it will come as no surprise that i felt obama did a fantastic job last night. he is such a great public speaker and so eloquent. it’s so refreshing after 8 years of dumb, plastic speeches from the dimiwtted dubya.

i think that he moved himself and his agenda toward the center. i’m not a center left person at all. i would say that i’m middle to far left. i’m not only honest about that but very proud of it. i think the left sincerely cares about the average american. the left’s agenda is focused squarely on making their lives better. taking a gamble that businesses and the wealthy might let their wealth trickle down to the lower classes is a gamble i’m not willing to endorse. it hasn’t worked in the past and i cannot figure out why the right continues to push this tired agenda.

i loved that obama called out the horrendous, dangerous, disastrous decision made by the supreme court with regards to business contributions. no business deserves the first ammendment right to freedom of speech. businesses are not people. any individual in any of the american businesses has the right to donate as they see fit at anytime. allowing a business entity to donate unlimited amounts will skew the political balance so far that it will be unrecognizable. it will irreparably damage our political system. to see alito mouthing “not true” was sickening. obviously this guy is not neutral as i would hope that a justice could at least pretend to be. alito and roberts are obviously just the two newest far right ideological members of the supreme court. this more than anything that bush/cheney did to the american people will have far reaching repercussions that will damage america for years to come.

it was very telling watching the right sit on their hands during even parts of obama’s speech that mentioned traditionally republican values. for these people then to come out in interview after interview and say that they aren’t the party of no, is a joke. eric cantor was interviewed on msnbc this morning and wouldn’t even answer the question directly about whether he would support these initiatives outright in themselves. he also refused to admit that he’s (and his right colleagues) unwilling to meet the democrats half way. chuck todd asked cantor this questions – that if the president (as he said in his speech) would be willing to look at offshore drilling and nuclear power plants would the right be willing to meet him halfway on cap and trade. the president has moved to the middle to cooperate. are the repubs willing? no, was the was what i gleaned from cantor’s waffling. he said cap and trade is bad and it will hurt job creation. so even the fact that obama has moved in the right’s direction in this matter, they are apparently unwilling to move the center.

to hear these far right guys say that the president paid lip service to jobs is disappointing. they are so unwilling to give this guy a thumbs up on ANYTHING. i guess it’s politically disastrous for a republican to agree with anything obama does.

it seems that the right would like for the president and their democratic colleagues to listen to their agenda (not a bad idea), accept the conservative agenda (often a bad idea) and forget about the democrats ideas (disastrous idea). this is what they consider working together. this is what they consider bipartisanship. we tried their ideas for 8 years and it led to the most disastrous presidency this country has possibly ever seen. we have the majority (not a super majority anymore). the public obviously liked our agenda in 2008. i don’t think that the waning popularity of government in the last year is because of the democratic agenda. i think it’s because government is gridlocked. you can’t say no all the time and expect anything to get done. the right needs to accept the fact that they ARE the minority. deal with it. we did when we were the minority back in the mid 00′s.

mitch mcconnell (referred to as the senate obstruction leader by some) has said that he is willing to require a 60 vote majority on everything. he said that this is the usual practice. in the words of rep. joe wilson “you lie!”. the republicans almost double the number of filibusters used in congress this last session. it went from 54 in the 110th congress to a whopping 104 in the 111th congress! wtf?!? and they say that they are not the party of no??

i thought the filibuster was wisely used to hold up the nominations of alito and roberts and their decisions on the supreme court have only served to strengthen my opinion on that. but these are extreme cases. using it to hold up anything and everything that your opposition proposes is an abuse of the system. i guess i’m leery of it going away completely but it might be necessary. i do like the proposal of some democrats that would allow a filibuster but we make it so that the actual number of senators needed to overcome a filibuster would lessen with each vote until the measure is dropped or passed. great idea there. it benefits both parties in the end and gets the government moving again. not a bad idea at all.

that’s my opinion on a few of the plans mentioned in the state of the union and the resulting interviews.