All right, I guess I am the only one in America who actually paid attention the other night.  Even the Republican Response was written before the speech, so many parts of it were so obviously not correct it was pathetic.  But, what I did hear and what I was listening for were fighting words.  Perhaps America has become so deaf or dumb that they do not understand when someone calls them out, but that is what I heard.  I heard him talk about Jim DeMint obstructing the appointment of the head of TSA who might have prevented the Christmas Day airline situation because of his dislike of unions. I heard him call out the Supreme Court for handing over our electoral process to corporations, domestic and foreign both.  I heard him talk about GOP obstructionism to every policy just to win over a base.  I heard him take on the pundits who twist and turn every fact into a lie. 

But, I also heard something apparently no one else did - I heard him say that he never promised to do it alone!  He also chastised us, the American People, for acting like fools. We elected one man to the White House, but we elected 535 people between 2006 and 2008 to do the people’s business in DC and we got screwed by THEM!  He was telling us to give him a Congress that is not controlled by the corporations and he will win for us, but until we do, he feels like he is fighting this battle alone.  Did anyone else see the face on Pelosi when he pointed out that he could not do the job alone, or the pan to Harry Reid?  He was calling them out on their poor leadership in controlling the Democrats, and neither one of them liked it.  He has not forgotten that the first day they met with him, they proceeded to the lawn of the White House, and announced that they would not be dictated to by this Administration.  In case anyone of you has forgotten, they allowed themselves to be dictated to by the Bush Administration and they have continued to allow themselves to be dictated to by the Republicans for the last 4 years!  Obama was making it clear, subtly, that they would be dictated to not by him, but by the people of this nation if they did not start acting like OUR representatives, not corporate one.

Yes, I heard things I did not like, and I will oppose them when they come up, but what I finally heard from this President is that he is not giving up, and what I saw on his face as he left the podium, and during the speech, was controlled anger at the people in front of him who have sold out our nation to the corporate and military interests, and he is prepared to fight and get angry (albeit in private)with those who continue to block his hopes for a better form of government and governance.

I recently wrote and noted in several videos that I would not vote for Obama in 2012 because of the actions he has taken, or allowed those who advise him to take in direct opposition to his stated positions.  I saw it as a sign of weakness, and demanded that he take more direct action in cleaning out his White House staff starting with Rahm Emanuel, and his cabinet of Clinton retreads.  Now I hope and pray that he makes those choices, and that we the American People make similar hard choices in November to replace incumbents who do not serve the people with newly elected officials who will, starting with Pelosi and Reid, the GOP, and the Blue Dog Democrats.  Put in Independents.  Obama took money from the corporations when he ran for president, but when you total the amount vs what individual Americans contributed, and realize that it was all after his nomination when the DNC took control of much of his campaign, the American people paid the tab for his election, and it is time for us to show that we are willing to put our actions where we put our money.  Elect Independents and progressives who are not aligned with either party.  These are the ones who truly understand what our Founding Fathers wanted: Liberty and Equality for all citizens, and not corporations!

“It was also obvious that he realizes his administration lost two critical battles last year: to define his stimulus plan and his health-care proposal. Polls show that Republicans’ negative claims have stuck with voters, while the administration’s arguments for the merits of both plans have not.”—Dionne

  Problem?  The stimulus plan was loaded with concessions to corporate power.  The health-care proposal was bargained away to corporate power.
Corporate power won bigtime on both issues, and that without any significant “change we can believe in.”
Now along comes the Supreme Court awarding corporations still another huge concession.
Why should ordinary people believe in such policies, weighted as they are in the direction of monied interests at the expense of everybody else?

It is becoming more obvious that the US is transforming to a South American like republic where there are great divides between the left and the right and never the ‘tween shall meet.  Whichever party is in power has to push through their agenda without bi-partisanship or nothing gets done.

Not just math, but English test results don’t look so good.  He hasn’t mastered
his two-letter words yet.  “No” seems to be one he has particular problems
grasping.  There is other evidence of vocabulary confusion such as his
understanding of mandatory insurance requirements as laughable in 2008, but a
good idea now, same thing with spending freezes.  He also confuses Republican
and Democrat, and seems to have no concept of majority.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

Obama’s top contributors to his 2008 Presidential campaign.

University of California   $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs   $994,795
Harvard University   $854,747
Microsoft Corp   $833,617
Google Inc   $803,436
Citigroup Inc   $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co   $695,132
Time Warner   $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP   $588,598
Stanford University   $586,557
National Amusements Inc   $551,683
UBS AG   $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp   $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al   $530,839
IBM Corp   $528,822
Columbia University   $528,302
Morgan Stanley   $514,881
General Electric   $499,130
US Government   $494,820
Latham & Watkins   $493,835

So, the guy who took nearly a million dollars from Goldman Sachs now says “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,”

He shows he’s a highly skilled politician by being able to keep a straight face while he says that.  Bet that took a lot of practice.  There’s probably an out-take video of his practice sessions that shows him cracking up and laughing every time he tries.

Obama’s speeches have always been about stringing pretty words together.  He always goes for a bunch of cheap applause lines that mean nothing.  He always has a Bill-Clinton-like ‘feel your pain’ section.  All of which makes for a nice sounding speech ... as long as you aren’t listening too closely.

When you listen closely, what’s always missing is what to do to actually help Americans. 

What Obama’s proposals really add up to is that military spending keeps skyrocketing.  We still budget the wars ‘off-budget’, and the costs of those keep rising every time we ‘surge’ somewhere else.  Today’s headlines elsewhere on Truthdig point out that we just easily found another $120 million to give to Yemen of all places.

Meanwhile, when the topic turns to maybe spending a little money to help Americans, Obama turns the cold shoulder. Suddenly, he’s all about ‘deficit reduction’.  Obama’s big plan is to ‘freeze’ the spending on the programs that actually help Americans. 

Of course, should wall street need it, billions and billions of dollars are always available just for their asking.

Obama says ‘screw you America’ with such nice and pretty words that most people don’t seem to catch what he’s really saying.

Just in case I had missed something I looked up definitions for poignancy: intensity, emotion, deep sadness. Take your pick. I don’t understand a word of what is written here. To me the speech seemed more like juggling with words than poignancy. The juggler-in-chief dropped most of them.