It seems to me that President has two serious problems, he did not address either one adequately in his annual State of the Union speech. For one thing, his spending is out of control. The other problem is Iraq.
Tonight he claimed this year his budget would “only” increase spending to 4%, this compared with 20% of previous years. This is only an election year ploy to seem to be a fiscal moderate. In reality people will honestly look at his record and look at all the non-defense spending bills: farms, medicare, and education; all this and reducing taxes so the fed actually has less money to give away to spending bills. It makes no fiscal sense. President Bush did not tell us why he has spent like (as The Economist recently coined) “faster than a French Socialist” over his administration.
He also named all the countries in his “coalition.” It is not that this is in significant, it could have been significant in World War I era balance of power politics. Post World War II America put a whole new set of International Law in stone. The Bush Administration has dismissed this and treated it with disdain. Their “coalition,” will not be on the correct side of history in fifty years because it undermines International Law by violating the Section VI of the UN Charter.
President Bush’s State of the Union hardly touched on any of this, because there is nothing he can say to change these facts. I do think he will lie, as he did when he was running for President in 2000, to sound like a moderate on foreign affairs fiscal discipline, and the economy; but as long as you continue to read my posts I won’t let you believe his lies.
He didn’t mention his giant deficit nor did he mention Osama bin Laden. His pitch for a reelection was extremely inappropriate for a SITU address. Those are supposed to be formal reports to Congress not opportunities for stump speeches.
The best part was when he started to lament the fact that Homeland security was about to expire and he was interrupted by applause.
Hmm…I recall it was in reference to the Patriot Act. But I only caught the first 10-15 minutes on the radio as I was driving home from work, so I could be wrong.
Gotta love that Defense of Marriage Act. God knows that if gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, good heterosexual marriages will utterly fail, and this nation will fall to ruin. And we don’t have enough federal support of faith-based charities; in fact, people of faith are discriminated against. We must not let the atheists run God out of our country, because America is blessed by God. This is God’s chosen country, people! You’re either with us or against us!
I liked how he went back to trying to suggest a connection betwen Iraq and 9/11. He said he doesn’t need a “permission slip” to protect America. The problem with that reasoning is that Iraq wasn’t a threat to America.
blowero, I caught that effort to link them again too.
President Bush is still twisting words in an effort to deceive. During the State of the Union Address, he spoke the following words so quickly that I couldn’t believe what I was hearing:
I thought that he was again claiming that we had found dozens of WMDs that Iraq had concealed. So I looked up the text of the speech and noticed that it is not “weapons of mass destruction” that have been found, but WMD program activities and “significant equipment.”
I had to search out the Kay Report to understand the reference:
The Kay Report makes it very clear what has been found and what has not. WMDs have not. So why is the President still trying to use that to justify the war? Congress knows better. Who is he trying to mislead? What would the average voter make of what he said when hearing it only one time, in passing?
He may have received bad intelligence before the war. But what is his excuse now?
He set up quite a few straw men to know down. For example:
Who has said they are not in favor of Iraq’s liberation? I think the method is what many people are not in favor of.
And:
Who are the activist judges? Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore comes to mind, but seems to be off-topic. I suppose he’s referring to the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s ruling that was decidedly non-activist by handing the matter in question back to the state legislature.
And I can’t believe that Carl Rove let him keep the lines about making homophobia legal at the constitutional level. He may have picked up a few points with conservative cristians, but lost many points with just about everybody else. I can’t even believe an issue like same-sex marriage made it in to the SOTU address in the first place.
And yet, in spite of all these obvious deficiencies, the President’s approval rating remains high, and polls show him winning against any Democratic candidate in November. It’s a shame how stupid the American people are, eh?
Many here have supposed the “best part” of the speech. I submit that the Best Part™ was the telling and damning behavior of the Democrats during the speech, and especially in reference to the Patriot Act. They applauded when he said provisions of it were to expire next year, but he shut them up quickly by following that up with the fact that the terrorist threat will not follow that schedule.
The Democrats are self-destructing, and that is probably the best thing that can happen to America.
Will the average American notice the deceptive word-play mentioned in Zoe’s post?
Will the average American give any thought to how many new jobs have been created? Do they care about the difference between a thousand new jobs and a hundreds of thousands of new jobs?
Does the average American care that 9/11 and Iraq had squat to do with one another?
Did the average American even watch last night’s speech?
I’m a young person…under the age of 30. But I feel burdened with the cynicism and mistrust of a much older person. I think the answer to the above questions is a resounding NO! Why? Because we’re a stupid and ignorant people. Bush is going to get re-elected–this time fair and square. My stomach churns in anticipation.
I loved the shots of Ted Kennedy, he was just shaking his head everytime they showed him (mostly after scary Bush remarks).
I was very disturbed by the comments about the Defense of Marriage Act. He did say that it should be a constitutional ammendment??
Apparently a glurgy closing remark reminding us to thank the troops who are fighting and dying is enough for the American Public to believe he empathizes with their situation.
I watched the State of the Union on PBS. My favorite part was when the camera panned to Ted Kennedy. When Bush was nattering on about how he’d allegedly improved education, Kennedy was subtly but clearly shaking his head. He did the same thing when Bush went on about how we’d found those weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq, as if that justified Bush’s Iraq adventure.
I watched the whole thing, right through the Pelosi and Daschle rebuttal and all the Shields and Brooks commentary. Shields was being too kind, and Brooks wasn’t being as much of a cloying sycophant as I might have expected, considering his New York Times columns as of late. Frankly, this State of the Union speech was a joke. It was a campaign speech, and hardly the report to Congress that it’s supposed to be, as Diogenes has already pointed out. It was politically charged to a most inappropriate degree. I can’t say it’s out of character with Bush, though. Wish I could.
I finished my third beer by the time the whole thing was over. It’s a good thing there weren’t any Bush apologists at my place last night. They would not have had a good time.
Bricker:And yet, in spite of all these obvious deficiencies, the President’s approval rating remains high, and polls show him winning against any Democratic candidate in November. It’s a shame how stupid the American people are, eh?
Oh, I don’t think the American people are stupid; but without being as pessimistic about it as monstro, I think that many of them are ill-informed or misinformed about many issues. Thanks in no small measure to the Administration’s strenuous efforts to mislead them.
Don’t worry, though, many of us are doing our best to set the record straight, and will continue to do so between now and November. I think that Bush’s chances of re-election are strongly inversely correlated to how well-informed the public is about what he’s actually been doing.
(And about those approval ratings: according to the Century Foundation’s Ruy Texeira (“The Bush Cycle”), it does not bode well for a President’s re-election when his approval rate is dropping during the first half of an election year, as Bush’s is doing.)