On the state of the state of the union

Okay, so I watched this year's SOTU the day after the event itself. We don't have standard television (and not in a snooty, Jesse Eisenberg, "I don't even have a TV" way--we watch an assload of TV, but we stream most of it), so I ended up watching it later on YouTube. That gave me the opportunity to read a lot of commentary on it beforehand, which I probably shouldn't have done but did anyway (so there), and that had me looking for undesirable things in Obama's speech: extreme socialism, extreme kowtowing, a sense of giving in and giving up.

I didn't see any of it.

Now, you all know me. You know my politics and views. You know that Barack Obama has been my pretend boyfriend since the 2004 DNC. But you also know that I tend to be (I think) fairly reasonable and discerning. And with this speech, I discerned… a pretty good speech. It was an appropriate balance of optimism (dare I even say hope?) and realism, it made solid proposals that were backed up by ways to make them happen, and it really, really showed a lot of respect for our country.

A few things that jumped out at me, briefly:

(Okay, a whole bunch of stuff that jumped out at me, at length:)

America the Beautimous