11 thoughts on “SOTU Address: What did you think?”

  1. It’s time that Congress cease having the president deliver the SOTU in person. Go back to receiving a written report.

    I don’t know how Dems & Reps. alike sit there while they all get bashed by a moron whom they invited into their chambers.

    End it.

  2. This may be the first SOTU in history where the entire agenda laid out by the President was intentionally designed to fail. They trotted out every “soccer mom” issue they could think of, changed to middle-class, rather than, forgotten-American rhetoric and poured yet more gas on their endless class warfare fire. All designed to pick up suburban votes in swing states by painting the GOP as the bad guys when nothing gets done.

    Nothing here but ad-bait issues for 2016 races. Truly, a naked, crass, completely election-driven agenda with no intent to get anything done.

    The day after we celebrate “I have a dream” we have a president with an “I have a focus group” agenda. Truly a sad day in American history.

  3. I’m not going to chime in with any ridiculous “Worst day ever,” rhetoric, because it is the same empty drivel damn near every state of the union contains. A couple of points:

    1) The community college free thing is bunk, both because the White House is already considering reneging on existing public interest programs, plus this sort of program will likely jack up tuition costs at what is supposed to be a low cost option.

    2) The white house is attempting to ride two horses on immigration, and it is a little bizarre. First, they say “Look how tough the president is on deporting illegal immigrants” when they point to how he has higher numbers of deportations than Bush did. What he doesn’t tell you is that the White House, for the first time in history, started counting people turned away at the border as deportations in order to inflate the count.

    Then, he backtracks and acts like republicans are the xenophobes for their stances on immigration reform. While this is likely true for some of them, I have to wonder why the White House felt the need to inflate their numbers if they weren’t kowtowing to xenophobic interests themselves.

    I just keep seeing a lot of the same dogs and ponies. Nothing new, moving on.

  4. Waste of time. Waste of effort.

    Advice to GOP in congress – pass every bill he’s threatened to veto. Then pass some more. Let him veto everything that crosses his desk. See what happens.

  5. Tax 529 college funds? Divert the money to third rate community colleges? Punish those who had the foresight to provide for their children’s education? This is truly madness.

  6. There were no real surprises.
    The one thing I did find interesting is what was happening behind the scenes. Normally the White House will release a full copy of the speech to selected news outlets the morning of the speech so they can prepare for news coverage. This year the speech was released to the general public through web site. They also streamed the speech with various graphic to illustrate his points.

    Almost as he is already try to by pass congress and normal news channels and taking his message directly to the people.

    1. sure, that’s why clinton wanted to be on leno and arsenio instead of 60 minutes. no filter, no context.

  7. MC & MHS,

    I thought virtually the same thing. My questions:

    1) Does he think he has the political capital and gravitas to actually move the people? Or,

    2) Is he wholly incapable of working with people who have disagreement with him?

    I think it a combination of the two with the former his conscious rationale and the latter his subconscious at work. Which then leads to a final question:

    Will it make any difference? I think not. I’d just move as PNR suggests. The GOP can only control what they pass. Obama is the President and he can veto whatever he wants. But, it just draws the lines for 2016 and I’m comfortable debating the issues on that field.

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