Which Union George? Yours or Mine

by James Glaser
January 21, 2003

I am just getting ready to listen to President Bush give us his State of the Union Speech. I have a note book, some popcorn, and a cup of coffee. I have no idea of what to expect, but said a little prayer that he wasn't sending us off to war against another pitiful third world nation.

Well I took lots of notes and wrote down what kind of feelings I got out of George's speech. First off I could tell that President Bush wants to keep instilling fear in the nation about terrorism.

He talked a lot about his War in Iraq and was saying that Weapons of Mass Destruction were kind of found there. Well not really the actual weapons, but proof that if we didn't attack, Iraq would have tried to get some ... someday.

The President talked about our troops going out on 1600 patrols a day in Iraq and that they also make 120 raids a week. I took the raids to mean that we are still kicking in people's doors in the middle of the night. There are not any Iraqi troops left, that we can make raids on.

Not once did I hear the President mention the over 500 Americans that have given their lives for his war nor did he ever mention the over 2600 men and women that have been wounded.

George did talk about how the women in Afghanistan have equal rights under the new government there. I wish that was true, but it is not.

We are going to keep right on spending and cutting taxes and get this, at the same time we are doing that, George is going to cut the deficit in half in the next five years. That goes right along with his talk of job creation. He didn't say that last month he created 1,000 new jobs and he only needs to create over 3 million more jobs, to be where the job market was when he got elected.

Now this caught my ear. President Bush said that he believed that God put the love of freedom in every human heart. This is the same man that said that we were attacked because the terrorists hate freedom.

When we thought Bill Clinton was getting money help from the Chinese to get elected, we as a nation thought that was totally wrong and that other countries should "butt out" of our politics. Well George thinks we should "butt in" to everybody else's country and he wants us to fund something called National Endowment for Democracy. We will send TV and radio programs into the Middle East trying to change those countries. I am sure we wouldn't like other nations filling our empty TV stations with their propaganda. We still haven't figured out that we should lead by example. If we made America even better than it is and more free for ever class of people here, we wouldn't need to send our propaganda to other countries, they would be coming here to learn from us.

Poor people in other countries look at poor people in America and see that our poor don't live much better that they do. They know we have hundreds of thousands in this country that are homeless. They know we have an incredible drug problem with both children and adults. People the world over know that a black, brown, or yellow man does not have the same chance in this country as a white man. We have lots of work to do right here in America, before we start telling the rest of the world how to live.

President Bush did look a little pissed when many in the chambers started clapping when he said that next year the PATRIOT ACT would sunset. He wants it to be a permanent law. That scares the hell out of me and I was glad to read that three states and over 350 cities have passed resolutions against this taking of our freedom.

George wants to have all medical records on a computer which I am sure make the insurance industry happy.

George also wants to find jobs for the 600,000 people getting out of prison every year. He didn't say if these people would be ahead of the millions of Mexican workers he is giving amnesty to, so they can stay here and work the jobs that major corporations refuse to offer decent wages or benefits for.

So here is what I got out of this years State of the Union Speech. If you are rich or you have a lot of stock in the Defense Industry, Insurance Industry, or the Medical field the State of the Union is Great. If you are a working man or women with a family to support the State of the Union is not looking so good. Fear is still up, deficits are up and going higher, and we can look to many more years of war with this President.


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