What gets into a State of Union matters. What doesn?t matters too ? sometimes just as much.
President Barack Obama embraced his base Tuesday night by affirming his commitment to Israel, clean energy, economic equality and immigration. He also placated his supporters by avoiding a few sensitive subjects.
Continue ReadingHere?s POLITICO?s list of the top 5 things that didn?t make Tuesday?s State of the Union.
Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations
Obama took time out to talk about Israel ? key for securing Jewish support in November.
?Our iron-clad ? and I mean iron-clad ? commitment to Israel?s security has meant the closest cooperation between our two countries in history,? Obama said, adding the second ?iron-clad? to the prepared version of the speech. He?s also likely to get applause for the tough line he took against Iran over its nuclear program.
But Obama avoided any mention of peace negotiations ? and of the trouble he faced for his unsuccessful effort to jump-start them.
Since Palestinians formally applied for statehood at the United Nations in September, despite pleas from the U.S. not to do so, Obama could have addressed the topic this year. He did in his 2009 message to Congress, when he referred to the special envoy appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell, who ultimately resigned last May.
Obama did pay tribute to the Arab Spring democracy movement, welcoming the demise of Libya?s Muammar Qadhafi and warning that Syria?s Bashir Assad?s government ?will soon discover that the forces of change can?t be reversed.? But he left discussions of the negotiations over the region?s thorniest problem to another day.
Keystone XL Pipeline
Obama?s speech Tuesday night was chock-a-block with mentions of energy ? 23 in all. Not one of them was about the major decision he made just last week to reject ? at least for now ? plans to build a massive, 1700-mile long pipeline to carry oil sands from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The Keystone project pits two major Democratic constituencies ? environmentalists and labor ? against one another. Greens oppose the pipeline not just because of the acquifer issue, but because processing and burning the oil sands has a heavy greenhouse gas impact. Unions are eager for the thousands of jobs involved in constructing it. Obama chose to incite neither.
But Republicans wouldn?t let the night go by without mentioning it. The party views the pipeline rejection as a perfect example of Obama?s unwillingness to make job creation a priority. In the official GOP response to the president?s speech, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels warned against ?the extremism that?cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands.?
Anti-piracy legislation
The showdown over the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act consumed both chambers of Congress last week. But there wasn?t a peep about it from the president?s podium Tuesday night.
tiki barber minnesota vikings packers vs vikings packers vs vikings randall cobb google x lisfranc injury
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.