Obama urges nation not to fear future
President Obama tried to use his final State of the Union address Tuesday to calm Americans’ economic and national security anxieties, tout his record and rebuke Republican presidential hopefuls for the vitriolic tone of their campaigns to replace him.
“And then, as frustration [with politics] grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Obama said, in one of many not-so-subtle references to GOP front-runner Donald Trump. “We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”
The president — his hair now flecked with gray — was greeted with cheers of “O-bama!” from enthusiastic Democrats but mostly stony silence from Republicans. They laughed louder at his allusion to many members’ eagerness to resume campaigning for president in Iowa than at his joke about how even as the United States has cut carbon emissions, “gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.”
“We live in a time of extraordinary change — change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and our place in the world,” said Obama, standing before Vice President Biden and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “It’s change that can broaden opportunity or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.”
READ MORE: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/oba...
“And then, as frustration [with politics] grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Obama said, in one of many not-so-subtle references to GOP front-runner Donald Trump. “We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”
The president — his hair now flecked with gray — was greeted with cheers of “O-bama!” from enthusiastic Democrats but mostly stony silence from Republicans. They laughed louder at his allusion to many members’ eagerness to resume campaigning for president in Iowa than at his joke about how even as the United States has cut carbon emissions, “gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.”
“We live in a time of extraordinary change — change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and our place in the world,” said Obama, standing before Vice President Biden and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “It’s change that can broaden opportunity or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.”
READ MORE: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/oba...
All Obama is doing is the pot calling the kettle black.