Bush At The Beginning Of The End

Tonight, President Bush gave his final State Of The Union Address.We must thank the Almighty for small favors.

In terms of delivery, it wasn't such a bad speech, as Bush's speeches go.
Interested parties can find a full transcript of the president's remarks here.

It may seem unfair of me to critique the current occupant of the White House's remarks. With very little of the political capital left he so famously said he intended to spend after his re-election,it would be unreasonable to expect bold statements or major departures at this late date.

But I must say, to hear President Bush suddenly touting spending cuts and fiscal responsibility and threatening offenders with his veto pen after cheerfully overseeing a veritable orgy of spending and earmarks on his watch for the past seven years rings maddeningly hollow.

I particularly liked this line from the president: "American families have to balance their budgets; so should their government."

Of course, the president has no real intention of actually cutting spending, as he made clear tonight. While talking about submitting a budget that cuts $18 billion in government programs, the president also waxed poetic on a number of high dollar spending programs he wants to embark on, including his economic stimulus program, ( to the tune of $146 billion) and extending and vastly expanding No Child Left Behind and the government's Pell Grant programs to high school students who already are in public schools to the tune of $300 million, rather than taking the problem of dysfunctional public schools head on by allowing working parents access to private schools through school choice.

And he also wants to spend vast sums overseas to fight AIDS and HIV ( a mere $30 billion over the next five years) and malaria and more billions to purchase food crops from the third world and fund `democratic oversight,' whatever that means.

The president is also not content with interfering in the housing and secondary mortgage market by mandating `interest rate freezes' that subsidize borrowers with poor credit and no equity at the expense of investors and ultimately the taxpayers. He now wants to spread the chaos around by allowing state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds subsidize the mortgages of homeowners with little or no equity or credit.

He also had a few things to say about `leveling the trade playing field'and taking steps to bring jobs back to American workers to make products labeled `Made In The USA.' An interesting idea coming from someone who stood by and watched as 1 in 6 American manufacturing jobs disappeared over the water and did virtually nothing to stop the influx of illegal aliens coming over the border to take a lot of the jobs that were left from those American workers he now has such kind words for.

Of course, those illegal aliens are only taking jobs Americans won't do.I seem to remember the president saying something about that when he was trying to ram amnesty for them down our collective throat.

On foreign policy,the president chose to take the high road, talking about the successes in Iraq without mentioning that a number of congressmen in his audience did their best to sabotage those efforts and slander the commander of our forces there.

He also, thankfully, mentioned the need for Congress to continue to fund our troops,pass the Columbia Trade Agreement and re-enact the legislation allowing the intelligence monitoring of communications between terrorist suspects here and overseas. It would probably be too much to ask for the president to be equally forthright on the need to confront his Saudi friends to curtail the export of wahabi flavored jihad into the mosques and madrassahs they control and fund here in the US.

Of course, the president also did a bit of shilling for his pet project, a Palestinian terrorist enclave next door to Israel. That part should have made any reasonable person gag,if nothing else did. He referred to the Palestinians as electing `a president who recognizes that confronting terror is essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity and at peace with Israel'...while Arafat II Mahmoud Abbas still has the Tanzim and the al-Aksa Martyr's brigade on his payroll and funnels cash to the other government those peace loving Palestinians elected - Hamas.

As I said, not the worst speech the present occupant of the White House has ever given - at least until you contrast it with his record of the past seven years.

And until, as always with this president, you look at what he didn't say and what he avoided.