View Poll Results: State Of The Union Address
Grand Slam!!!!
31
23.66%
Did a great job
67
51.15%
Didn't do anything for me
15
11.45%
Didn't watch/Don't care
18
13.74%
Voters: 131. You may not vote on this poll
Poll: State Of The Union Address
01-29-2003, 11:50 PM
#51
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I'm with Risk Taker
Risk Taker's POST #49 is ON THE MONEY - GREAT RESPONSE
I'm just happy to see that the majority of the people posting here are clear thinking.
It takes a long time for the changes that a regime makes to show their effects.
It seems to me in my short life, that Democrats screw everything up (Carter), then the Republicans come into office (Reagan then Bush Sr.), all the things the Democrats have destroyed begin to crumble, and it appears it is the fault of who is in power right now. When the Republicans have made all the changes for the better (enter Bill "I can't keep my fly closed" Clinton), It is smooth scandalous sailing for 8 years of screwing everything up again. Then George W. Bush comes in and has a huge task at hand.
George W. is doing a great job, great speech! Thank you for tax cuts. That $500 I got last year was very helpful. Look forward to more.
I'm just happy to see that the majority of the people posting here are clear thinking.
It takes a long time for the changes that a regime makes to show their effects.
It seems to me in my short life, that Democrats screw everything up (Carter), then the Republicans come into office (Reagan then Bush Sr.), all the things the Democrats have destroyed begin to crumble, and it appears it is the fault of who is in power right now. When the Republicans have made all the changes for the better (enter Bill "I can't keep my fly closed" Clinton), It is smooth scandalous sailing for 8 years of screwing everything up again. Then George W. Bush comes in and has a huge task at hand.
George W. is doing a great job, great speech! Thank you for tax cuts. That $500 I got last year was very helpful. Look forward to more.
01-29-2003, 11:54 PM
#52
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Another good phrase I saw
"Give a bear food and he will come back"
Wake up liberals. Stop giving to the dead beats. GET A JOB. I'm a cop, I know. People are abusing the hand outs. I deal with perfectly able people all night long every day, walking around doing nothing productive. Living in section 8 (gov't assisted housing) and driving Lexus' and Acuras.
Wake up liberals. Stop giving to the dead beats. GET A JOB. I'm a cop, I know. People are abusing the hand outs. I deal with perfectly able people all night long every day, walking around doing nothing productive. Living in section 8 (gov't assisted housing) and driving Lexus' and Acuras.
01-30-2003, 01:03 AM
#53
Registered
Second that. I work nights in a hospital 98% E.R. stuff after 7p. You should see the abuse of Medicaid in every fashion imaginable. From ambulance rides to BS complaints of every nature it leaves you as a hard workin' SOB dishartened, disgusted and sometimes just fu***n' angry! Stop the handouts! It's not my godamn fault most of these losers have no f*****' ambition...they just don't have to because of the handouts. I don't come from a golden spoon background. I have struggled to re-educate and retrain myself to stay gainfully employed. I have been successful because I have ambition...F*** those who don't! On the war front, are you all aware of the off the record dialouge between Powell and the top Iraqi officials? they are scared ****less and would do anything to avoid this. They are aware and confident they will be crushed quickly! Their army won't fight...even more so than the last time. Suddam is a lunatic and in denial of what all his generals know to be true! This whole delay thing....there's alot more going on here than it appears...look for Suddam to be taken out or exiled by his own generals or family! 
Last edited by Rippem; 01-30-2003 at 01:05 AM.
01-30-2003, 07:59 AM
#54
Guest
Posts: n/a
Phenomenal post Risk Taker!!!
Phenomenal post Risk Taker!! Couldn't have said it better myself.
It is amazing to listen and watch the Liberal grasping at straws and using spin-tactics. "W" may not be the most eloquent speaker, but he sure as hell is a man with conviction and honor. You have to love and respect that. I especially love the reference to GOD in his speach.
GOD bless America, George W, and OSO.
It is amazing to listen and watch the Liberal grasping at straws and using spin-tactics. "W" may not be the most eloquent speaker, but he sure as hell is a man with conviction and honor. You have to love and respect that. I especially love the reference to GOD in his speach.
GOD bless America, George W, and OSO.
01-30-2003, 08:39 AM
#55
One of the best deterents to war is to PREPARE FOR WAR! Peace through an arse kicking military!!! War is hell, but is sometimes neccesary. You have to go after the bad guy before he comes after you!
Look at America in the past 100 years! We've helped LIBERATE and give FREEDOM back to a TON of nations through war and then helped rebuild their countries----and yet we are hated. Sounds kinda backwards to me. How soon people forget! We need to learn from history and NEVER forget!
BTW. well put Risk Taker!
Look at America in the past 100 years! We've helped LIBERATE and give FREEDOM back to a TON of nations through war and then helped rebuild their countries----and yet we are hated. Sounds kinda backwards to me. How soon people forget! We need to learn from history and NEVER forget!
BTW. well put Risk Taker!
Last edited by KAAMA; 01-30-2003 at 08:46 AM.
01-30-2003, 10:16 AM
#56
Guest
Posts: n/a
Risk, I'm gonna pat you on the back as well, very nice.
As for Sudam not doing anything to hurt us......niether did Hitler.
Economy, GW was in office 10 minutes and the dems were blaiming him for the economy. Add that to the fact that we have been at WAR for the last year+ and that the market was out of control with horribly out of whack positions. It is correcting itself, pull out the history books and learn about these things before you spout off about factually incorrect points. Use your head before you type.
The deomocratic party used to be strong, they did not put up with ruthless dictators, they did not put up with evil awefullness we could only imagine. NOw they whimper in the corner and wait unitl everything is "fair". Truly sad, now wonder they keep losing elections.
As for the speech, say want you wnat about GW, but he is a winner. And yes, as asked above, it makes me VERY proud to be an American when my President stands up and passionatley, profoundly and honestly tells you that we are the world's superpower and are not gonna take anymore crap from these readical freaks.
Just damn glad to be here........
As for Sudam not doing anything to hurt us......niether did Hitler.
Economy, GW was in office 10 minutes and the dems were blaiming him for the economy. Add that to the fact that we have been at WAR for the last year+ and that the market was out of control with horribly out of whack positions. It is correcting itself, pull out the history books and learn about these things before you spout off about factually incorrect points. Use your head before you type.
The deomocratic party used to be strong, they did not put up with ruthless dictators, they did not put up with evil awefullness we could only imagine. NOw they whimper in the corner and wait unitl everything is "fair". Truly sad, now wonder they keep losing elections.
As for the speech, say want you wnat about GW, but he is a winner. And yes, as asked above, it makes me VERY proud to be an American when my President stands up and passionatley, profoundly and honestly tells you that we are the world's superpower and are not gonna take anymore crap from these readical freaks.
Just damn glad to be here........
01-30-2003, 10:28 AM
#57
Guest
Posts: n/a
Here is someone else that enjoyed the speech. Damn, this chick can write!
The Right Man
By PEGGY NOONAN
You always hope a State of the Union address will be a sleek and handsome ocean liner cutting through the sea. Often they start that way and then turn, inevitably, into a greasy old barge riding low in the water, weighed down by policy cargo. It blows its horn proudly but the sound is more impressive than the ship; in fact it highlights the ship's inadequacy.
* * *
George W. Bush's State of the Union the other night flipped expectations and broke rules. It began as a barge and turned into a ship of state. Suddenly you realized its early slowness was in fact a stateliness, not a flaw but part of a design. It built. It didn't blast its horn and yet as it moved forward you couldn't stop listening.
It was the speech of a practical idealist, practical in that it dealt directly with crucial and immediate challenges and addressed them within a context of what is possible, and idealistic in that it applied the great American abstractions -- freedom, justice, independence -- to those challenges. The speech was held together by a theme of protectiveness. We must now more than ever, and for all the current crisis, continue as a uniquely protective people. We must protect the vulnerable and troubled -- the young with parents in prison, the old with high prescription costs, workers battered by taxes, victims of late-term abortions, a continent dying of AIDS. In foreign policy we must protect ourselves and the world from those who would harm us with massive, evil weapons.
The theme held both halves of the speech together, and so they cohered and supported each other. The two halves were defined, too, by a change of tone or demeanor on the president's part that you couldn't quite put your finger on. In the first, domestic part of the speech he was serious and contained, but in the second part of the speech, on Iraq, there was a shift. His voice seemed lower and there seemed a kind of full head-heart engagement in his grave but optimistic message. For a moment I though of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big "S" on his chest. But it wasn't quite like that because it wasn't theatrical. The speech was unrelentingly serious, and assumed a seriousness in its audience. It assumed also a high degree of personal compassion and courage on the part of those watching. And so it was subtly rousing without being breast-beating, flag-waving or cheap. It was something.
In a pre-speech meeting with reporters on Tuesday, a high administration official with intimate knowledge of the president's thinking said that the president did not intend for the speech to be the last word on Iraq. There will be meetings with allies, statements and presentations, and they will most likely culminate in a big and final presidential address.
The State of the Union was intended to persuade and add more data, which the president did. He revisited Saddam Hussein's attempts to create and obtain weapons of mass destruction, and referred to his ties with al Qaeda. He met Democrats' insistence that he prove that a Saddam move is "imminent" with the observation that terrorists don't send handwritten notes announcing they're about to visit. He added to the case against Iraq in a way that seemed compelling: He was talking to mom and pop at the kitchen table and telling them that men with histories and characters like Saddam's don't get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to do anything with them but hit their enemies -- that is, us -- hard. He finished with a vow: We will "disarm" Saddam if he will not disarm himself. Mr. Bush did not hold out hope on that score, asserting that trusting Saddam "is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
It is hard to know how many Americans are still open to persuasion on the subject of an invasion. It is tough to know how hardened positions are. The new information Mr. Bush offered seemed both believable and incomplete. The high White House official in the pre-speech interview made it clear that he wants to release more classified data on Saddam, and seemed to suggest the data will inform parts of a future Colin Powell appearance before the Security Council.
Mr. Bush's language was interesting. It was Elevated Bushian -- plain and pared of personal emotionalism. "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity." "[T]he course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others." "If this is not evil then evil has no meaning."
People talk about "great lines" in speeches, but this speech was distinguished in that it didn't highlight them -- it didn't toot its horn. When leaders speak these days a big problem with their rhetoric is that the great lines -- the soundbites -- sound like something sprinkled in artificially. They almost jump up and announce themselves -- Main soundbite coming! Runs 14 seconds. Incue: "My fellow Americans . . . " This doesn't impress people very much because Americans are sophisticated. They don't say, "I love what he just said," they say, "That was the big soundbite."
Mr. Bush's speech was a departure in this regard. It didn't have "good lines," it had thoughts. The thoughts were pithily, and sometimes memorably, expressed. They didn't seem artificially sprinkled in. They arose from the text, were woven into it, and organic to it. And so they didn't seem showy and insubstantial, they seemed like real thoughts that had a particular weight. This is oratory of the post-soundbite era, and it's a step forward.
I felt at the end of the speech not roused but moved, and it took me a while to figure out why. It was gratitude.
* * *
This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush's stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and to lead his country toward that vision of rightness. We have had many unusual men as president and some seemed like a gift and some didn't. Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.
A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor at the Journal.
Updated January 30, 2003
The Right Man
By PEGGY NOONAN
You always hope a State of the Union address will be a sleek and handsome ocean liner cutting through the sea. Often they start that way and then turn, inevitably, into a greasy old barge riding low in the water, weighed down by policy cargo. It blows its horn proudly but the sound is more impressive than the ship; in fact it highlights the ship's inadequacy.
* * *
George W. Bush's State of the Union the other night flipped expectations and broke rules. It began as a barge and turned into a ship of state. Suddenly you realized its early slowness was in fact a stateliness, not a flaw but part of a design. It built. It didn't blast its horn and yet as it moved forward you couldn't stop listening.
It was the speech of a practical idealist, practical in that it dealt directly with crucial and immediate challenges and addressed them within a context of what is possible, and idealistic in that it applied the great American abstractions -- freedom, justice, independence -- to those challenges. The speech was held together by a theme of protectiveness. We must now more than ever, and for all the current crisis, continue as a uniquely protective people. We must protect the vulnerable and troubled -- the young with parents in prison, the old with high prescription costs, workers battered by taxes, victims of late-term abortions, a continent dying of AIDS. In foreign policy we must protect ourselves and the world from those who would harm us with massive, evil weapons.
The theme held both halves of the speech together, and so they cohered and supported each other. The two halves were defined, too, by a change of tone or demeanor on the president's part that you couldn't quite put your finger on. In the first, domestic part of the speech he was serious and contained, but in the second part of the speech, on Iraq, there was a shift. His voice seemed lower and there seemed a kind of full head-heart engagement in his grave but optimistic message. For a moment I though of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big "S" on his chest. But it wasn't quite like that because it wasn't theatrical. The speech was unrelentingly serious, and assumed a seriousness in its audience. It assumed also a high degree of personal compassion and courage on the part of those watching. And so it was subtly rousing without being breast-beating, flag-waving or cheap. It was something.
In a pre-speech meeting with reporters on Tuesday, a high administration official with intimate knowledge of the president's thinking said that the president did not intend for the speech to be the last word on Iraq. There will be meetings with allies, statements and presentations, and they will most likely culminate in a big and final presidential address.
The State of the Union was intended to persuade and add more data, which the president did. He revisited Saddam Hussein's attempts to create and obtain weapons of mass destruction, and referred to his ties with al Qaeda. He met Democrats' insistence that he prove that a Saddam move is "imminent" with the observation that terrorists don't send handwritten notes announcing they're about to visit. He added to the case against Iraq in a way that seemed compelling: He was talking to mom and pop at the kitchen table and telling them that men with histories and characters like Saddam's don't get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to do anything with them but hit their enemies -- that is, us -- hard. He finished with a vow: We will "disarm" Saddam if he will not disarm himself. Mr. Bush did not hold out hope on that score, asserting that trusting Saddam "is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
It is hard to know how many Americans are still open to persuasion on the subject of an invasion. It is tough to know how hardened positions are. The new information Mr. Bush offered seemed both believable and incomplete. The high White House official in the pre-speech interview made it clear that he wants to release more classified data on Saddam, and seemed to suggest the data will inform parts of a future Colin Powell appearance before the Security Council.
Mr. Bush's language was interesting. It was Elevated Bushian -- plain and pared of personal emotionalism. "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity." "[T]he course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others." "If this is not evil then evil has no meaning."
People talk about "great lines" in speeches, but this speech was distinguished in that it didn't highlight them -- it didn't toot its horn. When leaders speak these days a big problem with their rhetoric is that the great lines -- the soundbites -- sound like something sprinkled in artificially. They almost jump up and announce themselves -- Main soundbite coming! Runs 14 seconds. Incue: "My fellow Americans . . . " This doesn't impress people very much because Americans are sophisticated. They don't say, "I love what he just said," they say, "That was the big soundbite."
Mr. Bush's speech was a departure in this regard. It didn't have "good lines," it had thoughts. The thoughts were pithily, and sometimes memorably, expressed. They didn't seem artificially sprinkled in. They arose from the text, were woven into it, and organic to it. And so they didn't seem showy and insubstantial, they seemed like real thoughts that had a particular weight. This is oratory of the post-soundbite era, and it's a step forward.
I felt at the end of the speech not roused but moved, and it took me a while to figure out why. It was gratitude.
* * *
This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush's stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and to lead his country toward that vision of rightness. We have had many unusual men as president and some seemed like a gift and some didn't. Mr. Bush seems uniquely resolved to be as courageous as the times require and as helpful as they allow. There is a profound authenticity to him, and a fearlessness too.
A steady hand on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor at the Journal.
Updated January 30, 2003
01-30-2003, 11:15 AM
#58
Guest
Posts: n/a
Uncle Toys...Peggy Noonan has a way of putting things into perspective without "getting in your face".
She is fantastic...
I must say that the liberals have taken a turn for the worse after the last election. They MUST rid themselvs of their current leadership if they hope to come back to mainstream America.
The democrats need more Zell Millers representing them and less Tom Dashles and Nancy Pelosi's...
They just don't get it...
She is fantastic...
I must say that the liberals have taken a turn for the worse after the last election. They MUST rid themselvs of their current leadership if they hope to come back to mainstream America.
The democrats need more Zell Millers representing them and less Tom Dashles and Nancy Pelosi's...
They just don't get it...
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