Reflections From a Murky Pond

Much has been made of the hate and disrespect that the Congressional Democrats show our our President, Donald Trump during his SOTU address. But, if we refuse to give them and their constituencies the hand-out of our being offended – which is what they want us to be – and look at all this is a different light, these Dems actually gave President Trump many left-handed compliments.

Honestly, their refusal to engage, their silence, the sitting in open disrespect of both the POTUS and the content of the proceedings, and the bitter, sour, disgusted looks on their faces are all tacit admissions that they have already failed and have already been defeated by a greater power due to those failings.

Remember, it’s a compliment, no matter how left-handed or begrudged, when your enemies and the enemies of your people act like that.

Tags: #MAGA | America | Defeat | Democrats | Hate | Humor | Politics | Sarcasm | Schadenfreud | SOTU | Trump

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 3rd, 2018 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Humor, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Some fraction of the world watched as Obama jabbered, shucked, and jived his way through his thankfully final State of the Union address. Rather than spending effort the boy hasn’t earned to decipher his “nuances, I’d rather spend that time and effort on Moochelle’s opinion of their tenure in the White House.

Moochelle’s 2016 SOTU Address

After all, Moochelle can say more and more pointed with a smirk than Barack can with an hour’s bloviating and tooting of his own horn. She’s also the more honest of the two adult Obamas and can normally be trusted to say in plain words – no “code switching” for her – what Obama hides behind well-crafted rhetoric.

Tags: America | FLOTUS | Moochelle | Obama | Politics | Racial Politics | SOTU

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2016 at 6:57 am and is filed under Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Our Bloviator-in-Chief Spoke

Yeah, I didn’t bother to watch Obama’s latest State of the Union address. Frankly, I could neither see the point in doing so or tolerate another hour or so of hearing the Bloviator-in-Chief jabbering, shucking, and jiving.

Given that every year fewer and fewer people bother tuning into the Obama Show, I’m far from being alone in this.

Tags: America | Lies | Obama | Politics | SOTU

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 10:59 am and is filed under Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Microsoft fired up it’s Bing Pulse tool for the second year in order to record real-time audience sentiment during Obama’s fifth SOTU speech. The online voting tool allowed viewers to share their opinions about the speech using a smartphone, PC or tablet.

This year, Microsoft is added some new functions to the tool, including an annotated graph feature that allowed viewers to click on spikes and/or dips in the real-time graphs to see the issues being addressed during the speech that have prompted major reactions.

Last years SOTU Bing Pulse registered 12.9 million votes, according to Microsoft, and this year’s should have been at least as popular so these are the broadest political polls in existence at this time. The re results are also quite interesting.

Speechcrafting

Firstly, I have to give credit where credit is due. Whatever team of writers developed Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech did a very credible job.  The Overall Intensity Graph show a solid curve of interest that builds well, peaks, and drops off at the end, indicating a good denouement. The pacing of the peaks and valleys of engagement also shows a good pace to the speech.

A Telling Response

The listeners’ responses, broken out by political beliefs, is very telling indeed. There’s a huge and stark disparity between how Democrats viewed Obama’s speech and how both Republicans and Independents did so. It’s quite a dramatic difference.

Democrats held largely uniformly positive views of each of Obama’s talking points, only dipping below the 50% mark on the issues of the War on Terror and continuing to support Israel.  They’ve approval didn’t waver much throughout the speech either, showing far less mean difference in approval rating and engagement from one talking to point to the next than either Republicans or Independents. For the most part, however, while differing in amplitude, Democrats showed the same peaks and valleys of approval as both Republicans and Independents.

Republicans and Independents conversely were, by and large, quite disapproving  of Obama’s talking points during his speech, rising above 50% only when it came to the War on Terror and providing medical benefits to veterans. They were, in fact, both more disapproving of it than the Democrats were approving of it.

One point to make specific note of is that Republicans and Independents responded to the talking points in Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech almost identically. There was almost no statistical variation between them, whereas both differed greatly from the Democrats’ responses.

Women’s Needs

Interestingly, despite the constant contention that women have different needs and priorities than men, the responses and engagement of the respective genders was, talking point by talking point, almost identical. This largely held true even on those parts of Obama’s speech which would normally be considered “women’s issues.”

Tags: America | Bing | Bing Pulse | Conservatives | Democrats | Independents | Liberals | Men | Obama | Politics | Polls & Surveys | Republicans | SOTU | Technology | Women

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 30th, 2014 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Politics, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.