SOTU, Barackus?

"One place to start is serious financial reform. Look, I am not interested in punishing banks, I'm interested in protecting our economy. A strong, healthy financial market makes it possible for businesses to access credit and create new jobs. It channels the savings of families into investments that raise incomes. But that can only happen if we guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire economy". -- Barack Obama

Okay, okay -- that was from last year's STFU, pre-Occupy edition.  How he pretends that things have changed, because now the president has directed Attorney General Eric Holder to whip up a financial crimes unit to punish the banks.  As former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer told Keith Olbermann Tuesday night, there are already dozens and scores of financial crime units floating in the ozone. This may be either a lot of empty rhetoric, or it may be a way to appease/co-opt the state attorneys general who are refusing to go along with that sweetheart deal I wrote about in a previous post. Time will tell.

He also suggested a ban on Congressional insider trading, which was met by thunderous silence from the millionaire congress critters. And his much-touted big applause line: "No bailouts, no handouts, no copouts" did not evince so much as one hand clapping. 

I was disgracefully way off the mark in my prediction that Obama would utter the word "folks" two dozen times. He only used it twice -- once when he referred to millionaire folks like himself, and the other about the poor slob brand of folks on Main Street. I should have known he would never refer to Congress as folks.

Other than that, the main phrase was "built to last". I counted five times. I just couldn't get the Ford truck commercial out of my head for the whole damned speech.

And did he really say he would still work with Republicans to reform (code for cut) Medicare and Social Security?  Are you kidding me?

And to give us a preview of his bellicose chest-thumping campaign theme, he began and ended the speech with the celebration of the assassination of Osama.

All in all, a totally predictable orgy of self-celebration by the political subdivision of the criminal oligarchy.