State of da union....

I kind of forgot about the state of the union address tonight until I heard my roomate watching it. So I flipped on FOX NEWS (because I'm an evil brainwashed neocon) and caught most of it.

I think the state of the union speech is sort of overrated - it's political posturing. It's always going to be overly polite and play to the mainstream/middle.

I missed the begining, but caught most of it. It was pretty predictiable, but there were a few things that kind of struck me and made me have an immediate reaction:

- I was kind of annoyed that he brought up gay marriage when talking about judicial activism. I don't like judicial activism, but I really don't care about gay marriage either way. To me, it's not an issue worthy of a mention. It's pretty much a dead horse, and despite claims by a few people on each side, my guess is it's a nonissue to most people.

- I was very annoyed by the standing ovation that the Dems gave themselves when Bush mentioned that his social security reform was shot down. OK guys, I'm one of those people who is paying into social security right now, but will probably see it go bankrupt before I retire. Bush's plan wasn't perfect, but it was a step in the right direction, and brought up the possibility that I might see a sliver of the 15% or so of my income that goes into social security (when you count the employee contribution). You haven't come up with a solution, you've just claimed that a problem that anyone with a caluclator knows is going to happen doesn't exist.

-Education and alternative fuels - Grr. Too much big government. I'd love to see the feds have less to do in these two areas, and there was way too much talk of the government doing way more. If there is money to be made in alternative fuels, businesses will do it, and if they can't, it probably isn't worth doing. And I'm not convinced that our country will be vastly improved by the federal government trying to convince grade-schoolers to study math.

-tax cuts for hard-working Americans - as a hard working American, I'm all for them.

-Reducing government spending - Bush talked about cutting a bunch of programs. Great. I'm curious to see which ones - and how much the dems slam him for doing it.

-banning human-animal hybrids - probably OK on an ethical level, but human-animal
hybrids sound really freakin' cool.

I also watched the Democratic reaction from the gov of VA. He kept talking about a new, third way, which seems to involve lots of government. He also thinks that importing drugs to Canada would solve healthcare problems - nevermind that drugs are cheaper in Canada because of price controls, not because things are magically cheaper in Canda. I don't see how that could work on a national level. It's sort of socialized medicine light. He also criticized Bush for cutting spending (ie on college loans) and for running a deficit. So he's for more spending, but against the deficit? Does not compute. He also seemed to use deficit and national debt interchangably, as if to try to make people think that Clinton didn't have a national debt, not that he had a budget surplus for the year (which was more because of higher tax revenues from those dot.com boom years than anything else).

So there you have my quick, slapdash thoughts on something politcal. Now I can claim this is a political blog, and go back to complaining about my car, my job, and the closet that I will never get cleaned out.