State of the Union.

Talk about it here. The Supreme Court Justices: Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan are all there. No Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

1. Obama's voice seems strange. Here's the full text of the speech, by the way. You don't really need to sit through all of this.

2. "So let’s set party interests aside..."

3. "[D]eficit reduction alone is not an economic plan. A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs – that must be the North Star that guides our efforts."

4. "A year and a half ago, I put forward an American Jobs Act that independent economists said would create more than one million new jobs. I thank the last Congress for passing some of that agenda, and I urge this Congress to pass the rest." That gets a huge laugh from Biden, and we laugh a lot at Biden laughing so much.

5. "After shedding jobs for more than 10 years... " I say: "Shedding? Maybe we should go back to the dog show." (I've got the SOTU and the Westminster Dog Show recording on the DVR. We can go where we want. I love that Tibetan Mastiff!)

6. Climate change. "Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late." What?! What is the overwhelming judgment of science? He merely gave the impression of making an assertion. That's not the attitude of science.

7. "I’m also issuing a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years." There's a modest goal. Why not cut all waste?

8. "Today, the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act that Joe Biden originally wrote almost 20 years ago." Closeup on Biden, who looks elderly.

9. We should do "more to encourage fatherhood – because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child; it’s having the courage to raise one."

10. "And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over."

11. Closeup on John Kerry. I say: "He looks different." Meade says he had plastic surgery.

12. "Overwhelming majorities of Americans – Americans who believe in the 2nd Amendment..." support all sorts of gun control. "[I]n the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun."

13. "But we were never sent here to be perfect. We were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but absolutely necessary work of self-government."

14. Biggest cheer of the night: a 102-year-old lady who waited in line 6 hours to vote.

15. Weirdly, there's no cheering at all after the description of the police officer at the Sikh temple shooting, Brian Murphy, who who kept fighting "even as he lay bleeding from twelve bullet wounds. When asked how he did that, Brian said, 'That’s just the way we’re made.'" That was the last anecdote of the night.

16. "Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."

Why is the CEO of an outdoor gear retailer qualified to head the Department of the Interior?

Obama nominates REI's chief executive Sally Jewell.

In 2011 Jewell introduced Obama at the White House conference on “America’s Great Outdoor Initiative,” noting that the $289 billion outdoor-recreation industry supports 6.5 million jobs....

Jewell has pushed for land conservation in Washington state, where she lives, as well as nationally. She is a founding board member of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, which focuses on a stretch of land from Puget Sound across the Cascades, and helped lay out a plan for the National Park Service as a commissioner on the “National Parks Second Century Commission.”...

National Park Conservation Association President Tom Kiernan, on whose board Jewell sits, noted that she focused on how to broaden the national park system’s appeal as head of the “Connecting People and Parks Subcommittee” during its planning process. He described her overall approach as being “about connecting people and the out of doors, to the benefit of both.”

Jewell was also an engineer for Mobil Oil:

“Her experience as a petroleum engineer and business leader will bring a unique perspective to an office that is key to our nation’s energy portfolio,” said [Tim Wigley, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents independent oil and gas producers in the West]. “We hope to see a better balance of productive development on non-park, non-wilderness public lands that enhances the wealth of America and creates jobs while protecting the environment.”

From what I'm reading at the link, this is a nice change from the usual career politician who cares about environmentalism.