Best State of the Union Address Ever

President Obama's State of the Union Address was the best ever. Not the actual address- that was the usual bunch of lies, rhetoric, and deception- but I watched the address with a crowd of over 150 people at a local event that was hosted by the Americans for Prosperity.

Americans for Prosperity, Rocky Raczkowski (Republican-candidate for the MI-9th), and the Core Principles-Center Right Coalition sponsored a State of the Union speech watch party at the Sheraton in Novi. Organized only a few days in advance, it drew anywhere from 150-200 people, who packed in the crowded room to watch Obama's speech on the big screen. A couple speakers spoke beforehand, and then the crowd watched his speech, hooting and hollering and making comments as he went.

With a crowd of Tea Partiers, of course they were critical of Obama's speech, especially his talk about the budget and the debt. People around me were engaging in conversations about economic theory and principles, history, and political theory and thought while we watched his speech. This crowd was not politicians and rich people, but rather good decent citizens who care about our nation and just want to see it prosperous and happy. The words that this group was using the most often in conversation by this group were 'liberty,' 'freedom,' 'citizen,' 'republic,' or 'responsibility.' It contrasted with President Obama's speech, which instead highlighted regulation, taxes, partisanship, and blame.

And this group wasn't a 'Republican' group either- every speaker spent time bashing the Republicans for their failures in office when they were in charge. We expect Democrats to raise taxes, put in place more regulations on our lives, and be corrupt, but we don't expect Republicans too, and so this group ripped into them as well.

As to what I thought about Obama's speech... I thought it was one of the most divisive, partisan speeches ever uttered to a joint session of Congress. Maybe Obama's teleprompter was to his left or maybe he just always looks left all the time, but if it not, it seemed to me he spent most of his speech staring down at the Republicans, brow-beating them and lecturing them. His little chin started drifting up, his shoulders got all narrow, and in this pose, he stared to the left for most of the speech, directly at the Republicans, lecturing them about subjects of which he has little to no knowledge or experience in. He pushed his agenda, spoke about everything in 'us vs' them tones, and spent little time laying out his vision or goals for the nation. I don't think he has any visions or goals, other than power and control, and he didn't disprove my theory in his SOTU address tonight.

There were parts that made me angry- when he took credit for the isolating of Iran when he wants to meet with them without precondition, or when he began to cite the Declaration of Independence and simply stopped with equality and fraternity, or when he said that every generation has fought for change but failed to mention that every generation that fought was fighting for freedom and liberty and not what he wants, or when he blamed Bush for the debt- but mostly I shook my head and thought to myself 'who actually believes this guy anymore.'

As I drove home from the AFP event, I listened to the radio, and heard a much better vision of America from the Republican response. If you haven't listened to their response yet, look it up and do so- the GOP's vision of America is a lot more hopeful, a lot more change for the better, a lot more free, and a lot more prosperous than the stuff Obama uttered tonight.

The picture is from the AFP event- I hope for you it was also the best State of the Union Address ever.

UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press covered this event- read their article on it by clicking here.

As a side note, one way that bias is introduced by the media is through misleading crowd counts. By my count, there were closer to 200 people at this event then there were (as the Freep notes) "about 150 people". The Freep is right about this though- "The catcalls, boos and ridicule from the crowd were frequent" and deserved.