State of the Union: Everything rolled into one

Or as the Twitter-sphere calls it: SOTU (saves space). President Obama addressed the nation last night in his first State of the Union. I had to watch it on MSNBC online after it aired because I was at an event when it came on, so I didn't have the typical feeling I get of watching "with the whole nation," but I was pretty impressed that he addressed so many things in such a short amount of time. He spent more than 25 mins (from my personal estimations) talking about jobs and the economy. Mostly empathizing with people, with a few plans sprinkled in). Then he diversified his topic portfolio by smoothly transitioning in education, limiting federal spending (plus a 3-yr freeze...we will get to that later), climate change efforts, health care (I waited for it and waited for it and he did get there, albeit,with a pretty quick mention), the wars, repealing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the military (which was huge, I thought it should have been talked about more by the media. But I guess since Sam Stein on HuffPo broke the news, people were just expecting it. I was still impressed) and he even criticized the Supreme Court decision to deregulate corporate campaign donations - the justices were sitting right there! It was ballsy. Justice Alito was about to stand up and say something, the news sites reported he was saying "that's not true" to Obamas claims that corporations were going to steamroll the needs of the people. My point is that he addressed a lot of issues, but had to do it in a short sentence or two because he spent so long talking about jobs and the economy.

I would mention too, though, that he did not address the Guantanamo Bay closure (or lack thereof), which was a big issue in his inauguration speech and other speeches. But that is likely because he did not want to bring up the fact that he failed to do what he said. He was not afraid to say he added a trillion to the deficit (after talking about how Bush took us from a budget surplus to a huge deficit (artfully, without mentioning Bush's name at all - the camera panned to McCain mumbling to himself), so I think he could have addressed his failure at Gitmo. But he didn't. He never said he would, so it's cool. But I noticed.

And after promising to address the Middle East conflict, he did not bring up the fact that he (more accurately, Hillary Clinton) failed completely at halting Israeli settlement building. Which is a foreign policy issue so I guess it is not relevant compared to the domestic issues he talked about...but if we are throwing out issues to talk about, I think it deserved a passing mention. But again, not a huge surprise or let down, just something I noticed.

Also absent in talking about domestic issues we are facing as Americans: Oprah is leaving! He didn't even mention the talk show maven's last year. Poor Oprah! ...just kidding.