The Daily Background

President Obama’s State of the Union speech was pretty decent, I thought. The mixed seating certainly made it a different experience to watch, and made the constant audience cutaways feel less motivated when there wasn’t big differences in who was standing up and sitting down. I was impressed at the emphasis the president put on the importance of investing in new technology in particular. It was certainly the most high-tech focused SOTU I’ve seen, which was nice.

Paul Ryan (R-Wis)’s Republican rebuttal from what looked like the back of a poorly-lit auditorium fell into the predictable role of being a debbie downer after an inspiring speech. Also, did anyone else think he looked (and sounded) an awful lot like Gabe from The Office?

Is this Gabe or Paul Ryan? I’m not sure.

Incidentally, the fact that there is a separate “Tea Party Response” to the State of the Union is the most solid evidence to date that there is indeed an ongoing civil war within the GOP. The two factions’ split can only become more and more evident from here.

Update: One moment that sticks with me in the president’s speech is when he said that we need to celebrate not just the people who win the Superbowl, but also the people who win the science fair. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see the number of people giving him a standing ovation for this line for the length that they did.

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