So it turns out I missed mere sentences of the SOTU in favor of prayer, but the good news is that I also missed the Dem response. (That, and I also saved tons of money on my car insurance by ...) So here are a bunch of slightly more organized thoughts than those presented in my live-blog :
* Get your transcripts here.
* Apparently, the Prez ended with including legislative reform to make AIDS medication more widely available. The catch is he's gonna use faith based initiatives through mostly black churches to do so. Works for me; Dems oppose, and they mess with their hold on the black vote.
* I'm now watching post-SOTU coverage on CNN, and there's some nut using a telestrator to point to only Dems clapping when Bush admitted that social security reform was defeated. I have two thoughts: 1 nobody under 50 that wants to see social security money when they retire should have seen that and be able to vote Dem; and 2 John Madden needs a CNN anchor job.
* The same coverage had the entire blogosphere to pick 2 worthy analysts, and the best they could do was Andrew Sullivan and Adriana Huffington? The worse part is I either have to watch that or Hannity and Colmes ... um ... er ... ESPN it is.
* Turns out that FOXNews' live coverage is 0.05 seconds faster than CNN, but the president has a skin condition on FOX. I didn't bother to test the networks, and I forgot about CSPAN.
* Most biting 'graph of the speech: "Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy."
* Best 'graph of the speech: "Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on Earth. Today, there are 122. And we are writing a new chapter in the story of self-government — with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan ... and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink ... and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom. At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half — in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran — because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require their freedom as well."
* Puttign foreign policy first was a good decision, because this is where Bush shines, and this is where Bush makes a renewed Patriot Act and NSA surveillance make sense. His idealism resonates (or at least it does with me), especially because unlike other Woodrow Wilson (another head-in-the-clouds type), Bush does not compromise his goals to the whims of his allies to the degree of Wilson at Versailles.
* A statement I meant to comment on in live-blogging, but didn't have the time for: "Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity." That's a really strong statement from a man that professes Christ as Lord. Yes, liberty is the right of humanity, but no, it's hardly mankind's hope, and the idea that it is inevitable is peculiarly Hegelian, and it irks me to no end that I have to defend Hegelian thought just because I claim to be a conservative. Read my lips: HEGEL, NO, HE'S NO GO!! And what is it with the worship of democracy (however they choose to define it) that has been propogated in every political science department in America? Sooooo arrogant, it makes me want to scream. To quote the Simpsons: "Jesus is our only king."
* Overall, I'm disappointed. Previously, Bush has used the SOTU to push entirely new and exciting policies, especially on the domestic level. As mouch as I love the foreign policy rah-rah, he should be doing that at least twice a week, and once per year doesn't compensate for months of neglect (Spring and Summer '05). Let's count the new policies:
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