SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

POLLING – First polling responses to Obama's State of the Union speech are favorable.  The numbers are strong.  However, as Wolf Blitzer pointed out tonight, the viewing audience of a SOTU speech is usually weighted heavily toward followers of the president's party.  So we can assume that most viewers tonight were Democrats.  Still, the response was good.  The president promised goodies, without specifics.  I've noticed in the past that the impact of a SOTU speech doesn't last very long.  It'll be forgotten by the weekend.

FIRST IMPRESSION – I looked forward to Senator Joni Ernst's response to Obama, but frankly I was disappointed.  Ernst is supposed to be terrific, and the GOP has high hopes for her.  But her speaking style tonight was right out of the 1950s, with shopworn phrases like "this great country of ours."  Sentiment good, wording old fashioned.  I think Ernst will be a good, dogged senator, but she's got to sharpen her speaking style for a national audience. 

IN THE REAL WORLD – We are battling monsters.  From the New York Post:  "ISIS jihadists publicly executed 13 teenage boys for watching a soccer match.  The young fans were reportedly watching an Asian Cup match between Iraq and Jordan on TV last week when they were caught by the militants in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which ISIS, or the Islamic State, controls.  The group of teens was executed in public by a firing squad that used machine guns, according to Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, an activist group that exposes ISIS atrocities."   Obama appears to take ISIS seriously, but there also appears to be no coherent strategy for dealing with these madmen.

FURY – Mayor de Blasio's New York is even worse than Barack Obama's Washington.  From the New York Post:  "Relatives of 9/11 victims responded with fury to news that the city is in negotiations to suppress an NYPD report warning about the dangers of homegrown terrorism.  The Post exclusively reported Sunday that plaintiffs in a pending civil-rights suit have demanded the city take down the online report as a condition for settling their case, which accuses cops of illegally targeting them.  Retired NYPD Sgt. Al Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian, was killed at the World Trade Center, said removing the report from the city’s Web site would amount to the same sort of 'political correctness and pandering' that he says led to his son’s death.  Regenhard also noted the recent three-day terror spree in Paris."  Incredible.  Even after Paris the left wing refuses to change its rhetoric. 

January 20, 2015