Last night, President Joe Biden delivered his first "real" State of the Union address to lighter-than-normal crowd in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber. It seemed there were empty seats due to COVID social distancing, as every occupied seat had a name taped to it. His speech was about what you'd expect - some classic moments, some dull moments, a couple awkward moments (especially transitions). His stammer got the best of him a few times, the worst being when he said "Iranians" instead of "Ukrainians". He definitely put Congress on notice to get to work on his agenda.

Disclaimer: As of this writing (immediately after the speech), I have not been able to find a transcript of the speech, so this is all from memory.

He started out addressing the unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia. It was a fairly lengthy part of his address, and in general received hearty bi-partisan support in the chamber.

From there he moved on to domestic agenda, talking about the Build Back Better act, how manufacturing jobs were coming back to America (including a massive new Intel factory in Ohio), and why COVID (and our reliance on foreign-made goods) was the catalyst for inflation.

He covered medical initiatives, including drug price control, mental-health coverage, and bolstering the VA.

He also touched on voting rights, women's pay equity, tax increases for large businesses and the wealthy. This did not go over as well with Republicans.

The one area that might make heads explode on The Left was when he talked about the Defund the Police movement, and saying the police need MORE funding. He mentioned training, but that is not what was heard, based on the cheering from the Republicans.

CNN has a fact-checking page up, in case you want to get more context on some of the items, and does a nice job of summarizing the various points in the address.

I tried watching the Republican response (given by the governor of Iowa), but it was just an annoyingly-delivered list of disproven Republican talking points that don't deserve any more attention than what I just provided.