State of the Union Address

[Oh, Gee!!]

Word was on the morning news programs that Bush will not focus much time on Iraq. He's supposed to focus mainly on domestic issues such as immigration and energy.

Weak Sauce if it's true.

[PixelPusher]

Word was on the morning news programs that Bush will not focus much time on Iraq. He's supposed to focus mainly on domestic issues such as immigration and energy.

Weak Sauce if it's true.
I suppose, but then again...what more can he say about Iraq that he and his talking points parrots haven't already said several times over the years and in past SOTU speeches?

[clambake]

Domestic issues are the other "bear". He's hated at home, too. Nothing he speaks about will provide a soft place to land. How many more republicans will leap off the bush wagon after tonight?

[Nbadan]

I don't think there are many left to jump off. Well, except maybe for a few misinformed Insannity listeners.

[boutons_]

Obviously timed for dramatic effect on the day of the SOU speech (if the repugnant, toneless noises dubya makes can be called "speech"):

========================


January 23, 2007

U.S. Warns Iran to Back Down

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:25 p.m. ET

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday.

Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was ''not possible'' until Iran halts uranium enrichment.

''The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region,'' Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.

''Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us,'' Burns continued.

Iran is in a standoff with the West over its defiance of U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment, which can produce fuel for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Iran says its atomic program is aimed solely at generating energy, but the United States and some of its allies suspect it is geared toward making weapons. The U.N. imposed limited sanctions on Iran last month.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States Tuesday of stirring up conflict between rival Muslim sects to maintain U.S. influence in the Middle East.

''The U.S. intends to cause insecurity and dispute and weaken independent governments in the region to continue with its dominance over the Middle East and achieve its arrogant goals,'' Ahmadinejad said during a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.

''The U.S. and Zionist regime have a conspiracy to stir up conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in order to plunder the wealth of the regional nations,'' the president said, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA.

Ahmadinejad said last week that Iran is ''ready for anything'' in its confrontation with the United States.

Iran conducted missile tests on Monday, the first of five days of military maneuvers southeast of Tehran. The Islamic republic also barred 38 inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog -- the International Atomic Energy Agency, prompting fears that it was seeking to restrict access to its facilities.

''This is obviously not a sign of goodwill, nor a sign of willingness to cooperate with the international community,'' French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters Tuesday.

Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said Tuesday that the decision had been misintepreted and that there had been no change in Iran's cooperation with the IAEA.

''The issue is not the way the media has reflected it,'' Larijani was reported as saying by IRNA.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the U.S. buildup in the Gulf was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable.

The American aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and several accompanying ships are heading toward the Gulf to join an aircraft carrier group already in the region, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.

The Stennis's arrival in the Middle East will mark the first time since the U.S.-led Iraq invasion in 2003 that the United States has had two carrier battle groups in the region.

The U.S. Navy said Tuesday that the minesweeper USS Gladiator arrived in the Persian Gulf, one of six such ships -- four American, two British -- now plying the Gulf for anti-ship mines. U.S. officials have long said Iran was likely to block busy Gulf shipping lanes in a conflict.

Some among the audience of Dubai-based diplomats and analysts complained that American wars in the Middle East were already threatening the region's stability and asked Burns to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before turning attention to Iran.

''What we are not interested in is another war in the region,'' Mohammed al-Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. ''Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess.''

[Nbadan]

Oh goody...


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. contingency planning for military action against
Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank....

Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070120/ts_nm/iran_usa_experts_dc_1)

The attack may also be timed to *avoid* a radiological disaster. Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor is scheduled to beging initial fueling in March and begin operation in September 2007.If they want to avoid contaminating the Persian Gulf with reactor fuel and/or fission products, they have to take it out soon.

It's no coincidence that all the 'surge forces' and the Stennis Strike Group are supposed to arrive in the Persian Gulf by March. Russia is to supply fuel to Iran's nuclear power plant in March 2007.

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Bush's Iraq Plan - Goading Iran into War Analysis
by Trita Parsi
January 15, 2007


WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - President George W. Bush's address on Iraq Wednesday night was less about Iraq than about its eastern neighbour, Iran. There was little new about the U.S.'s strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the president spelled out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the U.S.

While Washington speculated whether the president would accept or reject the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, few predicted that he would do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton advised. Rather than withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush ordered an augmentation of troop levels. Rather than talking to Iran and Syria, Bush virtually declared war on these states. And rather than pressuring Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration is fuelling the factional war in Gaza by arming and training Fatah against Hamas.

Several recent developments and statements indicate that the administration is ever more seriously eyeing war with Iran. On Wednesday, Bush made the starkest accusations yet against the rulers in Tehran, alleging that the clerics were "providing material support for attacks on American troops."

While promising to "disrupt the attacks on our forces" and "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," he made no mention of the flow of arms and funds to Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda from Jordan and Saudi Arabia

Zmag (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=11859)

[Nbadan]

Bush to call for 20 percent reduction in gasoline usage


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush will call for a 20 percent reduction of gasoline usage over the next 10 years in his State of the Union Address Tuesday night, a senior Administration official tells CNN.

By decreasing gasoline usage among consumers, the president will say it's in the nation's security interest increase the supply of the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- the nation's oil supply that is only tapped in crises.

The president will also push for more renewable and alternative energy sources -- initiatives he has pushed previously.

CNN has also learned the president will call for a balanced budget by 2012 and advocate several measures to accomplish this including a decrease of pet projects by members of Congress.

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/01/bush-to-call-for-20-percent-reduction.html)

Predictably, ABC News can't wait to bend over and take it in the arse.

"Bush to Offer Bold Energy Plan" (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2816080)

To little, too late.

[Trainwreck2100]

60 minutes of preempted crap

[Nbadan]

Setting the record straight....

Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link
U.S. warnings of advanced weaponry crossing the border are overstated, critics say.


BAQUBAH, IRAQ — If there is anywhere Iran could easily stir up trouble in Iraq, it would be in Diyala, a rugged province along the border between the two nations.

...

But even here, evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq's troubles is limited. U.S. troops have found mortars and antitank mines with Iranian markings dated 2006, said U.S. Army Col. David W. Sutherland, who oversees the province. But there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found.

In his speech this month outlining the new U.S. strategy in Iraq, President Bush promised to "seek out and destroy" Iranian networks that he said were providing "advanced weaponry and training to our enemies." He is expected to strike a similar note in tonight's State of the Union speech.

...

For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.

...


Few doubt that Iran is seeking to extend its influence in Iraq. But the groups in Iraq that have received the most Iranian support are not those that have led attacks against U.S. forces. Instead, they are nominal U.S. allies.


LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraniraq23jan23,0,1896346,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines)

Not that the chicken-hawks will let facts get in the way of a SOTU...

[CubanMustGo]

Here's all Bush the Lesser needs to say:

"The State of the Union is Crap. I and my minions made it that way. Fuck off if you don't like it because once I've made my mind up ain't nothin' gonna change. You wouldn't want me to be a flip-flopper now, would you?"

"Thank you. The next 29 minutes of commercials come to you courtesy of the fine folks at Halliburton, Exxon/Mobil, and the like. Since I got nothin' to say I figger they might as well use the time. Besides, they always tell me what to do anyway."

[ChumpDumper]

:lol It took two dudes to announce the president?

[LaMarcus Bryant]

time to jack it

[dallaskd]

no one boo'd :depressed

god do they have to clap after every thing?

[dallaskd]

:sleep

[MannyIsGod]

:lol, The State of The Union in HD. Nice. Meh.

[lil'mo]

yeah.. these images are too sharp

[PixelPusher]

Dick Cheney looks like he has indigestion or something.

[angel_luv]

I can't get over the vacant expressions of almost everyone in attendance. They look bored.

[angel_luv]

Mutombo is there.

[angel_luv]

:dont


I wasn't... I really think so.

[Saddam's Ghost]

I can't get over the vacant expressions of almost everyone in attendance. They look bored.


I can't get over the hideous expressions of almost every photo of yourself you've posted. You look like electrocuted genitalia.

[FromWayDowntown]

It's wonderful to see Dikembe Mutombo gain as much recognition as possible for all of the great things he does for those who are less fortunate than he is.

[MannyIsGod]

I love how the country gets credit for producing heroic actions now. I hate speeches like that.

[PixelPusher]

well...at least it was relatively short for a SOTU.

[JoeChalupa]

Well done Mr. President. Time to play ball.

[Yonivore]

He almost accidentally grabbed Madame Speaker's hooter there at the end...wow! How many time would we have seen that screen capture over the next two years?

[01Snake]

Is it just me or does Hillary think she is God?

[Yonivore]

Is it just me or does Hillary think she is God?
It's not you.

[JoeChalupa]

I think Bush wants some of that Pelosi.

[MannyIsGod]

Hillary always looks like a bitch.

[angel_luv]

I see Saddam's ghost is hanging around, mean as ever.

[CubanMustGo]

Did anyone see the shot of McCain either nodding off or texting in the middle of all that? Heh heh

[Hillary]

Hillary always looks like a bitch.

STFU you non-tipping cheap ass non-working man supporting biatch!! :cuss

[Chris Bell]

STFU you non-tipping cheap ass non-working man supporting biatch!! :cuss

Hey baby, divorce that no good cheatin' husband of yours and let's get hitched. I'd be proud to be your First Man.

[lil'mo]

Is it just me or does Hillary think she is God?
isn't she?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Shit, bring on that $7500 deduction for single Americans for health care, which my company already pays for :drunk

[CubanMustGo]

Shit, bring on that $7500 deduction for single Americans for health care, which my company already pays for :drunk

Ah, but the fine print is that the amount they pay on your behalf becomes taxable income to you. So your net deduction prolly wouldn't be all that much.

[01Snake]

How cute, they give a seperate Democratic Response in Spanish also.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Ah, but the fine print is that the amount they pay on your behalf becomes taxable income to you. So your net deduction prolly wouldn't be all that much.

What I read was you only get taxed on what's over $15K.

[boutons_]

None of dubya's shit is going to work or get approved.

He has failed in Iraq. Iraq is now irredeemably lost.

All dubya is doing now is trying delay withdrawal until after his term and to polish that pile of shit called his legacy by calling for stuff he didn't do when he had both houses of Congress with him. He knows he can't do this shit now with both houses, and a huge majority of Americans, against him.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

None of dubya's shit is going to work or get approved.

You're dumb.

[angel_luv]

see?!


:worthy: :lol

[CubanMustGo]

What I read was you only get taxed on what's over $15K.

What I read earlier today was (let's say) your company pays $5000 for health insurance. You are taxed on that $5000, but the $7500 (single person) deduction takes care of that (and then some).

If your company pays $10K (again, single converage) then you would end up paying tax on the $2.5K excess over the $7.5K limit.

An AP story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/state_of_union_analysis) says that there is a fear that young, healthy individuals would end up declining health insurance in order to maximize their deduction (e.g. no health insurance = $7500 deduction). Since the Demos won't let it through it's prolly a moot point.

CNN.com explains it much better here (http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/23/pf/taxes/health_proposal_effect/index.htm?cnn=yes).

[Vizzini]

Did anyone see the shot of McCain either nodding off or texting in the middle of all that? Heh heh


I think they were all following along on with the copies of the speech that they recieved a head of time. Those were things that W. spent about fifteen minutes signing when he was trying to leave.

[DarkReign]

I didnt watch one friggin second of the STOU. What on God's green earth could the most inept public-speaking President ever say or accomlpish? Nothing excpt rhetoric, pandering and cheap policy to look as though he cares about the dissenting opinion.

What a complete waste of time.

[Phenomanul]

:lol, The State of The Union in HD. Nice. Meh.


Did Bush show signs of razor-burn? :lol :lol

[boutons_]

Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union

Published by Greg Palast January 24th, 2007 in Articles

by Greg Palast
Tuesday, 23 January, 2006

There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.

In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times — my kids kept count.

But it wasn’t all rat-licking lies.

Most pundits concentrated on Iraq and wacky health insurance stuff. But that’s just bubbles and blather. The real agenda is in the small stuff. The little razors in the policy apple, the nasty little pieces of policy shrapnel that whiz by between the appearances of the Presidential tongue.

First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.

There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law. The law in question is the United States Constitution. The Founding Fathers thought the government had no right to keep track on a citizen unless there is evidence they have committed, or planned to commit, a crime.

But the Founding Fathers didn’t imagine there were millions and billions of dollars to be made by private contractors ready to perform this KGB operation for the Department of Homeland Security, tracking each and every one of us to keep tabs on our “status.”

These work databases will tie into “voter verification” databases required by the Help America Vote Act. And these will tie to the databases on citizenship and so on.

Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as “felons” from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?

There were several other little IEDs (improvised execrable policy devices) planted in the State of the Union. Did you catch the one about doubling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? If you’re unfamiliar with the SPR, it is supposed to be the stash of oil we keep in case the price of crude gets too high.

Well, the price of oil has been horribly high but Dick Cheney, the official who sits on the Reserve’s spigots, has refused to release the oil into the market.

Instead of unleashing the Reserve and busting Big Oil’s price gouging Bush will double the Reserve, which will require buying three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. This is a nice $40 billion pay-out to Big Oil from the US Treasury. Compare this to the President’s health insurance plan which will be “revenue neutral” — that is, have a net investment of zero.

But the $40 billion in loot the oilmen will get from us taxpayers for doubling the Reserve is nothing compared to the boost in the worldwide price of crude caused by this massive, mad purchase. While the Congressional audience didn’t even bother polite applause for the reserve purchase plan, there’s no doubt they were whooping it up in Saudi Arabia. Clearly, the state of the Saudi-Bush union is still pretty good.

But why end on a cynical note? I must admit I was moved by the President’s praise of Wesley Autrey, a New Yorker who, last month, threw himself on top of a man who had fallen on subway tracks — and held him between the track rails as the train passed over them.

While the President properly acknowledged Autrey’s courage in saving the man who fell on the subway tracks, Mr. Bush still did not explain why Dick Cheney pushed the man in the first place.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller: Armed Madhouse: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. The subscribe to Palast’s investigative reports, go to www.GregPalast.com (http://www.GregPalast.com)

http://www.gregpalast.com/off-the-rails-big-oil-big-brother-win-big-in-the-state-of-the-union/

==============

Does anybody dispute the citizenship database and the windfall profits to oilcos by doubling the SPR?

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

boutons, you're dumb.


Instead of unleashing the Reserve and busting Big Oil’s price gouging Bush will double the Reserve, which will require buying three-quarters of a billion barrels of oil. This is a nice $40 billion pay-out to Big Oil from the US Treasury. Compare this to the President’s health insurance plan which will be “revenue neutral” — that is, have a net investment of zero.

But the $40 billion in loot the oilmen will get from us taxpayers for doubling the Reserve is nothing compared to the boost in the worldwide price of crude caused by this massive, mad purchase.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was never intended to be a price control at the pumps. It was intended to be an emergency reserve in a time of war.

What the fuck are people bitching about gas prices for anyway? I paid $1.90 to gas up last week.

[01Snake]

What the fuck are people bitching about gas prices for anyway? I paid $1.90 to gas up last week.

You think Croutons actually needs a reason to bitch?

[2centsworth]

What I read earlier today was (let's say) your company pays $5000 for health insurance. You are taxed on that $5000, but the $7500 (single person) deduction takes care of that (and then some).


That is flat out wrong! Health premiums are tax-free unless you are the business owner or partner (2% interest).

Always consult your CPA.

[boutons_]

the SPR is dipped into for all kinds of reasons, not just national emergencies:

"Emergency sales and loans

Oil has been released and sold in the open market under emergency conditions just twice, in 1991 and 2005. However, oil has also been temporarily loaned out or exchanged to private oil companies on several occasions, then returned to the reserve after the specified loan period including "premium barrels". These oil exchanges include an ARCO pipeline disruption in April 1996; an exchange of 11 million barrels (1,800,000 m³) of Maya crude oil for 8.5 million barrels (1,400,000 m³) of higher value crude oil in 1998; a dry dock collapse in June 2000 just north of the Intracoastal Waterway near Lake Charles, Louisiana used by CITGO and Conoco refineries; and temporary loans in response to supply disruptions following Hurricane Lili in 2002, Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

On August 31, 2005, President George W. Bush authorized the SPR to loan oil to help refineries whose operations had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, the President announced the sale of 30 million barrels to maintain supplies and calm markets. Katrina had shut down an estimated 95% of crude production and 88% of natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico. This amounted to a quarter of total U.S. output. About 735 oil and natural gas rigs and platforms had been evacuated due to the hurricane.

On April 25, 2006, President George W. Bush announced a temporary halt to petroleum deposits to the SPR in an attempt to alleviate high gas prices."


http://www.answers.com/topic/strategic-petroleum-reserve

================

Doubling the SPR is clearly another oilco-enriching boondoggle. The WH wants to make sure when the shit really hits the fan in the M/E, such shit being fundamental to the entire Iraq invasion reasoning, after the US retreats in defeat from Iraq, that the US oilcos will be able to obtain oil from the SPR at below-market costs and sell it at top-market prices.

US taxpayers buy the oil into the SPR from the oilcos, and then sell it back to them so the taxpayers can be gouged for windfall profits.

[xrayzebra]

I could just feel the love in Washington last night during his speech.
Couldn't you? Ah, bi-partnership.