Who changed the channel???????
The first half of his speech was the speech of a truly great president--a president to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Lincoln or a Reagan.
The second half of his speech was the speech of a flawed politician seeking to pander to powerful interest groups in echange for money, votes, and transient accolades.
But even at his worst, he outshown the Democrats--the party of bitter bile and increasing irrelevance.
But, enough of that. President Bush. YES!!! He is something else. He is smooth, firm, strong, beautifully articulate and his eyes, my they just move me. He reminded me so magnificently why I voted for him in the first place.
All I can say, is that he is thinking beyond the realm of ordinary politics. He just launched us past MARS...we are looking further into the future with his ideas for spectacular opportunity and projection into doing business not at all like before. I love his idea for an Association Insurance Plan. WOW!!!
I love his idea of tax breaks for people who provide for their own health insurance and don't tap into precious tax revenue for those who really need government asistance. Triple WOW!!
Well, I'm not so embarrassed to admit, a few weels ago I was rather ticked off at the President for proposing illegal alien recognition by establishing a "workers program".
Somehow, hearing the President's proposal tonight, in his own words, I can see that he does have a excellent proposal to debate. So I am proudly rejoining his team.
I can't stop the spine tingling happiness that the President's SOTUS has given me. WELL DONE, Mr. President, SIR!
One of my favorite passages from this speech.
Let's send 15 billion taxpayer dollars to Africa to fight a 100% preventable disease.
What deficit?????
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First impression report card (haven't read transcript):
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I oppose amnesty, because it would encourage further illegal immigration, and unfairly reward those who break our laws. My temporary worker program will preserve the citizenship path for those who respect the law, while bringing millions of hardworking men and women out from the shadows of American life."
"Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. (Applause.)
I don't think anyone expected that.
Haven’t read most of the responses on this thread, but, if the first couple hundred are any indication, this is a love fest of which I want no part. Too many people fall in line behind the Republican banner, or the ‘conservative’ label, simply because of what both used to represent. This president is no conservative.
Although I admire almost all of what this administration has done in Iraq – originally questioned the priority of going in there, but believe that what has been (and what will yet be) accomplished there is monumentally good – the rest of this President’s (especially domestic) leadership is deplorable.
The most recent announcement of his amnesty program represented, to my mind, one of the last-stage nails in the ever-more-sealed coffin of this republic.
I did not hear the address tonight. Perhaps that makes me less than qualified to respond to what was said. If so, forgive my presumptuousness. But I did read a good deal this afternoon about what it was to contain. So nice to hear about all of his new initiatives. I heard reports all day about the many kinder, gentler spending programs that will be proposed (no doubt with no method with which to fund them). The two programs that caught my ear were a jobs retraining program so that our people can be prepared for jobs of the twenty-first century, and new healthcare initiatives (didn’t hear the details of those .... and don’t want to. The prescription drug bill set the precedent. I will assume this new stuff is just more of the same.)
I’d like to ask our President exactly what public education is for if it isn’t in large part to recognize abilities in our children, and teach them the skills that will enable them to seek meaningful employment after their education is complete. If our public schools, and institutions of higher education, aren’t preparing our children for jobs of the twenty-first century then what exactly are our public school tax dollars, and college tuitions, being used for? And why on earth do we need a new socialist federal bureaucracy to do what they were intended to do? Why not then abolish the Department of Education?
And if one would argue that it is the older employees who are losing their jobs and need retraining for jobs of the twenty-first century I would suggest that the older employees who need this retraining are most likely employees who have been working in America’s dying manufacturing sector, which is finding itself daily moved overseas. So are we going to be retraining our steelworkers, machinists, tool and dye makers, model makers, construction workers, engineers, designers and the like to do information collecting and paper pushing? Such ‘retraining’ is an admission that we are no longer an industrialized society, but have become a nation of information collecting, service oriented, paper shuffling people who will have to depend on the rest of the world (most of whom despise us) for the nuts and bolts that it takes to run a country, and to remain free and secure. The need for this kind of ‘retraining’ is not a positive. It is a terrible omen.
As for healthcare, the idea that all citizens deserve healthcare or the provision of drugs, no matter their willingness to work or save in order to afford them, is socialism at its worst. Conservative leadership and socialist programs cannot co-exist. Conclusion: this president is no conservative.
The slide into socialism is fiscally expensive. Each new entitlement program or bureaucratic department that is implemented requires boatloads of money. But no worries. The burgeoning deficit is no problem. We’ll just fire up the printing presses (actually, do we ever shut them down anymore? I seem to hear them humming 24/7.)
For those who are gaining some comfort from the occasional figures which are touted as signs of an economic recovery I say keep your ear to the ground. The consumer cannot continue to fuel this recovery with ever mounting personal debt (taken a good look at record personal debt and bankruptcy figures lately?). Taken a good look at the balance of trade lately? Taken a good look at how many American jobs have moved to China, India, Canada, the Philippines, Ireland, Israel …. ? Taken a good look at the amount of foreign investment in US paper? Ever considered what the effect on the American economy will be if just a fraction of those foreigners decide to pull their money out of US treasuries?
Speaking of which: announced last Thursday, with no fanfare at all (but sure got my undivided attention): the US Treasury will call for redemption on May 15, 2004 treasury bonds originally issued in 1979 (at 9.12% interest) which were supposed to mature in May of 2009. Most of these bonds are held by private investors who had assumed that they were interest-secure for thirty years. These bonds are being called early to reduce the cost of federal debt financing. Bonds not turned in by their owners by May 15, 2004 will completely stop earning interest.
We’re living on borrowed money because of the ever-burgeoning obscene federal deficit. And this President shows no genuine interest in halting the vicious, deadly economic cycle. As far as I know, treasury bonds have never been called before. Forget the fact that the original private purchasers of these bonds are having their interest income cut short by five years. Of even more significance is the fact that if the foreigners who are kindly digging our credit hole deeper find out that they can't trust US interest rates either …. (I won’t even finish that thought. It would be an economic nightmare possibly unlike any we have ever experienced – the great depression not excluded.)
So, submit your bonds for mandatory redemption five years early because your government has gone on a fifty-year spending spree and can no longer afford to pay the promised interest. What to do with your money then? Beats me. The powers that be in American monetary policymaking have things so screwed up (thank you Mr. Greenspan and associates) that one never knows whether to fear inflation or deflation, or whether the dollar will have any value at all against foreign currencies a year from now. There are no longer any such things as free markets, natural economic laws, or tangible-backed currencies.
At least where economics are concerned, it kinda makes the term national security seem like a nostalgic pipe dream.
Where have the real conservatives gone? Those who call themselves conservatives have sold their birthright to the highest bidder, and thrown their country to the wolves.
~ joanie