Some thoughts on the SOTU speech

For the last two days, I've been spending my time babysitting my four-year-old niece. So I haven't had much time to blog on President Bush's State of the Union speech. I've certainly been reading some of the commentary and analysis from the media. The New York Times has an excellent SOTU editorial, which breaks down to "the same ole, same ole." A Washington Post analysis rips into the Bush lies on Iraq. MSNBC has an interesting comparison between President Bush's current State of the Union, and the State of the Union of an earlier Texas president--Lyndon Johnson.

I found it rather interesting that President Bush started his SOTU address with an emphasis on his domestic agenda rather than Iraq. In fact, the entire emphasis of the SOTU speech was about domestic policy--you would think that the United States wasn't even in a failed war in Iraq. Then again, what else could the Bush White House speechwriters say, considering that the majority of the American public opposes the Bush administration's escalation of the war in Iraq. There was a laundry list of Bush domestic policies that will go nowhere--the Health Savings Accounts, school vouchers, a balanced budget (Now that's a laugh!), research into new energy technologies (Every president seems to talk about this since Carter wanted Americans to wear more sweaters), nominate federal judges with up-or-down votes--this will all go nowhere. President Bush did propose a new health insurance scam of proposing another tax reduction on health insurance premiums paid by Americans. There was also some talk of shifting the health insurance costs on to the states, rather than the federal government. I don't know much about these proposals yet, but I'm not sure I particularly care much for them, considering that President Bush seems more interested in the economic interests of his rich elites and corporations, rather than of ordinary Americans. Iraq didn't come up until the final quarter of the speech, and yes President Bush again linked 9/11 to Iraq (Four times). And now, President Bush is starting a new linkage of terrorists taking orders from Iran. Even worst, the terrorists want nuclear weapons that Iran would certainly give them. Therefore, we've got to escalate the war in Iraq, and possibly attack Iran. It was pretty much the same BS as Bush said in his "surge speech."

Crap.