State of the Union

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What, am I the only one that stayed up to catch the speech?

Well, this would be the perfect opportunity for a fresh batch of Bush-bashing or Bush-worshipping (pick your poison) - so many hot-button issues, so little time! - but instead, let's take this topic to post what you liked or hated or were surprised by or whatever in the speech itself. We have plenty of other topics for debating the specific issues.

I, for one, was shocked that Bush openly promoted a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. (So much for the Utah vote.) Seems like quite a gamble.

Anything that really leapt out at any of you - positive, negative, or hilarious?

 

Yea - there goes the separation of Church and State.

 

Sojourner wrote:

That's just stumping for his constituents. The conservative religious right is a strong supporter of Bush, he has little choice in that arena, he's been towing that family first/christian values line since his presidential campaign.

As for the overall speech, I liked it. He outlined accomplishments, declared the world a better place w/o Saddam Hussein, and even talked about areas he wanted to improve in...given a second a term. Nothing groundbreaking in his speech, just the President talking about his accomplishments.

I like the fact we are finally setting up an arabic radio/news station for the Middle East similar to Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe. At least it'll give a different perspective to events than Al-Jazeera. I also liked Bush's challenges to Congress about keeping tax cuts in place and scrutinizing the budget to trim programs.

I actually think the most annoying part of the address was the Democratic response. Daschle and Nancy Pelosi's response sounded more like whining children than the response from the Democratic Party.

Pelosi talked about Bush's "go it alone" foreign policy, yet it seems in every instance he made an appeal to the international community for support. Without getting into the whole Iraq debate, the US attempted to find political solutions to Iraq for damn near 12 years. How long is too long? Like I said, I don't want to get into it here...There are other threads in the Alley for it...

I agreed with the Democrats that the Patriot Act should be repealed. I think, despite the positive effect it may have on curbing domestic terrorism, it is outweighed by the eroding effect it has on Liberty and personal Freedom.

Complaints of a budget deficit on the President isn't really fair; Congress controls America's pursestrings. So there's plenty of blame to go around for that one. However, more taxes are not the answer. It always cracks me up that politicians feel that higher taxes are the answer to budget deficits when the opposite is true. When the money is not there, you make hard choices on what you're going to spend it on. I do this in my personal life, why can't the Government figure that out? The government exists to serve THE PEOPLE, not vice versa!

I also liked the vision for education, but it will take money to realize it. Our education system is crap. Public schools are increasingly more like prisons than educational institutions. We lack the focus on math and sciences (I am a living example), and it's beginning to show. Many technology firms are shipping their business to India and other countries, due to cheaper labor costs and generally more/better educated people. Improving education should always be a priority.

Well, I could go on for hours...But I'll stop here. Overall, I'd give Bush a C+ for his presidency so far. It could be higher, but the 2.3 million jobs lost, the Haliburton crap, the Patriot Act, and the inability to find WMA's in Iraq took away from his score for me.

 

That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the separation of Church and State. It's a common move on the gay rights activists' part to downplay the oppositive position and its arguments as purely religious and otherwise unfounded, thereby logically unfounded at all. Refer to the Gay Marriage thread for a prolonged lecture on why that is so. I think I wrote a medium-sized book equivalent in that thread

Now, back to the topic. Seems I agree with Dubya at least once. My agreeance probably makes him a bit smarter and more competent in the eyes of public opinion, but it's not like I support him in other matters

 

I watched enough of it to remind myself that without 9/11, he'd have nothing to talk about. Terrorism, terrorism, fear, fear, don't be comfortable, safter country because Saddam Hussein isn't in Iraq (??), terrorists in Bali, Baghdad, etc...

Al-Qaeda's actual terrorist act was to give Bush something to campaign on. If they hadn't hit the towers, he'd have showed up to the address with a note from his dad that said, "MY DOGGIE ATE MY HOMEWORK!"

 

Well, I had three big problems with it:

1. He wants to keep/renew the Patriot Act. I don't like that idea at all.

2. His "No Child Left Behind" policy is failing miserably. There aren't enough dollars in the budget to buy the teaching supplies needed, or to hire enough teachers to make class sizes smaller and more managable. The "No Child Left Behind" policy is, without doubt, a noble goal, but it cannot be realized with its current level of funding.

3. The "save money for health care" idea. Ridiculous. We currently have 30 million people in the U.S. that don't have health care, and about 2/3 of that total have a family member that has a job - just jobs that don't offer health care. So, how is someone going to be able to save for a specific medical procedure, if they can't offord basic health care in the first place? It just doesn't make sense to me.

[ January 21, 2004, 15:54: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Say what you will, religious values have everything to do with Bush's proposal.

 

Aldeth, the No Child Left Behind Act is just another in a long list of visionary programs that Bush introduces and then either underfunds or refuses to fund altogether. That way he gets the credit without actually having to do anything about it. It's a nasty habit of his which, unfortunately, seems to work.

 

I'll say right up front that I didn't watch the speech - it was Queer Eye night, and they were re-running the Holiday Reunion Special.

Anyway, from what I've heard (BBC and NPR) or read about the speech, I'm glad I didn't watch it. I've disagreed with almost every point that's been called out, and I certainly don't buy into the overall premise that we need to give him another four years to realize his vision. I did, however, get a laugh out of the commentary from a professor of communications who found the speech to be very disorganized and poorly presented.

I definitely made the right choice last night. The Fab Five have both style and substance, while Bush has neither.

 

Not a surprise:

• "No Child Left Behind" was touted as a big success.
• Blowing smoke up the country's ass about how great things are under his watch.
• The record was NOT set straight about the justification for the Iraq war.
• Hardly any mention of the enormous deficits. But hey...Reagan proved deficits don't matter. Right Dick?
• Bush vowed to reign in outrageous government spending, and keep the growth at a CAP of 4%. Why not a surpise? He said that in the last two SotUnions, too. This from the party who's all about "smaller government."

Big Surprises:

• He more or less solidified his position on gay marriage. Well, that's not a total surprise.
• He didn't mention going to the moon or Mars.
• He mentioned both his "mission accomplished" and "eat my fake ass turkey" photo-ops as evidence that he's 'down' with our troops, despite the fact that both turned out to be major PR blunders for him.
• He didn't declare war on anybody.
• Tom Daschle really blew a stellar opportunity to rail Bush on his failed policies in the rebuttal. Instead, I felt like he was about to sell me Amway™.

And this, my favorite part...

• Bush actually wants us to believe the following is true: "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible and no one can now doubt the word of America." Nothing can be farther from the truth.

And now, the downright funny...

• Ted Kennedy shaking his head for an entire hour.
• When Bush talked about the military and everything he does for them, during the standing ovation the camera panned to 3 decorated soldiers, all of whom frowning, courtesy clapping, and all body language basically saying "dude...what an ass."
• That one Democratic Senator they caught sleeping.
• Bush himself....he's just goofy.

 

@DR

I loved Ted Kennedy shaking his head throughout the entire speech. He just had a look of "What the hell is this guy talking about?" on his face.

 

For me, I didn't see "What the hell is this guy talking about?" so much as I saw "Good god...I can't believe people are buying this sh*t."

 

I agree....Ed Kennedy shaking his head was a real treat! I also was a bit surprised that he brought up the UN stepover..err...stepON..when he said "the US doesn't need a permission slip" to defend it's country against threats from terrorism (or something to that effect). That was, quite frankly, a bit ballsy to say.

Overall, I didn't agree with half of what he said, but he did have some good punchlines -- it wasn't a bad speech as speeches go.

Oh... and Bel...

About prisons....IT professors at the University of Alaska are asked to volunteer their services at the local prison in Anchorage -- to teach the criminals there IT courses for free -- the same courses that other students have to pay for -- and in some cases provide special tutoring that the normal student can't even get access to, due to constraints on the professor's time. (And when a few of the profs refused to donate their time in such a manner, they were given an ultimatum -- either do it or you're fired.)

 

And the moral is: If you can't afford an education, commit a crime, do the time, and get your degree for free.

 

Spellbound wrote:

Do they do this so the convicts can graduate from blue collar crime to white collar crime?

 

LOL -- That must be the reason! (It's all pretty pathetic.) They offered me a job at that institution on the condition that I do the freebee work at the prison -- I declined.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/sotu.transcript.1/index.html

Man, you'd think you backward-ass Europeans would all have cable by now. Sheesh.

 

Lol, Sir Bel. And then they hire fancy lawyers from Philly to defend themselves.