State of the Divided Union Address

Last night President Bush gave his fifth State of the Union address and it made me realize two things...
1) Bush was great on ideas and short on detail.
2) Democrats offer nothing.

I felt this State of the Union address should have been the one delivered after his re-election. We need to get off of our dependence on foriegn oil... I said it back then that Bush should have mandated a shift to non-oil solutions as Kennedy mandated we get to the moon.

There were a lot of great ideas in Bush's positive speech, but if I followed up each idea with the question "well, how do we do that?" I found very little detail to make me think those ideas would be converted to action quickly.

The other thing I realized, or at least solidified in my mind, is the current Democratic leadership has completely lost their way.

For the most part, I believe each American is likely 50% Republican and 50% Democrat... Republican in the sense we want the government to leave our money alone, we want judges to uphold laws, not rewrite them and we tend to follow the moral direction the Republicans represent. We are Democrats in the sense of focusing on the environment, assisting the poor and under privileged and evaluating domestic social programs to fill the gaps between the haves and have nots.

However, I really feel the current Democratic leadership offers nothing. They complain about the war, but offer no solutions. They complain about tax cuts, while ignoring how those cuts strengthened the economy, and they have offered no strong spending and/or entitlement overhauls to fix overspending.

They remind me of the slash and burn mentality in war... they go in, burn down an idea, and leave nothing remaining but the smoldering remains.

For example, one of my biggest gripes is Social Security. Bush offered a Social Security solution which, by the way, is very similar to a plan the members of Congress and federal employees currently enjoy. Yet, the Democrats slashed and burned the idea, not because it was bad (i.e., they use it now personally), but because it was Bush's.

I have not heard a peep out of the Democrats on how they would fix Social Security... except raising taxes.

Excuse me? Let me get this straight. You've borrowed against the Social Security funds, decisions which have put us in a precarious situation, and now you want to take more of my money? Why should I believe the government will spend that money wisely? They haven't before, or else we wouldn't be in the situation, so what's changed?

Tell you what, I'll pay more taxes if the government can prove to me that they've cut all of the unnecessary spending in the budget. Do that, show me you're responsible, show me I should trust you with my money, and I'll pay more taxes.

Until then, leave my frickin' money alone.

The clincher for the Democrats failure occurred last night at this point in Bush's speech...

"Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security..."

And the Democrats applauded. They were actually proud that they did NOTHING to solve this problem! What they should have focused was on Bush's words that completed the sentence:

"...yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away — and with every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse."

If I were a Democrat I would immediately demand the resignation of current leadership. There have GOT to be some proactive, sensible Democrats among the ranks that actually represent the average American citizen. Because the current list of bozos (Clinton, Kennedy, Reid, Shumer, etc.) represent one thing... bad leadership. They attack. They change their stances on critical isues at the whim of the polls. They offer nothing constructive or productive.

They slash, they burn and they leave the remains to us and our children.

As for the details missing in Bush's speech, I'll give him a little time to put together some initiatives. I'd love to see them all come to fruition, but talk is cheap, especially in Washington. For me, he's got six months to put some meat behind the ideas or else those ideas just become smoke and mirrors.

My last thought watching the State of the Union and all of the members of Congress was... these people are supposed to represent the average citizen? They're supposed to understand our needs and react to them?

I didn't buy it for a minute.

I wondered what Washington, Jefferson and Franklin would have to say about that. I can't imagine it would have been good.