Dangerous Dan

From the juvenile interest file comes a headline from today's USA Today that could have used some more thought:

Here's briefly what I think on things that happened since my absence:

Cheney shooting incident: It was an accident and there's not much more to the story than that. The media, however, jumped on it as an opportunity to make the administration look bad. That and the press corps was put out that it wasn't immediately notified of the incident and that the story originally appeared in the Corpus Christi newspaper instead of a coastal newspaper ending in ‘Times’ or ‘Globe.’ The idiot reporters who appeared on TV wearing orange hunting gear and who thought they were on the Daily Show also demonstrated a remarkable condescension for hunters and the purpose of that clothing.

The ports: I'm not comfortable with the management of the country's most important ports being in the hands of a foreign corporation whose home-country interests could easily and suddenly diverge from those of the U.S. (if they aren’t already divergent). Even if we assume that the company is ok and is not a security risk, it was a very stupid political blunder from the Bush administration, which should have known this would run into massive resistance.

The cartoon protests: Nothing more than I've already said. The violence continues and Western media outlets can't get themselves out of the fetal position, but softly hum to themselves how they're being high-minded idealists in the hopes that the problems will just go away.

Winter Olympics: I tune in every once in a while, but don't really care. I've grown weary of the broadcast format anyway. I still find it ridiculous that NBC feels compelled to run an athlete-centered film before each competition. I can enjoy it quite nicely without having Bob Costas establish the emotional context of an event. My favorite part so far has been the rollerbladers with the flaming helmets in the opening ceremonies. They were like feathered plumes, but awesome.

As occasionally and unfortunately happens, I'm a bit busy right now and don't have the time to blog as I'd like. I'll post when I can.

I know this blog has made it big because I've been linked to by the forum of the Jedi Knight Guardian Academy.

Take that, Glenn Reynolds.

Providing a paradigm example of irony, many furious Muslims around the world have taken to the streets committing acts of violence in protest of cartoons that implied Muslims were violent. There's nothing quite like playing to type. Thus far, mobs have torched a few embassies, some neighborhoods have been roughed up, a few protesters have been killed as a result of their own rampage, and untold numbers of Danish flags have been incinerated. The non-violent protests have involved boycotts of Danish goods.

As I argued in my last post, this conflict and how the West responds to it is important. It can either defend its core values of free speech and a free press and insist Muslims put up with these values or assimilate them, or the West can roll over and adopt Islamic religious edicts as binding on it through self-censorship. At least one prominent newspaper has chosen the latter course.

In an editorial, the Boston Globe chastises the European papers for publishing the cartoons, accusing them of pulling a childish prank. In fact, this editorial gets things wrong in a surprising number of ways.

This was a case of seeking a reason to exercise a freedom that had not been challenged. No government, political party, or corporate interest was trying to deny the paper its right to publish whatever it wanted.

The Globe certainly demonstrates its shortsightedness as to what constitutes a challenge to free speech. This statement comes just after explaining that what led to the cartoons’ initial publication is that a "Danish publisher of children's books had complained of trouble finding an illustrator to draw a likeness of Mohammed." This wasn't an accident, it was because potential illustrators were afraid to draw such pictures. It was the threat of violence that silenced them. If it was tacitly acknowledged that anyone who drew likenesses of Jesus would face the real threat of death from Christians, I somehow doubt the Globe would be so narrow in their thinking. They might instead think that the Christians’ threat of death constituted a very real challenge to free speech and a free press and that it should be confronted.

This is exactly the case with the Islamists. I don’t suppose the Globe has paid much attention to events in Europe, such as the Muslim riots in France, the murder of Theo van Gogh, that whole Salmon Rushdie thing, and many others, but the Islamists couldn’t make their challenge any more clear or obvious than if they put out a pamphlet called “The Challenge to the Freedoms of Speech and of the Press,” personally authored by Osama bin Laden. To say that the Danish newspaper was exercising a freedom that had not been challenged is a remarkable feat of ignorance.

Journalists in free societies have a healthy impulse to assert their hard-won right to insult powerful forces in society. Freedom of the press need not be weakened, however, when it is infused with restraint. This should not be restraint rooted in fear of angering a government, a political movement, or an advertiser.

This is practically a declaration of surrender. Don't let the fear of censure or strongly-worded letters from governments or politicians restrain the press. Nor let the fear of advertisers pulling their money retrain the press. The fear of riots, death, and the destruction of property, however… well, we’ll let that restrain the press.

The Globe's editorial staff may not agree with what you say, but it will defend to its last advertising dollar your right to say it! Just don’t ask it to put anything else at stake.

As with the current consensus against publishing racist or violence-inciting material, newspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance.

As I also argued in my last post, the value of tolerance has been distorted and misused. It merely means that you put up with people with whom you disagree and you don't try to coerce others into believing as you do. Given the violence and calls for violence from some Muslims in Europe and elsewhere, this is clearly a value that hasn't been inculcated among them. If this is the ultimate Enlightenment value, as they say, and if the West is based on it, then how do they expect the West to stand when a significant portion of its population do not hold it? Is tolerance of the intolerant to be pursued to the West’s own self-destruction or should a line be drawn?

Tolerance also does not demand that I not publish cartoons that, to any rational objective person, are no big deal. Name me another religion that would respond in the way these Muslims have if especially tame, mundane cartoons were published about their religious figures?

That aside, the idea that the Enlightenment's ultimate value or contribution to the world was tolerance is absurd. That's the sort of statement a college freshman throws out as a rhetorical flourish with absolutely no support. The Enlightenment was a rationalist movement that relied on science, logic, and secularism, that sought out to diminish dogma and censorship, and helped to separate religion from government. Given this, the societies and nations that base themselves on Islamism and the people rioting are fundamentally anti-Enlightenment. Western entities that practice self-censorship because of certain religious dictates are also being fundamentally anti-Enlightenment.

Just as the demand from Muslim countries for European governments to punish papers that printed the cartoons shows a misunderstanding of free societies, publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet. Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. That is why the Danish cartoons will not be reproduced on these pages.

This commits two sins. The first is the part about any pictorial representation of Mohammed being prohibited. This is a particular interpretation that some hold, but it has not been consistently followed by Muslims themselves as you can find plenty of representations of Mohammed in Islamic art. I would imagine and hope that there are also many, many Muslims who don't think the rule is valid and/or simply don't think representations of Mohammed are that big a deal, including ones that feature him wearing a turban bomb. So for the Globe to say that this is a prohibition with "profound meaning for a billion Muslims" is simply false and is another college freshman flourish, one that involves irrational, unsupportable overstatement.

Second, to say the cartoons are equivalent to "Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks" is simply false. Even if you want to believe that of the turban bomb toon, tell me what's wrong with the one that features Mohammed traveling with his donkey or the one with a crescent halo over his head? Please find me a Nazi or KKK caricature that is as benign as these are.

Also, the comparison is invalid. Nazi and KKK caricatures mocked races by exaggerating physical features belonging to those races and by attributing certain behavioral traits or societal maliciousness to them that were utterly without merit. These cartoons, however, comment on an ideology, a religious one, but an ideology nonetheless. None of them exaggerate physical features of any race. They further comment on certain very real components of militant Islam, namely violence. As the riots, death threats, and embassy burnings have demonstrated, this concern is warranted and should have attention called to it. So here we have a third college freshman flourish: false equivalence.

So let us review. The reasons why the Globe will not publish the cartoons:
1) Freedoms had/have not been challenged – False
2) Never restrain only in cases of fear of government, politicians, and advertisers – False
3) Tolerance means we shouldn’t publish them – False
4) The world’s Muslims are offended by representations of Mohammed – False
5) The cartoons are racist and as bad as Nazi and KKK caricatures – False

I don't know what I have to fear more: the weak-will of Western journalists or their muddled thinking.

The CS Monitor has a nice roundup of various press reactions here and the Globe isn't the only media organ that's off track.

Others blogging: Rolled Stone, TheRIGHTJournal, themissinglink, and Volokh.

There's all sorts of uproar among many Muslims about the cartoons of Mohammed that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September. It's supposedly against the Koran or a surah or some such to produce visual representations of the prophet. So for the paper to do was, again, supposedly a great affront and insult to Islam. In response, Muslim groups called for various sorts of retribution: apologies from the media and from governments, anti-discriminatory laws, a boycott of Danish goods, demonstrations, riots, and the ever-popular death of the infidels.

Several other European newspapers, in a show of solidarity with Jyllands-Posten and free speech, recently also published all or some of the 12 cartoons on their own pages. This has naturally been followed by an even greater outcry. So far, there have been demonstrations in the Gaza strip that closed the EU office (way to keep that funding you want, Hamas!), the editor of a French paper that published the cartoons got canned, there have been protests in Pakistan, the Turkish Prime Minister said the freedom of the press should have its limits, and a few prominent Muslim leaders residing in Europe have said, respectively, that "the war has begun," that "Friday be an international day of anger for God and his prophet" in which violence is anticipated, and that anybody to do with the cartoons should be killed.

So what's the big deal, you ask? What are these cartoons? Here are they are:

Brutal, right? You should also notice some irony. While the toon with the turban bomb has been getting most of the attention, also observe toons 8 and 11 (the chalkboard one and the one with orange falling on the guy's head). Both of those are criticizing the Danish newspaper for seeking to publish the cartoons. Then you go to toons 3 and 9 (the guy hiding his drawing and the one with Mohammed calling off his guards) and you'll see that they're a commentary on Muslims' potential reaction to the drawings, which was obviously warranted.

Thus far, no MSM outlets in America that I know of have dared publish the images or show them on TV. CNN.com's article, in fact, says that "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam." The other MSM folks have said pretty much the same thing. European papers have shown up for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but not those in America. Even a newspaper in Jordan published a few of the drawings and told Muslims to chill. And as MM points out, their excuse of respect for religion seems weak when none of the MSM outlets have had hesitations about showing pictures of Kanye West dressed up as Jesus, of the virgin Mary accessorized with an elephant turd, or of the world renowned "Christ in Piss" that featured a crucifix in a jar of urine. Were people upset at those things? Sure, but nobody, not even Pat Robertson in one of his loonier moments, called for the death of those who would insult Christianity. And the protests certainly didn't stop the images from being published, nor should they have done so.

So either the MSM are afraid or this is a case of tolerance gone wild. One should wonder why, with all the things that come out of the media that could fairly be called insulting to Christianity, that Christians don't have the same reaction as the Muslim world is having over these exceedingly mundane scribblings. The answer is multipart (and this list is hardly exhaustive). First, Christianity has had a reformation, something Islam is sorely in need of having.

Second, in the West, Christianity and the government are not the same entity. Once upon a time in Europe, displaying a crucifix in urine as an objet d'art would likely earn you an appointment with flaming lumber or with an inconveniently large stone pressing down on your chest. The separation of religion from government, though, meant that the Church, no matter how put out it was by a particular act of heresy, did not itself have the power to punish; that belonged to the secular authority.

Third, and perhaps most important, in the West, we believe in certain secular values that allow for effective pluralism and debate. Among them are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Freedom from being insulted or from being miffed, however, is not among them. Thus, my right to say a religious belief is wrong or to violate a tenet I believe is false, e.g. that displaying a depiction of Mohammed is heresy, overrides somebody's perfectly non-existent "right" not to have that tenet violated. Similarly, though I think "Christ in Piss" is insulting to Christianity, the media's right to free speech overrides my non-existent “right” not to be insulted and so they can do display it. I may say that they shouldn't do so, but this is not a normative claim and it is merely another example of free speech. I certainly wouldn't threaten coercive measures to prevent it.

So this is a case of Middle-East meets West. Islamic values are again coming into conflict with Western values, something that is becoming increasingly common in Europe. The question is how will the West respond? Will it stick to its core values, or will it allow itself to be dictated to by a select group? One core value of the West is tolerance. This, however, merely means putting up with people with whom you disagree. Tolerance does not mean that I shouldn't post representations of Mohammed against Islamic strictures. Tolerance also means that the Muslims, in the West at least, should put up with people not of their faith who do not follow the strictures of their faith and so they should not advocate death for those who violate those strictures.

Two cultures enter and two may leave, but one will have to come out a little different. Either Muslims must conform to Western values of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and of tolerance, and they must give up their militancy at perceived slights, or the West must conform to the religious tenets of Islam and through self-censorship not do anything that could possibly insult Muslims.

The latter would be truly unfortunate. I have said before that nobody can ever defeat the West, the West can only defeat itself. We must remain convicted of the importance of our core values and not shy from controversy. If a subculture in the West advocates anti-Western ideals and that the West also take on those anti-Western ideals, then we must confront it. If one side must conform to the others' core values, then the subculture must conform to the West. If it's the other way around, then the West is lost.

Others blogging: Riding Sun here and here, Belmont Club, Dread Pundit Bluto, Flopping Aces, CQ, most especially RWNH which is on the page as me.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond spouted off again, this time at a speech at a historically black college. Said Mr. Bond, "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side." Uh-huh. The problem with this kind of incendiary, hyperbolic language is that it lessens the seriousness of evil. Bond wants to vilify the Republicans by comparing them to Nazis, but at the same time, he's making the Nazis seem not as bad as they were because the Republicans aren't remotely, dimensionally, spatially-temporally like the Nazis. By drawing down Republicans with the comparison, he's also drawing the Nazis up.

You see, comparisons are a two way street. If I say that a housecat is like a lion, I may intend that you perceive the housecat as being ferocious. At the same time, though, my comparison implies that a lion is in some way like a housecat, and given our experiences with housecats – that they’re not especially dangerous – you may apply that same description to the lion. And that would be a very bad and false impression to have of a lion should you encounter one.

I've long had a beef with this sort of rhetorical trick when used in politics and I find it simply irresponsible. It contributes to the failure of imagination too many people have. They can't imagine that the atrocities reported in North Korea, Cuba, or China could be true or as severe as witnesses say because they have no experiences with which they can compare the accounts. If the worst a penal system can be is the American one, then they can't imagine one in which people are tortured, systemically starved and worked to death, or summarily and capriciously executed. This failure of imagination is why so many liberals accused Gulag survivors of lying or exaggerating the conditions of the Soviet camps. Now, when people like Bond make comparisons between the Nazis and the Republican Party, he creates an impression that if the GOP is the worst it can get, then that's as bad as the Nazis were, when the reality is far from it. This is a dangerous game with negative long-term consequences for short-term gain. The Nazis and their evil should be allowed to stand on their own. He shouldn’t create the impression they weren’t as bad as they were by making foolish comparisons.

Don't insult the benign or the good by comparing it with evil. Worse yet, don't lessen the severity of evil by comparing it with the benign or the good.

Want more?
Visit Dread Pundit Bluto, A Blog for All, and Stop the ACLU

T.J. Walker at NRO contends that Bush is a much better speaker than he used to be:

Whether you love or loath George W. Bush, you can not deny that he has learned how to read a teleprompter. His smirks are gone. The squinting has disappeared. The nervous rushing through a speech is a distant memory. Tics are nonexistent. The first half of his speech was completely devoid of any stumbles whatsoever. (Granted, he did stumble over ten words in the second half, but none were disruptive.) Indeed, Bush was devoid of Bushisims.

Bush exuded confidence through his steady eye contact and his lack of head jerking. He conveyed emotion without seeming exasperated. For once, he seemed to have spent more hours in a week rehearsing his speech that at the gym.

I hadn't really thought about it, but he may be right. One of the things in which I used to find great entertainment (as I described here in 2002) was watching Bush read the teleprompter screen on his right, then he would look to the middle at the audience for a second while finishing a line, then his eyes would dart to the teleprompter screen to his left to read the next line with his head slowly following. Rinse, repeat. I wasn't watching for it last night, but the fact that I never consciously noticed it likely means he wasn't doing it. He did seem a more self-possessed speaker as far as that goes since I still don't think he's a great orator in terms of presentation.

According to reports, the Air Force is ready to begin testing a new airborne laser that, unlike missiles, can be used to take out ground-based targets with no collateral damage to the surrounding area. The weapon platform will be a C-130 Hercules cargo plane, so the laser will clearly be a large device. The C-130H has a wingspan of 132 feet and is simply a big plane (see here for a picture). A full-scale test won't take place until next year, but it will be interesting to see if it works. I'm hoping they'll use the laser to zap a gigantic foil ball of popcorn kernels and that the resultant popcorn will burst open the house it's in. And if Val Kilmer could be there, that'd be sweet.

Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner on the old sit-com Full House, has admitted that she became addicted to crystal meth a couple of years ago. She's been clean since rehab last March, which she entered, reportedly, after "an intervention staged by her Full House castmates — including the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, John Stamos and Bob Saget."

Huh. I wonder if during the intervention, slow soft piano and violin music played in the background while Danny and Jesse… errr… Saget and Stamos told Sweetin how much they loved her and how she didn't need the smack to make her feel good about herself. I'm confident it took no longer than 30 minutes anyway, and that at the conclusion, the Olsens, with a blank-eyed thumbs up, said, "Cool, Dude." And then everybody laughed and hugged.

(link via Wizbang Pop!)

The AP has a few different articles up about the State of the Union address and the editorializing is heavy. Here's a selection with actual quotes. Any italics are mine.

From Terence Hunt, AP White House Correspondent:

A politically weakened President Bush declared Tuesday night that America must break its long dependence on Mideast oil and rebuked critics of his stay-the-course strategy for the unpopular war in Iraq.
…
He declared that the "the state of our union is strong" despite Americans' anxieties about the war in Iraq, the economy and soaring energy costs. Oil prices are inching toward $70 a barrel, throwing a cloud over the economy and pinching Americans' pocketbooks.
…
Facing budget deficits that may approach or exceed $400 billion this year, Bush had no room for expensive, new initiatives.
…
Bush went before the nation after the toughest year of his administration. His job approval rating is in the anemic high 30s to low 40s.
…
Despite recent elections in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories that have given rise to religious-based parties with views sometimes hostile to the West, Bush pressed Saudi Arabia and Egypt — longtime allies that Washington is loath to challenge too aggressively — to provide greater freedoms to their citizens.

From an AP article about people reacting to the speech:

President Bush delivered his fifth State of the Union address following arguably his worst year in office — so-so poll numbers, the controversial war in
Iraq, revelations about the administration's secret domestic spying program, and missteps following Hurricane Katrina. Americans from Pennsylvania to California watched Tuesday with a mixture of skepticism and optimism — often along party lines.

The writers consulted 12 people about the speech. 10 of them reacted negatively. Moreover, most of them were predisposed to react negatively for various reasons, which should have been obvious. Keep in mind that they were most likely sought out, not just man on the street. Nice balance, guys.

From Josef Hebert, Associated Press Writer:

President Bush acknowledged America's reliance on oil Tuesday night, but his proposals will do nothing to curb today's high energy costs and are likely to make only a modest dent on oil imports — even in the long run.
…
But the president's litany of initiatives is similar to what he has long touted and reflects many of the same alternative fuel proposals included in a broad energy bill he signed into law last summer.

As he often has in the past, Bush renewed his call to develop hydrogen-fueled vehicles, a technology most energy experts say will not be ready for two or three decades, if then.

From AP's "analysis" by Ron Fournier, AP Political Writer:

The state of the union is fretful.

President Bush acknowledged the public's agitated state Tuesday night when he gave voice to growing concerns about the course of the nation he has led for five years. His credibility no longer the asset it once was, the president begged Americans' indulgence for another chance to fix things.
…
[And there's plenty more. Fournier also references somebody that appears to have been at the same Costa Mesa party mentioned in the reaction article.]

From Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Writer:

President Bush, opening the fall campaign season, is painting Democrats as defeatist for criticizing his march to war in Iraq and protectionist for questioning new trade deals and tax-cut extensions.
…
Encumbered by some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush hoped to take charge of the agenda at the start of a year that will see races for most of Congress and 36 governorships.

Bush has been beset by criticism that his optimistic messages of recent years haven't squared with the worries many Americans feel over high energy and health care costs, the costly and deadly Iraq war and continuing terrorist threats. He acknowledged the anxieties of "a period of consequence," while still expressing confidence in the future.
…
In Tuesday's speech, the president, hampered by big budget deficits, offered a modest program. He declared that America must break its long dependence on Mideast oil and rebuked critics of his stay-the-course strategy for the unpopular war in Iraq.
…
Bush declared "the state of our union is strong and together we will make it stronger." But Democrats said Bush was living in a fantasyland.

From Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writer, writing about Kaine's response:

The president's fifth State of the Union address comes during tumultuous times for the scandal-plagued Republican Party. Democrats are seeking to regain power in Congress by emphasizing GOP woes.

Ten months before Election Day, support for Bush has soured and public sentiment favors Democrats.
…
[She then goes to report Democratic responses with no commentary.]

That's the AP, everyone! The Agence France Presse article about the SOTU was far more straightforward than any of these. When people complain about liberal media bias, take note – this is it.

Posted without comment:

The Cato Institute has a piece up by that title that criticizes the nature of the current SOTU: a big televised speech before the combined Congress. It wasn't always thus. For 112 years, from Jefferson to Taft, the President merely couriered a written SOTU to the Capital (something I didn't realize was done at all until I read Theodore Rex last year).

The author, Gene Healy, contends that the modern version of SOTU has imperialistic overtones and is not at all republican (small 'r'). I disagree with that. While there is a great deal of pomp to it and it's not very humble, it's the keynote speech of the year for the President. At no other point of the year (except maybe election years at the party convention) will he get as much attention. It's also his chance to lay out some policy priorities and engage in bully pulpit diplomacy. More importantly, it’s the only time that the President appears before the Congress, something that doesn't happen enough in my view. If Healy really is concerned about the accountability of the Presidential office to Congress (as he says elsewhere in the piece), then you would think he’d advocate the President appearing before Congress more often, not less – perhaps engage in a little debate like the Prime Minister has to do in British House of Commons (for my money, the most entertaining show in politics – you won’t care what they’re talking about, but will be hypnotized by the process and theatre of it all). What makes the modern SOTU seem imperialist is that the President shows up to speak to the legislature so rarely. If he had to talk to the chambers once a month, it wouldn’t be such a big deal and would seem much more republican than now.

The part of the article I do agree with is that the speech is often laden with stuff that doesn't belong there:

"A speech from the throne," Thomas Jefferson called it, with republican disdain. He didn't know the half of it. Last year, the president's State of the Union address was interrupted 64 times by frenetic applause, as President Bush promised, among other things, to educate the nation’s children, heal the sick, defend the sanctity of marriage, and bring democracy to the world. This year, the president is expected to pursue a less ambitious agenda, yet don’t be surprised if there's a Mars mission or the like cued up somewhere on the teleprompter.

The Constitution requires that the president "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." But it does not mandate the modern ritual of the State of the Union, which consists of a passel of promises and demands on the public fisc, greeted with repeated standing ovations from members of a coordinate branch. That ritual reflects the growing dominance of the presidency in our political system, and our retreat from limited, constitutional government.
…
Thus the State of the Union has settled into its familiar, modern incarnation: a laundry list of policy demands packaged in pomp and circumstance. And the content of the annual message has changed accordingly.

Perhaps the modern "ritual" is a little overblown and the President should certainly refrain from discussing new programs, but it is entertaining.

For real time thoughts, scroll down.

I thought it was a decent speech, if somewhat unexciting. The main theme seemed to be that we need to be an international country and not an isolationist one – politically, militarily, and economically. I can support that.

I was also a fan of him calling out various dictatorships, Iran, and Hamas. There's nothing wrong with naming names. His tone on Iran was weaker than in the past, but I think that matches the speaking-softly tact the U.S. has been taking on the Iranian nuclear program. That tone itself is, I think, too soft. It's understandable, though, since politically and militarily, Bush can't afford to be too overtly threatening right now.

The biggest thing I worry about when listening to SOTU addresses is any mention of new initiatives, agencies, or programs. I think the federal government should be heavily cutting such things and that the creation of new ones only means money down the hole. This is especially so since initiatives spotlighted during the SOTU are nearly always some fuzzy, feel-good scheme that's supposed to sound good to the public. I can't stand it.

I was able to swallow the alternative energy initiative idea since that at least has some strategic value to it. Generally, though, it's going to be up to private enterprise to develop new energy technologies. I've always thought that if I were the CEO of an oil company, I would invest some serious R&D money in new energy technologies. The demand for such technology is high enough that once it’s invented and reaches a certain level of development, it will slowly cut into oil's energy dominance. While this is probably at least 20-30 years down the road, I, as the oil CEO, would like to be a leader in this technology. Not to quash it as cynics would think, but to profit from it.

I thought the rest was fine. As for Tim Kaine's response, I found it woefully unimpressive. I'm often surprised at how politicians, who give speeches for a living, are so horrible at many televised speeches. Maybe it's because they don't have an audience. Maybe I got spoiled by Bill Clinton’s mastery of the form. Maybe most politicians really are that bad at it. Kaine wasn't very aggressive in challenging Bush, I could not take my eyes off his left eyebrow which was oddly arched the entire time as if only the right part of his forehead had been botoxed, and his cadence was plodding and stuttering. It sounded like he was doing his best William Shatner impression. I think he either needed the teleprompter sped up or somebody needed to flip the cue cards a little faster.