state of the union, back to the drawing board......

I had the time, and decided that I needed to watch how the top official described the American future we all have concerns over. Needless to say, I fell asleep towards the end, and missed the finale. It's not that I was bored, but my days start somewhere between 5 and 6 am, and I barely stay awake to watch Law & Order. Anything past 9:30 pm, and I'm nodding off... unless it's the occasional insomniac evening, or I've had a power nap during the day. Tuesday was neither of those. I had planned to look up the speech, re-read it over to chew on the finer points, but was saved the task through Mike's blog: http://25yearplan.blogspot.com . Not only did he link it up, but he put out a fine post on the matter that allowed me to see another point of view.

Of what I did see, I had the immediate feeling that the only substance it consisted of was pure damage control. Not that damage control is a bad thing, and in this case it is a necessary element. It's only too bad it didn't come sooner, and in the first years of the administration.

That said, our little dutch boy at the dam, is now asking for fewer leaks, and plans to put up new bandaids that have an uncertain timespans. Yeah, he said six to ten years... but looked what happened in the past. He has proposed to the American public that we need to become less dependent on oil, and use our technology to develop other resources to meet our energy needs. Bravo.... but wait, I seem to remember Jimmy Carter saying the same thing back in the 70's. We've had 30 long years to do this, what happened to that plan? Carter was laughed out of the arena, and told that every American had a right to keep their thermostats on 75 degrees if they wanted.... this proposal of 68 degrees was preposterous! Gas lines then were a daily chore, as you sat in your car and waited along with everyone else to make it up to the pump. Your best bet was to wait till midnight, find a 24-hour station, and hope everybody else didn't figure our your idea. Prices were outrageous, 79 cents a gallon!... but you drove the new Toyotas, and mileage was a whopping 26 - 35 miles to the gallon.
It seems that the only one really ahead of the game was Willie Nelson, as his tour bus is run on used fryer grease and the like.... and he's been doing it for years. Now our commander in chief wants to have a talk with him. Looks like Willie can use this point to see if the Feds will forgive him on his past tax faux pas'.

Within the first few paragraphs of the speech, Mr. Bush refers to the American democratic system as a party of two. Well, I seem to remember that there was an independent Party, but who's counting right? It might be a issue for me next time I vote, as I am a registered independent. Oh well, I'll deal with that when the time arrives.... but don't think it will be too much of a problem.
Everyone knows that Mr. Bush has a hard time counting anyway.... why do you think Cindy Sheehan had a number pasted on her shirt? But then, Cindy wasn't allowed into the chamber. Fearing that there might be an outburst from her, they ejected her from the chamber before she had a chance to find her seat. That was something that was announced before the address even started. What did they think she was going to do... start a riot? If you wanted to see a real riot in this type of setting, check out the meeting of parties in Georgia, Russia. They were mad enough at each other that chairs went flying, and fists spoke louder than words. I'd like to think that we are a bit more civilized than that, and I was pretty sure she just wanted her "number" to be known.
Along with her ejection came the same fate for a senators wife... although her shirt said "support the troops". As far as I can see, they pretty much had the same message, only Cindy decided to put a number on hers.

Mr. Bush tells us that the only way to secure our position of peace and control for our destiny is to forge ahead, and not fall into the whims of isolation and protectionism. Ok, I can kind of see where he felt he needed to rally us a bit on that, as he has a war he needs to have the American public support.... after all, his ratings with the public (and world) are the lowest of any President so far, and that includes Nixon, who everybody disliked.
He continually likens this to World War II, and this is where he makes a poor analogy. World War II was a defined enemy, with defined countries. We knew Germany was the invader, and that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Where is the country that all these terrorists live today? Well, they seem to be everywhere: London, Germany, Lebanon, Egypt, etc, etc, etc....... Heck, we even trained the 9/11 "pilots" in Florida and Georgia of our own country. The biggest difference is that they have an agenda, and have slipped into countries becoming sleeper cells, while waiting for the call to arms from bin Laden, who has a movement that will long outlast his life.
If we think we were about to bomb the crap out of Afghanistan or Iraq, and the citizens of those countries would line the streets at their liberation, we were sadly mistaken. There will be no roses thrown from the balconies as they did when we liberated Italy and France. They may be happy that Hussein is out of the picture, after all, his regime was the strong-arm of their terror internally. That will not make them thankful that we did liberate them from such a tyrant.

What we fail to see is that these countries have been fighting this way internally for many generations. Perhaps Mr. Bush is looking to be the one to bring peace to the Middle East once and for all.... ask Jimmy Carter how well it worked for him. During one of his "peace talks" at Camp David, Mr. Carter was so disgusted with both sides, he got up and walked out of the room. Although he did achieve some part of a peace accord, the memories and hard feelings were too deep amongst the actual citizens of these countries. Within years, assisignations, bombings and terror all resumed their natural course for that area. I'm not saying an attempt
isn't worth it, but "shock and awe" might might not be the best tactic unless you want to bomb them all off the face of the earth and start over. In other words, they really know no other way of life, and it will take many generations to reduce the hate.... even if today were the first day they all put their guns down and shook hands with their enemies.
That all said, yes, there have been some progressive moments in the war, but we easily said that during the 60's and Vietnam.... and that didn't end till April 1975 when we were scrambling off the roof of the American embassy building. Once Mr. Bush started this war, he added a heavy burden to the next person to take his office, as this is something that will go on for a long time. Ask Henry Kissenger how easy it is the "shut off a war".

Then there was a brief mention about Katrina.... although my one time saying it here, was one more time than he actually mentioned the word at all. He has pledged 85 million dollars to the area of New Orleans and the Gulf region. I'd like to see the money tree he'll gather that from. This is not to say that the area isn't deserving of it, they most certainly are. They are our populace, and we have a duty as neighbors and fellow citizens to assist them. I'm just not sure from all I've heard that there is money in the budget. Yeah, he wants to eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly, therby saving 14 billion dollars next year and still stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Whoa..... there's a lot of numbers there, Mr. Bush, please make sure they have their calculators out and pencils sharpened. Measure twice, cut once, as the carpenters say.

There is one area where I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Bush, and that would be the line-item veto. Most of the bills that get passed up to become law have a lot of "pork" in them. In order to gather votes to get bills through, many attachments are padded to the original agenda. We'd like to think they would stand alone, but most don't. A lot of the original bills that get past the committees are attached with "amendments". Not that this is a bad thing altogether, as some things do get overlooked and it is a safety net, but some things are unnecessary and they get attached because it falls in the general area. This is mostly due to save time. Regardless, I think every item needs to be read through on it's own, and weed out the pork that slips through. There must be plenty of it if Mr. Bush counted 14 billion dollars worth so far.

My bottom line opinion is that it is a beautiful speech. Brilliantly written by the speech writers, and everything we'd like to hear if we had a President that we respected right now. We don't. Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, it's what we wanted to hear and see in his first years in office, and this speech was missed by many, even though it aired on all major stations, and then in sound bites on cable. Nobody really cared to hear more rhetoric or what they thought were lies. The track record of this administration is very laughable to the world right now, and that's an embarrassment for our country. We'll get over it, and the world will continue to spin, but I can't help but think how it really must stink being in Mr. Bush's shoes right now.