The Full Text of President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech

3 comments on “The Full Text of President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech”

1. Kendall Harmon says:

   January 25, 2012 at 10:09 am

   Please confine comments to the content and arguments of the speech itself.

2. Archer_of_the_Forest says:

   January 25, 2012 at 11:12 pm

   I didn’t watch it live. (I would if they would hold their applause to the end of the speech.) So, just reading the text, I was taken by the odd use of regulation/anti-regulation rhetoric. He seems to want to deregulate the buying of houses and the employment markets, but then set up these bureaucracies that police “Congressional insider trading” and “Financial Crimes Units.” That was not clear to me by just reading the actual text.

   I would certainly applaud his little dig at the Payday Loan lenders. I have no problem with trying to reign in those usury parasites. If he can do that, more power to him.

   I really wish speech writers would stop with the “Jackie Bray is a single mom from North Carolina who was laid off from her job as a mechanic” analogies. I hate emotive appeals like that, particularly when the examples are blatantly from “toss up” states that will be electoral battleground states in November. I think those detract from a speech myself.

   I also was taken with the cutesy way he began and ended the speech with hat tips to the military, particularly shrouding himself with the flag of the Seal Team Six at the end. I found that a bit distasteful to read. Maybe it played better live. But the “Nobody thought about politics” bit at the very end when the mission to assassinate Bin Laden was going on was laughable. I really thought that was a chintzy way to end the speech.

   A lot of what he seemed to be proposed I can’t say I disagreed with, but then, I have no idea how he hopes to implement all this stuff, particularly in an election year. I prefer particulars over grandiose statements overly broad, but then that’s why I’m not a member of Congress. I couldn’t get elected speechifying that way.

3. Kendall Harmon says:

   January 26, 2012 at 5:42 am

   It was quite disappointing, focused on the campaign, sadly.
   No sense of shared sacrifice which is what the country itself needs–if certain people paid more things in America will be fine is a false idea, but a dangerous one.

   Not one word about a plan to deal with the debt and the deficit.

   An opportunity lost from where I sit.