This is such, i am sorry, simplistic idelogical response.  In a speech in which he called for greater investment and ending tax breaks for oil companies, all you can say he is appeasing republicans. Pathetic.

What irked me was his direct honesty, lacking any empathy.....No remorse, just hard cold facts, with very little comfort.

He talks about how the rules changed for this generation; my generation, and then he admitted it did change. Mr' President, you administered the rules, your policies punished us. 

No kidding Mr. President; you surrounded yourself with advisors, who considered my generation expendable. Your cure was to let me die and upon my ruins, some grand future awaits us. Like I was a piece of garbage, to be discarded on the side of the road to the Presidents vision of utopia.   Was the collateral damage accceptable to you Mr. Presidente

Where everyone in the new generation, will go to college and become teachers, or rocket scientists……Sounds to me like the old story of too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

I’m sorry Mr. President your economic policy of the last two years, screwed me, you screwed my offspring, for some promised pie in the sky future. My generation ready to face retirement can go to h%%% ?

The President talked about how some governments would have just bulldozed houses to put in a road…….Your administration just bulldozed and buried my future and the future of my seed (offspring) the future generations of Americans. My dreams dashed, because my government saved the privileged class. My dreams of sending my offspring to college evaporated, because my government failed to protect me, from the terrorists of Wall Street.

Children of the Bankers and Wall Street crowd, will be able to afford college, seeing as how they were protected. 

Well I am so relieved to know our government is better than most others.

Well thanks I thought I helped build this one already, and now you want more sacrifice?

I can’t believe I like the President as a person, but he just doesn’t get it?

Obama is a mixed bag.

On the one hand, there was a vision of the future with better times ahead, driven by an activist government spurring growth and progress by organizing public investment in innovation, education and infrastructure.  I like it as far as it goes.   In those areas, Obama sounds like a progressive Democrat.

On the other hand, there were some aspects of the speech - shockingly few - dealing with our current crisis.  These parts of the speech were extremely bad, and somewhat offensive.  Obama tried to sell the country on the idea that the recession is now over, that we have "broken the back of the recession."  He based this on the idea that corporate profits are up and the stock market is up.  But profits are up even though revenue is flat, because corporations have cut costs and improved profit margins by slashing jobs.

Frankly, this avoidance of reality makes Obama seem obtuse and indifferent.  The whole Western world remains in profound economic crisis and deep doldrums.   Whatever labels economists might use to descibe them, these are the worst economic times in many decades.  And they are not bad times that we just lived through and from which we have now emerged.   We're still there. Obama only seems willing to lead in a world he wishes he were handed, but not the one he actually was handed.

If you are one of the 9.5% officially unemployed, there was not a single word in the speech about what he is going to do to get you working this year.  Not.  One. Word.  There were lots of words about what he is going to do for your children and grandchildren.  But as for the present it was:  Out of work?  Out of luck!

There was also nothing in the speech that would make a progressive think that Obama has any plans aimed at addressing the profound inequalities in our society, inequlaities that are historically unprecedented are are fragmenting us socially and politically.  One gathers he doesn't even care about them.  He just wants things to go back to normal - normal being good old dysfunctional and unequal America, with the middle class continuing to fall further behind the wealthy.

He is also placing far too much blame on foreign competition for US economic sufferings and job losses, and not enough on the structural problems, exploitation, corruption, incompetence and malfeasance of the current order.  China and India did not create the Ponzi flim-flam financial bubble of phony, under-audited and and toxic financial assets.  The Chinese and the Indians didn't crash and burn the economy and evaporate our savings.  I wonder if Obama even understands why we are in a recession.

So I agree that the speech had a lot of Hooverite qualities.  It was a "prosperity is just around the corner" speech aimed at restoring the economy purely by instilling psychological confidence and making bold plans for the distant future, and by ignoring all of the scary monsters under the bed.

Obama strikes me as like a baseball player who has been thrown a curve ball by history, and who takes the pitch and then says, "I don't do curveballs; I'm a fastball hitter."  Instead of facing and accepting the crisis and responding creatively to it, he keeps trying to wish himself out of it so that he can move on to his big post-crisis plans.

One last thing.  This speech reminded me of Obama's inauguration speech in some ways.  Obama is the master of the "optimistic downer".   The theme is something like this: "Well, it's going to be really hard.  We're going to have to work, and compete, and sacrifice, and save, and sacrifice, and work, and struggle, and work some more ... and did I mention work yet?  But we can do it guys, 'cuz we're Americans!"

The Obama future might be prosperous.  And we might be number one again in that future.  Our kids might have good jobs and make more money than the Chinese kids.  But it doesn't sound like it's going to contain much fun.

Nothing about the foreclosure crisis in the whole speech? Strikes me as a bit wierd...

I have had a night, to ponder what lessons I can take away from the speech.

I can now see, the remedy to all our problems is for the people to become educated.......In other words, the problems are due to our ignorance.

The people are too stupid, and because of that we are suffering.

Are you going to be a part of the solution or are you going to remain the problem?

Don't blame Washington, because you’re too stupid.

“If you feel you have no place in this enlightened world, you can always join the military and defend us; us the elite educated”. You wouldn’t want to risk losing the only thing that keeps America moving forward into the future would you?

In fact, the elite would prefer to open up ROTC on college campuses, to increase service by those seeking to “not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your countries elite” because without them there would be no crumbs. 

Lets hear it for our educated elite, because  without them our country will remain weak, lets hear it for our military becuase without them, who will defend those of the elite educated corps.

The rest of you are a burden to society not worth picking up the tab for ?

Ps. Can anyone tell me what the unemployment rate would be if our troops were already home?