Other SOTU blog comments

Not surprisingly, bloggers have been weighing in on the State of the Union address.

Markos Moulitsas (Kos):  Osama who?

Duncan Black on the Republicans' Social Security phase-out plans:  A lot or even most of the money in your private account is just going to deducted from your benefits. Zero sum game.

A lot or even most of the money in your private account is not going to be able to be left as an inheritance -- you'll be required to buy an annuity upon retirement, and if you die one day later the money will be all gone.  [Josh Marshall gives details on this.]

Steve Gilliard:  Bush's social security plans may represent the best opportunity for the Democratic Party to finally discredit GOP economic theory in a quarter century. We have to expose the lies behind this plan for what they are. A naked attempt to steal social security and convert it, as Josh Marshall said, into a government-controlled 401K plan.

One of Bush's more notorious habits has been that when he singles out a domestic program for major attention, he either refuses to increase it or slashes it.  The gang at the new Think Progress blog remind us of that in relation to the anti-gang effort he announced in the SOTU:

President Bush has proposed a 40 percent cut in federal juvenile crime prevention funds,  which would effectively “pull the plug” on good local programs that reduce gang and youth violence.

John Podesta did live blog coverage of the SOTU at that Think Progress blog, sponsored by the liberal Center for American Progress:

You know the president has hit full Orwellian stride when he starts invoking deceased Democratic icon Patrick Moynihan to defend privatization and goes out of his way to  praise Bill Clinton.

Sidney Blumenthal:  In his State of the Union address, Bush boldly stated: “We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing and end its support for terror.” But Bush is playing no part whatsoever in the Europeans' negotiations. His declaration, a shameless falsehood, suggests that he cannot defend his actual refusal to do what he says he is doing.

Blinding bursts of triumphalism are characteristic of a march of folly and quicken its pace. True, just as paranoids have real enemies, so the euphoric can experience a high from genuine events. But the insistence on euphoria, as those who grapple with sober reality know, is symptomatic of a disorder that can dangerously swing in mood.

Tim Grieve:  The Bush administration has ginned up a phony "crisis" over Social Security and then -- and this is the truly brazen part -- suggested a "solution" that does less than nothing to solve the problem it predicts. Social Security isn't going "bankrupt," as the president said tonight. Nor is it going broke in 20 years, as the president suggested to the Parliament-like jeers of Democrats.

Steve Soto:  The Bush bait and switch on his privatization plan reached its zenith today when an unnamed administration official revealed that workers who choose the privatization option will never actually get to see their earnings because those earnings will be going to the government instead. It turns out that under the Bush plan, those who choose to privatize will, upon retirement, only see any earnings in excess of the rate of return on Treasury bills as a supplement to a reduced Social Security benefit.  [See also Duncan Black quote above.]

Josh Marshall:  Remember, [Bush] says the [Social Security] program's in trouble in 13 years and bankrupt in less than forty as it stands now. And now he's telling people who are 55 and over that they can rely on the program with complete confidence even though, under his new plan, it'll have to make do with 2/3 of its current revenues.

Does those two facts compute to you? You think that might put a little stress on the system? Even if the president just decides to pull out the national Visa card and borrow a few trillion more dollars to make up the shortfall, that will just come back and hit the program in other ways and more than soon enough to hit people a decade from retirement. People who are 55 today will be alive in 10, 20, 30 and more years from now. And like so many of President Bush's promises this is one he couldn't keep even if he wanted to.