The State of My State of Mind

Last night, President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address and I received a nice treat that I wasn’t expecting. Because of a previous commitment I wasn’t able to watch the beginning of the telecast and had to listen to the first half of the speech on the radio in the car.

Wow! How great was it to not have to see the hours and hours of clapping and grandstanding and pre-speech “analysis”. I didn’t have to suffer through what Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, and even Brit Hume had to think about what Obama might say during the speech (even though they usually have an advanced copy). I didn’t have to see the human yo-yo, Nancy Pelosi, stand up and sit down and stand up and sit down (see my previous post on exercising during the speech) All I had to do was sit back and actually listen to what he had to say.

I can’t say that he hit on too many interesting topics for me but I did like his dig at senators who were holding up nominations to Federal posts based on their little pet projects. But again I don’t think he went far enough to make me happy. If it were me (and that’s a stretch because I’m quite sure that I’d have a couple thousand attempts on my life the second I was sworn in), I would have started to call them out by name and whom they were “holding up” (see Kit Bond, R-MO, holding up the GSA nomination).

Furthermore when he was talking about his health plan he should have insisted that Dick Durban (R-IL) stand up, in front of the class, and give the GOP health care insurance reform bill book report that they said they’ve been working on for all this time.

I think direct embarrassment is always the way to get things done.