EckerNet.Com

How would that be for a title for this SOTU address?? It appears Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-CA gave Cindy Sheehan a pass to attend the speech. And of course she couldn’t help but make a complete ass of herself so she was promptly arrested. My guess is she won’t apologize for it.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with Bush’s speech. In general, nothing new or particuarely bold. It’s delivery was boring and over-practiced. Lack of details or really anything for anyone to sink their teeth into. Whether that is how it was intended is unknown. So before my post becomes the same thing (UPDATE: Too late), let’s get to the issues:

Illegal Immigration
*sigh* He apparently is still incapable of drawing a line between legal and ILLEGAL immigration. I’m all in favor of immigration, as long as it’s legal. What I don’t like is the millions pouring across, and Bush did little more than pay lip service to that.

We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy – even though this economy could not function without them.

That may be true. But nobody is saying we should get rid of all immigrants or stop all immigration. Just the illegal part of both. Illegal meaning it’s against the law. And may I remind you as the Executive Branch it’s your responsibility to enforce the laws??

Instead, Bush keeps on with his guest worker program

And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty … allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally …

The problem is his guest worker program IS amnesty…just under the table.

No method of how to increase border security. Absolutely no mention of stricter penalties for companies who hire illegals.

In summary, Bush failed miserably on this issue and for me it was the most important issue I was hoping to hear him talk about.

Civility/Bi-Partisanship
Almost right off the bat he addressed civility in Congress, and he repeatedly mentioned it throughout his speech. Not surprising considering the heated battle over Alito just ended this morning.

In that spirit, I might note that civility includes NOT comparing your opponent to the Nazis, or using anti-semetic statements.

Economy

Our economy is healthy, and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs – more than Japan and the European Union combined.

Haven’t heard that stat before but it’s impressive nontheless. Overall, Bush did a good job here. Decent job on hitting the tax cuts and the fact that they are still temporary. Hint : Congress, get off your ass.

Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending – and last year you passed bills that cut this spending

Um, what?? Ok…TECHNICALLY that is true. Discretionary spending was increasing by 15% in 2000. It hasn’t grown quite that fast so far. But do you really wanna give yourself a pat on the back for 15% increases??? Anyone here get a 15% raise in their salary this year??

And that doesn’t count supplemental spending on everything from defense to agriculture to whatever government program you can dream up. So this is meaningless. And you’ve done a shitty job at reeling in spending. Don’t count this as a success there big guy. Try again.

This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities.

[...]

By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another 14 billion dollars next year – and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

Yeah, yeah yeah, I’ve heard this before. Wake me up when it actually happens.

I am pleased that Members of Congress are working on earmark reform – because the Federal budget has too many special interest projects. And we can tackle this problem together, if you pass the line-item veto.

Ok that would be nice….although in order for a line-item veto to work, you would actually have to use it.

But I think McCain just got presidential support for his earmark campaign. Whether that motivates others to get on board or not is another matter. Problem is half of America just changed the channel since they have no idea what you just said.

Isolationism
Ok seriously, he slams isolationism at least three times in this speech. Where did that come from? And who is he supposedly addressing here?

Iraq
Once again had to explain the plan to the liberals. And once again they didn’t appear too enthusiastic about it.

Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning.

True dat. No response from the Democrats. No surprise there, they aren’t in this to win.

As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels – but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.

Murtha, that one is for you. And just to remind you, you now fall into the latter category. Thank goodness.

A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison … put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country … and show that a pledge from America means little.

Truer words were never spoken. And common sense for the most part, yet it’s a concept that liberals around the country seem incapable of grasping.

Would have been nice to see him cite specific examples of progress in Iraq, such as numbers of schools, bridges, water plants, etc built. Numbers of Iraqi military ready for action and stuff like that. Oh well, the important ones in this situation (the Iraqis and the US military) are aware of them and that’s what counts. The Democrats would never understand anyway.

Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

Oh, BURN!

War on Terror/NSA/Patriot Act

I think the highlight of this area was

If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaida, we want to know about it – because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

I was hoping he’d use that exact line, and he did. Nice. I especially enjoyed the “I can’t believe he just said that” look on Hillary’s face.

We have killed or captured many of their leaders – and for the others, their day will come.

Heh, Zawahiri, he’s talking to you.

They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime – so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

Basically there is a general theme here. Bush isn’t apologizing. He’s not backing off. He’s pushing forward, not showing weakness and not giving the Democrats anything to hang onto. And it’s exactly what he needed to do. I mean what would you rather here, “We’re doing good and we’re gonna keep it up”, or the Democrats version “AHHHHH!!! We’re all gonna die!!!”. Seriously.

The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil.

Basically most of the rest on this area is boilerplate. Granted it’s good but it’s still pretty standard. Nothing new. Reminds me of a line from the movie ‘Down Periscope’, “I think we should continue to kick ass, sir”. We are and Bush plans to continue. Good to know.

Social Security
As Bush stated, the Baby Boom retirement has begun (and you think Hillary could at least have laughed at his joke). This when the problems all start. And predictably the Democrats applauded the fact that they have done nothing to help the matter and have, in fact, obstructed progress on this issue.

Ok I know Bush isn’t always the best speaker, but I thought he missed a real opportunity here. He could have pointed out the blatant partisanship and then reminded people to remember who stood up and cheered when Social Security goes broke.

Bush wants to create a commission to study the effect of Baby Boomers retirement on the big three (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid)??? I’ll tell you what the effect is, it’s gonna be bad and expensive. And no “commission” is gonna accomplish anything. I’m tired of “commissions” and “studies”, when do we get around to the results part?

Sorry, Bush, you missed a chance here to make a big push on one of the few remaining pieces of your domestic agenda.

Energy
I’m sorry….when did Bush join the Sierra Club?? Solar and wind technologies? Seriously, these both takes massive amount of space to generate energy. And these aren’t infinite resources. You can’t just “create” energy.

Ethanol?? Oh great, more of the biggest energy boondoogle. Maybe one day we can make it half as efficient as gasoline. At a cost of only a few hundred billion dollars of research.

Since 2001, we have spent nearly 10 billion dollars to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources – and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

Ten billion to get to the threshold huh? I’m not impressed.

Nuclear energy?? Excellent…when can we start building? Yesterday if possible.

Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

I damn near fell off my chair.

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

Definitely an admirable goal, and one which I fully support. I just have my doubts. Good luck.

Judiciary

I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law, and not legislate from the bench.

Good boy. And we’ll be here to protest when you nominate another judge (like Miers) who is clearly unqualified to be a federal judge, much less a Supreme Court judge.

Cloning

Ok….not sure why this topic was deemed worthy of including in the speech. This hasn’t been in the news for over a year now. And since nobody in the US, that I’m aware of, has actively promoted cloning human beings I’m not sure what he’s addressing. He never uses the term “stem cells” so I don’t think he’s talking about that stem cell research.

Did I miss an expose on an epidemic of animal-human hybrids sweeping the nation or something?

New Orleans
Ok yeah, we’ve spent a lot of money cleaning up a city devestated by a hurricane. Alot of this money probably SHOULD have come from insurance but whatever.

Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived.

What?? How did we get signed up for that??? Now not only do we have to clean up the city, but we have to fix everything that was wrong with it BEFORE the hurricane??? When did that become a federal responsibility?? Isn’t that a local issue? Now we’re gonna have the feds clean up every liberal utopia in America??

Education
Basically this part can be summed up as “No Child Left Behind : The Next Generation”. More of the same basically. Basically came down to kids are the future, we need to prepare them, and it’ll help keep American great. Nothing new. Which is the problem. No mention of vouchers. A shame. Missed chance there.

Palestine
Acknowledged the win by Hamas, and then challenged them to disarm and recognize the right of Israel to exist. Fat chance that will happen, but good to know he was forceful about it. Would have liked to see him reiterate that the Palestinian Authority will never receive any aid until they stop blowing up innocent people.

Actually, I’m not sure why we gave them aid in the first place, but one step at a time I suppose.

Iran
Speaking directly to the Iranian public. Good move. Should have addressed the nukes more by directly addressing how a nuclear Iran is a threat to the US and the world. Maybe even drop a vague threat of military action to spice things up a bit.

Health Care
Dropped alot of keywords, but nothing on the details. Not sure if I should be encouraged or depressed on this one. I mean I realize this is just a speech but some sort of highlights of what he has in mind would be nice. Unless he has nothing in mind, in which case we’re in trouble.

Misc
Lots of general good news

In recent years, America has become a more hopeful Nation. Violent crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1970s. Welfare cases have dropped by more than half over the past decade. Drug use among youth is down 19 percent since 2001. There are fewer abortions in America than at any point in the last three decades, and the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.

All good to hear, but none of them hot-button issues. I suppose he had to at least mention them though. So…whatever.

Overall
Generally, I’m not real impressed. I think I heard this same speech last year. Yeah, the standard buzzwords were there. But that’s it. Atkins, this speech was not. Alot of vague references. Short on details. Missed chances to score points. But on the other hand, I don’t see anywhere were he really fell backwards on anything. But it was pretty boring and uneventful for a President with ratings in the 40s in an election year.

Final Grade : solid C