First of all the overall tone of the speech was good, I felt that the mixed seating gave it a good bi-partisan feel.
There was a lot that I liked, I thought it was important to bring up education and to talk about alternative energy.
I have to say though that Obama in my view made a big mistake by not coming out with a more detailed description of the spending freeze and how much it would reduce the deficit by. A lot of people wanted to hear it and by not putting it out there he has just encouraged a new herd of Tea Party "patriots" to run for office. That is not good for anyone.
I thought it was ill timed to ask for more spending, first of all it's not going to happen, and secondly it puts the new health care reforms in jeopardy. The way he asked for money for infrastructure and then effectively threw Medicaid under the bus was uncalled for. You cant tell me that a 5% spending freeze is only a cut to Medicaid. If Obama thinks that by leaving the under-insured high and dry is going to help reign in these Tea Parties he is mistaken. The Tea Party rallies will continue because they only want two things, for him to fail and to keep health care in the hands of the privileged.
As for the Republican response. What can I say Paul Ryan is a douche box. This guy spent the whole rebuttal talking about repealing health care reform and comparing us to Greece. Someone should explain to him that Greece has twice the social program spending as we do and a retirement age that is lower than ours. He said that the private sector has historically done more for the poor than government. I don't think even he could believe this bull shit. I would ask him to look at Ireland, who adopted the U.S. free trade system when the ecconomy went south the poor there had nothing. Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on the president, after all the only thing these Republicans want to hear is a repeal of health care.
The Tea Party response was weird and of course made reference to WWII but it was to the point and short.
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