State Of The Union. The Outline For The Coming Year In Politics
Read more articles on Politics and education.February 1, 2008
Posted by neillevine
February 1, 2008
Posted by neillevine
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On Monday, President Bush gave his last State of the Union address.
Using word count showing how many times he mentioned a subject, it is evident he emphasized Iraq, terrorists, Al Qaeda and taxes. Clearly, he considers the War On Terror to be not only ongoing and still significant but politically viable in terms of support. This would also make it plain that there will be a need for courageous American soldiers facing danger in Iraq and Afghanistan, since the assassination of Pakistani political leader Benazir Bhutto spells out how dangerous fundamentalists and their terrorist brethren can be. But it does not explain why Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts are still at large. Is there no justice in this world? S the CIA confused? Why allow him to continue to plot murder, mayhem and mass destruction when he remains an obvious danger as evidenced by his videotaped jihadist diatribes.
Of course, President Bush covered many other topics in his State of the Union Address, from energy to immigration (again) to education and global warming.
On energy, after explaining how to produce hydrogen fuel and alcohol for power cars, the President now wants to trust in the creative genius of American scientists. This would be nice if it were to lead somewhere but except for burning coal to supply domestic electricity, and encouraging the proliferation of nuclear powered electric power plants and diversifying the sources of imported oil nothing has been done that would eventually solve the problem. This being an example of shallow political thinking that will not do. Then the President mentions greenhouse gases. Obviously, the solutions that have been applied will not do. There is still a lot of pollution, But asking where the hydrogen Mr. Bush so infamously described is going to come from does not get a coherent answer.
In education, Mr. Bush was to provide grants for children to attend private schools, while the Democrats are complaining about too much testing. Jobs and opportunity, naturally, are good, while earmarks are bad, naturally.
As for health care, everything is going to be free, more or less with the Democrats offering more and the Republicans pointing to the expense.
The Democratic response presented by Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas was to espouse more spending on national security, college loans and health care. Of course, this ignores the existing federal budget deficit as well as the extra spending necessitated by the current stimulus plan.
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