SOTU Aftershow

I'm going to keep this fairly short, since I just spent about an hour and a half doing this in real-time. To sum-up:

Obama rocked it. There were jokes! There were jabs at Republican nonsense! There was ad-libbed snark! The President wants monies for community colleges, $10,000 family tax credits for four years of college, reforms for financial aid for students, energy reform plans, financial reform, deficit fixing, and repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Two best lines?

In response to Republican snickering over "Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years" Obama ad-libs "That's how budgeting works."

At the end, finishing up, "We don’t quit. I DON'T QUIT."

Overall, the speech was very good, rousing, and clear. There was room for lots of bi-partisan crap, and lots of actual good work (not to imply those are different). AND JOKES!

UPDATE: Totally forgot about this:

President Bad-ass also was awesome by calling the Supreme Court out on the Citicens United v. FEC decision, to their face, with them in the FRONT ROWS:

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

SOTUFYIUGUYS

It's State of the Union night! I'll try to get in a write-up after the event, but if you're interested, I'll be live-Tweeting the goings on over on @dailyblerg. So, enjoy.

Race to the Finish

This post is about the whole Harry Reid thing, so... the title is a pun, get it?

But seriously, folks.

In cased you missed it, Harry Reid (old white dude, NV) said something "racially insensitive" once, and now it's a big deal. Apparently Reid referred to Obama as a "light-skinned" African American with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," which was certainly a stupid-ass thing to say.

Here we are, in 2010 [although I guess the comments were made in '08 or '09], and still old white dudes say things that minority people find offensive. Because, even though lots of them are lovely people, they are OLD and out of touch. Dear Reader, you know this, you've met old people. Perhaps you are even related to some of them! It really shouldn't be surprising that old people say rude things.

The other side of this, though, is the "OMG, Trent Lott and Don Imus lost their jobs for saying stupid stuff! Why shouldn't Harry Reid?" I would submit to you that hey, guess what, these are different situations. Don Imus said something that was not just "accidentally" offensive, but had a good bit of not nice-ness behind it. Trent Lott? Well, Trent Lott said something nice about someone at the guy's birthday party, and people got pissed. Frankly, I don't think he should have lost his job over it. I mean, Trent Lott voted for Strom Thurmond for President. If we're not willing to kick people out of office for being obviously racist like that, then we shouldn't be surprised that they are proud of the way they are. I mean, really people. Come on.

UGH. Okay, are we done now?