The Washington Post has the article The transcript of President Obama’s final State of the Union: What he said, and what it meant. The “what it meant” part is in the yellow high-lighted words which are links to their interpretation of background material.

I link to the article, not so much for their interpretation so much as a source for the original words for me to interpret. I probably want to pick apart more of the speech, but the following is a good place to start me off right away.

Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.

A large part of the State of the Union Address was great. This is one of the statements that stood out from what was not so great. For many of the problems that the President addressed, there was no agency in how he spoke of them. People feel insecure, wages aren’t high enough, there is instability in the world, the economic system is rigged because they just happened with no agent responsible for causing the problem? In this one sentence he finally made mention of the fact that there are people who cause some of these problems.

Obama was eloquent on many of the things we have to do to solve our problems, but occasionally he would slip in a good word about some of his policies that are responsible for our problems. The Trans Pacific Partnership that he touted is the antithesis of what he claimed it was. Trade policies like the TPP are exactly the kind of tools that the rich use to rig the system in their favor. I refuse to believe that he doesn’t know this. So his touting of this pact is one of the things that ruined the speech for me.

In my 71 years I have grown to know some of the times when I am being lied to. I don’t like it no matter who is doing it.