State of the union.

This years state of the union served as both an address on how the country is doing, and a chance for president Obama to outline his plan for the future, and as a very public set up for his presidential campaign As a result of a very dysfunctional congress, it felt like some of what was said was the same as last year. There were a lot of things I liked about it though.
The president talked about lowering the tax rate for corporations. I am not in agreement with this idea, as I feel that corporations who gain from our labor should have to contribute to this country. I did like what Obama said about taking tax breaks away from companies that outsource their jobs.
I appreciated his comments about enforcing the reforms that would prevent poor bank practices, although I think this came a little too late.
I was impressed with what he had to say about education. The idea that businesses will help community colleges train people for jobs that they will be able to move right in to is a great idea. I agree with the notion that education is essential to the success to this nation, so I was pleased to see the president demand more from congress in the form of school funding.
The president suggested that states change their policies for letting high school students drop out. He challenged them to only allow students to drop out after they turned 18. This is a really good idea, because more and more jobs are not happy with applicants who have a GED rather than an actual diploma. Dropping out of school is a big decision that can have negative effects for that student's future life. It is for similar reasons that we make students wait until they are 18 to join the military,  we want those who join to be at an age to understand more fully what they are doing, we should do the same for those who are thinking about dropping out of high school.
He entered more fully into campaign mode when in what seemed a total disconnected thought he mentions equal pay for women.
I was impressed with how he shut down many of the attacks against him, and stood by his decisions. He came across as optimistic while the Republican who gave the rebuttal sounded pessimistic and antagonistic.

My response to the state of the union address

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.