Gotta Comment

I've been trying to avoid politics here lately, but just had to comment on last night's State of the Union.

I was kind of surprised how he came out early and tweaked the Dems on their obstruction of the war efforts. But I couldn't help imagining the Bush supporters all cheering while all the Bush enemies yelling "shut up!". Somehow I sort of doubt he made any converts there, even though I sort of enjoyed it.

He seemed to find a bunch of proposals that nobody could really disagree with on principle. It could be a brilliant move politically, if it's followed up by introducing that legislation in congress right away (like this week), then letting the Dems respond with their normal angry obstruction. They don't look very good when they try to block Bush even on his good ideas, just because they came from him.

The cheering from the left side last night when Bush mentioned that they had blocked his efforts to reform Social Security made them look infantile and irresponsible. But a bipartisan commission isn't going to solve the problem. They'll meet for a long time and eventually come out with some proposal which will be mostly meaningless and dismissed before it's even presented. I don't see anything happening with Social Security unless a solid and practical proposal is developed by someone and sold to the majority of Americans.

The energy technology stuff is all well and good, but even in the best of scenarios is decades down the road. Even though he has been blocked on every attempt to open up more domestic oil resources, it's still the right thing to do whether the environmental lobbies like it or not.

The healthcare stuff sounded good, but it didn't sound to me as if Bush was prepared to do much more besides health savings accounts and tort reform. Those may be a start, but the system's in dire need of a lot more reform than just those two items.

Then the Democrat response was something I wasn't sure I wanted to watch, but I'd never heard Kean speak before, so I stayed for his speech. And was very impressed. The guy is smooth and a terrific orator. It was kind of surprising that he came out as a marked departure from the normal Democrat message of the last 5 years or so, stressing bipartisanship and common sense instead of trashing Bush at every turn. But on the other hand, he presented no real new ideas; in fact, his whole speech was centered around the "There's a better way" theme, which basically said Democrats would do a better job than Republicans doing pretty much the same things.

So I also heard Cindy Sheehan got invited to attend the speech by some stupid Democrat congressman. Apparently, she got arrested before it even started for getting her disruptive protests ready. If there's one thing we all know about Cindy, it's all about her. I think it's way past time for everybody to just ignore the dingbat.

It all makes for an interesting sort of theatre.