She's publicly noting the security concerns are different this year due to the ongoing trump Shutdown, and that Secret Service protection will be less this time because of it. It's also quite likely Pelosi is doing this to fuck with trump's ego, on which point I heartily applaud.
The invitation has usually been something of a formality, and there's been times either side - the President or Congress - had openly mused about rejecting the offer out of partisan spite.
It's also become a terrific bore of a speech, if you ask pundits and historians. If the President and Congress are of the same party, it turns into one big rally with standing ovations and ego-boosting and nothing else. When it's split, the speech is pretty much a laundry list of "Oh hey let's do these things this year."
Even the Opposition Reaction speeches are useless.
Pelosi suggests trump is better off giving his State of the Union from the Oval Office, make it a televised spectacle to the nation without involving a Congressional background. It has the advantage for trump of being able to give the speech without having much of the House booing him for every lie he spills every five seconds.
So in some respects, this might actually be a good time to end what had been a meaningless spectacle. Our nation's actually done well without it for more than a century, after Washington stopped doing it after one year - he received a lukewarm response from Congress and swore never to return - until Woodrow Wilson revived it because he was the kind of President who believed a President should serve like a Prime Minister and make such appearances (also because film became prevalent and it was a good way to perform before the cameras).
But if it came to it, if I were President and I were still able to give a State of the Union speech before the entire Congressional body, what would I give?
Maybe something like this:
My fellow Americans, tonight the state of our union is... OH JESUS CHRIST IS trump STILL HERE?! GET him OUT! Grab him! Drag him back to the jail cell where he's waiting for his Obstruction trial.
Anyway, we are currently looking at repealing much of the Ryan Republican Tax Cut fiasco that has created billions in deficits rather than growth, we are struggling to improve health care coverage for more Americans, and we are waiting on the next Avengers Endgame movie to see how Spider-Man and Nick Fury get back (relax, no Spoilers, the trailers are already out for that).
We need to set higher goals and make better objectives this year in education. We've got to provide relief to millions of college students wallowing in loan debts. We've got to raise taxes at the federal and state levels to spend more money on upgrading every school for every city and every county. We've got to promise to ourselves and to our nation's future we WILL dedicate ourselves to making smarter and stronger children grow up to be better and happier adults.
We need to make a serious effort to fix every broken and aging bridge. We need to make a serious effort to clean up our water supply. We need to make a serious effort to end our carbon emissions to turn our planet away from the ecological disaster we are hurtling towards.
I want to count on every American to stand up in these coming days and weeks, for your families, for your communities, for your futures.
And now is the moment in the speech when we DANCE! BREAK OUT THE MOVES, SANDY!
GOD BLESS YOU, AND GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
...think it'll work?
1 comment:
I think it would work better than what we're likely to get from Fergus.
-Doug in Oakland
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