About Last Night's SOTU Address

Joshua Holland has the best summation of last night's SOTU address for those of you who missed it:

But all you really need to know is that last night president George W. Bush could have come out on stage and, after pausing to let the ovation die down, he might have looked at the cameras with those beady little eyes and said, simply, "Folks, I got nothing. G'night!"

Of course, that didn't happen. Bush touched on everything from Afghanistan to Social Security. If you're interested in reading about his domestic initiatives, the Drum Major Institute's SOTU analysis covers the economy, budget, health care, immigration and education.

The president also talked about the goal of reducing U.S. gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years. But, as the WAPO pointed out this morning, you need to read the fine print: "Administration officials said that the goal is 20 percent below projected annual gasoline usage, not off today's levels."

If you're still starved for information, try turning to Think Progress. The site has a number of excellent posts discussing the address, as does Campaign for America's Future, which takes a look at the numbers and shows how Bush's rhetoric has failed to match reality throughout his presidency.

Overall, though, Holland is the most realistic:

To be fair to the president, it didn't really matter what he said; Americans are fully aware of the state of our union. Polls this week paint a grim picture of a nation that has lost confidence in its leaders. Seven out of ten Americans say the country is headed on the wrong track. A record 64 percent call the Iraq war a mistake, more than at any time during Vietnam, and "for the first time more than half of Americans, 52 percent, say the United States should withdraw its forces to avoid further U.S. casualties, even if civil order hasn't been restored." More than half think the economy's getting worse, and less than a third of the country thinks Bush "shares their priorities." He might as well have gone up there and admitted that he had nothing.

Ultimately, the best thing about this State of the Union was the end -- Miller Time -- and with it, the knowledge that we'll only have to suffer through one more.

I'll toast to that.

The SOTU Is a Misnomer

The State of the Union address is tonight, although I think that's a misnomer - it should be called the "Spin of the Union" address. Looking only at the economy, the Bonddad Blog points to some honest facts we won't hear tonight: State of the Union: A Nation Off Track

Click the link and read the statistics, but the bottom line is this:

[T]he economic recovery Bush will tout is mostly about the rich getting richer. And those tax cuts that Bush will call the shining star of his economic acumen? Guess what. They’re helping the rich more than the economy.[...]

The Bush administration ran the Clinton budget surplus into the ground after less than a year in office—and has kept adding to the national tab so that the United States is now more than $8 trillion in debt (that’s nearly $29,000 for every man, woman and child in the nation). Yet after all these years of draining the federal budget into oblivion, administration cronies now suddenly are sounding the alarm. [...]

Let’s see. The budget deficit is in the dumpster and the Bush administration wants to salvage it by cutting back on retirement and health care.

As the table shows (which happens to come from the Congressional Budget Office), entitlements only contribute 10% to our budget deficit, yet Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, claims the long-term danger posed by looming deficits comes from Social Security and Medicare!

As Bonddad concludes, "There are a lot of reasons why Bush’s approval rating has tanked, according to recent polls. And it’s pretty clear that Iraq isn’t the only reason 71 percent are saying the country is seriously off track."