A regularly updated list of Jan 27th anti-war events is posted on: http://www.unitedforpeace.org , currently approaching 100 cities. And Bush did not even MENTION Katrina/New Orleans recovery. Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/opinion/24wed1.html The State of the Union NY Times Editorial: January 24, 2007 The White House spin ahead of George W. Bush's seventh State of the Union address was that the president would make a bipartisan call to revive his domestic agenda with "bold and innovative concepts." The problem with that was obvious last night - in six years, Mr. Bush has shown no interest in bipartisanship, and his domestic agenda was set years ago, with huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans and crippling debt for the country. Combined with the mounting cost of the war in Iraq, that makes boldness and innovation impossible unless Mr. Bush truly changes course. And he gave no hint of that last night. Instead, he offered up a tepid menu of ideas that would change little: a health insurance notion that would make only a tiny dent in a huge problem. More promises about cutting oil consumption with barely a word about global warming. And the same lip service about immigration reform on which he has failed to deliver. At times, Mr. Bush sounded almost as if he'd gotten the message of the 2006 elections. "Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on - as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done," he said. But we've heard that from Mr. Bush before. In early 2001, he promised to bring Americans together and instead embarked on his irresponsible tax cuts, a divisive right-wing social agenda and a neo-conservative foreign policy that tore up international treaties and alienated even America's closest allies. In the wake of 9/11, Mr. Bush had a second chance to rally the nation - and the world - only to squander it on a pointless, catastrophic war in Iraq. Mr. Bush promised bipartisanship after his re-election in 2004, and again after Hurricane Katrina. Always, he failed to deliver. He did not even mention New Orleans last night. When Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, Mr. Bush's only real interest was in making their majority permanent; consultation meant telling the Democrats what he had decided. Neither broken promises nor failed policies changed Mr. Bush's mind. So the nation has been saddled with tax cuts that have turned a budget surplus into a big deficit, education reform that has been badly managed and underfinanced, far-right judges with scant qualifications, the dismantling of regulations in order to benefit corporations at the expense of workers, and a triumph of ideology over science in policy making on the environment and medical research. All along, Americans' civil liberties and the constitutional balance have been trampled by a president determined to assert ever more power. Now that the Democrats have taken Congress, Mr. Bush is acting as if he'd had the door to compromise open all along and the Democrats had refused to walk through it. Last night, Mr. Bush also acted as if he were really doing something to help the 47 million people in this country who don't have health insurance. What he offered, by the White House's own estimate, would take a few million off that scandalously high number and shift the burden to the states. Mr. Bush's plan would put a new tax on Americans who were lucky enough to still have good health-care coverage through their employers. Some large portion of those are middle class and represented by the labor unions that Mr. Bush and the Republicans are dedicated to destroying. Mr. Bush's comments on Iraq added nothing to his failed policies. He did, at last, propose a permanent increase in the size of the Army and Marines that would repair some of the damage he has done to those forces. But that would take years, and it would do nothing to halt Iraq's spiral. Mr. Bush failed to explain how he would pay for a larger force, which would almost certainly require cutting budget-busting weapons programs. That would mean going up against the arms industry and its lobbyists - something Mr. Bush has never been willing to do. Mr. Bush almost certainly didn't intend it, but his speech did reinforce one vital political fact - that it's not just up to him anymore. There was a big change last night: the audience. Instead of solid Republican majorities marching in lock step with the White House, Congress is controlled by Democrats. It will be their task to give leadership to a nation that desperately wants change and expects its leaders to work together to deliver it. The Democrats' challenge will be to form real coalitions with willing Republicans. If they do, Mr. Bush may even be forced, finally, to compromise. Say what you will about the flaws and shortcomings of the two-party system. After six years of the Bush presidency, at least we know it's a lot better than the one-party system. *** http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070123_the_world_agrees_stop_him/ Truthdig: January 23, 2007 The World Agrees: Stop Him By RobertSheer Stop him before he kills again. That is the judgment of the American people, and indeed of the entire world, as to the performance of our president, and no State of the Union address can erase that dismal verdict. President Bush has accomplished what Osama bin Laden only dreamed of by disgracing the model of American democracy in the eyes of the world. According to an exhaustive BBC poll, nearly three-quarters of those polled in 25 countries oppose the Bush policy on Iraq, and more than two-thirds believe the U.S. presence in the Middle East destabilizes the region. In other words, the almost universal support the United States enjoyed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been completely squandered, as a majority of the world's people now believe that our role in the entire world is negative. "The thing that comes up repeatedly is not just anger about Iraq," said Steven Kull, the director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which helped conduct the global poll. "The common theme is hypocrisy. The reaction tends to be: 'You were a champion of a certain set of rules. Now you are breaking your own rules, so you are being hypocritical.' " More depressing, that judgment is shared by those who know us best: our allies in Britain, the only country still willing to share our sacrifices in Bush's once ballyhooed "Coalition of the Willing." Despite British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dogged support of his American chum, fully 81 percent of Britons told the BBC they are opposed to U.S. actions in Iraq, while a scant 14 percent still believe the United States is a stabilizing force in the Mideast. But it is not just our failure in that all-important region that disgraces us. Those around the world who still believe we play a positive global role has dropped to a miserable 29 percent, strikingly similar to Bush's overall performance numbers at home, according to the most recent CBS poll. So it's true: Bush is "a uniter, not a divider"-uniting people across the world in their opposition to his policies. With a whopping 71 percent saying in an ABC-Washington Post poll that the country is seriously off track, the Post called it "the highest such expression of national pessimism in more than a decade." And that's at a time when the economy, presumed to be the all-important bellwether, is in halfway decent shape. It's the war, stupid, and ending it is the major concern of most Americans, while all other issues are in single digits of importance to them. In a shocking twist, Americans are now turning to the Democrats in Congress for leadership on foreign policy. "Three in 5 Americans trust congressional Democrats more than Bush to deal with Iraq, and the same proportion want Congress to try to block his troop-increase plan," reported the Post. That is a mandate the Democrats ignore at their own peril. Even an increasing number of congressional Republicans, most recently Sen. John Warner of Virginia, have made it clear that ending this disastrous adventure is vital to their electoral future. Warner, along with several moderates in both parties, proposed legislation on Tuesday opposing Bush's sending of 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. In fact, it seems as if everyone gets it except the president and those still hunkered down with him in the White House. "They've backed themselves into a tough corner," GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio told the Post, "and the problem is his continued insistence for the troop increase, which flies in the face of what 70 percent of Americans want." He added that it makes Bush seem to say, "I'll listen to you, but I'll do what I want anyway." Hardly the message that the leader of the world's greatest experiment in representative democracy should be sending to the world. It is a message voters in the midterm election soundly rejected, along with the association of this great country with torture and chicanery, and it is the basis of what the Post calls a mainstream America "honeymoon" with the Democrats. Americans understand in their gut that the long-term consequences of disillusionment with democracy, here and abroad, would be disastrous. In the same way Congress repudiated an out-of-control president three decades ago, the House and Senate must show the world today that our celebrated system of checks and balances is not just a fanciful mirage. Spreading the ideal of democracy throughout the world remains a compelling obligation of those who enjoy freedom, making this an excellent occasion to demonstrate that we still possess a system capable of holding a deceitful and egomaniacal leader accountable. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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