On Bush's State of the Union

Just my personal opinions, major points.

Economy: Hard to do the right thing here (which would be to let people who were financially idiots lose money), and Bush scores a solid 'C' with his PC plan to have the government bail out dumb people with massive, poorly concealed inflation. It could be worse, the democrats will almost certainly do worse when/if they get into power.

Trade: Who cares. I mean, yeah, it matters to macro-economics, but in ways no normal people understand. Let Warren Buffet make the policy, and do that.

Domestic Surveillance: Sorry, G-dub, gotta go with the dems on this one. There is no way in hell the corporations which co-operated with you shady, pseudo-legal (ok, common... blatantly illegal) warrant-less wiretapping should be given immunity, for the same conceptual reason the idiots who lost billions buying securitized bad housing debt should not be bailed out by the government at the taxpayer's expense: it encourages people to not consider the consequences of their actions, and rely instead on big brother bailing them out. Fail. Next time you want to spy on people, change the Constitution to make it legal first.

Education: The government supporting explicitly "faith-based" schools and groups doesn't jive with the idea of getting judges who support the letter of the Constitution (something about church and state). Take that money, and figure out how to stop paying billions into the garbage can called the teacher's union, and how to actually fix the public school system (hint: you're gonna need to take out the trash, figuratively speaking).

Energy: Yeah, the hippies are starting to realize the nuclear power is actually cleaner than burning coal. Now just give us 20 years to catch up on the technology...

Iraq: Meh. I think the war is generally good, in a cynical way, as it gives our military good real-world training and would-be terrorists get to fight our soldiers in foreign countries, instead of our civilians in our country. Just figure out how to do it in a more cost-effective way, please (hint: that means less troops deployed, not less money per troop).

Middle-east peace: Haha. They hate each other, 1000 years of diplomacy wouldn't change that.

Earmarks: Good call, get rid of em. The legislative process is pretty much a corrupt disaster anyway, so it's like scraping a small nugget off a huge pile of crap, but it's a step in the right direction anyway.

That's my opinion on the major points.