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President Obama addressed Congress and the nation yesterday in his State of the Union Address. Speaking for about an hour, he referred to this being “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” announcing a relatively bold goal of adopting clean energy so that “[b]y 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.” This went hand-in-hand with his call for cutting subsidies to oil companies. Obama also focused on education by first chastising parents and teachers for their responsibility, and then lauding his own education policy called Race To the Top calling it “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” Obama called on Americans to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world” even as he announced a 5-year domestic spending freeze. The President also obliquely voiced support for the DREAM Act, extolled the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and then made a strong call for the return of military recruiters and ROTC onto all college campuses. He stood firm on the health care reform bill, and preserving college tax credits. In job creation, the President called for major infrastructure rebuilding while assuring Congress that such a plan would not increase the deficit. In foreign policy, the President reiterated that the Afghanistan war was going well, and sent a clear message of support for the Tunisian revolution. Using his standard rhetoric of trying to please both aisles of the party divide the President made more than a dozen mentions of Democrats and Republicans working together.

GUESTS: Amy Dean, co-author of “A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement,” Kai Wright, Editorial Director of ColorLines. He’s an Alfred Knobler Fellow of The Nation Institute

Read Amy Dean’s article here: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6874/
mr._president_the_fight_for_the_middle_class_isnt_in_washington/

Read Kai Wright’s article here: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/01/the_state_of_our_union_is_weak
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