What were your thoughts on the State of the Union Address?

Nope, he is doing a great job. And he has done it in a non combative way. He’s the grown up in the room.

You’ve inspired me to turn the radio on.

Oration is the skill Obama has down. Say what you will about his legislative capabilities, his ability get shit done as a president, but his speeches are freaking amazing.

I guess I’ll turn it on now, too. Lol.

Boring, and I’m sick of his insistence on the possibility of bipartisanship when everyone in the room and everyone watching knows it’s never going to happen.

I actually don’t understand why everyone thinks Obama is such a great speaker. I mean, he’s better than Bush, but so is my damn cat. Clinton and Reagan were much better speakers.

@Blackberry i think it just ended :(

@FutureMemory Yeah, oh well.

@Blackberry and @FutureMemory It’ll be on youtube in full in a few hours.

I think the only part of the job that he enjoys or has any facility for is the talking.

@Qingu I actually don’t understand why everyone thinks Obama is such a great speaker. I mean, he’s better than Bush, but so is my damn cat.

Bush was straight out embarrassing to watch. I would have to change the channel any time I heard his voice…was like watching a comic bomb on-stage…painful.

@Quingu Its not so much that he is a great speaker. What is awesome is that this is probably the first time I have ever watched the state of the union address where I agree with 90 percent of what was said. He started like usual. we have done this and this. But his ideas were I think pretty on par with what most voters think should happen.

@Pandora, yeah, I agree with most of Obama’s policies too. Of course, Democrats tend to have reasonable-sounding policies. Voters tend to sour on those policies once they emerge from the hall of mirrors of right-wing propagandists.

Sounded like an 8th grade speech. Just like his last.

@missingbite and why is that?

Because it was written on about an 8th grade lever of reading. The SOTU addresses have been dumbed down for years and last nights was one of the lowest. The continuation of the dumbing down of America. Not a slight against Obama, just a fact.

@missingbite Is it bad if people with only an 8th grade reading level can understand it, so long as it contains nuance and complex themes? The Gettysburg Address is at pretty much the same level as Obama’s speech. Using big words doesn’t constitute using complex ideas and themes.

I don’t think it was a bad speech. I do wish people in power, like Obama and others, would trend in the other direction. It would be nice to have to look up words or phrases because it was a little over my head. Instead, we keep going lower and lower.

The Gettysburg Adress was a little different in that it lasted what, 3 minutes and was less than 300 words? Take a look at the last 10 years of SOTU addresses and I think you will see the slow decline.

I do feel it is bad that the leader of the free world feels it is necessary for his speeches to be written on such a low level for all Americans to understand him.

I also think it is shameful that most Americans won’t take the time to look something up if they don’t understand it.

@missingbite The problem with speeches that are made at a higher degree is that voters then misunderstand what is being said. That can have negative consequences. Also the simpler the words the simpler the meaning. Less chance of double talk.
The simpler the speech the less chances the speaker has words put in their mouth after the media tries to translate what is being said or the opponents.

@missingbite, magazines and newspapers, including the “elitist” New York Times, are typically written at an 8th grade level. As are most other presidential speeches before Obama.

Is this some right-wing talking point now, like the teleprompters? Give me a break.

I also think you’re incoherent. The Gettysburg address is at a relatively high reading level (because it uses long sentences, in the style of the time). But it’s also very short. Obama’s speech, on the other hand, was very long, contained a lot of complex issues, and cited a lot of facts and figures. On the one hand, you are deriding Obama for not using a high-grade-level sentence structure, but on the other hand you want his speeches to be shorter and less complex? LOL.

@Qingu Not everything is right winged so, give ME a break. I simply answered the question as I felt. If you would read my later post I said it was not a slight on Obama and that I didn’t think it was a bad speech.

I also realize that for publications 8th grade level is normal. Doesn’t mean I have to like it or even think it is a good idea.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote at like a 5th grade reading level. You prefer Stephanie Meyer’s rambling sentences, I take it?

Just to be clear: a lot of how algorithms determine reading level involves sentence length. Vonnegut and most newspapers today use short sentences. Older works of literature and speeches used long sentences with a lot of clauses separated by commas. It’s not harder to write stuff with long sentences—watch, I can do it too, as it is trivial to simply strap on clause after clause without, as it may happen, bothering to keep one’s thoughts in any sort of organized state, as if writing issued forth from the scrambled thoughts within my brain as the neurons assembled them, or “stream of consciousness” as they say in English class, or at least as they used to say when I was in school, which wasn’t so long ago, mind you.

Yes, let’s yearn for those days when writing and speeches involved really long sentences.

He took both sides of too many topics. One example: We will NOT support big companies with bailouts! . . . . . . . . a few minutes later . . . . . . . I did a great job bailing out American motor companies and now they’re successful again.

My other thought is that while everyone expected it to be a mixture of State of the Union AND campaigning for another 4 years, it was MOSTLY him using the platform to campaign.

How much was about the current state we are in and how much was promises about what he’s going to do with his ideas?!?!?!

Disappointing. We already know you are a good speaker Obama, NOW SAY SOMETHING.

I don’t think the talk was double talk as far as the bail out simply because it was something that was needed to be done within a short time of him taking office. I agree that things would’ve really hit bottom fast but at the same time they hurried to quickly and didn’t consider what the banks would do with the bail outs. So to let them know it is off the table now, is fine. You try something and if it doesn’t take go exactly as plan than you try something else. You live and learn.
My only problem is that he has promised a lot of good ideas. (One of the best ones is that senators or congressmen should not be able to benefit in any way from companies that they stand to gain personally from.) But he has had 3 years to make these come to fruition. Why has it taken this long to come to these conclusions that everyone else has seen? But it could be that he is still having a proplem with getting the votes he needs to make these things happen.
He is also not the first nor will he be the last to use the State of the Union as a platform for his coming election.

He is a genuine guy and I like what he said. I just hope he can carry it through.

Same speech, different politician.

State of the Union, or State of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?

Pretty much unadulterated bullshit.

@CaptainHarley +100

@CaptainHarley, unadultered bullshit is when you copy and paste from a chain-e-mail.

I find it disturbing that you consider raising taxes on wealthy people back to what they were during the Clinton years as a “dictatorship.” I’m sure people who have actually lived and suffered through dictatorships would be insulted at your ignorance.

@mrrich724, speaking of dictators, you realize that Obama cannot actually do much domestically without Congress, yes? Because he’s not a dictator? He also outlined many of his ideas, specifically rearranging the tax code to incentivize companies to hire AMerican workers and move operations to American factories, to lower the coprorate tax rate, and to erase loopholes that reward companies for offshoring, to name a few off of the top of my head (I guess you must not have been paying attention during that part?). But Congress needs to turn those ideas into laws before Obama can “do anything” with his ideas.

I think it’s funny that a true socialist would’ve hated Obama’s plan because it’s focused on strengthening the private sector economy. I feel a mixture of sadness and embarrassment that fully-grown adults are incapable of appreciating the propaganda they’re being spoon-fed (and yet they are so confident that they are well-informed). All it takes is a trip to wikipedia to learn what socialism really is.

I believe this is a product of our corporately controlled, conservatively biased media. If we had a full-blown socialist condemning the president for being too much of a capitalist for every Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly, I think Americans would realize just how moderate Obama’s policies really are.

@Qingu @CaptainHarley, unadultered bullshit is when you copy and paste from a chain-e-mail.

Thank you, Qingu.