Yesterday President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address. I shall now join the rest of the media in discussing it...
Well, that was a pretty mellow speech. By mellow I mean it wasn't too confrontational, with even the bit where Obama talked about Health Care Reform being offset by his humor. The usual big hopes were pronounced, with a million electric cars by 2014, high speed rail and internet for people not too much later, and something better to replace "No Child Left Behind"--although really, wouldn't anything be better than that?
There were no outbursts by justices or congress-members. Congress made an effort to look like they actually all got along by switching up the seating format and having Democrats sit with Republicans even though we all know starting tomorrow they are going to go back to trying to rip each others' ideas to shreds.
There was a lot of talk about jobs and how the technology of today and tomorrow will play an important role in our trying to be number one industrially against nations like India and China. Plus, there were of course heart-warming examples of people working to get better jobs or get factories working again on new technology like solar panels and the like. Oh, illegal immigration also was mentioned with Obama saying he wants to address it. Good luck working out that messy political topic.
John Boehner didn't cry--as he is known for doing--although sometimes it looked like he was close to bursting into tears for some reason or another. Other Republicans were pretty well-behaved, although you could see when a good chunk of them didn't like what they were hearing when only half the audience stood up and clapped for certain bits (such as the aforementioned health care).
Clean energy was discussed, along with taxing the oil companies and the big deal was of course his announcement about a spending-freeze to help lower our debt. At least, it would have been big news had the fact this would be announced not have leaked during the day. Plus, a draft of the whole speech coming out two hours before the State of The Union also kind of killed any surprises. Obama was clear he didn't want to cut anything in education however, saying how wonderful teachers are (they are pretty great, I loved most of mine, except the mean ones).
Obama didn't address gun control at all despite having people affected by the Tuscon tragedy right at his speech, but according to a brief statement by Chris Matthews on MSNBC it seems Obama may have his own big address about just Gun Control. Interesting.
In closing, the speech was pretty dry, maybe even a bit dull. However, Obama got across the points he wanted to make about the economy, job creation, and how he wants to work toward accomplishing other things like making needed changes to Health Care Reform (without repealing it), furthering our education, and figuring out what to do about illegal immigration. The speech was positive without being sugary, and mostly realistic with some outlandish hopes that its always good to have (80% of our energy will be clean by 2035? Sure, and nice job mentioning "Clean Coal" as if that isn't just a huge oxymoron). I wouldn't say I enjoyed the speech, but I found it interesting. What did you think?
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