Brief & Belated Thoughts on the State of the Union

- 1.   A nice change -

It is more fun to watch the state of the Union when Nancy Pelosi is sitting up there with Dick Cheney.  And interesting to see when one stands up and one doesn’t.

- 2.  Strongly strengthening up our stregnthly strongness -

In 2004, President Bush described the state of the union as “strong” seven different times, six times in 2005 and 2006.  This year he called us strong a paltry three times, leading me to the conclusion that we as a nation are becoming a bunch of sissies, or someone at the White House has invested in a Roget’s.

- 3.  It takes one to know one -

Obviously the best part of the State of the Union is the commentary afterwards.  My favorite moment of punditry came from Republic strategist Karen Hanretty, who, in an appearance on Fox News, wore a very tasteful 3 pounds of frosty silver pink lipstick, and tackled one of Washington’s toughest issues:  insincere hand-shaking.  That’s right, before and after the speech, congressional Democrats had the audacity to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with the President, even while disagreeing with his views.  Scoundrels!  Well, actually, I would call them scoundrels.  Karen called them media whores.

- 4.  Bush vs. Language: Round 7 -

I have mentioned this to President Bush before, but he seems to have forgotten.  “Democrat” is a noun; “democratic” is an adjective.  In fact, his speechwriters were even courteous enough to put the correct wording into the text of the address, but the busy President just could not be bothered with that final “ic” when he offered his obviously sincere congratulations to “the Democrat majority.”  A helpful hint: if you want to be a “Uniter, not a Divider,” you might want to go ahead and correctly pronounce the party that represents half of the country.  Nitpicky?  Only if I was pointing out the grammar and insult issues of someone other than the President of the United States.

- 5.  Ooohhhh Snap! -

President Bush also revealed a new health care plan that would take health insurance out of employment packages and have everyone buy their own independently.  An additional 3 million people would get coverage under the new plan, which sounds good until you remember that there are 47 million currently without health insurance.  Hilary must have been waiting for this moment for years.  After the speech she gave a response saying that the plan “robs Peter to pay Paul,” which is one of the epithets that was used against another healthcare intiative, back in the day…  Who’s laughing now, Harry and Louise!

The Urge to Surge

President Bush has decided to send a surge of 21,000 additional troops to Iraq.  Remember all that talk of “not staying the course”?  Well, it seems he has managed to find a worse course.

Meanwhile, Congress is tossing around non-binding resolutions voicing opposition to the new strategy.  And while it’s trendy (and hilarious) to point out that non-binding resolutions are just as toothless as they sound, we do have to give the new Congress a little bit of credit for at least applying some political pressure.  Binding resolutions, or putting their money where their mouth is and opining via appropriations can, and must, come later.  For now, let’s stop making fun of them for doing their job and checking the power of the executive branch.

The thing about co-equal branches of government is, they are allowed to disagree with each other.  If the point of the government was for anyone with dissenting opinions to sit down and shut up, less they risk being accused of being ”unpatriotic,” or worse, “not supporting the troops,” then we wouldn’t need three separate branches of government and we could let one man make all our public policies, decide on the budget all by his lonesome, and interpret the Constitution with no help from anyone but Jesus.  And while it would be a great country for that guy and his friends, I wouldn’t particularly want to live there, and I can name several founding fathers who would agree with me on that one.

 And so I am getting very, very sick of the incredibly manipulative and unpatriotic tripe coming from assorted Republicans and Lierbermans who want to stifle dissent in the legislative branch.  A sampling:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:  A resolution opposing the troop surge would “embolden the enemy.”

Senator Joe Liberman (D*, CT):  “opposition to the troop surge would offer comfort to the enemy.”

 This is interesting because I thought the idea was the the terrorists hate our freedom.  If a group of people hates freedom, then wouldn’t they be emboldened and comforted by a legislature that displays a dog-like obedience to authority, the increase of concentration of power of one individual office, and the erosion of liberties like the rights of habeus corpus and free speech?  I would think that if people hate Americans for their freedom, then nothing could be less comforting or emboldening to them than for us to proudly and actively exercise the rights and responsbilities that come with our democracy?  No?

 Which leads me to my favorite and most egregious slur.  Coming from everyone’s favorite Republican, you know the one – he of the heroism and integrity, Senator John McCain.  On Meet the Press last week Mr. McCain said,

 ” And the—this resolution is basically a vote of no confidence in the men and women we are sending over there. We’re saying, “We’re sending you—we’re not going to stop you from going there, but we don’t believe you can succeed and we’re not willing to support that.” “

Allow me an analogy, gentle reader.  The mayor of a city decides to tear down some old building to build a shiny new post office, and the townsfolk pretty much all want a new post office, so the mayor and the city council together hire a big construction crew and they are diligently working on the demolition, but over the years the post office doesn’t get built, and from time to time there are scandals about the crew being send over to work with no backhoes, and the mayor is giving no bid contracts to his friends, and it turns out he lied about why he wanted to tear down the old building, and actually the whole project is just a mess and it’s eating the city’s entire budget and eventually the city council puts together a letter to the mayor, saying something along the lines of, “actually we don’t like your new building plan, perhaps we could get together and think of other ways to get a new post office built, and since you have been tearing down this particular building for 4 years and you don’t seem to have a plan and frankly you lied about the reasons for tearing down the building in the first place so we’re disinclined to continue to follow your lead on this one, also several of us have experience with post offices and we’d be happy to help if only you’d let us,” but meanwhile the demolition/construction crew are really giving it their all, i mean they are a very talented group with a lot of civic pride and everything, but they are being led my a bozo with no strategy.  Is the city council giving a “vote of no confidence” to those workers by writing their letter to the mayor?  No.

John McCain, and anyone else who wants to stoop so low as to conflate disagreement with Bush’s Iraq strategy with a lack of support for the troops, should be ashamed of himself.  He should know better than anyone that the people who design (or fail to design) wars are not the same people who fight them, and that while criticizing the latter group is inappropriate and ungrateful, critiquing the former is absolutely necessary.

____________

*  Ha!

God and Jesus Face Off About Politics

How does that saying go – “even the devil can cite scripture for his own purposes?”  Well, I am going to invent a new axiom about diamettrically opposed presidents citing deities for their own purposes.  

 Hugo Chavez was sworn in to another term as president of Venezuela yesterday.  In his speech he announced that his main goal this term will be building Venezuelan socialism.  This will include nationalizing the oil and telecommunications industries.  He also mentioned Jesus, saying, “I swear by Christ – the greatest socialist in history.”

 By now I have gotten used to religious references in big political speeches, but I was very confused by this reference – not because Jesus wasn’t a socialist, but because I was sure I had heard somewhere that God wanted George W. Bush to be president of the United States.  Who was it that said that?  Oh right, President Bush.  This is the first I have heard of any father/son team belonging to both the Bush and Chavez camps.  Divine generation gap?  The kids are always more liberal…