state of the union

yes, i actually watched it last night, went up to the bar at the corner of my street, had a glass of chianti (politics can be difficult to digest) and forced myself to at least watch if not fully pay attention...

the bar was rather empty, a consequence of the smoking ban (it shows that the food and service at this place have not been strong enough to bring in a new customer base to replace the smoking crowd), so i could hear everything that was said.one chick at the other end of the bar whined "i cant believe they pre-empted american idol for this!!" as nancy pelosi gave the final presidential introduction...

sitting there, i imagined that 30 years ago, people actually WATCHED these things with interest and curiosity, maybe even ten years ago, some people did (though by then, people my age were becoming politically aware and were rather uninterested and jaded)

then our president began to speak- he talked about balancing the budget (and tried to prove he did with smoke and mirrors)a dn ending earmarks (which was a trademark of the republican congress), ha talked about using private citizens for millitary responsibility, he talked about tax breaks as a way to make individual health insurance plans affordable to non-insured americans (in the state of ohio, a decent individual health plan costs about $400.00 a month- not affordable in my mind to anyone making less then $25,000 a year, and even that would be very very tight).... i wish people would stop focusing on the immediacy of his tax cuts and start seeing the larger picture of what bush has done for the rich.

anyhow, sen. jim webb of virginia gave the democratic response. i am not a huge fan of webb, but i did like some of what he had to say, most importantly, his respsonse to america's economic health:

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

somehow, we have stopped valuing the worker and put all our eggs into the basket of the "bossman"...thats all i have to say for now