"Let’s make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on the path to a good job."

"Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges."

Watching the State of the Union with Scott Walker who "offers a Mystery Science Theater-style running commentary."

It's Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, eating roast beef sandwiches and deviled eggs in the finished basement of the Wisconsin Governor's Mansion.

Obama: “Let’s agree, right here, right now, to keep the people’s government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” (Walker: “To pay your bills on time means you don’t spend more than you have.”)

Much more at the link.

The State of the Union "has turned into a childish spectacle."

"I don’t want to be there to lend dignity to it," said Justice Scalia.

A State of the Union quiz.

Did Obama ever intone the standard phrase "The state of the Union is..." and if so, what word followed "is"? (There's a hint in the tags.)


Yes, he did, and the word was "stronger." Did you notice that "stronger" was a key word? Here are its iterations:

Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report.... Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.

Together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger....

Our economy is stronger when we harness the talents and ingenuity of striving, hopeful immigrants....

We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence....

We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages....

Stronger families. Stronger communities. A stronger America.

Coincidentally, just the other day Kelly Clarkson won the Best Pop Vocal Album Grammy for her album "Stronger."

So let's just say Barack Obama wins the Best Pop Political Speech for his SOTU "Stronger."

"What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith."

Rand Paul delivers the SOTU response from the Tea Party.

State of the Union.

Talk about it here. The Supreme Court Justices: Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan are all there. No Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

1. Obama's voice seems strange. Here's the full text of the speech, by the way. You don't really need to sit through all of this.

2. "So let’s set party interests aside..."

3. "[D]eficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs – that must be the North Star that guides our efforts."

4. "A year and a half ago, I put forward an American Jobs Act that independent economists said would create more than one million new jobs. I thank the last Congress for passing some of that agenda, and I urge this Congress to pass the rest." That gets a huge laugh from Biden, and we laugh a lot at Biden laughing so much.

5. "After shedding jobs for more than 10 years... " I say: "Shedding? Maybe we should go back to the dog show." (I've got the SOTU and the Westminster Dog Show recording on the DVR. We can go where we want. I love that Tibetan Mastiff!)

6. Climate change. "Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late." What?! What is the overwhelming judgment of science? He merely gave the impression of making an assertion. That's not the attitude of science.

7. "I’m also issuing a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years." There's a modest goal. Why not cut all waste?

8. "Today, the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act that Joe Biden originally wrote almost 20 years ago." Closeup on Biden, who looks elderly.

9. We should do "more to encourage fatherhood – because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child; it’s having the courage to raise one."

10. "And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."

11. Closeup on John Kerry. I say: "He looks different." Meade says he had plastic surgery.

12. "Overwhelming majorities of Americans – Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment..." support all sorts of gun control. "[I]n the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun."

13. "But we were never sent here to be perfect. We were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but absolutely necessary work of self-government."

14. Biggest cheer of the night: a 102-year-old lady who waited in line 6 hours to vote.

15. Weirdly, there's no cheering at all after the description of the police officer at the Sikh temple shooting, Brian Murphy, who who kept fighting "even as he lay bleeding from twelve bullet wounds. When asked how he did that, Brian said, 'That’s just the way we’re made.'" That was the last anecdote of the night.

16. "Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."

Sandra Day O'Connor says attacks on John Roberts "demonstrate only too well a lack of understanding that some of our citizens have about the role of the judicial branch."

She was testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on civics education, which doesn't sound as though it was about airing grievances about her old colleagues on the Supreme Court, but Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy — the chairman of the committee — used the occasion to express his concern "about some of the rhetoric about the chief justice. He’s been called everything from a traitor to having betrayed President George W. Bush."

But watch the video at the link. O'Connor is almost robotic as she steps carefully through a bland transition back to her prepared text — watch her look down at her notes — which seems to the usual civics lesson about the framers and the Constitution:

“It’s unfortunate. Because I think comments like that demonstrate only too well a lack of understanding that some of our citizens have about the role of the judicial branch, and I think the framers of our federal Constitution did a great job in understanding themselves that the judicial branch needed to be able to make independent decisions and the legitimacy — the lawfulness — of actions at the state and federal level...."

But the news media got their sound bite: Unfortunate!

She was also prompted give the other side a sound bite:

Once Leahy was done, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the committee's senior Republican, wondered whether the real threat to judicial independence came from Obama's remarks in early April, after the court heard arguments in the health care case but nearly three months before it was decided.

"If there's a pending decision at the Supreme Court and the president was to express his views along those lines it would be surprising," O'Connor said. "I guess it could happen, but it's not what we expect and it's not ideal."

Not ideal! Take that!

Grassley also wanted to know what O'Connor thought about Obama's criticism during his 2010 State of the Union speech, with several justices in attendance, of the court's 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case that freed corporations and labor unions of most limits on political spending.

"I don't know if it threatens judicial independence. It's just not what a citizen expects to hear," she said. "It's unusual. It's not how that time is usually spent by presidents."

It's unusual... not how that time is usually spent....

I'm guessing Justice O'Connor thinks it's unfortunate that her time, when called upon to testify about civics education, was used by politicians to extract politically useful statements from her, but that is how the time of politicians is usually spent, and it is exactly what a citizen expects to hear.

Ironically, that's a civics lesson.

Disparaging Obama's SOTU because it "was written at an eighth-grade level."

Eric Ostermeier relies on the Flesch-Kincaid test, which calculates the readability of written text, based upon the length of sentences and words. He notes the prevalence of sentences like:

"There are plenty of ways to get this done. So let's agree right here, right now: No side issues. No drama. Pass the payroll tax cut without delay."

Hey, it would be on an even lower grade level if it weren't for that colon. You see my point? The punctuation says nothing about the difficulty or ease of the material in a text written for oral delivery. It's a signal to the speaker, indicating the length of pauses, the degree of flow. But I could just as well have written the previous 2 sentences as one sentence, with a colon in the middle, so quite aside from the oral/written distinction, the Flesch-Kincaid test is a pretty simplistic device to leverage an argument that a text is simplistic.

Obama repeats himself in State of the Union speeches.

I hear the ominous chimes, but how bad is this, really? He repeats platitudes. (Via Instapundit.)

"Which way am I going? This way or that?"

After the State of the Union.

SOTU.

You watching?

ADDED: Who decided that Obama should start pronouncing the word "business": bid-ness. Is that supposed to make us feel that this country is back to work?

AND: What are those beams of light shooting in from the upper right? It's nighttime. Did they set up some spotlights? Or is that the light of God?

ALSO: Amazingly unbelievable assertion: "I'm a Democrat, but I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: The government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves and no more."

"I'm heading to Capitol Hill soon to deliver my third State of the Union address."

"Before I go, I want to say thanks for everything you're doing.... Barack."

Email, just received. Nice to know the President appreciates whatever it is I'm doing.

"How Not to Listen to the State of the Union."

Not turn it on?

No, seriously... from TNR's Jonathan Bernstein:

You can see the typical press approach in The New York Times preview of the speech earlier this week. The piece is almost entirely focused on Barack Obama’s strategies to win the American public to his side; we’re told that he’s expected to “dra[w] a stark contrast between the parties” and to “define the election” in various ways. The Washington Post says that “how he delivers the argument will test his rhetorical dexterity and set the tone for the year ahead,” and focuses on the speech as a campaign document.

But the truth is that presidential speeches rarely have much effect on public opinion. For one thing, most people already have opinions about the president, so they’re not particularly open to changing their mind even when they hear something they like....

So it’s unlikely that the State of the Union can produce any short-term bump in any president’s approval ratings. Even less likely is that the speech could have any effect on voter choice in the upcoming elections, which are still over nine months away....

Which is a reason to ignore the whole thing, but Bernstein says it's worth paying attention to because "the State of the Union is usually a reliable guide to White House priorities for the next legislative year and even beyond."

But I don't have to watch (or listen) to get that. The State of the Union is usually very tedious because of all the applauding and standing ovations... with half the people in the audience grimly enduring it. Maybe the first 5 minutes are worth it. I like to check out which Supreme Court Justices are there.

They're required to sit there, right in front and act like they are completely disaggregated from politics. But Obama might chastise them, and maybe one of them will silently mouth a simple response and get all the attention the next day. Will Samuel Alito be there tonight? Frankly, the interaction with the Supreme Court is the only aspect of the speech that interests me. With the big Obamacare case coming up this year and a pending decision that will have an impact on the fall election, I'm wondering what Obama might do.

Obama sounds "corporate and airy."

"His theme last night was wtf, winning the future," said Sarah Palin.

"I thought, okay, that acronym — spot on. There were a lot of wtf moments throughout that speech."

Watch your acronyms, people. Or the saucy ex-governor will watch them for you.

"I found last night's speech very dull, and I turned it off less than an hour into it."

From Jaltcoh, who's been a big Obama supporter for years.

The idea that we're supposed to be alarmed that other countries are making too much progress relative to us, and that this is going to be our motivation to make economic and technological progress, leaves me cold.

Is it possible to declare a "Sputnik moment"?

The President tried last night:

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation's Sputnik moment.

But how do you have Sputnik without Sputnik? The Soviets launching their satellite shocked Americans into a period of intense activity and achievement. It's nice to want to do that again, but there's not an equivalent incentivizing advance by an imposing and feared foreign competitor.

This is our generation's Sputnik moment. What is? Are we playing let's pretend? Nothing is scaring us and lighting a fire under us. In fact, it's hard for us now, with our long perspective, even to understand why Sputnik was such a huge motivation. Ask some under-50 Americans today: Why was it so important to beat the Soviets in sending men to the moon? Ask them when/if the Soviets got a man to the moon. I'll bet they can't even give plausible answers. I'll bet even the over-50s are hit-or-miss when it comes to answering the question whether the Soviets got a man to the moon.

So what on earth — or on the moon — does Obama think he will get out of the mere verbal tag "Sputnik"? If you remember how Sputnik felt — and I do — you'll probably say, but there is  no equivalent of Sputnik. There are just a lot of countries, full of human beings, trying to get ahead economically, like us — not against us. There's no race with dramatic consequences for the winners and losers, and there's no impressive physical object that signifies that bad guys are winning the race. If you don't remember Sputnik, you're like: Sputnik?

***

Bonus Bob Dylan lyric:

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first
Wowee! pretty scary!

Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree
I want ev’rybody to be free
But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I’m crazy!
I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba

The morning after the State of the Union.

I hope you're feeling okay. Hope you didn't smoke too much salmon last night. Here's the video of the whole thing, in case you missed it... or forgot it... or just want to relive every scintillating moment of it...

ADDED, THE EVENING AFTER... I embedded last year's SOTU. So... quite a morning after for me. LOL. Delete.

Man! Getting Nancy back. That's quite an aftereffect!

Here's where I blog everything about the State of the Union address that doesn't involve the text.

I've already blogged the text. That's done! No more fretting over typing out what the Prez is saying in real time. Been there. Done that. This post is for everything else. What are they wearing? Who's falling asleep? What was that funny look? Where did he stumble over the text? All style and no substance, except to the extent that style is substance, baby.

UPDATE: Thanks for keeping this going in the comments. I don't have much to say about the visuals. The House fixtures looked surprisingly shabby on HDtv. Obama spoke slowly, had some gray hair, and made stabbing gestures with the pinched-together fingers of his left had. The mixing of the Democrats and Republicans in the audience really did — as critics warned — have the effect of making it look as though everyone supported him, but perhaps the demonstrations of support were a bit more toned down than they would have been if the parties had kept separated.

UPDATE 2: Instapundit has a grim screen capture. Was O's suit that blue?!

AND: As for that look, I think that's the Boris Karloff look.

CONFESSION: I slept through parts of it.

The text of the State of the Union Address from a Democratic insider who has violated the White House embargo.

Via the National Journal.

UPDATE 1:

With their votes, [the people] determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

But the challenges were "bigger than party, and bigger than politics" before, when you "move[d] forward" on your own, with only your party. Now, you're into togetherness, and it's togetherness with the party that isn't into "moving forward."

At stake right now is not who wins the next election – after all, we just had an election. 

Ha. What a lie! The next election is completely at stake. As for the last election, some of us think it was really important. But you're saying: Eh, it's over. Let's turn away from electoral politics. But we know damned well you're working on 2012, and you opponents want some attention paid to what just happened last November.

UPDATE 2:

Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn’t always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you’d have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion....

When was that true? Who is he talking about? I'm 60 and I don't remember that ever being true.

That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets. I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear – proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game....

Proud... and bitter, clinging to their guns and religion. 

What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook....

Edison? Can I have my incandescent light bulbs back?

UPDATE 3: I'm skipping a ton of stuff to get to health care:

Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses.

What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

He'll work together with Republicans, but only if they offer little tweaks to the big overhaul he rammed through, with no consideration for their opinion, when they didn't hold the seats in Congress.

UPDATE 4: Hey! I'm just noticing that Obama never says "The state of the union is [?]."

And now, what will I do when the actual speech comes on television? I don't know, but I feel so liberated! I'll just give you some chit-chat about whatever strikes me. The visuals. The screw-ups. The intonations. The hints of gray...

UPDATE 5: I've put up a new post for all the real-time style-over-substance chit-chat.