State of the Union Address

[jackhammer91406]

Long on rhetoric, short on substance, but he is using the teleprompter much better than when he first started.

[Mavica]

I can't watch/listen to the guy. I've never accepted him as my President, or the President of the U.S. (yes, I know he is) . . . and every time I see a picture of the shit-eating grin in his face, I imagine myself smacking it off his face. Yes, Iraq is a "bad boy", but, no, he hasn't yet made the case for war; there are bigger issues to deal with. The acceptance of my fellow Americans of the imposition of the right-wing/christian right agenda on our lives is discouraging, and alarming. Knock Bill Clinton all you want (how can you fault a guy who likes to get sucked-off), but he had it right with the mantra, "It's the economy, stupid!". Let's not confuse an abhorance for Bush and the John Birch Alumni Club with being un-American, these are not nice people. Those of you who are not registered to vote, go out and register. And, when the next election for President rolls around, let's send this idiot back to Texas!

[Rick Munroe]

I had no idea that the word "nuclear" was pronounced "new-kyu-ler" but if that's the way our president says it (over and over and over), it must be correct. I'd give a standing ovation for that. :+

[VaHawk]

I really, really, really, had somewhere much further south than Texas to send him back to!! :7 I hear that it is a lot hotter there than El Paso is on Independence Day!!! :-(

[Guest fukamarine]

>I can't watch/listen to the guy.

 

Me too - he really creeps me out!

 

>Knock Bill Clinton all you want

>(how can you fault a guy who likes to get sucked-off), but he

>had it right with the mantra, "It's the economy, stupid!".

 

Clinton could run rings around Bush as far as intellegence goes.

 

>Let's not confuse an abhorance for Bush and the John Birch

>Alumni Club with being un-American, these are not nice people.

 

So true. You put it very mildly. It is a scarey thought to contemplate just how much harm this man could potentially cause. And to think that he is their by the grace of the Supreme Court - an oxymoron if ever there was one! What the hell is "Supreme" about that clutch of old farts?

 

I found it very interesting to watch his "audience" react to his speech. It was obvious many were clapping only because they were on TV and it was expected of them. Did you catch Hilory?

 

fukamarine

[Guest zoom]

Well I am in the minority here. And not because I'm a gay man. I liked most of his speech tonight. Like all state of the union speeches it was well rehearsed and every standing O was pre-planned. Also, like every state of the union speech it was quite general in scope. So nothing new about this no matter the party you associate with.

 

AIDS is preventable when proper precautions are taken. I did hear compassion in his voice when speaking about how the disease has had such an impact on society.

 

Malpractice insurance cost is out of control. It is getting to the point where doctors cannot afford to practice. We (in the US) live in a sue them, sue you environment. The attorneys are killing us with frivolous lawsuits. I feel sad for the person who has AIDS and his/her doctor won't try certain treatments for fear of legal action. Nothing wrong with capping malpractice suits. I guarantee you that the lawyers will begin to look elsewhere for their jackpot courtroom victories.

 

I did not like the part of his speech about Iraq, terrorism and potential war. I do not believe that war is the solution to our current problems. We can't even deal with what is happening in our ghettos, crime ridden streets. War is something I'm against and I disliked his remarks about terrorists who met a "different fate." That sort of gloating made me feel very uncomfortable.

 

Well, since you have read this far I should point out I voted for Al Gore and I am a large fan of President Clinton. I feel he was one of the best presidents our country has elected.

 

To sum it all up, Bush is not my first choice, yet I believe he is sincere most of the time and believes deeply in what he says. I take the good and leave the bad and hope for the best.

[Uncle Bill]

I too am in the minority here. I liked the speach, most of what he said, and especially how he said it. Please save me the histrionics and lectures -- I've heard it all before.

 

However, I've got something even more frightening for you guys than W's speach/looks. They always hold out one cabinet secretary in case the Capital building gets blown up or something during these speaches (wiping out the president and all of the others in the line of succession), and this year it was Ashcroft. From what I've read on this board, the notion of President Ashcroft is probably the ultimate nightmare. Pleasant dreams ;-)

[VaHawk]

>AIDS is preventable when proper precautions are taken. I did

>hear compassion in his voice when speaking about how the

>disease has had such an impact on society.

>

And just what are those proper precautions????? If you are talking education along with "free' distribution of condoms", then you need to revisit the current Republican/Conservative Christian policy on this! After all, the 2 groups are bed mates! What compassion did you hear in his "voice"??? Are you referring to his commitment of $15 million in services to Africa/Caribbean countries over the next 5 years? This is no increase in what Clinton established years ago! What about the increase in AIDS infection in the USA? Of course, most of that is in the non-white population so who "gives a fuck???" right????

 

>Malpractice insurance cost is out of control. It is getting to

>the point where doctors cannot afford to practice. We (in the

>US) live in a sue them, sue you environment. The attorneys are

>killing us with frivolous lawsuits. I feel sad for the person

>who has AIDS and his/her doctor won't try certain treatments

>for fear of legal action. Nothing wrong with capping

>malpractice suits. I guarantee you that the lawyers will begin

>to look elsewhere for their jackpot courtroom victories.

>

I don't know about you personally, but my payroll deduction for ppo health coverage just went up 150%!! per pay day!!!! That has nothing to do with malpractice!!! It is the goddamned Republican owners of the HMO/PPO's that drive up the cost of health care! They are the ones who decide what treatment is justifialble/payable, not the doctors, and as such are the ultimate party in malpractice suits!!!

As such, they should be held 100% plus accountable for denying available treatment, whether that is for HIV infection, breast cancer or fucking hemorrhoidds!!! If they deny available treatment, then they should be sued an hauled into court until hell freezes over!!!!

 

a>To sum it all up, Bush is not my first choice, yet I believe

>he is sincere most of the time and believes deeply in what he

>says. I take the good and leave the bad and hope for the

>best.

 

Bush. like most Republicans, is a pseudonym for "TOTAL ASSHOLES!!", out to benefit the rich and "got ours fuck you" !! They have a tendency to fuck up that word sincere into rescind all promises to the majority of the people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Guest zoom]

When did it become a crime in the US to be "rich?" What is wrong with a program or policy benefiting the "rich?" Do you not like "rich" people?

 

Why do so many people feel that people with money owe them something?

[jack]

Just three months ago, the results of the elections in the United States was the equivalent of the American people voting to endorse President Bush in a way that no other American President has earned or enjoyed in 150 years.

 

It is surprising, if not sad, that the excellence of what President Bush has done globally and domestically escapes the comprehension of several people here, who, fail to grasp what the majority of Americans applaud the President for and for which he has gained the attentition and support of other world leaders.

 

Good luck for whatever you people do. The boat with everybody else on it, as in the world, has left you on the pier waving at the birds.

[Guest Pulsator]

The speech itself was pretty good. He has very good speech-writers. But of course you have to keep in mind that it was packed with over-simplifications and lies. Just a tiny example: he makes a big deal about the education bill from last year, but he doesn't mention that he and the Republicans in Congress have refused to fund the mandates it contains. So they get the symbolism of passing education reform, but then they leave it to localities to raise taxes in order to comply. On virtually every issue he discussed, he sounded good, but anybody conversant with the details would know he was really lying about most of it.

[VaHawk]

LOL! Certainly is no crime to be rich, by any means, and no one is saying that it is or that the rich owe anyone, other than themselves, anything! However, what should be a crime is to enact laws that reduce the tax burden of the rich at the same time as cutting programs designed to help the poor and needy, ultimately increasing the tax burden of the middle class who are the majority of Americans.

[duke37]

SOTU and how it hits home

 

I'm in the minority here as I have generally supported Bush and his policies. With some exceptions of course. He doesn't provoke the emotional reaction in me he seems to provoke in some people. But he lost me on his position on medical malpractice. Let me explain.

 

You see my mother died yesterday in my arms in the intensive care ward of the local hospital. She was only 59. She went from reasonably healthy to a vegetative coma in hours.

 

Why? She had been fighting obesity for years. And after years of failed diets and excercise regimes she found a doctor that promised an operation that would help she leapt at the chance.

 

After an exhaustive battery of tests the surgeon said she was OK for the operation. It went well. She lost a good deal of weight quickly. It was unpleasant for my mother to adapt to the restriction posed by such surgeries but she did like she did everything, with good humor.

 

What we didn't know and was easily detected by the pre-op tests were that she had a damaged liver. The surgeon told us nothing of this. And when she got a blood infection that was a possible complication from the surgery her liver and kidneys failed and it killed her.

 

The last few months she had a variety of medical complications. One affected her mentally. It was enough so I believed she was abusing pain medication. I spent the last few weeks of her life thinking my mother was an addict. Instead she was dying.

 

Medical malpractice caps? Hell, no. The limits proposed wont even begin to deter a quack like my mothers surgeon.

 

I know suing for malpractice wont make us feel any better but maybe if the surgeon is forced to stop other families wont have to go through what we are going through.

 

Sorry Mr. President not with you on this one.

 

Jeff

[jackhammer91406]

RE: SOTU and how it hits home

 

Jeff,

I had a similar experience with doctors and my mother who also passed at age 59 through incompetence of doctors. Please accept my heartfelt condolences for your loss. I can easily identify with your emotions at this time. I hope that you have a networks of friends and family that can minister to you. Blessings

[woodlawn]

Namecalling and silly insults directed at Bush accomplish nothing. You will notice that all the remarks about his intelligence and his 'smirk' did not stop him from becoming president and then from getting Congress to go along with almost everything he has tried to do, even when the Democrats controlled the Senate. Whatever his abilities are, the evidence shows they are sufficient to allow him to do pretty much everything he sets out to do. Someone with a record like that deserves a certain amount of respect.

 

His domestic agenda is about what one would expect from a Reagan conservative. Privatize Medicare by luring seniors into HMOs, cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans in the hope that there will be a 'trickle down' effect, insulate big business from lawsuits by consumers. He has never really made any secret of his conservative agenda, so those who voted his way in 2000 and 2002 had to know what they were getting.

 

On Iraq he has a problem because he is not telling people the real reason for his policy, which is to put America in a position to exercise far more power in the Mideast than is now possible by installing a puppet government in one of the biggest countries in the region. Being unable to talk about the real reason puts him at a disadvantage, since the phony reasons he is giving for this policy naturally sound very unconvincing. Considering that handicap he did pretty well.

[Luv2play]

If I may add my thoughts as a Canadian who has lived in the US half of each year for 5 years and follows US politics closely, I found the President ran true to form last night. On the domestic side, he talks from the center but his actions indicate he governs from the right.

On taxes, he kept the focus narrowly on the $1100 reduction that a family of four earning $40,000 will receive while failing to mention that his proposal for elimination of the tax on dividends will benefit Bill Gates and his family of four to over $100 million in annual income TAX FREE!

On AIDs, his $15 billion proposal represents $10 billion in new funds and since he opposes the distribution of condoms in third world countries through family planning, I suppose all the money will go to the pharmaceutical companies. When the fine print comes out, I don't suppose they will use the money to purchase the drugs from the generic producers in Brazil and India, who offer them much cheaper than the big multinationals.

On Iraq, he seems intent on leading America into the swamp of the middle east for a bloody fight, with the predictable (but unmentionned) consequence of spawning yet more terrorists seeking vengence. Somehow, bin Laden was dropped from the script this year, probably on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the "Bush".

:7 :7 :7 :7

[Guest Bitchboy]

Silly man, silly speech ... I love the way some ascribe motives for his Iraqi war stance, like they are part of the inner circle. Bullshit. This president was appointed by the Supreme Court. He is a fakir and a fraud and with all his experience still can barely say an entire sentence without stammering or losing his place on the prompter. As far as the State of the Union speeches in general, why do I feel it's the 80's again and we're at an Arsenio Hall taping? Woof, woof, woof, woof!

[woodlawn]

Speaking of the 80s, some of the posts here remind me of the things liberals used to say about Reagan. He's senile, he's stupid, he can't say anything without cue cards or Nancy whispering in his ear. Nothing they said ever made any difference. Reagan, like Bush, outmaneuvered them again and again. Bush, like Reagan, has two qualities none of the current liberal leaders possesses. He has the ability to make most Americans believe he shares their values, even if they don't agree with many of his positions on issues, which they certainly don't. He also has a willingness to make bold moves and take big risks to move his agenda. Making war on Iraq is not something he needs to do in order to be popular, it is a major gamble that could damage or destroy his presidency if it goes badly.

 

What Bush hopes to gain by attacking Iraq is no secret, since key architects of the policy like Wolfowitz and Perle have talked about it on the record many times. The only people who don't know about it are those who don't pay attention. Luckily for Bush, that includes most of the population of this country.

[SoCal]

I could not have put it better myself. Thanks, Jack.

[woodlawn]

> On Iraq, he seems intent on leading America into the swamp

>of the middle east for a bloody fight, with the predictable

>(but unmentionned) consequence of spawning yet more terrorists

>seeking vengence.

 

I don't think that's quite fair. It's not Bush but his predecessors who led America into the swamp of the Mideast by supporting the secular regimes that have been targeted by Islamists. That was the situation he found when he became president. I don't think he can be faulted for not undoing decades of U.S. foreign policy toward the region during the first eight months of his presidency.

 

Even before 9/11 I don't think there was anything Bush could have done to make the Islamists forget about attacking us, and there certainly isn't anything that can accomplish that now. The issue he faces is not whether we should be involved in the conflict between the Islamists and the secular regimes, since that was settled before he came to power, but how to turn the situation to our advantage. If you think turning Iraq into our base in the region isn't the right method, what do you suggest?

[Rick Munroe]

>the excellence of what

>President Bush has done globally and domestically escapes the

>comprehension of several people here

 

Can you be more specific? I'd really be interested to know. "Global and domestic excellence" is just a little too vague for me to comprehend.

[Guest Fin Fang Foom]

Hi Woodlawn. You're wasting your breath. It's pointless to point out the obvious. All this noise you hear from the Left, is their death rattle. They have nothing constructive to add to the debate. Republicans are pounding the facts and the Democrats are pounding the table. The reason the Dems are having a hard time finding their "message" is because, confronted with facts, they can't spin. All they can do is trot out all the tired cliches: Bush is an idiot, he can't talk, he's held hostage to the Radical Right (whoever THAT is), he's trying to make Daddy happy, Clinton has a superior intellect (but not smart enough to realize that all hell is going to break loose if it comes out that an intern, young enough to be his daughter, is eating his ass in the bathroom off the Oval Office), he hates gays, he's a warmonger, he's in the pocket of Enron, he's only for the rich, he longs for the return of Jim Crow, he's for torturing puppies, blah blah blah.

 

The Dems are in such a swivet, that their collective skirts are over their heads and they're all tangled up. They can't stand the fact that a C student from Yale is whooping their sorry asses.

 

The speech was great, and, Bush is on track to become one of the greatest Presidents in American history. Just remember, I told you so.

 

Patriotically yours,

 

FFF

[VaHawk]

I agree with Rick, as I would be interested in seeing a list of some of these "excellent" things Bush has done globally and domestically. Are you referring to the economy being in the toilet with rising unemployment, soaring health costs, the asassination of the environment to benefit the big oil companies, the abolishment of our Consitutional rights and due process of law in the name of "homeland security", and the alienation of our allies all over the world in his reckless pursuit of all out war with Iraq????(Outside of Tony Blair of the UK, who else is behind him?)

 

And where is this "ringing endorsement" you speak of? According to the latest gallup poll in today's USA TODAY, public approval of Bush's handling of the economy has plummeted from 64% to 46% from 01/02 and his handling of foreign affairs has dropped from 83% to 50%! :o

 

So excuse me, while I wave to the birds. The way Bush is going with the environment there could very soon be no birds left to wave at, except for the middle finger variety! :-(

[dick_nyc]

I couldn't agree with you more. I look at the people who represent the great state where I live and the congress people and senators are people who I personally wouldn't let clean out my kennels. I still remember when Hil was running for senate that Sharpton said he wouldn't support her unless she came to his office and essentially "kissed his ass" which little thing she was happy to do. This is a man who has personally tried to destroy the lives of elected officials in a suburban community by claiming they raped a teenage black girl. The black girl has repudiated this whole thing and has said it didn't happen, yet this man is now runni ng for president. The mind boggles.

 

These wonderful representatives, even with a majority Democratic party in congress and a democratic president were not able to get as much done for the state of New York together as the man no one liked (Al d'Amato) did when his party was totally out of power. The only member of the New York state delegation in Washington who refused to meet with the firefighters when they called on Bush was Hil. She was too busy to meet with these men.

 

I am absolutely flabbergasted that anyone gives these people house room; yet when a man stands up there and tells you what he is going to do and then proceeds to do it, the loyal opposition can only come up with the comment that he smirks or that he doesn't use his teleprompter properly. Clinton used it well, i will give him that, but that is about the only thing. I am sorry but the fact that he liked blow jobs does not excuse things like making policy with the defense secretary and chief of staff while Monica is humming away and thinking that is funny is not the actions I want my president to take. This man is one button away from a nuclear war and you approve of these actions! Not in my lifetime. I think Clinton and his wife are both disgusting. I may not approve of all that Bush is doing but I trust him to do the best he can. I think that Saddam Hussein is trying to get away with the same things Hitler did in the 30's when we had "peace in our time"; remember that little phrase?

[phage]

>The speech was great, and, Bush is on track to become one of

>the greatest Presidents in American history. Just remember, I

>told you so.

 

Puh-lease. I will dislike Republicans until the day I die. It’s not totally rational, but neither is much of your screed. Rationality aside, I could see your point up until this last absurd statement. You don’t really believe it, do you? (I think this is like your use of ‘whore’. Just something to get people frothing at the mouth.)

 

Only time will tell, but I’d bet part of my future retirement that he will prove to be average at best.