Ah, no, I didn't watch the State Of The Union speech. But having taken my blood pressure meds, and after a good night's sleep, I think I'm ready to read the text and all the coverage in a calm, rational manner.
AARRGGHH!!!
The usual, so why am I frothing at the mouth? The bullshit plea to continue the war despite all common sense, the attempt to suggest that failure in Iraq will lead to another 9/11, the refusal to acknowledge that failure is what's happening, the halfhearted plea to reduce use of fossil fuels--feh, we've heard all this before.
The truly vile aspect of Bush's new agenda is his proposal to provide health insurance to the poor. Instead of doing something bold--or, to use an archaic term, responsible--like slashing military spending to find money in the budget to pay for universal healthcare, or better yet, overhauling the insurance industry, Bush is proposing tax incentives.
For the poor, that is, ostensibly to help pay for insurance. But the poor don't need tax incentives--they need coverage now, not more forms to fill out. And these initiatives amount to chump change anyway, and to pay for them, the White House proposes to raise taxes on people with decent insurance coverage.
And everyone knows there's no way in hell anybody's going to actually raise taxes. In other words, the proposal is pure, uncut bullshit--words in the air that suggest a concern over a very real problem, but in reality an unworkable non-solution, designed to fail.
Kanye West may have been wrong when he said Bush doesn't care about black people--there's no evidence the man's a racist. But he sure doesn't care about poor people. In fact, Our Beloved President appears to be doing everything he can to make sure they vanish from the earth.
