Think I'll probably support Rubio if Christie doesn't run

Listened to the speeches on radio for first time. Really different and interesting.

Obama mentioned one of our CTE high schools, PTECH in Brooklyn. So, so cool. And it would be *unreal* to move toward a VET (vocational education and training) model like they have in Germany--not an alternative to higher education but a different and in many ways more suitable path into it. (Rubio also alluded, albeit with much less specificity, to CTE.)

Otherwise the speech reconfirmed for me that Obama really knows how to do the job now. He'll try to bribe Republicans with those innovation hubs, just as he should, and is staying out of the way on policies where his name will kill any chance of bipartisan compromise. He really spoke to the country rather than the room. The one thing I wish he'd named is that the sequester was designed to be stupid policy: the cuts are intentionally indiscriminate and painful, on the logic that this would force further negotiation. It's budgeting by meat cleaver.

The response is a tough, thankless gig. Rubio said the same old shit: we can't cut defense, raise taxes or reduce current entitlement spending but zOMG DEBT we gotta do something now! Presumably his pretty brown eyes made it all better. Blaming Those People and their greed for home ownership for the crash, rather than the unregulated Wall Street fucks who created financial WMDs out of bad mortgages, no doubt bullseyed the Fox News g-spot. He mentioned the need for balanced budget, but not that they're going to try to pass an insanely irresponsible amendment for it. As with voting laws and "electoral reform," Republicans are trying to change the rules rather than actually engage and win the argument.

Question for I guess TV and jh: who actually chooses the SOTU responder? The national committee of the out party?

dajafi wrote:Listened to the speeches on radio for first time. Really different and interesting.

Obama mentioned one of our CTE high schools, PTECH in Brooklyn. So, so cool. And it would be *unreal* to move toward a VET (vocational education and training) model like they have in Germany--not an alternative to higher education but a different and in many ways more suitable path into it. (Rubio also alluded, albeit with much less specificity, to CTE.)

Otherwise the speech reconfirmed for me that Obama really knows how to do the job now. He'll try to bribe Republicans with those innovation hubs, just as he should, and is staying out of the way on policies where his name will kill any chance of bipartisan compromise. He really spoke to the country rather than the room. The one thing I wish he'd named is that the sequester was designed to be stupid policy: the cuts are intentionally indiscriminate and painful, on the logic that this would force further negotiation. It's budgeting by meat cleaver.

The response is a tough, thankless gig. Rubio said the same old shit: we can't cut defense, raise taxes or reduce current entitlement spending but zOMG DEBT we gotta do something now! Presumably his pretty brown eyes made it all better. Blaming Those People and their greed for home ownership for the crash, rather than the unregulated Wall Street fucks who created financial WMDs out of bad mortgages, no doubt bullseyed the Fox News g-spot. He mentioned the need for balanced budget, but not that they're going to try to pass an insanely irresponsible amendment for it. As with voting laws and "electoral reform," Republicans are trying to change the rules rather than actually engage and win the argument.

Question for I guess TV and jh: who actually chooses the SOTU responder? The national committee of the out party?

I honestly don't know how the choice is made--I wonder if any responder has ever been elected President.

Looking at wikipedia--in 1968, George Bush and Gerald Ford were two of seventeen responders. In 1985, Bill Clinton was one of 3 responders.

the whole response thing is just a thing, in somewhat the same way that the Big Event format of the contemporary SOTU itself is just a thing that became what it is, rather than being a ritual carefully proscribed in founding documents. for the response, there's little in the way of time-honored protocol. and, given the 'successes' of recent responders, it may in the not too distant future become mostly a former thing, peopled by rand pauls yowling to themselves on the internet