State of the Union - what did you guys think?

Just curious on what everyone thought about the State of the Union by Mr. Bush. I myself thought it was excellent and a defining moment in our great Nations history...

To me, it allayed some fears.. but not all of them.

Finally, Bush came out and said "this is why we want to go after Iraq" which is one thing I've harped on for some time. I don't know that's it's enough to sway the "allies", but it does help me swallow the war plans to some extent. However, he STILL hasn't actually divulged any of the "evidence" that he keeps talking about, so that still bugs me a bit.

The thing that scared me the most, however, was his frightening inability to do math. He calls for some massive tax cuts while calling for some massive spending increases. This is not good. Tax cuts dig deeper holes - they always have, they always will.

Also, I think he manipulated a few trivial numbers in an attempt to make them seem like a big deal. For example his Africa / AIDS package is not significant to even come close to addressing the real scope of the problem, yet he made it sound like it was. Uh uh. On top of that, he twisted words to manipulate the true meanings of his environmental policies. He asked for a trivial amount to research H2 powered vehicles and pushed a bunch of business agendas as environmental packages. Nope. You lose again. Bush and friends have taken unbelievable steps in rolling back environmental protections in the interests of loggers and oil companies. I don't like that one bit.

Wrap-up: While I'm not gung-ho about war with Iraq (or war at all), I did see some progress in releasing a LITTLE bit of info to the public.. so it's a start. I'm glad he wants to make overtures toward the AIDS epidemic, but I think that he needs to make bigger overtures than that. I am definitely NOT sold on his cut taxes to solve every problem policy. I would rather let the government keep the taxes I'm paying now and use it RESPONSIBLY. Also, his call to end the dividend tax still bugs me to no end. The only people it helps are the people who could afford stocks - pretty much a luxury in this country - to begin with. In other words: the middle and upper classes. And, of course, it's the rich who get the biggest break - as usual.

My personal approval rating of him went up... a little. But I still have plenty to gripe about

I'll say it was a master piece of oratory. It's almost hard to believe this is the same person that stumbled through his first debate. That is not to say I agree with the philosophy behind everything. Mainly, I disagree with the "saviors of the world" mentality. The world always manages to resist being saved, no matter what resources you pour at it. No, if we do the war, we should do it as a simple, immediate response to a real threat, no more.

It seems to me that Bush's main effort here was not to trot out all the details of his case against Iraq, but just to set us up with the preview, leaving Colin-Powell to deliver the real story in a few days. That is the speech I want to hear.

I'm really hoping that there is a way out of this without war, but I agree that the time to resolve this whole question one way or the other is coming to a close. One note to all the people who still keep dragging out the same complaints: O'reilly had one of those discussions with someone who mentioned how Europe is not with us, to which he responded "What do you mean Europe is not with us? All the former Eastern block states are with us, and most of the rest of Europe is with us. Mainly it is just France and Germany who are not with us at the moment." So, I don't think the question is all the broad-based coalition talk; the question is quite simply "Should we do this thing or not?".

As to his other messages in the speech, as a dedicated Libertarian, I don't really have much to say, other than to realize that one way or another, both the Dems and the Republicans are eager to do something with about 50% of my income . And I don't make that much.

Boohoo. Sour grapes. The rich are taxed at the highest percentage already, and that will still be the case after these big breaks. Anyway, I really dislike the idea of tax breaks as being seen like a gift. It's the peoples' money to start with. It is the government which gets the gift.

I couldn't care less how rich the rich get. What I care is how free the "free people" of the U.S. can be. Money is only a side effect to that.

(OK, so I guess I do have much to say, although I didn't plan this... a doozy of a rant coming up... )

I personally think the whole idea of any government having any kind of sensible input on the economy is ridiculous. It's plain voodoo, no matter which side practices it. No one can really tell you what the effects of this or that action will be. It's like chaos theory: one little action might have a big effect, one big action might have little or no effect. Usually any action has the opposite effect you intend, sooner or later. You can't make people buy stuff; you can't make people work harder; you can't make companies expand their workforce; you can't make people act more responsibly with their money. That is the most complex socio-cultural facet of being human, and no amount of statistical mumbo-mumbo will fix it. There is only one factor in economics which is proven to make an economy better: give people more economic freedom. Look at history. In the long run, that is always what does it. In the short run, no one can make any sense of it, though. Oh yeah; a new president takes office and the economy goes down; must be his fault, huh? Never mind the millions of other forces at work which no one really understands.

The problem is not what you would like to do with your money. The problem is what you would like the goverment to force others to do with their money.

Let's face it: the only reason for a government to take the amount of money ours takes is so that it can do us the incredible favor of meddling in every aspect of our lives, as well as meddling in plenty of things that go on elsewhere in the world, and give incredible amounts of money out to countries who don't ever thank us for it, but instead almost always manage to find incredibly stupid ways to spend it.

This nation managed without a national income tax until 1913, if you can believe it. When one was finally introduced, the average person payed less than 1%, while the wealthiest payed somewhere in the order of 5%. Somehow, people in this country managed to survive without the government's constant supervision. They had families, children, ran businesses, etc... With that pathetic tax, we fought World War I.

Now, we are led to believe that the world will cave in unless there are armies of paper-pushers and billions of pages of rules and procedures telling us how everything is supposed to happen. I mean, the sheer amount of legislation that an American citizen is theoretically supposed to know would stretch to the moon and back. And we payed for it. The tax code itself, which is just the documentation on how we are to pay for all the other documentation, would pile as high as your shoulder if you printed it out. To what end? People still get robbed; murderers still murder; workers still get laid off. If anything, we have less job security than we had in 1913. Governments that have taken the ultimate level of control over their population have still not been able to prevent these problems. So, I can't see how a little more or less tax is going to be the answer. The answer is simply and plainly in the quality of the people in a country. End of story. You can't make that kind of thing happen. People have to decide that sort of thing for themselves, between themselves and their consciences (or between themselves and God), as distressing as this may be to those who want to solve the world's problems. Solve yourself first.

If all the activists and political lobbyists in the world would put their energy into convincing and helping individuals to be better people, instead of trying to legislate us into a frenzy, then the worlds problems would be a long step closer to solved. But no one wants to convince; Everyone wants to control.

Oh, and for a more moderate but very thoughtful response, I have to post a link to the review by my favorite blogger. No, he's not a crazy libertarian like myself.

An example of tax cuts:

Aye - that's not a responsible use, but it's what they do I didn't say I TRUSTED them to do it, more like wishful thinking.

Understatement.... again:

Rod -

Good analogy, but that's not how I look at it (and it's all a matter of perspective, unfortunately). From my perspective, my taxes still hurt. Coming from a federal, state, and local level, then adding school tax, medicare tax, social security tax, personal tax, sales tax, et al. I wind up losing a significant amount of money by the time I'm supposed to pay the bills. This is money I don't have. I can't earn this money back, because I haven't finished school. I can't finish school, because I don't have the money. I know a lot of people who are in this situation, and I know a lot of people who got a free ride from rich parents and dodged this situation. Now, Bush comes along and tells me that he wants to cut the dividend tax, while raising government spending. I don't know ANYONE with an income under 50K a year that has stocks. The people with the MOST stocks to sell are the rich. Sooo... if the government spends more, who picks up the slack from the governmen'ts lost income on dividends? This is my perspective. It's like looking up out of the toilet just as Burrito Bill sits down on it - it ain't pretty.

This leads me to believe there are two problems:

A very elite group of people control the overwhelming majority of the money in this country by leveraging what they have to get more. This helps prevent me from getting the increase in cash that I need no matter how hard I work or how well I do my work.

The government can't do math. Spending more and making less means you come up in the red. Guess who gets to foot this bill as well?

Of course, there's the other perspective:

I have all this money. It doesn't matter how I got it, because I got it legally, and it's mine. Why should I be forced to pay a higher percent and prop up the other people who don't have as much?

Well, this argument to me (maybe not to you - but to me) is meaningless. I look at it as a matter of quality of living - they have too much of it (god forbid some big shot executive who's got a hooker under his desk 4 hours a day and takes a 2 hour 3-martini lunch should have to settle for a Porsche 911 instead of a Lambo Countache), and I don't have enough of it (I'm working in a 6'x4' box and driving a 94 Thunderbird with a smashed P-side because I can't afford the $500 deductible to fix it).

It's all perspective friends.. it's all perspective. I will undoubtedly lose money I need from this and people who don't need money will get it. To me, that means I'M giving MY money that I don't have to people who have money I need. And I don't like that.

As for the economy and Bush, no, it's not Bush's fault the economy "tanked", and it's not the government's fault that it's staying "down" (but it IS at least partly his fault that the debt is spiraling). I blame business. They have the cash to get things back to normal, but they're just sitting on it. Consumer's have, largely, been pulling their weight. However, business has been cutting jobs and clamping down on spending. They quite literally locked their money up and won't use it. Why? Who knows. They could be investing, they could be hiring - but they aren't. Until business comes around and realize that it's time to get their heads out of the sand, we won't see any improvement.

A quick note on Iraq -

Most of the speech was propaganda (torture children, electric drills, blah blah - stuff I already knew). None of what he mentioned is new, so it begs the question - why was Washington rubbing elbows with him (Hussien) 15 years ago if this is the sort of thing Iraq has been doing? Don't try and pull that BS with me - you just want the oil and you're just using the propaganda to whip up a fervor. Still, now that the (majority) of Europe is with us, I'm reluctantly ready to see the assault begin. I've been concerned about the "go it alone" attitude. Now that we're not going it alone, let's get the looney tune.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864

>>The people with the MOST stocks to sell are the rich.

And the companies themselves, they are the biggest shareholders.

This is how it works.

The company can 'create' more stock, say an extra $1million worth. Give it to their exec's on a no interest loan. This loan is recorded as income but the new stock issue is not counted, in these 'creative accounting' times, as an expense.
This means the company has made a profit (on papaer) of $1 million! As the companies bottom line looks better its stock price usually rises, the execs get their performance bonuses and can sell the stock at a healthy profit to pay back the loan.
(Look at GWB's history as an oil exec to see the finer workings of this practice)


>>Don't try and pull that BS with me - you just want the oil and you're just using the propaganda to whip up a fervor.

And the US$1.5 billion a year the no fly zones cost.
And then the ability to reduce aid to Israel as the region settles.
And the fact that Bush can't go to another election with Sadam in power after such a big show to get 'regeme change'.
And, if you are a cynic, that as we failed to get OBL in Afghanistan, Sadam is the next best thing.

>> I'm really hoping that there is a way out of this without war, but I agree that the time to resolve this whole question one way or the other is coming to a close.

Not a chance.
Sadam can't prove he has no WMD to the US / UNSCOM especially if he does not have any. Its like trying to prove God does not exist.

Sadam won't give up power and that is what is required to stop the war.
No faction has the might to take it from Sadam.

Not to mention that the troops are already committed.

But as I already have friends that are in the gulf (if not in Iraq) I must support their efforts in any war that happens (even if I disagree with its motives). I don't want them to come home to the reception Vietnam vets got.

TechNoFear -

<smart_***_mode>
How did I know that eventually you were going to post to this thread.
</smart_***_mode>

ctb,

Actually, that's not what was said. The overall budget will be less.

Really? You don't get out much do you? In fact, you are just ignorant to the fact that people you DO know own stocks. Most publically traded stock in the US is owned (directly or indirectly via various retirement plans, etc) are owned by individuals with income below $35K.

I've not heard anyone (outside of the flat tax nuts) say anything at all like that. The point is that if taxation levels are based on income, then increases and deceases of tax burden will also be based on income.

Really? The tax cuts will cause your taxes to INCREASE?

I blame business as well, but not for that reason (which is just plain wrong anyway... I suggest you do some research on capital liquidity of US businesses to see how it has dropped over the last 2-3 years), but more I blame the politicians. People yell and scream about "evil business" buying political influence. Who is more at fault, the people buying, or the people selling?

So, who do you think is "pure as the driven snow" about this? The French, Germans and Russians? Bull****. French and Russian oil companies have contracts in place to exploit the Iraqi oil fields once embargos have been lifted. The problem is that the contracts are with Hussein and would not be valid should a new government be established. The Germans also have contracts to supply technological products once the embargo has lifted, but find themselves in the same situation.

Hmm, a thinly veiled accusation. The court awaits your evidence Mr Prosecutor.

Or does. (BTW, "especially if he does not have any"??? You think it would be easier for him to prove he didn't if he DID have them?) However, this is the typical comment from those ignorant of the facts of what the UN resolution calls for. SC resolution 1441 simply calls on Iraq to allow inspectors to verify the DESTRUCTION of WMD, of which Iraq itself had already disclosed possession. It has NOTHING at all to do with trying to find WMD. If you believe that Iraq is honest when it says it no longer has these weapons (when previously stating they DID possess them) then you must believe these weapons were destroyed by Iraq during the absence of inspectors from 1998 - 2002. If you believe that, I have some ocean front property in the Ozarks I'd like to sell you.

Why would they decide to destroy the weapons and not allow the UN to verify the destruction?

I'm not 100% in agreement either, but let's debate facts and not disinformation and paranoid dillusions.

Alright... I deserved that assault for not making myself clearer and choosing my words more carefully

But allow me to debate only one particular thing at the moment so I have a clearer focus: Iraq.

First: Calls for Iraq to prove a lack of WMD are meaningless. Give it up. We know he had them, he won't show anyone evidence that he got rid of them (and that was a condition he was expected to meet). Conclusion: he must still have them.

Now that that's settled...

I'm not so much concerned about a fight with Iraq as the way Bush and crew are going about setting it up. All this tough talk and whatnot would be OK if we were going up against the evil Canadians or something, but we're not. This is where Bush's absolutely terrible grasp of foriegn policy comes into play. Whether Hussein is evil incarnate of not, he runs a muslim country, and that's enough to make a lot of Arab countries waver on support. The "we'll go it alone" tough talk only re-inforces fears and hatred in those countries. Unfortunately, we NEED help from those Arab allies, because we can NOT go it alone from start to finish. Can we kick Saddam's *** in a fight? No question - but it's what happens afterward or toward the end that could well be completely out of our control. Let's speculate (and I reinforce: this is pure speculation) on one of the worst-case (but VERY plausible) scenarios first:

We've put Saddam against a wall and closed off pretty much every option. What's he got to lose? Can he hit the U.S. with a chemical weapon? Not even close. BUT... in 1991 he proved that Israel was a fine substitute by hitting THEM with scuds. Israel is nuclear-armed, whether they admit it or not. If Saddam knows he's about to die or lose power, why not immortalize himself with a launch against Israel that could claim tens of thousands of lives? Let's say he takes down 35,000 people with a few chemical or biological warheads - that's MASSIVE casualty - Israel would effectively be forced to retaliate with a nuclear attack that could kill millions of innocent Iraqis (not to mention any allied troops that happen to be in the way), and that would make the **** hit the fan for good. Key arab nations would undoubtedly drop U.S. support and fight against us. We'd have a whole new World War on our hands, and god help us if it sets anything off on the Asian subcontinent. One looney tune radical group making a big move in Pakistan against an already splintered gov't and we could have mushroom clouds plastered all over the area (it could happen anyway, but a World War would sure help raise the odds).

Admittedly, this is worst case and merely speculation. However, it does illustrate rather well how quickly things can get out of hand. We're dealing with a very volatile region and a very volatile situation. Bush doesn't seem to grasp this concept, and we could wind up paying a very very heavy price because of it.

Regarding the Germans, French, and Russians... well... the French, I believe, have found themselve