I am unable to watch President without wondering about the subjects that he didn't speak about in the SOTU which was delivered in a tone so flat that one wonders whether the sound technicians in the hall had to pump in an "applause" track for the Congress to "palm sync" to.
After making so much out of the ISG recommendations, he didn't mention any regional talks amongst the various players in the Middle East, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Lebanon to work toward a region-wide peace. Not to mention forcing a peace on the the Israel/Palestine conflict. without which no success will ever come to Iraq, other than more profitability for the likes of Halliburton, Parsons and Becthel who have already "cut and run" after their contracts ran out. "Mission Accomplished" indeed.
Likewise the Torture in Chief neglected to address the worldwide condemnation of the extraordinary renditions, system of secret prisons, and detention of prisoners at Gitmo without rights of habeas corpus. The Spy in Chief also didn't address the domestic uproar about executive claims to monitor American's phone conversations, emails, and physical mail.
Also not mentioned is the ongoing travesty in New Orleans. Katrina victims would love to have a one billion dollar jobs program that he is proposing for Iraq. As it it they have been abandoned to duke it out in court with major insurers in an attempt to make them honor the policies they were sold, and paid for. So much for relief for American refugees.
But small minds have small ideas. So it is not surprising to see such a small bore mind come up with proposals that don't recognize the physical limitations posed by the real world. Specifically, the difficulty of boosting the entire US's production of corn by 25 percent to meet his alternative fuels goal for 2017 didn't occur to him. Mathematically it probably fits with his fantasy proposal to balance the budget by 2012 without raising taxes.
It also didn't occur to him that those Americans who are lowest on the ladder without health coverage probably don't pay enough income tax to be able to benefit from a tax cut designed to "help" them obtain health coverage. But after seven SOTUs the American's can't expect their Commander in Chief to be able to think his way out of a brown paper bag.
On Fatherland Security he made oblique references to “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” What he didn't say is that he is paving the way for a National Identification Card. This should fit nicely with all those databases being put together by Admiral John Poindexter in the DARPA basement at the Pentagon under his latest version of the Total Information Awareness program, which transmogrified into the Terrorism Information Awareness program, and has subsequently gone underground as codename "Topsail" due to public outcry about government collected dossiers on law abiding American citizens.
It is nice to see that he still is a compassionate conservative when it comes to multinational oil companies. His proposed doubling of the Strategic Oil Reserve will require the purchase of three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. At current spot prices that will pump a cool 40 billion dollars into the coffers of Exxon/Chevron/ARCO/BP to make up for 14 billion that Congress just pulled out of their voracious gullet.
My hunch is that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be built up and saved for the use of the US military, as they use a large percentage of available petroleum and they will need it for the coming expansion of the Global War on Terror. The GWOT that will go on until there is no more oil. Can't you can see the Superbowl ads for the Sunni-Shiite Civil War Oil Company? Bringing freedom to Exxon/Chevron/Arco/BP to pursue profits wherever there is oil that we need to take from someone else.
It took the Commander in Chief 32 minutes to the push the escalation of the Iraq war, which only merited 21 words. His plan to add 21,500 troops to the 130,000 in the arena (previously as high as 150,000). This number translates to roughly 12,000 soldiers with guns on the street. The remainder of the troops functioning to support the gunmen. Dividing the troops into three shifts, we are down to 4,000 additional troops in the streets of Baghdad, a city of 5 million people. This drop in the civil war bucket is the "plan" that he and the Congress are currently debating. Fiddling while Rome burns.
Apparently one of the President's speech writers thought it necessary to disturb the President's seven year slumber by inserting references to Darfur, Climate Change, and CAFE standards which haven't been adjusted in 20 years. Poor Bush, with his 29% approval rate, probably doesn't know where Darfur is, and was hoping that he could continue using the "acid rain" page out of Reagan's play book to ignore the enormity of the problem of Climate Change. Am I the last person to recall in a previous SOTU that Bush called for a national energy policy that encourages energy consumption?
Rip Van Winkle would envy Bush's ability to slumber through the real problems facing Medicare, Social Security, and the huge fiscal deficits that endanger the Americans and their financial health and security worldwide.
What is a A Way Forward? Here's one http://impeachpac.org/node/2686
Thursday, January 25, 2007
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