Guest Bloggers on the State of the Union
President Bush gave his final State of the Union address last night, focusing on war, threats of war, and the economy. If you missed the speech, you can read it on the White House’s web site or watch the video posted by The New York Times
Several colleagues at FCNL asked if they could join me in blogging about their reactions to the speech. In the next few posts you’ll hear from
• Joe Volk, who says the president missed the basic truth that our house of democracy is falling down.
• Ruth Flower, who wonders how we can review the state of the union without mentioning the seven cities where child poverty is over 30 percent.
• Ned Stowe, who points out that the president treated climate change like a side show in his speech, but it's a bigger problem than al Qaeda and Iraq.
• Jim Fine, who notes that, despite his rhetoric, the president is acting like the U.S. is going to be in Iraq for a long, long time.
• Ann Vaughan, who applauds the president for keeping the crisis in Sudan in the public view but was disturbed by any mention of diplomacy as an approach to world problems.
• Jim Cason, who sees the speech as more relaxed than in previous years but with an underlying message consistent the president’s seven year campaign to empower the Executive at the expense of the power of Congress and the courts.
• And I give an overview of the speech and talk about the contradictions and legacy of President Bush.
Several colleagues at FCNL asked if they could join me in blogging about their reactions to the speech. In the next few posts you’ll hear from
• Joe Volk, who says the president missed the basic truth that our house of democracy is falling down.
• Ruth Flower, who wonders how we can review the state of the union without mentioning the seven cities where child poverty is over 30 percent.
• Ned Stowe, who points out that the president treated climate change like a side show in his speech, but it's a bigger problem than al Qaeda and Iraq.
• Jim Fine, who notes that, despite his rhetoric, the president is acting like the U.S. is going to be in Iraq for a long, long time.
• Ann Vaughan, who applauds the president for keeping the crisis in Sudan in the public view but was disturbed by any mention of diplomacy as an approach to world problems.
• Jim Cason, who sees the speech as more relaxed than in previous years but with an underlying message consistent the president’s seven year campaign to empower the Executive at the expense of the power of Congress and the courts.
• And I give an overview of the speech and talk about the contradictions and legacy of President Bush.
posted by Dan Smith at 1:27 PM
4 Comments:
The Libertarian party had this to say in response.
I couldn't agree more.
"Tonight's State of the Union address went much as expected. Instead of calling for a more limited role of the federal government in American society, the President laid out plans that would only increase the government's intervention into the realm of economics, health care, education and foreign policy. It is unfortunate to see that after seven years of increasing the size of government and increasing the government's presence in the day to day lives of all Americans, the President refuses to limit the scope of the federal government, a once championed virtue of the President's party. The President's last State of the Union address encapsulated his legacy of an abandonment of the principles of limited government and individual freedom."
Contrary to President Bush’s remarks in his final State of the Union address, our nation is weakening and off course. Compared to last year, or any year since he took office, the US has more debt, a higher percentage of and more homeless, more people living in poverty, more people without health insurance, more lives lost in Iraq, and more dependence on foreign oil. We have a higher percentage of and more people in prison, hungry, or poorly educated. We have veterans not getting the healthcare due them by the nation they fought for. We have fewer civil rights, less privacy and a weaker Constitution. We’ve made zero progress in securing our water treatment plants, seaports or inbound cargo; zero progress in ridding the planet of Pakistani-based Osama bin Laden and the increasing threat his group defiantly poses, zero progress in resolving genuine hostilities and brutalities in Africa, and zero progress in addressing an aging and even hazardous domestic infrastructure. Though we spend $2 billion a week in the Persian Gulf, in New Orleans and our own Gulf, we have made precious little progress in taking care of our own people in almost three years since Hurricane Katrina and promises to do so. We are losing ground daily to the rest of the world in our innovation, utilization of and leadership in education, technology, and markets. Today we witness collective American household and federal debts, bought by the Saudis and Chinese, which place increasing ownership of American assets in foreign hands. We have more enemies and fewer allies, and the numbers continue going contrary to our interests. By any measure, we are going the wrong direction, and have been for years.
We came up with a drinking game for the occasion. Every time Bush said "I'm Sorry," everyone had to take a shot. We were fully prepared with each of us having at least a pint of our favorite spirits. Alas, our bottles were never opened....
--abe
abe@abolition.org
What Bush said was that we must reduce spending on Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure maintenance and health so we will have more money to spend on killing innocent people on the other side of the world.
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