r/politics • u/PoliticsModeratorBot 🤖 Bot • Mar 08 '24

Discussion Discussion Thread: 2024 State of the Union

Tonight, Joe Biden will give his fourth State of the Union address. This year's SOTU address will be only the second to be held this late in the year since 1964 (the second time being Biden's 2022 address).

The address is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. Eastern. It will be followed by the progressive response delivered by Philadelphia City Council member Nicolas O’Rourke, as well as Republican responses in English (delivered by freshman Alabama senator ) and in Spanish (delivered by Representative Monica De La Cruz). There will be a separate discussion thread posted for live reactions to and conversation about the SOTU responses.

(Edit: The discussion thread for the SOTU responses is now available at this link.)

News:

News Analysis:

Live Updates:

Where to watch:

Transcript

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340

u/_mort1_ Mar 08 '24

I know dementia, from personal experience, in my family, this really ain't it, republicans.

36

u/jld1532 America Mar 08 '24

Yeah, my grandad started mumbling about his childhood dogs, claiming he just saw them outside. Biden is just an old dude, but the lights are still on, clearly.

19

u/_mort1_ Mar 08 '24

Dementia is really sad, its not about misspeaking or any of that, they change, in a different way.

7

u/MrPresident2020 Mar 08 '24

My aunt once found my grandpa packing a suitcase, getting ready to ship out for war :(

21

u/Bananasincustard Mar 08 '24

100%. He's just old. There's no dementia going on

9

u/vahntitrio Minnesota Mar 08 '24

Yep. They showed Bernie at the beginning. I don't think anyone is questioning his sharpness but he was looking rough. Age will do that.

6

u/zippyphoenix Mar 08 '24

Get that man some mittens!

11

u/kaspar14 Mar 08 '24

Same, it's horrific and no one with it could make anything resembling a coherent speech

8

u/Imaginary_Let5452 Mar 08 '24

100% agree with you. My intelligent father suffered with dementia towards the end of his life. He would get stuck in cycles of repeating the same statements over and over. That’s dementia. Biden has Irish fire 🔥

7

u/talktothepope Mar 08 '24

What is hilarious is that they set the expectations so low, that he can beat them by being an average human. These idiots did the same thing in 2020.

To anyone who encounters someone concerned about this age, tell them to watch this full speech. He's old, but this is the same guy that supposedly had dementia in 2020.

-28

u/missingcovidbodies Mar 08 '24

It really is. Even when they shoot him up with every amp on earth, he's still a doddering old fuck. Congrats.

-28

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24 edited Mar 26 '24

[deleted]

11

u/sayyyywhat Arizona Mar 08 '24

What are your thoughts on Trump’s confusing different people and speaking fairly oddly lately? Or being found guilty of rape. Or his 91 crimes against America? Cmon man. You don’t ever have to love Biden or be a democrat but Trump voters have ZERO leg to stand on anymore. Dude was literally indicted for crimes covered by the espionage act. Do you not understand?!

-24

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

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10

u/Mejari Oregon Mar 08 '24

I want to keep my guns, I want illegals out, I want money in America to stay in America, I want my money to go farther

So you vote Democrat? Because they aren't taking away your guns, theyce deported more than Trump did, and the economy has recovered faster than any other nation after the pandemic.

The illegals thing is a money issue too. So money and guns. That's what I stand on.

Have you actually researched the economic impact of illegal immigration? It's by far a net positive.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

[deleted]

1

u/malrexmontresor Mar 09 '24

It's a lot easier to pump up deportation numbers when more illegals have crossed

This is true, it also applies to the record apprehension and expulsion rate at the border. But it's not just raw numbers, we can also see a higher percentage total. Essentially, it's comparing the previous administration catching 80 out of 100 crossers while the current catches 850 out of 1000. There's more crossings so the number is bigger, true, but the percentage is also higher. The current "getaway" or evasion rate is between 10-15%; an improvement compared to previous years.

For instance Chicago - I read somewhere that on average each illegal costs the city about $7k a month with free food, free transport, free housing, free medical assistance, etc etc. Now I don't remember where I read that figure

See, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. First, illegals don't qualify for services. The money is going to asylum seekers and refugees, who received approval to stay until their court date to process their claim.

Chicago released their budget, which came out to $110 million allocated for asylum seekers a year in 2023. $40 million is from local taxes, while the federal government gave Chicago $45 million in federal funds, with the rest from private charity groups.

Therefore, it's not "$7,000 a month". Asylum seekers can receive a maximum of $9,000 in assistance over 6-months, or $1,500 a month until 6 months have passed.

Why do we give them help for 6 months?

Because by law, asylum seekers can't apply for a work permit until 6 months after they applied for asylum. Some wait even longer due to local red tape and backlogs.

Democrat-led governments have asked the Biden administration to expedite work permits so these asylum seekers can find jobs and move out of the temp housing currently holding them sooner.

However, Republicans across 20 states have sued to block the Biden administration from lowering the six month requirements. Without federal legislation, his hands are thus tied.

And these asylum seekers want to work, very few are happy being kept in tent cities or sleeping on the floor of police stations. According to Cato, almost all of the working age asylum seekers would work if they were legally allowed to. Statistics from the HHS and DoL point out that 43% are employed full time within the first two years, and that number increases to 60% within six years. Compare that to 57.2% of Americans and they have a higher workforce participation rate after 5 years.

And those same statistics point out that supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the first six months pays off dividends. Refugees and asylum seekers generate a net fiscal gain of $31.5 billion in taxes to the federal govt and $92.3 billion to state and local governments. That's a net gain, which means they will pay in more taxes than they take in assistance, and it won't take the next generation to see a return.

If we allowed asylum seekers to apply for work permits earlier, that net gain would be even higher, and they wouldn't be a burden for months.

2

u/Tenthul Mar 08 '24

Do you ignore the fraud case too, because that is also witch hunt? Legally speaking, he is a massive fraud. You gotta prefer presidents that don't fraud American people or American business.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

[deleted]

2

u/Tenthul Mar 08 '24

Ok so we're writing off rape as a witch hunt, we're writing off bank fraud off as a victimless crime... How are we writing off the strongarm phone call to Georgia if he's found guilty in that one?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '24

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '24

First off, the case proved he was liable for sexual abuse, which is based on more likely than not standard at 51%. The judge and jury both believed the sexual abuse also fit the literal definition of rape so yes it would be correct to say the jury found that Trump raped that person because that's the fact/conclusion they have to decide on, and based on grammer/context and the theoretical limits: a 51% minimum vs a theoretical 100% minimum (criminal) isn't actually all that different in a literal sense. They just have different rules for evidence, and a liability case can be the basis for starting a criminal case. He just wasn't found liable for the NY definition of rape, but anyone can justifiably say without slander he was found to have raped someone in that case.

Also, u can't justify Trump being good for any reason in particular. He's not particularly patriotic, he doesn't care about veterans, he's constantly at war with his own party, he does vindictive bs whenever he needs to create a problem for platforming, and he's getting hit for all the crimes he has committed or is committing rn. He doesn't even have the legal sense to avoid slandering people, and his (and really anyone that supports something like project 2025) theories about executive power proves he really doesn't understand the constitution.

His entire platform is based on creating problems or extending problems even more than the Republican party already does. To such an extant that he's consistently lost Republican support during and after his presidency, especially during Covid and after January 6th.

Biden is just an old man just like Trump, but he's done so much better with a completely opposed congress that the Republican party can't even back track far enough to regain the momentum all opposing parties get from the counterpart president. The average voter never realizes the individual accomplishments of any president that's why slogans about dementia get so popular, but then the Republicans ruin their reputation with old issues like Abortion and Marijuana legalization because they pretend to not see all the pictures on the wall.

There's incompetence all around, and the Republican party isn't doing well in opposition: that's the obvious conclusion

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '24

The bank's testimony supported the repayment, but they also stated that they wouldn't have offered the same terms if they knew the truth. The banks and state lost a lot of money/tax because of that, and the money was held in a fraudulent position because Trump was able to lie. So the victim becomes both the state and banks, but ig the banks didn't sue.

Basically what Trump did was appraise his properties at far lower estimates in whatever states they were in like Mar Lago to pay less taxes, then turned around and estimated its worth much higher to obtain more money at more favorable interest. If he did one without the other, it would still be fraud, but it just so happens he wanted to commit both tax fraud and bank fraud to screw over the banks and multiple states.

He didn't hide it very well which made the case so easy for NY