While I had the unfortunate luck of being the only one in our group to have to post the week of THON, I was fortunate enough to have the week of the annual Presidential idealist stump speech: The State of the Union.

Like every SOTU, the President began with a history lecture, then said the same words, repeated every year since JFK, “the state of our union is strong.”

But how strong is it, really? I mean, our country is torn into a contentious dichotomy over immigration, gun control, women’s rights, gay marriage, abortion, Medicare, defense spending, the national deficit, foreign policy, weapons policy, assisting the needy, and international trade. It seems like party contention and debate is at an all time high, even spurring the inception of new political movements (read: The Tea Party).

As for the content of the speech, I will speak briefly on a few subjects.

The first is the most important, our economy. The “fiscal cliff” aversion caused a serious reduction in our 4 trillion dollar deficit, but we are still well over a trillion dollars in the hole for this year, provided that Congress will stand by cutting all they pledged to (they won’t). The president said that the continued reduction of this deficit must come from balanced cuts across the board in spending, coupled with rewriting the tax law, and increasing revenue. Now, closing up loopholes in taxes will save the Government 100 billion annually, sadly this action is almost negligible. When he said that the Government would need to increase revenue, he said it would need to be balanced by all Americans. I may be wrong, but it sounds like the President just hinted at increasing everyone’s taxes.

The problem, now, is that he went on to describe advances the United States needs to make in many areas: energy independence, alternative fuels, biomedical advances, education, the environment, helping citizens refinance, etc. All of these require increases in funding. But we have to cut funding.

And then the President goes on to say how our economic policy must have the sole purpose of creating jobs in mind. Unfortunately, for the Government to create jobs (increase GDP) with fiscal policy, it has to increase spending (GDP = Gov. spending + consumption + private investment + net exports). This is the exact opposite of reducing the deficit.

Look, I totally agree with him that all these things have to happen, but my logic says that they cannot. So, as president, he has to decide which route the country needs to take.

Another topic he spoke on was immigration reform. A measure that received ovations from both sides of the chamber, he proposed strengthening border security as well as influencing immigrants to learn English. Jaanki recently posted about bringing the best and the brightest to the United States, so I will play devil’s advocate here.

The problem with immigrants coming to the United States is that they drive population increases faster than the economy can create jobs. In a word, some people would say that they are taking American’s jobs. A couple of times President Obama referenced the creation of a million American jobs, except with influxes of immigrants, and policies of affirmative action, along with basic microeconomics, those jobs will go to immigrants before they go to established struggling families.

Finally, he touched on some foreign policy. First, everyone should be reminded that John Kerry is our new Secretary of State, and we should send our best wishes to HC, she was a great Secretary. Now, Obama mentioned “making sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.” I sometimes (often) have misgivings about the United States being the police of the world. Iran is an independent, sovereign nation, who are we to impose sanctions other than a member of the UN council? Is it feasible that the country that is struggling to sustain a nuclear program will launch a missile knowing that the response would be 100 back into their face?

In addition, he discussed supporting democracy and human rights in the middle east. I agree with the human rights portion, and I love my country, but at the same time, I don’t think that our democracy will work everywhere. I think that we should fight for the basic human rights of people through Diplomacy, and allow them to form their own power structure. The Constitution is ours and ours only, let these other nations have that same beauty.

To finish, he said simply that the gun control measures proposed recently “deserve a vote.” Though we may disagree on what the results of that vote should be, I totally agree with him, it’s time for a referendum on the debate gripping the country right now.

So there’s my entirely disjointed, uncensored, opinionated, probably a little misinformed take on the SOTU.

PS I didn’t watch the Republican Response, or the Tea Party Response. The latter would be a complete waste of time.