State of the Union, GOP response focus on Donald Trump

Two Democratic members of San Diego’s Congressional delegation praised President Obama’s final State of the Union address Tuesday for appealing to the American spirit and countering “defeatist rhetoric” that has dominated politics.

In an election-year marquee event, Mr Obama hailed a period of “extraordinary change” laden with both opportunity and the risk of wider inequality. “We must resist that temptation”, said Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants.

“For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all”, he said, adding that Vice-President Joe Biden, who lost a son to cancer past year, would be heading the effort. “We ought to have a security test, not a religious test. That’s who we are”.

Then he segued to looking forward to the future, building on the foundation of history that has chronicled how over time, and amid all changes and challenges that has beset the American people, they did not act out of fear, but rather ”thought anew, and acted anew”.

“The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth”, the president said.

White House Communications Director Jen Psaki said the president was also energized by his appearance last week on a CNN special on guns, in which he took questions from gun control advocates as well as gun owners, a gun dealer and an Arizona sheriff. He says references to World War III just play into the extremist group’s hands. “That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world’s stage”, he said pointedly.

He also took a thinly-vieled shot at Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

So what Obama basically did was to kick off campaign ’16 with a State of the Stump speech, to rebuke the top Republicans for trolling in their cesspool.

“Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it”, President Obama said.

And in a volley clearly aimed at Trump, Obama warned that “when politicians insult Muslims… that’s not telling it like it is”.

CNN said those figures are not far off the mark Obama set last year when 72 percent thought the policies he proposed would move the nation in the right direction, the highest mark of his presidency.

President Obama will follow up his final State of the Union address with a visit to Omaha, Nebraska Wednesday, where he will sit down with residents to discuss the themes of progress he touched on in his optimistic speech.

“We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world”. First Lady Michelle Obama was seated next to an empty chair in a gesture to victims of gun violence. And so, I applaud the president for actually taking that step.

The President at the outset spoke to the joint session of Congress about what he’d like to get done in a bipartisan basis in his final year in office. She also cited “chaotic unrest in many of our cities” and “the most unsafe terrorist threat our nation has seen since September 11”.