SOTU - Ritualistic Political Orgy

graysmoke January 31, 2006


With a great deal of effort, I bolstered my depleted capacity to listen, helped by yesterday evening hearing an excellent speech given by Gen. Wesley Clark at a symposium sponsored by the New America Foundation that was broadcast on C-Span.

What a contrast of views.

Tonite we had the usual theatrical, scripted, and uninspiring SOTU address by a chief executive that is not worthy of trust from the public, but is oblivious to anything but his ego trip presidency.

He claims to be compassionate and Christian. Yet I heard no references to the homeless and their problems, nor any mention of the continued discrimination of the brain diseased (still medievally referred to as the "mentally ill") who cannot gain parity from health insurance carriers. There have been attempts in every Congress for over twenty years to achieve this, now wouldn't you think that it would be a goal worthy of a compassionate Christian conservative?

And he skipped mention too of the losses of Americans due to corporate greed in the neglect of proper safety practices in the recent coal mine incidents. Nor was there any acknowledging of the facts about the minimum wage impact on lives. Instead he pleads for making the tax cuts for the wealthy, permanent.

As far as his concerns go, the Darfur genocide isn't on the radar. instead he beats the same old terrorist drums of war. Manipulating 9/11 yet again. One cannot help but ask, what on earth would this man use for a crutch if he didn't have 9/11 or the previous president's record. He characterizes the AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) as war and thereby attempts to justify his overlooking the restraints that laws put on his power as commander-in-chief.

An expression on his face told me that he was annoyed at the democrats, when at times they passed on joining the Jack-in-the Box, rise and clap routines. Especially noticeable when he commented that Congress failed to pass Social Security reforms. This turned into a few moments of comic irony. That telling look that he was aware of the democrats mockery showed several times during the speech. Once the camera panned on Kerry who was sitting by Feinstein and they appeared to be absorbed in the print copy of the speech and annotating it.(Or who knows, maybe working the daily crossword puzzle.) Another camera pan caught Hillary grinning and giving a slight negative shake of her head at his view of some issue or other.

As expected, "W" milked the Alito appointment to the Supreme Court by arranging the swearing in earlier in the day so Sam could show up robed and with three other judges, including of course Roberts. Thomas and Breyer were there which made four. "W" did acknowledge the service of O'Connor, but the words rang hollow in my ears since he still did not see fit to choose another nominee of her gender after the scuttling of Meiers by the most extreme of his right wingers. So this counts as a backwards direction for the court before Alito is even involved in any cases.

Force alone seems to be his only answer to global challenges. That is a decidedly foolhardy position,he apparently thinks this makes him look "tough", but it has put us in an untenable position in regards to the Iraq mess, which of course he continues to reframe after none of the pre-force pretensions were verifiable. ( This is a polite way of avoiding calling him a liar.)

He devoted more time to State of His Blunders with the standard rationalizations than to State of the Union. Not a word about how much the Iraq blunder has cost or will continue to cost, in dollars and its effect on the domestic economy, and he avoided the numerical mention of the fatal casualties or the count and seriousness of the wounded. Instead an emotional button was again engaged by referring to a letter from a soldier killed in action and his surviving family being hosted as guests in the gallery for a camera PR moment. If I were a veteran I would resent this manipulation and selectivity. My feeling is that he exploited this case and even used an excess of time on the whole terrorist deal in order to avoid addressing the problems afflicting the nation domestically. He insisted that Congress pass the Patriot Act again,in his demanding authoritarian manner that is so obnoxious and doesn't dispose anyone to do his bidding.

He posited that the economy is dependent on immigration. Strange, that. What he really is saying is that we have to be manipulative in order to have low wage workers to do the grunt work. I don't buy into that. But then there are a lot of relatives, of those immigrants, that are voters in Texas. It was not clear whether included in that statement are the imported high tech workers coming from countries that have a reverence for education and produce the ones with the skills needed in that area of the economy, I believe these are holders of various classes of visas that are intended for the holders to return to their countries of origin but instead remain here. Or the pirating of highly skilled workers in jobs where there are shortages here, such as nursing. But I did not hear of any program with education aid to train our own to address that shortage.

So for the American worker there was Praise but no Raise. Not a word about the shameful minimum wage level - but seal those tax cuts for the fat cats in perpetuity.

This speech offered little optimism for the remainder of this incompetent man's final term. It does raise a number of questions about whether the damages can be repaired when he is gone. Do you suppose there will be some brilliant immigrant economist that will tell us how this degree of debt and deficit can be managed and still have a functioning economy or meet the security costs of surviving in a world that no longer respects our country due to this president's blunders?

Alas there are no crystal balls.