State of the Union Address

If you're going to watch it, play along!

UPDATE: That was the most nauseating thing I've forced myself to watch in a long time. And I was only drinking water.

He said a lot of nice things. A lot of nice fantasy world things.

I don't mind the demise of Social Security because I think all forms of insurance are a scam (though government run insurance is usually better than privatized insurance). I don't mind independently putting money aside for retirement, I already do. But, I'm irritated that he wants us to put it into the unstable stock market.

Since I'm self employed I pay twice the social security through “self-employment tax”. I'm the employer and the employee so have to pay both portions of Social Security and Medicare. That's 12.4 and 2.9 percent, respectively, a total of 15.3 percent of net earnings just for those two forms of insurance that will probably never benefit me. I'm angry that Bush is lying about the state of Social Security. The government has been using its surplus as a slash fund for years and he didn't say anything about how much is in there, how much is owed to it, or how much the transition will cost.

Is Bush ever going to do something that isn't bullshit? His war... his tax cut... only cutting spending actually changes anything in regard to what the government costs us. He should have just given us all credit cards, it would be the same thing and “stimulate the economy”.

An immigration policy that “closes the border to drug dealers and terrorists”? Hah.

A “three-year initiative to help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence”? A war-monger is going to do this? Oh oh, Laura is going to be the leader of inner-city manhood.

There's only a few things I want to ever hear from a President's mouth: that (s)he will cut spending on defense and pork-barrel projects, implement a fair tax, take a real stand for the environment, and de-criminalize drugs so the state governments can stop building new prisons and letting out violent criminals to house all the drug offenders. I don't want to hear a word about marriage, that's between an individual, their partner(s), and their priest.

Listening to: Cat Power - Moon Pix

Posted by Ari at 17:49:17