And I don't mean the marriage union. LOL

I'm watching tonight but decided I needed a little comic relief in order to get through it. I found this:

http://www.atr.org/#

And will be playing along.

Just wanted to pass it around.

I don't know if I can make myself watch the State of the Union address tonight.

I did read that he will not be addresses Health Care Reform (Hmmmmm....wonder why?!?!?) which was the orignial plan but will be talking about jobs and the economy. Well dah....aren't those topics much more important right now then Health Care Reform?

I don't know if I will watch but it could be fun.

You got a point there..

Maybe the teleprompter will go down and he'll have to 'wing' it. Now that would be prime time entertainment. Ever seen himi talk without the prompter....hilarious

Health Care Reform as the Dems (Pelosi, Reid and Co.) is dead. Stick a fork in it..it's done.

There are components of health care reform that I have heard bandied about over the years that I like. I have no idea if they were even in this thousand-plus page document but here goes:

1. Portability
2. No pre-existing conditions
3. Insurance across state lines.

I think that it's possible to improve on what we have in health care, without tearing it down and starting from scratch and worse...having the Gov't run it. SCARY!

But if he wants to talk jobs and the economy, I'm willing to listen..as long as I have my Bingo card handy. I will not make it through this speech otherwise.

I have NEVER seen the guy without his teleprompter.

Scott Brown made a great speech after he won the election last week. No notes, no teleprompter.

Even Sarah Palin gave a great speech at her nomination for VP Candidate at the RNC in 2008. No teleprompter.

I heard (this could be a joke..I've not verified it) that Obama gave a speech at a local elementary school and he had a teleprompter.

#1 we already have this....it's HIPAA
#2 yes and no on this. You can go from one employer sponsered health plan to another with no pre-existing clauses or from any one health plan to another with no pre-existing clauses as long as you don't have more than a 30 day (I think or it may be 60 days) lapse in coverage.
#3 They need to work on this one.

I do know this, I DO NOT WANT the federal government running health care

That link ...

Well ???? Did you O-BINGO ????

The coverage gap is 63 days.

If pre-existing conditions are covered, why not wait until you are sick to get coverage? It's silly. Would you get abortion coverage unless you were pregnant?

The man has not learned anything. He still thinks he can print money and scatter it across the country for good causes, everything from a high speed rail line in Tampa to green technology to loan forgiveness for college students going into public service.

Now that I have two teenagers, I can sum up Obama's policies as one in which adults are turned into teenagers. I heard a man call into a CSPAN program and ask where is our national pride -- Obama's policies are turning us into beggars and bums.

Cherished

The whole family did. Great civics lesson.

If the card had included the words "I", "me", "my" or "mine", I would have filled it completely in the first two minutes.

I'm still digesting this speech....like a bad meal.

I believe he used the pronoun "I" 96 times. In something like 70 minutes.

Wow. Really? Are you able to substantiate that and also compare it to other SoU speeches? I'd love to know!

I heard that in one of the post-speech analysis commentaries.

When I have some available time maybe I'll download a transcript and run it through a word counter. I can't say about other SOTU speeches, but there has been a lot said about Obama's persistent usage of the "I/me/mine/my" pronouns. A little narcissistic, perhaps?

>I'm still digesting this speech....like a bad meal.

One word:

Metamucil.

OK, here's the (totally unscientific) breakdown. I used the transcript from the Chicago Sun-Times, copied it to my computer, removed the inserts for "applause" and "laughter" and ran it through Word Counter (Mac) 2.10:

• Total words = 7260
• "I" = 72 occurrences
• "me" = 10 occurrences
• "my" = 10 occurrences
• "myself" = 0 occurrences
• "mine" = 0 occurrences

Total first-person pronouns used: 92

EDIT: Added results of new algorithm:

• "I" = 76 occurrences
• "I'd" = 4 occurrences
• "I'll" = 3 occurrences
• "I'm" = 14 occurrences
  That's 97 occurrences right there...
• "I've" = 7 occurrences
• "me" = 11 occurrences
• "my" = 10 occurrences

Compare this to

• "Our" = 120 occurrences
• "ourselves" = 1 occurrence
• "we" = 141 occurrences
• "we'll" = 4 occurrences
• "we're" = 14 occurrences
• "we've" = 11 occurrences
• "you" = 23 occurrences
• "you've" = 2 occurrences
• "your" = 1 occurrence
• "yours" = 1 occurrence

And they say I have too much time on my hands...

Got more time on your hands, Fred? Can you compare it to maybe one of GW's SoU's and one of Clinton's?

I'm really curious.

A local radio personality was going to do a drinking game with SOTH speech.

When the prez said anything like ....

"Let me be clear about .... "
or
"Let's be clear about ..."


... the radio personality would do a shot of tequila.

I donno the outcome ... but I thought it was a idea.

I didn't watch the SOTU address last night. I really have no desire to sit for 69 minutes a listen to someone that doesn't have a clue

Pep, I was just joking about that with a friend today. I said "if I'd had a shot every time he said "I" or some variation thereof of 'first person', I'd still be in bed nursing a very bad hangover today.

His answer for too much Bam Bam?

More Bam Bam.



Jimmy Carter has been bested as the stupidest man ever in that office.

State of the Union drinking game

Priceless.

Thank you.

Oh, what the heck.

This is the count from George W. Bush's 2007 SOTU:

• Total words = 5588
• "I" = 33 occurrences
• "I've" = 2 occurrences
• "me" = 1 occurrence
• "my" = 4 occurrences
• "our" = 79 occurrences
• "ours" = 1 occurrence
• "ourselves" = 2 occurrences
• "we" = 104 occurrences
• "we'll" = 1 occurrence
• "we're" = 6 occurrences
• "we've" = 5 occurrences

It's possible that all presidents do this, but H was telling me they did a poll of certain words to see how they made the American public feel before they wrote the speech - words like restore, renew, etc. Very interesting. Wonder how much it cost to poll all those people?

I fell asleep, but I finally understand what the Bush haters felt, having him as President. I trusted Clinton professionally, but not personally; I trusted Bush both professionally and personally, and I trust Obama...well...not at all.

Fred..thanks for that...confirms what I'd thought. Don't feel obligated to spend the time, but if you're bored and you want to run Clinton's speech through...LOL I'm guessing we'll see about the same results as we saw for W's SOTU address.

Here's an interesting factoid:

Obama on Government: "We need our Government to fix our problems"

Regan on Government: "Government *is* our problem"

Clinton on Government: "This is the end of an era of big Government".

Who seems out of step with not only his own party but the world at large?

BTW, there are some pundits out there who are venturing an opinion that GW Bush will someday be viewed as one of the truly great presidents.

I LOVED Regan. He was the "Walk softly but carry a big stick" kind of president. He made me proud to be an American.

I'm shocked a Marxist would say that!

I just got into a huge argument with my (very liberal...read: ENTITLED) sister. I changed my facebook profile pic to a sign that has one of my favorite quotes of Thomas Jefferson's.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."

She went ballistic and just lit into me on FB!

But it's Jefferson, for goodness sake.

She's already drunk the Kool-Aid and is a full-blown Obot. Lit into me for my (I thought very accurate) comments on the SoU speech, too. Blames Bush for all our problems. Got ticked off when I mentioned Barney Frank was head of the finance committee that enacted legislation to force banks to make bad loans.

And then our discussion went downhill from there.

How dare you bring facts into the discussion.

Back by popular demand:

President Bill Clinton's SOTU speech, 1999:

• Total words = 7552
• "I" = 92 occurrences
• "I'd" = 9 occurrences
• "me" = 8 occurrences
• "my" = 9 occurrences
• "our" = 162 occurrences
• "we" = 171 occurrences
• "we're" = 2 occurrences
• "we've" = 3 occurrences
• "you" = 69 occurrences
• "you're" = 1 occurrence

Given the three presidents compared, Clinton comes out as the most narcissistic, Bush the least.

Purely an unscientific exercise, if anyone cares.

Interesting! Of course, Clinton's SOTU was so long ago so maybe I wasn't as aware of it. It just seemed so over the top watching Obama. I would have thought his speech would have claimed victory in this little contest.

Thanks Fred!

ETA: I guess we left out ratio. Can't do it now because I don't have time...but I need to go back and divide the number of words by the number of first person references.

LOL! I'm going to leave that to you, OurHouse. I've done my share of the heavy lifting at this point.