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Fact checking the SOTU

Chillfolks

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This is a preliminary fact check on Biden’s SOTU speech. Do you agree or disagree with the AP’s take on the speech? It seems a pretty fair initial assessment.
 
Factcheck: Joe Brandon read the teleprompter just as he was instructed.

Verdict: True
 
Factcheck: Joe Brandon read the teleprompter just as he was instructed.

Verdict: True
That’s not any different than any other president
 

This is a preliminary fact check on Biden’s SOTU speech. Do you agree or disagree with the AP’s take on the speech? It seems a pretty fair initial assessment.
Taking one at a time (I’ll stop when I’m finally tired enough to go to bed).

1) BIDEN: "Severe cases are down to a level not seen since July of last year."

THE FACTS: Biden overstated the improvement, omitting a statistic that remains a worrisome marker of the toll from COVID-19.

While hospitalizations indeed are down from last summer, deaths remain high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID tracker shows 289 deaths on July 1, 2021. This past Monday the CDC tracker reported 1,985 deaths.


All cases are down to a level not seen since July of last year, and that’s just…well…true. And if cases are dropping this precipitously (and they are), and if deaths lag cases (and they do), then deaths will also drop precipitously in the coming weeks. AP’s nitpicking is unreasonable.
 
2) BIDEN: "The pandemic also disrupted the global supply chain ... Look at cars last year. One-third of all the inflation was because of automobile sales. There weren't enough semiconductors to make all the cars that people wanted to buy. And guess what? Prices of automobiles went way up ... And so we have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drag down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation. Lower your costs and not your wages. Folks, that means make more cars and semi conductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America. More goods moving faster and cheaper in America ... Instead of relying on foreign supply chains let's make it in America."

THE FACTS: It's dubious to suggest that more domestic manufacturing means less inflation.

Manufactured products made overseas, particularly in countries such as China or Mexico where wages are lower, are generally cheaper than U.S.-made goods.

Biden also places too much weight on supply chain disruptions from overseas as a factor in the worst inflation in four decades. Although those problems indeed have been a major factor in driving up costs, inflation is increasingly showing up in other areas, such as rents and restaurant meals, that reflect the rapid growth of the economy and wages in the past year and not a global supply bottleneck. Those trends are likely to keep pushing up prices even as supply chains recover.


A combination of demand shock, backed up cargo ships, lack of workers to unload ships, and a sudden shift to a product over service economy as a result of the pandemic led to inflation. While it can’t be said how much increased domestic manufacturing would impact inflation, global supply chains, for better or worse, are in fact a component of the inflation we experienced. AP does point to the inherent flaw in Biden’s thinking, though, which is that it’s precisely because the supply chain is global that prices are low. At best, more domestic manufacturing as a fail-safe against future similar crises would be a wash rather than a net price reduction for products.

I’m going to give AP a mixed review here, because a President does have to address inflation, but it’s simply impossible for him to address it with the nuance and granularity such a complex topic deserves, and a statistically meaningless number of Americans would understand it anyway. “Move production to home turf” is as good a message as he can deliver given the circumstances.
 
3) BIDEN, promoting his $1 trillion infrastructure law: "We're done talking about infrastructure weeks. We're now talking about an infrastructure decade. ... We'll build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations."

THE FACTS: Not so fast.

The bipartisan legislation approved by Congress ended up providing just half of the $15 billion that Biden had envisioned to fulfill a campaign promise of 500,000 charging stations by 2030.

Biden's Build Back Better proposal aimed to fill the gap by adding back billions to pay for charging stations. But Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in December declared that bill dead in its present form due to cost.

Administration officials now say the infrastructure law will help "pave" the way for up to 500,000 charging outlets by 2030. That's different than charging stations, which could have several outlets. They say private investments could help fill the gap. Currently there are over 100,000 EV outlets in the U.S.

The Transportation Department's plan asks states to build a nationwide network of EV charging stations that would place new or upgraded ones every 50 miles along interstate highways. The $5 billion in federal money over five years relies on cooperation from sprawling rural communities in the U.S., which are less likely to own EVs due to their typically higher price.


Well, maybe his mouth wrote a check his ass can’t cash, maybe it didn’t. “We will” is pretty open ended, and can be read as “If you like what we have to offer, then vote more of us into office and you can have it.” Since 500,000 charging stations weren’t getting built this year anyway, it’s a bit much to say that because Manchin is…well…Manchin…somehow that translates into a plan that’s intended to reach fruition in 2030 simply won’t happen.
 
Did Biden mention Minimum Wage at all? Wage increases show a labor shortage; there is no better time to ensure that the lowest-paid are getting their share.
 
I'm reading it now. Really impressed by the string of soundbites, though also aware it's written for a President who can't be trusted with long sentences.

"We countered Russia’s lies with truth." and reading between the lines, the unprecedented disclosure of military intelligence before the accidental invasion, is no doubt being fed to Ukraine now.

"Smartphones. The Internet. Technology we have yet to invent." Perhaps you have to be a bit old to see the dazzle in this. The change in focus from specific, to limitless, to the unknown. It's a brilliant line. If your mind doesn't boggle a bit, you're probably very young and take all three for granted: you don't know how changing technology will change your life.

"More jobs where you can earn a good living in America." but what he doesn't say is "minimum wage". Leftists should be outraged at this, and I expect Tlaib to take issue with it. All these examples of 15k middle-class jobs in auto manufacturing, or 50k middle-class jobs in semiconductor manufacturing. Manufacturing is not where the jobs are, and that's not going to change. The working class of America want to hear about the wages of the job they've already got, going up to combat inflation. They don't want to hear about a college graduate with no ties to a state, moving to Ohio to work in semiconductors. Biden hands so much to the Right, even glossing over how GM only exist now because Obama's Democrats bailed them out, but he won't even mention minimum wage? What a sell-out.

"Second - cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change." Maybe, but not soon. And the solid policy suggestions (tax credits to weatherize homes, subsidies or tax deductions to make electric cars more affordable) are just fine, except you alienated half the audience right away by presenting it as combatting climate change. If that is ALL you have to say about climate change, then it would be better you not mention it at all.

"Third – cut the cost of child care. Many families pay up to $14,000 a year for child care per child." Yes this is a massive winner for Democrats. Freeing up time to work makes it effectively an income transfer to parents, but without the stigma of welfare. Biden should have fleshed out the figures more ... except that would have made it apparent to middle class listeners that they get less benefit than poor families do. Once again, a sell-out.

"My plan doesn’t stop there. It also includes home and long-term care. More affordable housing. And Pre-K for every 3- and 4-year-old.

All of these will lower costs"


A good end to the section. "Costs" mean different things to different people and there's a little solace there for the upper-middle-class taxpayer: families who work more, pay more tax back.

"The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year" what is this malarkey? There is no way a bit of nick and tuck on tax enforcement is going to make that pig look like a bird. Big deficits are here until someone either cuts military and welfare to the bone, or someone introduces whole new taxes aimed at wealth not income. Or both.

Medicare is going to set higher standards for nursing homes and make sure your loved ones get the care they deserve and expect. Another winner, if Medicare can do it. Many people of all classes feel bad about "putting mom/dad/grandcritter in a nursing home" and they can't afford a full-time nurse instead. The other alternative is having to bust in the door and find the elder dead in their own home. There's a deep stream of guilt many people feel when modern mores rule out living with their own elderly relatives. So the only way this could be better is to offer carer's subsidies for keeping elders in the family.

Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the Child Tax Credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty. Oh now you get round to it, well down the wish-list. The class division is all too obvious: minimum wage workers come between Elders and Students. They're not up front of the speech where people might still be paying attention.

"Under these new guidelines, most Americans in most of the country can now be mask free." Joe, joe, you can't use anti-masker phrases without making them think you gave up. You're handing them victory. ", most Americans no longer need to wear a mask" is more correct.
 
"We’ve ordered more of these pills than anyone in the world" Well ****ing duh. China wouldn't buy them even if they needed them, and India can't afford them. No-one went un-elected by underestimating the average American's grasp of math, I guess.

"Even if you already ordered free tests tonight, I am announcing that you can order more from covidtests.gov starting next week." Yeah that's good. Reward the faithful.

"Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: A God-awful disease. Well **** me, he used the G- word. Respect!

Section on police and guns is mostly alright. "Ban assault weapons" is a bum note, but I guess congressional dems want to hear it. Joe seems to have taken onboard some leftist ideas about crime prevention and community policing.

"
We can do both. At our border, we’ve installed new technology like cutting-edge scanners to better detect drug smuggling.

We’ve set up joint patrols with Mexico and Guatemala to catch more human traffickers.
" I almost want to watch the speech to see if this got a laugh in Congress. Speech-writer error.

"Second, let’s take on mental health. Especially among our children, whose lives and education have been turned upside down." Boom! I could not agree more. The greatest period of risk to develop mental illness is adolescence and if not treated then, it is much harder to treat later. I don't know much about mental health in younger children, except that having one or more parents who are cooking cuckoos in the coconut makes them at risk themselves. I do know that my own problems became apparent to me with puberty, and nobody else seemed aware of them at all. Help had to be forced on me, later, really only because it was never offered earlier.

"As Frances Haugen, who is here with us tonight, has shown, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit" Insert shot of Haugen wincing. If it's an experiment, it's not for profit. If it's for profit, it's not an experiment. This should have been two sentences.

Biden goes on to make a good point about advertising to children, but perhaps he should stop and think about how widely he's prepared to apply a ban. Children in the US become addicted to sugar, virtually the day they're off the teat. Advertising to their parents should be a concern too. You have kids growing up fat, doomed to short lives for something that was never a rational adult choice.

The other sentence is "social experiment" and it grinds my gears to hear that come from a Democrat. Only the most retrograde of conservatives ("reactionaries" in the original sense) think that children should be raised exactly the same way their parents were raised. Of course we don't know what the effects of social media use will be on children (or on anyone really) but the responsible course is for parents to be involved, rather than voting for a government to be involved as nanny.

"One of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden" enough said. Just enough to remind his critics that Hunter is not his only son.

"Last month, I announced our plan to supercharge the Cancer Moonshot that President Obama asked me to lead six years ago" ... missed opportunity. You don't supercharge a rocket, you add a second stage to it.

"The only nation that can be defined by a single word: possibilities." But not social experiments, Joe? You laud science, but experiments seems a bit ... grubby to you? Maybe you're a conservative.

"May God bless you all. May God protect our troops." What?
 
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Medicare is going to set higher standards for nursing homes and make sure your loved ones get the care they deserve and expect. Another winner, if Medicare can do it. Many people of all classes feel bad about "putting mom/dad/grandcritter in a nursing home" and they can't afford a full-time nurse instead. The other alternative is having to bust in the door and find the elder dead in their own home. There's a deep stream of guilt many people feel when modern mores rule out living with their own elderly relatives. So the only way this could be better is to offer carer's subsidies for keeping elders in the family.

This is rather meaningless. Medicare pays for very little of the national nursing home/long term care spending.
 

This is a preliminary fact check on Biden’s SOTU speech. Do you agree or disagree with the AP’s take on the speech? It seems a pretty fair initial assessment.
2 exaggerations (one only if you look at it from the right angle) and one difference of opinion.

That's remarkably low for a SOTU address. They're usually full of exaggeration.
 
Ouch! Gotta hurt to be fact check by your own friendly media
 
2 exaggerations (one only if you look at it from the right angle) and one difference of opinion.

That's remarkably low for a SOTU address. They're usually full of exaggeration.
Three. Three fact checks of 2 exaggerations and one…nothing really. The “fact check” of the covid statement was just desperate, to be honest.

I know it’s a low bar, but I remember four very recent years when SOTU addresses were incoherent and bore no resemblance to reality.
 
How would things have gone for your neutral country without our troops in WWII?

Whatever.

I'm questioning why God needs to protect "our" troops when the US is not at war.
 
This is rather meaningless. Medicare pays for very little of the national nursing home/long term care spending.

Hmm. Seems you're right. It's more MediCAID than MediCARE.
 
Hmm. Seems you're right. It's more MediCAID than MediCARE.

Yup, that's why good nursing homes require you to walk in with a six figure check. No one wants to deal with medicaid patients at any level of the healthcare system.
 
Whatever.

I'm questioning why God needs to protect "our" troops when the US is not at war.
When you are the protector of democracy, your troops are usually somewhere in the world. Biden has been saying that at the end of speeches since day one.
 
When you are the protector of democracy,

This is unfair towards America's allies. Why the emphasis, when instead you should have qualified as "the leading protector" or some such?

your troops are usually somewhere in the world. Biden has been saying that at the end of speeches since day one.

It still seems rather trite. Or if it refers to future deployments ... ominous.
 
This is unfair towards America's allies. Why the emphasis, when instead you should have qualified as "the leading protector" or some such?



It still seems rather trite. Or if it refers to future deployments ... ominous.
:rolleyes:
Don't tell me what to do, it's a useless gesture.
 
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