I watched Obama's speech last night. The first time I have ever watched a state of the union address that I can recall. It was really good (too much clapping, imho, but it's to be expected). Hell, I even teared up a few times when he started talking about how things are going to get better. I hope so. I really do.

The Republican "response" was a JOKE. I know I'm not alone in that. I actually gasped outloud when he commented that the government was wasting money in the stimulus package on "something called" volcano erupting. Um, WHAT? Really? THIS is what you find to be wasteful? I don't live anywhere near a volcano. I was only 3 when Mount St. Helens erupted but I remember it VIVIDLY. He went on and on about how "Americans can do anything." Yeah, a lot of us can, but there's a whole lot who can't.

You would think after the trouncing the Republicans got in the last election that they would try to figure out how to win their base back. The response speech shows that they are completely clueless as to how to influence people. The entire speech was purely pandering to the most rabid, non-critical-thinking people in this country. Even Fox News couldn't spin it as a good speech!

A friend of mine compared him to Kenneth the Page from the show 30 Rock, and I thought the comparison was apt. It is unfortunate that those with strong southern accents are automatically thought of as stupid or ignorant. I have quite a number of friends from the south, and the prejudice against southerners is something they have to deal with quite a lot.

I watched a documentary over the weekend that Nancy Pelosi's daughter filmed on the campaign trail with the Republican party in the last election. I was shocked at the unapologetic ignorance that so many displayed. Obama was right, a lot of those people cling to their guns and religion out of fear. It was quite an eye opener. It's not just the southerners that she highlighted. There was the infamous woman from right here in Minnesota who got national attention after calling Obama an "A-rab". Seemingly normal people just spewing such HATE towards people who live in cities, who don't go to the same church as they do, such ignorance of basic economics....

I have friends who are staunch Republicans, and I feel bad that those ignorant people get the most attention from the media as typical conservatives. I know that most people who identify themselves as conservative are not hateful people. I used to be conservative. Mostly because of the abortion issue (I'm Catholic), but for a lot of other reasons. I identified with the Republican party in my youth. I even voted for George W. Bush in 2000.

From the beginning, with the dispute over vote counts in Florida, and as the war in Afghanistan and Iraq spiraled out of control, and the corruption became so obvious and so many in the Bush administration were so...smug about their war profiteering, I knew I could never support such a party.

As far as the abortion issue, I just came to the realization that despite all their talk, there has never been any actual effort by the Republican party to ban abortion. They talk the talk but they never have walked the walk. This epiphany led to realization that whether abortion is legal or illegal, there will always be women who will want to, for various reasons, terminate a pregnancy. We can have those women have the option of the procedure performed by a trained professional in a sanitary environment, or we can have women get sick or die from botched procedures. So while I could not imagine a situation in which I would willingly have an abortion myself, my conscience cannot say that I should force my morals on someone else, or force women in bad situations (rape, incest, economic situation) to have the child anyway.

Ideally, no one would ever be raped, there would be no sexual abuse, and no one would ever have sex until they were in a committed relationship and both mentally and financially ready to have children. We don't live in an ideal world. Enough babies come into this world unwanted. I think the solution to the problem is education about effective birth control and the importance of waiting for sex until one is ready. I did some amazingly stupid things in college, I was lucky enough to have never been put in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy.

I was LUCKY.

So many women are not.