Well, I don't know how many people follow politics, but I was watching the State of the Union address last night and it brought up a lot of questions for me. Usually I don't follow politics too closely. The whole Bush presidency worries me, so I've been kind of trying to avoid the issue. The last real political news I heard, besides of course the very blatant news on the Iraq and terrorist issues, was that Al Gore was not running for the presidency in 2004. I considered that a good thing, because honestly, I don't think he could carry it. As a sort of liberal, I'm hoping the democrats can at least come up with someone who has a chance.

Anyway, dealing with the whole speech. I was amazed at the number of social reforms that Bush wanted to enact. He spent a lot of time talking about the economy, of course, and saying how we needed to create more jobs and increase stock holding and such. Then he tried to explain how cutting taxes and spending billions of dollars overseas and on social reform would help to create that ideal situation.

Is it feasible to expect that this will work? He sounded convinced, but years of learning about politics make me very doubtful about programs which decrease taxes and increase spending. It seems to be a very republican idea(and one of the major increases was in military defense, of course. Apparently now he wants to create a "Project Biosheild" to protect the nation from biological weaponry. My friends and I chuckled a little at that, and there was more than one murmur of "Star Wars all over again"). I must admit, the idea of hydrogen powered cars, better health coverage and funds to help fight AIDS in Africa sound like a good idea. But, is this going to work out for us financially, and if so how? He seemed to totally skirt this issue.

The entire discussion of the Iraq conflict and Saddam's actions seemed very biased to me. People I talked to after said that Bush skirted a lot of the pertinent issues in order to make Iraq look as bad as possible. I know the speech was very convincing. He was certainly graphic enough, bringing up every possible evil he could think of, including rape and torture. And of course, he wanted to send aid to Iraq for their hungry, and stressed that we needed to aid the Iraqi people in achieving their "freedom". I don't know much about the government of Iraq, but I hadn't thought that Saddam was all that heavily opposed. Perhaps I'm wrong. As I said, I've been out of the political scene.

I wonder what other people think. I had a lot of other issues, but I can't really think of many right now. Still, despite Bush's very adamant, and somewhat impressive speech, I'm still worried. Can anyone say anything that will be comforting perhaps? In any case, I think I need to pay more attention to the news. There is far too much I'm not aware of in this country, and this speech makes me think that maybe I should be...

Melanie