn't get the nomination, I will write him in and hope there will be enough others doing the same. Who knows, maybe for the first time in history there will be a president who didn't come from the big two parties. It surely would send a powerful message to Washington if this was to happen. I'm just afraid that many people will be so disillusioned that they will just stay home and not vote at all. America is in deep trouble!
ReplyDeleteRomney will be the nominee. Obama will get a second term. Not a fan of either thought, but it's true.
DeleteBeyond that, however, there are other parties. Ron Paul is the only option that would make any difference and have a chance to win, however, I plan to vote for either the Libertarian Party nominee or the Constitution Party nominee, depending on which one I like best. The Libertarian Party is likely to have Gary Johnson as their nominee, who basically believes exactly as Ron Paul does. He doesn't have the track record that Paul has, but he's not been on the planet as long, either.