State of the Union

I had a call to complete last night and missed much of the President’s address, so I chose to simply read it this morning, absent all the silly interruptions for applause, etc. And, given that, it was much easier to skip the *cough* “analysis* newsreaders and clownish pundits placed on it afterwards, as well.

Still, gee, the guy managed to cover a laundry list, didn’t he? I imagine the Democraps and other Leftist fifth columnists for jihad and Reconquista stuck their figurative fingers in their ears and blabbed “na-na-na-na-” when Bush rehearsed the economy’s good news and the dirty lil not-so-secret earmarks graft that Democrappic congresscritters have no more genuine desire to eliminate than their Republican’t “colleagues” do. And I can easily imagine what the ear-plugging “na-na-ers” had to say in response to

Finally, to keep this economy strong we must take on the challenge of entitlements. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience — and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty — and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true — yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and good will, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid — and save Social Security.

But then, a vanishingly small number of Republican’t congresscritters listened, really listened, to that paragraph, as well.

*sigh*

“So let us work together and do it now.”

May I throw the bullshit flag, yet?

*profound sigh*

And then, in the middle of some complete, absolute and total B.S., came this corker:

“Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act — preserving local control, raising standards in public schools, and holding those schools accountable for results.”

Oh! Perfidy, thy name is Politics!

“No Child Left Behind” is designed and perfectly functions to create the world of Harrison Bergeron, where No Child Gets Ahead is the true goal. (What?!?!? You haven’t read Harrison Bergeron yet? Get outa here and go read it! NOW!) And the comment about “preserving local control”–OK, I have to throw the bullshit flag on that one…

Still, let us press on…

Health care? Adding a tax deduction to an already labyrinthine tax code is… silly, when better and more can be achieved through the Fair Tax. Is President Bush trying to channel “President Staton” from American Dreamz, here?

Perhaps the thing gets better. Let’s see.

Extending hope and opportunity in our country requires an immigration system worthy of America — with laws that are fair and borders that are secure. When laws and borders are routinely violated, this harms the interests of our country. To secure our border, we are doubling the size of the Border Patrol — and funding new infrastructure and technology

OK, that sounds appropriate. Let’s see if it follows the political formula: Say something appropriately responsible in order to follow it with pure bullshit. Yup. He’s got it down pat:

Yet even with all these steps, we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border — and that requires a temporary worker program. We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis.

Pure bullshit. That “legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis” is already on the books. What your weasel words are code for is “I wanna give all the crooks who circumvented the ‘legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis’ a free pass, amnesty,” and you know it.

What’s next?

It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power — by even greater use of clean coal technology … solar and wind energy … and clean, safe nuclear power.

Well, about time! Of course, he follows it with the inane, even stupid, proposal to

…increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory Fuels Standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017

What is it this president doesn’t like about a free market? Mandatory? Screw that!

Oh. Well. He then followed that with an expository buildup to the crux of his speech, which I believe is found here, placing Iraq squarely in the broader context of the GWOT:

This war is more than a clash of arms — it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our Nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom — societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies — and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security … we must.

(Who wrote this? Someone needs to hand him an orchid.)

He goes on to develop the theme even further, making clear the nature of Islamic “extremism” (while prissily avoiding the pig in the parlor, i.e., that the fundamental, inherent barbarous savagery of Islam itself is the problem) and the “generational” nature of the struggle (choruses of “na-na-na-na” from leftard ear-pluggers).

Of course he does utter such fatuous remarks as ‘The people of Iraq want to live in peace.” *feh* The only “peace” the “Iraqi people” have known for thousands of years has been when an iron heel of dictatorial power imposed it on them from above. The tribal and religious factions have multi-generational feuds that will not be settled with political mummery. Learn from history or repeat its mistakes, Mr. President. Arm the Kurds to the teeth and impose a Kilkenny Cat solution on the rest of Iraq. It’s a sure winner.

But still, what the President proposes is worlds and away better than the Democrappic “solution” with amounts to nothing other than “Run away! Run away!”

Of course, he then followed with the now requisite fallacious “argument from the gallery,” citing the cases of four Americans as support for his vision. Yadayada. Nice stories. Folks who have done decent things with their lives. So? Not policy arguments.

All-in-all, given the vast majority of the speech dealt with a more correct than not view of the GWOT, even with the utter bullshit of early remarks on social policy and national security, a solid C+. If he’d left off the laundry list of B.S. earlier on and sinmply focused on the GWOT and ditched his nearly impeachable desire to help Mexico with its invasion plans, it would have been a B+ ranging up into A- territory.

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Trackposted to Wake Up America, Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, The Pink Flamingo, The Bullwinkle Blog, Pursuing Holiness, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.