The first thing to notice about the speech is who is not attending.
The law lays out a strict and long line of succession if perchance
the President and a bunch of top government bigwigs happen to kick
the bucket at the same time. The State of the Union address is important,
and all the bigwigs want to see it. In case there's a bomb or the Capitol
collapses or something else kills everyone there, one person in the line 
f succession is removed from the area and spirited away to a safe location.

Usually, it is someone who is fairly low on the totem pole. Last year
it was Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. This year it was
Attorney General John Ashcroft. If a disaster happens, the people
running this country want John Ashcroft to be in command.



It was a nice-sounding speech, but Bush slipped some actual policy proposals
into it, ruining it. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly:

THE GOOD:

Takes credit for legislation to mandate a 70% cut in power plants'
air pollution. No idea how this cut is effected, what else the legislation
does, or how costly it is to the power companies.

Proposes drug treatment programs. Republicans have long opposed
drug treatment in favour of jailing drug users -- this used to be
a major division between the two main parties.

Proposes additional research for converting automobiles to hydrogen fuel.
Republicans have been blocking alternate fuel research for decades
and mocking proposals of moving off oil while there is still oil to drill
as "junk science".

Speaks out in support of Iran's people against their government.

Proposes 100% employment. It's economically impossible without heavy
state interference in the economy, but it sounds nice.

General pleasant bloviating


THE BAD:

Condemns lawsuits against incompetent doctors who have harmed their patients
and the lawyers who would take such cases as "one of the prime causes
of higher costs" for medicine, saying "no one has ever been healed
by a frivolous lawsuit".

Proposes spending $15 billion to buy AIDS drugs to give to poor countries
weeks after the US refused to conditionally void drug companies' patent
monopolies over these drugs so poor countries could produce the drug
themselves. This is nothing less than a giveaway of tax dollars
to pharmaceuticals who don't need the money. I would also like to know
how his plan would "prevent 7 million AIDS infections" when he is opposed
to condom use.

Fails to mention that his program to "reform and strengthen" Medicare
would require people to quit Medicare to receive certain medications.
This was picked up by the Demo rebuttal.

Proposes privatizing Social Security. If the gambling isn't secured
by the feds, they might as well get rid of the middleman (the cynic
in me thinks that's the idea), and if it is, will the feds still pay
when the market tanks and they owe $trillions in insurance?

Proposes ending the dividend tax, the stupider of the two solutions
to the "double taxation" of dividends. They could just call the dividends
an expense on the corporate balance sheet and let them be taxed as normal
income for the shareholders.

Praises his programs of encouraging logging in federal parks as
a "Healthy Forests Initiative to help prevent the catastrophic fires
that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of
acres of treasured forest".

Condemns environmental laws and "endless lawsuits" against
pollution-law-breaking industries. Note that this didn't stop him
from praising his own environmental law. Note that in condemning
lawsuits which stem from the government's refusal to enforce its
own environmental laws, he is stating that environmental laws
should not be enforced.

Proposes using the power of the federal government to promote Christianity
("faith", but you know he doesn't mean Wicca or Scientology) to the weak,
poor, and suffering, to "transform America one heart and soul at a time",
and to "bring to all Americans who struggle with drug addition this message
of hope" that "God does miracles in people's lives and you never think
it could be you".

Proposes banning dilation-and-extraction abortions.

Proposes banning all kinds of cloning, including medical research.

Lied about the aluminium tubes Iraq purchased for building rockets,
claiming they are for building nuclear weapons. This has been disproven
by multiple agencies which know better, and leaks from US intelligence
agencies suggest the US knows better.

Repeats the dishonest statistic that "Americans will keep an average
of almost $1,100 more of their own money". This is only the mean average,
whereas the median average family will save about $250 a year.


THE UGLY:

Claims that "the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity", and that God is behind "all of history".
Coming from Bush, this starts to get dangerously close to the Presbyterian
viewpoint of "God as the source of all power in civil government,
the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among nations, his revealed will
as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian
government", as says an amendment the Presbyterians nearly got added
to the Constitution a while back. (They got "in God we trust" on
the coinage instead)

Claims that "in each case" of militancy in the 20th century,
the "ambitions of cruelty and murder...were defeated by the will
of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the
might of the United States of America", ignoring such wars in Turkey,
Lebanon, Syria, the British Mandate of Palestine, Iran, Sudan, Rwanda,
Burundi, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mozambique, Algeria, Uganda, Somalia, Spain,
Russia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
China, Vietnam, Korea, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tibet, East Turkestan,
India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Mongolia, the Philippines,
and numerous others where the United States either was not involved,
was actively supporting the "ambitions of cruelty and murder",
or was not victorious.

After saying "We have the terrorists on the run...the terrorists are
learning the meaning of American justice", a prominent group of decorated
military men refuses to applaud.

Proposes "peace between a secure Israel and a democratic Palestine",
ignoring that they're the same country.

Says that "lower taxes" would lead to "higher revenues to our government".
The last tax cut significantly dropped revenues. Bush's tax cut in Texas
significantly dropped revenues.

Says that increases in the child credit would be in the form of
"checks to American families" when they'd really be deductions on a tax form.

Promises "we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses,
other Presidents, and other generations", which, given the current set
of problems, will be next to impossible without eliminating the possibility
of future Congresses, Presidents, and/or generations.

Proposes increasing spending $51.25b/yr after whining about Washington DC
spending too much.

Proposes building the Maginot missile defense this year, when it was
earlier scheduled for '04 and still doesn't work afaik.