The state of the union

Good Tuesday morning, friends.  Our schizophrenic weather has plunged us back into the deep freeze this morning, as the temperature is currently a balmy 25 degrees as I write this!

As you probably know, tonight is the State of the Union address, an annual requirement for the sitting President to report to Congress and, by extension, the country, on how we’re doing as a nation.  Historically it’s often an exercise in both self-congratulation and introducing new legislative objectives for the coming year.

I would emphasize the word “historically” here, because our current President is nothing if not willing to buck historical trends.

For instance, his administration sports the lowest year-one approval rating of ANY presidency in history.  He has had an alarming number of cabinet and staff personnel depart during that first year in office, whether they’ve left voluntarily or otherwise.  He and his allies in Congress have fully politicized and subsequently attacked the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department, two units of government that normally operate above the fray of partisan politics, almost entirely due to the ongoing probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible coordination with his campaign to assure his victory, and the subsequent efforts to block those probes.

Yesterday, for instance, a twenty-year FBI official, deputy director Andrew McCabe, finally succumbed to months of pressure and announced his resignation.  Two other senior FBI officials had been either dismissed or reassigned in recent weeks.  The administration announced that the current economic sanctions levied against Russia and specific citizens of that country (again, for their roles in undermining the 2016 election) are “working” and that further sanctions would not be needed.  And the House Intelligence Committee (there’s an oxymoron for you) chairman, who claimed to have recused himself from dealings with the Russia matter, since he was a member of the transition team following the election, forced a vote on releasing a memo (which he and some staff members supposedly wrote based on classified documents) that the Justice Department itself deemed “extraordinarily reckless.”

Got all that?

I won’t get into the many news reports of sophomoric phone calls insulting various persons in key positions that have been placed by this president throughout his year in office.  I needn’t remind you of the gridlock in Congress, a bad situation made worse by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s long-ago pledge of making former President Obama a “one-term President.”  Politics has a long memory, as we all know.

So tonight we’ll be told that the economy is doing great, which in some respects it is.  That the current administration has created large numbers of jobs, which it has, depending on how it’s measured.  And that we’re safer and more respected around the world, a point I feel is definitely debatable. 

But we’ll also hear about an infrastructure improvement plan that most likely will place financial responsibilities on state and local governments in partnership with private developers.  So get ready for more toll roads, bridges and other projects.

Just remember all that I mentioned earlier when you watch this speech (IF you watch this speech; I know a good many people who simply abstain from viewing spectacles like this, but I have to see what’s said, if only to know what promises are made and not later kept).  It all fits together far too well and the motives are heavily interconnected.