After checking the SiteMeter results, it appears that Miss Samantha Burns is directing traffic my way.

Therefore, it is only fair that she be added to the official TCP blogroll. Congratulations, Miss Burns, and thanks for all the hits!

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yes, I listened to the speech. I was busy working on some locomotives in Microsoft's Train Simulator while doing so, but I did wind up paying attention to "The Better Way". Nonetheless, I jotted down a few notes and recorded a few observations. Item by item:

-Differences hardened into anger? Bah. Until we see the return of Preston Brooks in spirit if not in body, then I'm not worried about the kinds of things that pass for discourse in the nation's capital. When/if someone challenges Edward M. Kennedy to a duel and promptly pops the porker from the Port of Hyannis, then I'll worry. Oddly enough, if that ever happened, it would be the second time that I know of that a federal legislator from Massachusetts would be pummeled for running his mouth, as Mr. Brooks' target, Senator Charles Sumner, hailed from Boston.¹

-Mr. President, some of us do believe that your "historic, long term goal" concept is "misguided idealism". If you succeed, great. I am not however holding out great hopes for the success of this policy. I do believe in the basic theory of "change the rules!", but I'm not sure that this is the right way to change them.

We are reasonably certain that Islamic radicalism does quite well in adapting Western advances to serve medievalist ends. The good news about this may be that at least there aren't that many societies infected with Islamic radicalism that can produce much in the way of modern technology. By this, I mean that the states where Islamic radicalism is alive and well are generally natural resource(s) oligarchies where wealth is concentrated amongst a few (i.e. Saudi Arabia) or they're Third World holes like the Sudan.

Therefore, the next generation Mohammed Atta at least has to come to Europe or somewhere in the industrialized nations to get the training and tools necessary to carry out major attacks on foreign soil. He can't sit at home in Riyadh or wherever and plan his actions in anonymity. When he crosses into Western lands, we may have some sort of opportunity to identify and hopefully interdict these individuals.²

Enriching and empowering the nations in which these enemies of ours live is not, I think, a strategy for success. I prefer our enemies to be demoralized, disorganized, devoid of resources, and downtrodden in general.

I wish your plan godspeed, but I am remarkably uncertain of its success. We're taking an awful risk, Mr. President. As one fictional political figure once put it, "This had better work".

-"Allowing the violent to inherit the earth" is a pleasant phrase; I like the sound of it. It is a useful religious allusion, inasmuch as it directly contradicts the words of Jesus Christ, who said that the meek "shall inherit the earth". I of course would prefer to implement the testamentary intent of Jesus Christ as opposed to a Wahhabi Islamic notion.

-I too am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. I am not confident, however, in the will and nerve of far too many of our political masters and so-called opinion elites who lose heart the minute that a television anchorman and his cameraman are injured.

-I hate the personalization of the State of the Union addresses. "Here's so-and-so..." It's a stylistic quibble, but I have never been eager to see who's in the box. I think it has to do with my innate distrust of touchy-feely politics, practiced so well by the prior occupant of the Oval Office.

-I am pleased to see that the President is firm against Iranian nuclear proliferation. But er, that's not saying much; nobody's going to take him seriously. The Bush who cried "Nuke!" in Iraq may not get listened to, and that worries me. At the same time, I am hopeful that perhaps the European nations burned by Iranian duplicity may decide to take a very strong stance in favor of preventing Iranian entry into the nuclear club, whether Tehran likes it or not.

-"If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again." Blah blah, so-called domestic spying and more USA PATRIOT Act stuff. As the ink-stained wretches who used to cover Nelson Rockefeller's speeches would, "Mine eyes glaze over".

-Economic stuff, especially from this President, is another MEGO (see prior point) scenario. I would prefer that we create more manufacturing jobs, instead of low-end service industry jobs. Put bluntly, I'd rather have more men at Bethlehem Steel than I would at Wal-Mart.

Unlike the President, I am distinctly uninterested in a race to the bottom against countries whose industries pay five cents on the hour.

-If this economy cannot function without illegal immigrants working below the minimum wage and outside the insurance, retirement, and safety schemes established by the government, then perhaps this economy should not function. They, and their employers, cheat the system and that is unacceptably unfair to citizens of this country who, because of their birth and willingness to play by the laws of the country, cannot compete effectively.

Who would you rather hire? An illegal immigrant who you can threaten with the successor agency to the INS and who you pay a fraction of the minimum wage, or an English-speaking American citizen who wouldn't be afraid to organize or at least call his Congressman or the local TV station, all while (understandably) demanding a meaningful wage for his labor?

-Line item vetoes aren't kosher by way of the Federal Constitution, bub.

-"With open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker." With the exception of the reportedly overregulated European Union, where else might this "level playing field" exist? Last I heard, the United States were hemorrhaging jobs that didn't entail asking about fries and a drink with that. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm not hopeful on that coming to pass.

-Blah blah, humane guest worker program. No thanks; I'd rather employ American citizens. Too bad I don't trust you and yours on the question of enforcing border security.

-A new national energy strategy is a fantastic thing and I wish we were further along on it, but meaningful reductions in foreign oil consumption aren't going to happen so long as we are a nation of the Interstate Highway System. (Yes, I'd much rather have the post-World War II network of private sector passenger trains, but nobody seems to have asked me.)

-"Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions." Absolutely. Our culture is probably the best recruiting tool that al-Qaeda and its radical Islamic fellow travelers could ever hope for. While Hollywood and its hangers-on fetes Brokeback Mountain, millions more around the world see it and are repulsed right into the arms of the nearest recruiter for Islamist war. Thanks for nothing, Hollywood.

-Nothing further. I'm glad it wasn't a Clinton wish-list, "100,000 new whatever Dick Morris says is popular" and the like. I hated hearing those.

I also paid attention to the recently-inaugurated Governor of our fair Commonwealth. His response was underwhelming, but then again, I haven't liked that guy since I first laid eyes on him in 2001. Speaking of eyes, I think I've hit upon the perfect nickname for him, "The Boomerang". That's what his eyebrow reminded me of, arcing up there every few seconds, just as it did in the last debate between him and Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore.

Oh, how I wish Jerry had won. That truly would have been "A better way". Thanks for nothing, Northern Virginia.

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¹ Let's go Red Sox! Clap-clap-clapclapclap!

² On the other hand, a well-organized and efficient police state would do wonders for the American interest in keeping tabs on men like Atta in their homelands. Unfortunately, tyranny is inherent in "a well-organized and efficient police state" and is probably the antithesis of the democracies that President Bush seeks to create. Also, democracies of the modern sort tend to sprout the human rights pests that the EU seems to mass produce, and that can cause trouble when you need to make a Mohammed Atta the Younger disappear.

I don't particularly like condemning people in foreign lands to be under the heels of autocracy, but if it's a choice between defending the United States of America and letting foreigners suffer, or freeing them and taking a hit as a result, I know which choice I'm emphatically for.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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