Full video:

All in one big speech: climate change, renewable energy, gay rights, minimum wage up to $9 taking lower class just above poverty line if working full time, not just cutting welfare, improving economy, housing, helping those who need it in housing…I was pretty psyched and grateful overall.

Also: “What makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child; it’s having the courage to raise one.” -Barack Obama, State of the Union Address

Oh, and major preschool support for children in need, and focus on voting access rights.

Oh, and cuts in nuclear weapons and half troops home now from Afghanistan, half in a year and we’re out. And commonsense gun control. All in one agenda.

And immigration reform! But this moment had me on the verge of…tears…something I don’t approach often or easily.

In 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.

“President Obama, urging congress—more specifically, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, to put his gun control proposals to a vote.” (via Newsweek, via shortformblog)

Note: the GOP-controlled House won’t do it. So it’s all the more touching that President Obama tried, so passionately. ~ ed.

Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote.

Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress.  If you want to vote no, that’s your choice.  But these proposals deserve a vote.  Because in 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.

One of those we lost was a young girl named Hadiya Pendleton.  She was 15 years old.  She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss.  She was a majorette.  She was so good to her friends, they all thought they were her best friend.  Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration.  And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house.

Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence.  They deserve a vote.

Gabby Giffords deserves a vote.

The families of Newtown deserve a vote.

The families of Aurora deserve a vote.

The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote.