Did you know there's a State of the Union Address tonight?
For those who don't know, there's a Constitutional reference to the State of the Union address. It's at the end of Article II and it goes like this:
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.Perhaps someone should remind dubya about the phrase "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" at some point. Those signing statements of his obviously run counter to the spirit of that section. Which, by the way, is followed immediately by this part:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.Something else the Congress seems to have forgotten. But I digress a little.
The AP has put together a chart showing the dubya's approval ratings around the time of his SOTU addresses. Take a look:
February 2001: 62 percent approval.32% is a little low, isn't it? And has anyone noticed that he's lost 62% of his approval numbers since January, 2002? Six out of ten Americans used to approve.
January 2002: 84 percent.
January 2003: 60 percent.
January 2004: 53 percent.
February 2005: 51 percent.
January 2006: 43 percent.
January 2007: 36 percent.
January 2008: 32 percent.
And now they don't.
It's hardly surprising to me that the Congressional approval numbers are also in the toilet (pre-flush). Every step of the way, it seems, the Democratically controlled Congress gives Mr 32% exactly what he wants. What's the point of checks and balances?
But I digress a little. Back to the SOTU.
Here's the AP's take:
It's about the economy, and the war in Iraq, and other unresolved matters that have kept the nation on edge. But President Bush's State of the Union address on Monday is something else, too: probably his last chance to seize the public's attention and put it to use.And:
And the New York Times:The final State of the Union of the Bush presidency will be roughly split between domestic and foreign matters. Expect few surprises and no big initiatives.
To the degree the speech favors the pragmatic over the bold, the White House offers a two-word explanation: Blame Congress.
"His seventh and probably final"address tonight?? Is there another planned for next week? Next month? As a Summer fill-in if the Hollywood writers' strike continues? Or is dubya planning on extending his awful administration past January, 2009?For years, President Bush and his advisers expressed frustration that the White House received little credit for the nation's strong economic performance because of public discontent about the Iraq war. Today, the president is getting little credit for improved security in Iraq, as the public increasingly focuses on a struggling U.S. economy.
That is the problem Bush faces as he prepares to deliver his seventh and probably final State of the Union address tonight. For the first time in four years, he will come before Congress able to report some progress in tamping down violence in Iraq.Yet the public appears to have moved on from the war -- and possibly from Bush himself.
The economy has supplanted Iraq as the top public concern, and with voters shifting their focus toward the presidential primaries, Bush faces a steep challenge in persuading Americans to heed his words on the war, economic policy or any other issue, according to administration officials, lawmakers and outside observers.
Too awful to contemplate.
CNN says:
With fear of an impending recession, President Bush on Monday night will use his last State of the Union address to revisit unfinished business and press for quick action to keep the economy afloat, administration officials say.Whew! Last State of the Union address.
We're just all happy that the Bush presidency is coming to an end.
21 comments:
John K. says: And what did FOX news say about it? You got the lefty media in there. As for impeachment LMAO you can't! And that is just so funny. You can't win elections and you can't impeach. LMAO
Thus spake the Troll:
And what did FOX news say about it?
Faux News says whatever the Republicans tell it to say. Faux News is to the Republican Party what Pravda was to the Communists in the heyday of the Soviet Union.
i've been saying that it's our version of pravda for years now.
the sad thing, we do have other news sources. fox/pravda isn't the only news available to us and yet some people choose to believe in only what they say and never bother themselves to at least check out other sources.
the russian people had to put their
freedom on the line to look for the truth.
John K. says; What did FOX news say? CNN has 300,000 watchers, Limbaugh has 20 million and FOX 4 times the audience of CNN. MSNBC is of course owned by moveon.org and the daily kos. Schuster is chief editorialist for the Daily Kos. So run a CNN or NY Times comment by me again. LMAO LMAO You lefies are funny.
John K. also says: You left wing kooks are funny. CNN has had a left wing bias since 1992. Yet you act as if it is reporting news. They broadcast from a left wing political point of view. And Olbermouth is owned by the daily kos. And your response is typical lefty. Remove any news outlet that is not partial to your point of view. What a bunch of hypocrites! But funny hypocrites that is for sure. LOL
I think the "probably final" SOTU address thing is a bit weird. But looking at your quote from the Constitution, it only says that the message must must take delivered from "time to time". It doesn't have to be every 12 months, like clockwork. He could, in theory, do one every 15, 18, 21, or even 6 months if he wanted. He could do one in December or early January; it's his choice.
He could also do it in writing, as was done for most of our history. And he could also do it in the middle of the day, rather during prime time. Both moves would spare us the endless sequence of standing ovations which force 30-minutes of speaking time to drag on for hours on end. That would be a blessing.
I saw a story on Yahoo from Bloomberg news (that has since been displaced) saying that Bush is going after Congressional earmarks. Presumably that will be in tonight's SOTU. I was a bit confused by the story but if I read it correctly, Bush wants Congress to cut earmarks to 50% of last years level, or Bush vetos the entire budget bill. I still think of Captain Renault being shocked, shocked at the gambling at Rick's. Our President is similarly shocked that Congress is putting earmarks in the budget. Amazing how he only notices when Congress changed majority parties.
John K. says: You left wingers are so consumed by hate that you always missed the point of the Bush poll numbers. Which reinforces the point that liberals are not so smart. When your poll numbers are low, what do you care. You can get away with anything. So what, the poll numbers are going to be low anyway, who cares? But you lefties are so needy, always wanting to be liked, that you think you have to please everyone. LOL LMAO Bush has stumped you lefties again and he used his low poll numbers to do it. And remember 'fair and balanced" Dave does not watch FOX news. Though he does get his opinions from both sides. The left wing kooks and the Democrats. LMAO low poll numbers LOL LOL as if that mattered in 7 years.
hyenas laugh like that. note the last word there...
scavengers.
Main Entry: hy·e·na
Function: noun
Pronunciation: hī-'e-n&
Inflected Form(s): plural hyenas also hyena
Etymology: Middle English hyene, from Latin hyaena, from Greek hyaina, from hys hog -- more at SOW
: any of several large strong nocturnal carnivorous Old World mammals (family Hyaenidae) that usually feed as scavengers
All I know is, every single year I get his tie color wrong, which blows me for the contest before he opens his mouth. He'd better be wearing a red tie this year.
"the russian people had to put their freedom on the line to look for the truth"
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I think its safe to say they have lost it, with Putin and all. Today they have a dictator who many believe is tracking down and killing his political opponents, all the while oblitering democracy.
But what does that matter, right? I'm sure you Bush haters would much rather have someone like Vladimer Putin as your leader than George Bush--the man you people have verbally massacred for over seven years. It pretty funny too, seeing as he has managed to outsmart Reid and Pelosi over the Iraq War and has refused to back down even against all this pressure from poll-touting zealots, moveon.org bloggers, and code pink protesters who have infiltrated the democratic party and are using it to ensure the failure of hid presidency.
C.H. said...
"the russian people had to put their freedom on the line to look for the truth"
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I think its safe to say they have lost it, with Putin and all. Today they have a dictator who many believe is tracking down and killing his political opponents, all the while oblitering democracy.
more twisting words to try and defend the undefendable.
as to putin. bush was the one that said he looked into his soul and saw a good man (or some such drivel)
hillary(and i'm not saying she's my choice as yet) is the one that said she could have told bush that putin was kgb and had no soul!
all i said was that the russian people put their freedom on the line to search out another viewpoint other than pravda!
nice try to switch the conversation, but it doesn't work.
the republican shell game you guys try on blogs and fox and right wing radio has been found out.
I'm not a republican
So defensive! She didn't accuse you of being a Republican. She did imply, though, that you play the Republican shell game. A rather apt turn of phrase, wouldn't you agree, avoiding a technical niggle?
Just what kind of technical niggle would that be? Someone brought up the freedom of the russian people and I figured it would be an intersting opportunity to address a very serious concern that has come up amidst all of this political infighting that has been tearing this country apart.
You people think that George Bush is the driving force for evil in this world and massacre him with verbal assault on any given day, all the while we have brutal dictatorships, terrorists, and thugs slaughtering innocent people in Iran, Sudan, Congo, North Korea, Russia, Zimbabwe, Syria, and Somalia. Yet for some reason, you don't seem to want to talk much about them. Why is that? Is it because Donald Rumsfeld can't be blamed for planning those tragedies? "Bush lied people died so get the hell out" really doesn't come in handy when talking about Somalia or North Korea.
I'm tired of people who care more about defending their ideology than promoting unity. As I said before, the fringe elements on both sides could care less about solving the problems in this country and around the world--they just want to use them to obtain power, then they could care less what happens. Notice how many democrats use the phrase "change course" in Iraq. They want people to believe they have a plan for solving the problem, but the fact is their plan is to simply get the hell out a allow for a nice little sequel to eastern congo to emerge. Bush on the other hand wants to succeed over there, and has had to fight the far-left and the democratic party to achieve that success. the democrats and the left are invested in defeat over there...failure in Iraq is a key objective that must be completed in order for them to take back the white house.
...and don't think I am going to exempt the far-right from this either. Nutjobs like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan are just as narrow-minded and ignorant as any of you on the left who have sucumbed to bush deragement syndrome.
My point is that it is wrong for the anti-bush crowd to glorify failure in Iraq to the American public just so they hate bush. I would love to see both sides put aside their differences and work to find solutions, but neither seem to want it. All the while, cities burn in Kenya and other parts of Africa and the forces of terrorism continue to wreck havoc all over the world.
Thank the Great Bwahooha for you, C.H. Until you showed up here, I no idea what I wanted or what I thought. Now that you have told me, I can get on with my life.
BTW, the technical niggle is that we don't know whether or not you are registered as a Republican but, as I said here, that's not really important.
And the left is glorifying failure?!?!?!? That's not even a rational statement. We're bemoaning failure. We're weeping about death. We're crying over Iraqi women and children being killed and displaced; American troops being dismembered. You want glorifying? Your boy McCain is rubbing his hands together, panting, "More wars! More wars!"
And you're complaining that we're sooooo negative. Have you read your own tirades? Insult piled on insult like body bags in Iraq, complaint on complaint, false accusations stumbling over false accusations.
Go back to your John K. imitations. They were much more fun to read. Or maybe go back to your sublime "Hitler was not a Catholic" trope.
Check out People Power Granny and see my take on the State of the Union Address tonight. You can also vote in my poll.
There are no US troops in the Congo, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Syria or Russia. There are US troops in Iraq, but their relationship to the deaths of innocent (or not so innocent) civilians is at least debatable. We have to live in the world we live in, and if we have to preface every comment with a list of all the evil in the world, we won't get any more done than we do now. Not that you are wrong, C.H. or even that is unreasonable for you to point out what we often gloss over.
I think a lot of what is posted here is supposed to be analysis – you can make up your own mind about whether it is skewed (or how much). Unfortunately the comments often seem to devolve into a series of attempts to trap liberals and conservatives (by their counterparts) into logical errors. The risk you run, if you disagree with people here, is to be labeled and have your statements disputed. Only one or two commenters, such as X-Ranger, seem to get any respect from both sides. FWIW.
Only one or two commenters, such as X-Ranger, seem to get any respect from both sides.
Sometimes
That hurt.
How did that song go? "You only hurt the one you love..."
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