Why do you think the President lacks credibility on the life issue? He has signed legislation outlawing partial birth abortion, refused to allow federal funds to support the destruction of embryos, and appointed conservative judges.

My bad... the post read like I was saying Bush and McCain lacked credibility on the abortion issue because I left out the word "IMMIGRATION".

So just to be clear, I don't think Bush lacks credibility on the abortion issue. In fact, it is one of the issues America finds him very consistent and credible.

I was commenting that it is sad that when he raised the issue of abortion and noted how important it is that we, as a country, should embrace policies that shows respect for human life, so many Democrats sit on their hands.

Scott, please quit smoking skunk bud before watching a Bush SOTU.

Thanks for clearing that up Scott. I agree.

Jeez Scott, weren't you the one saying liberals were so tight?

Everytime I see Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair, I'm happy to see my party elevate competent people to positions of leadership. Loretta Sanchez shook the president's hand, and kissed his cheek in a sign of respect and that's somehow an embarrassment?

As for Democrats sitting on their hands over the embracing life notion, well, most Democrats are pro-choice along with 55-65 percent of the country depending on which poll you read/believe.

"Democrats are naive to the dangers of the real world." Which of course is why Rudy placed the terrorism command center inside the World Trade Center after being told not to and Fred Thompson suggests that the Soviet Union might influence Iran and how Mike Huckabee thinks the WMDs are now in Jordan. I'll put on my Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka voice and invite you to "come with me in a world full of pure IMAGINATION..."

Lastly Scott, you line on Dems and Taxes; just how do you propose we'll dig ourselves from this massive debt hole in budget and national debt run up by this administration? Our national debt has grown larger under Bush than under all other presidents combined. The American public now trusts the Democrats more on the issues of budget and the economy than they do the Republicans.

It wasn't a solid speech; it was the same speech we've heard again and again, but with fewer references to 9/11.

Progress there is truly amazing and should that country become a stable democracy, historians are going to be singing a very different tune than the spinless Democrat pontificators who have diminished our stature in the world and belittled the brave men and women who serve in our armed forces.

Yet another conservative who tries to blend those critical of the president as not supporting the troops. I have to give the right wing wackos for trying to paint those who don't worship at the altar of Bush-Cheney as Unamerican. They were strangely silent when conservatives were very critical of the President during the Balkan's Campaign during the 90's. Yet no one ever stopped to think they might be hurting troop morale. Not only were conservatives openly not supportive of the president, they tried to impeach him. So spare us the faux patriotic platitudes.

Scott, if you want to know why there are skeptics out there when we here about all the "good" news coming out of Iraq it is because this administration has yet to be right about anything during this. Remember how we were going to find WMD's?

Here's a couple of quotes to remind you just in case you forgot:

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Ari Fleischer January 9, 2003

"We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

"We found the weapons of mass destruction." President Bush, May 29, 2003

Maybe the Bush folks might be having a bit of credibility problem of their own making. We've declared victory about four times (Mission Accomplished, finding Hussein, turning over power (he he) to Iraq officials, and the purple thumbs) yet our military personnel are still being attacked and still being killed. My blood boils when I hear a supporter of the war tell me there is an acceptable level of violence in Iraq. Acceptable to who?

"Did you ever think the day would come when George Bush would be standing there addressing congress about the good news coming from Iraq. Progress there is truly amazing and should that country become a stable democracy, historians are going to be singing a very different tune than the spinless Democrat pontificators who have diminished our stature in the world and belittled the brave men and women who serve in our armed forces."

Very well said Scott.

If ever there was an appropriate time to use platitudes, it's the State of the Union. The president has about one hour to summarize the previous year and outline the road ahead. Details are for the politicos to slug it out on the Hill and in the press.

I watched the State of the Union online, without the benefit of "expert" news anchors telling me what the president was going to say (because they had already read the speech) and "benefitting" from their interpretation of Bush's speech. I just sat and listened to the speech and wrote what came to mind.

Dan Chmielewski - If you had watched the streaming news feed online, you would have heard Loretta Sanchez standing on the aisle acting and talking like a giddy child waiting for the parade at Disneyland.

I am not overstating things when I say she behaves like an immature school girl. And before you reach back into the time machine and offer up some canned speech about Bob Dornan, save your breath... he was a loud mouthed, bomb throwing embarrassment to Orange County for many years. Yes he was conservative, but he was an embarrassing conservative nonetheless.

So back to Loretta... admit that you, as a Democrat, could do better. Admit that Orange County, with all its bright, articulate, and accomplished individuals, could do far better at finding someone who better
represents our community.

Why should we have to settle?

So back to Loretta... admit that you, as a Democrat, could do better.

Scott. Could the same not be said for several of the GOP's that represent OC?

And Karl.

Those of us who remember the Vietnam War remember the "light at the end of the tunnel" speech and the ultimate outcome.

This isn't the first time we as a nation have been down this path.

Some more random thoughts on the SOTU:

Republicans absolutely failed to practice fiscal responsibility. There was no attempt by this president to submit balanced budgets to Congress.

Loretta is nowhere near as embarrassing as some of the sound bites that come from members of the Republican Congressional delegation from Orange County.

How can this president talk about respecting human life when once a someone is born, this president has managed to take away many opportunities to achieve the American Dream.

Name one politician that is credible and practical on immigration. That is not a solicitation for the one who conducts the most immigrant-bashing.

I give the President high marks for his consistency and principled approach to foreign policy. It is consistently unprincipled.

I saw the day Bush would address Congress about the good news coming from Iraq the same way I saw him address Congress about WMD's, it's called lying!

I am reminded of his speeches following 9/11 as full of fluff and no substance.

I hope that a Democratic President is in the Oval Office when we have to deal with Iran.

Republicans have lead with fear when it comes to the dangers of the real world.

Democrats and Republicans need to look at the legacy of Bill Clinton when it comes to fiscal responsibility by reducing government where possible and lowering taxes.

Bush, like Homer Simpson, pronounces the word, "nuclear" as "New-Cue-Ler".

Why is it that there seems to be a need to compare the Iraq war with the Vietnam war when they are two separate and distinctly different conflicts. In Vietnam, the US was fighting an organized national army in the form of the NVA, along with the VC. In Iraq, we have already defeated the "army" and are dealing with the "VC" of the middle east, and a much smaller organization at that. And there is no additional army with troops on the ground in country.

Also, in this war, the military is actually being allowed to execute the war from the field instead of having the LBJ interference of making daily decisions on bombing raids and military operatons like in Vietnam. Ask any military leader of the day and they will tell you that Vietnam more than likely would have had a diffrent outcome if not for the interference from the politicians.

I am not going to sit here and say that the overall strategy wasn't flawed initially. It was. Rumsfeld screwed the pooch and when the generals objected, he fired them. But give some credit to Bush for finally realizing that the wrong guy was in charge and noe we have the military calling the shots, just like they should be.

We have learned from Vietnam, and Iraq is no comparison. Get over it.

Why is it so difficult to acknowledge when "your guy" is wrong... or embarrassing... or a lousy speaker... or whatever? Facts are facts. For example,

The right answer when someone says Loretta is an embarrassment is to acknowledge her shortcomings and offer to find an alternative.

When someone says Bush is a lousy public speaker, acknowledge that there are others who are better and move on.

When someone points out that Hillary is shrill and Bill is a philanderer, acknowledge that those characteristics are unfortunate.

This practice of defending the indefensible by saying, "Yeh, but your guy is more embarrassing, a worse speaker, and a bigger cheat" is childish.

To deny the obvious just because someone is "your guy" always hurts your case.

What you guys are overlooking is the fact that Loretta brings more money into this county than anyone in the history of Orange County politics. Any time she's able to get herself on the television is good for Orange County. She's smart to secure a spot on the aisle. All of you noticed her and are generating buzz about her actions once the President walked down the aisle. She showed that regardless of her disagreement of the administration's policies, she is mature enough to respect the office of the President and his state of the union address. Politically, Orange County wouldn't even be on the map if it wasn't for Loretta Sanchez.

LOL!!! I have never written those letters before. As a thirtysomething, they never quite fit. But I really did laugh out loud (and I am still laughing) at the idea that Loretta Sanchez put Orange County on the map.

Loretta Sanchez is an attention... getter (Whew, that was a close one). I would argue most politicians are. When you say she "brings more money into this county than anyone in the history of Orange County politics", A.) I wouldn't be surprised, and B.) Just because government money is being spent in our community instead of somewhere else, doesn't make the spending any less egregious. Pork is pork.

Wise up OC Girl. Having Sanchez on the television representing the people of Orange County while she does things like attempt to chastise General Petreaus for his execution of the war effort is not good press. It makes her and us look like fools.

This thread on the State of the Union has become about Congresswoman Sanchez. This shows that she's much more savvy than you folks would like to believe.
I don't find Loretta to be an embarrassment at all.
Many folks in OC (and across the country) are quite proud of her.

Karl,

Bush himself has made the Vietnam analogy. As far as Vietnam being different due to political interference? There are more than enough examples of this administration interceding in opposition to the military experts.

This article written by the Brookings Institution does an excellent job of detailing how the administration ignored military experts during the planning stages.

So the United States launched a war with barely a third of the force it had used during Desert Storm to push Iraq out of Kuwait a decade earlier. Despite all the warnings before the war and the hand-wringing by retired generals during its initial stages, it took a mere 125,000 troops just 21 days to take Baghdad. America's victory was achieved with significant assistance only from Great Britain, which contributed one-fifth of the ground force, and key Persian Gulf states, which provided bases from which to launch the attacks. The remainder of what Bush touted as a grand "coalition" was made up by such powerhouses as Albania, Macedonia, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.

The ability to overthrow a brutal dictatorship with a relatively small ground force appeared to vindicate those who had predicted a cakewalk. It also bolstered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's conviction that the future of the U.S. armed forces requires a military transformation that emphasizes small, agile units backed by precision power capable of delivering a knockout blow from great distance. The decision to keep the number of invading troops small was "strategic and goes far beyond Iraq," Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith confirmed in July. "It's an old way of thinking to say that the United States should not do anything without hundreds of thousands of troops."

Feith's statement was a direct slap at those military officers, including Gen. Eric Shinseki, the outgoing chief of the Army staff, who before the war had warned that it would take at least 200,000 troops to stabilize postwar Iraq. To sustain such a deployment for anything more than a few months would require a significant contribution of forces from other countries—hence the insistence of many that Washington should go to war only if it had secured commitments by others to participate in the postwar phase. America might win the war largely on its own, they argued, but it would require the support of others to win the peace.

Bush and his advisers would have none of it. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz dismissed Shinseki's estimate as "way off the mark." He also told Congress in late February that it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in a post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." In any case, much of the postwar stabilization effort would, in fact, be done by others. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Wolfowitz explained. And, of course, the Iraqis themselves would help out. "We are training free Iraqi forces to perform functions of that kind," Wolfowitz said, "including command of Iraqi units, once those units have been purged of their Baathist leadership." The American postwar contribution would be small. By the fall, according to Pentagon plans, the U.S. military presence in Iraq was expected to be less than two divisions—about 30,000 troops.

Instead of listening to the advice of seasoned military officers or those with experience in past nation-building efforts, the Pentagon civilians relied on the reassurances of a small group of Iraqi exiles that all would be well once Hussein was gone. Iraqis would greet American soldiers as liberators. A war of precision would leave much of the bureaucratic and physical infrastructure in place. Remove the Baathist top layer, replace it with trusted (read: exiled) Iraqis, and the government and economy would quickly be up and running again. Iraq's oil wealth, meanwhile, would soon provide the revenue to pay for it all.

The Pentagon planned for possible humanitarian crises and environmental damage brought about by oil fires. What it didn't prepare for was the collapse of Iraqi society, the destruction of its infrastructure through looting and sabotage, and the decision to fight the occupiers indirectly through ambushes and terrorism. "Some important assumptions turned out to underestimate the problem," admitted Wolfowitz upon returning from a five-day visit to Iraq in July. "Some conditions were worse than we anticipated, particularly in the security area." He mentioned three: "No Army units, at least none of significant size, came over to our side so that we could use them as Iraqi forces with us today. Second, the police turned out to require a massive overhaul. Third, and worst of all, it was difficult to imagine before the war that the criminal gang of sadists and gangsters who have run Iraq for 35 years would continue fighting."

Wolfowitz's observations were right on the mark. What was astonishing was that these conditions came as a surprise. Defeated armies do not usually switch sides. Police in totalitarian societies are hardly versed in the intricacies of community policing and civil liberties. And sadists and gangsters are precisely the kind of people who keep fighting—especially fighting dirty.

And so Bush was forced to change course. Instead of 30,000 troops, five times as many are now in Iraq. Another 34,000 American troops support the effort from Kuwait. That is 180,000 troops in all—at a cost of $1 billion a week. And, by all accounts, we will need that many troops there for at least another year or two.

What about the much-vaunted coalition? Where are the allies that were sure to come? Britain has reduced its initial contribution of 45,000 troops to the war effort to a little over 11,000. It may add some more, but not enough to fill the gap. A Polish-led division of slightly more than 9,000 troops is replacing a U.S. Marine division in southeastern Iraq. It is composed of forces from more than 20 countries, including Spain, Latvia, the Ukraine and Honduras. And Uncle Sam is picking up a major part of the tab for the force—$240 million in all—which gives a whole new meaning to burden sharing.

Once again I restate my skepticism to a group that has yet to predict anything with accuracy regarding this military operation.

Here is a link to the article I referenced above.

Wow, you mean a military operation didn't go exactly as planned.

Hmmm, that's never happened before.

I guess we should never, ever take military action agina because things might not work out exactly as planned.

Unfortunately, Republicans who have embarrassed us in Orange County helped put Orange County on the map.

Examples include, but are not limited to, Nixon and Dornan.

I'd take more congressional representatives like Loretta Sanchez. she does a great job representing her constituents.

The speech was more of the same drivel he's been dishing out for years. The guy has lied so much for so long, I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time.

Get used to saying "President Clinton" again.

Dan-

Get used to saying "President McCain".

"President Big Mac" works too.

Scott, you say that "it's sad that the Democrats sit on their hands when the President said, in reference to the abortion issue, that as a country, America should respect human life", but an article in the O.C. Register on September 27, 2006 states that you are a "pro-abortion rights voter".

Have you been taking pointers from Romney on this issue?

Wow! It appeared in the newspaper so it must be true. I absolutely do not characterize myself as a "pro-abortion rights voter". End of story.

AND, I am not going to let this turn into a thread that accommodates irrational rants from extreme lunatics on either side of that issue.

Thank you for reminding me of that article again.

9AF, you said:

Wow, you mean a military operation didn't go exactly as planned.

Hmmm, that's never happened before.

I guess we should never, ever take military action agina because things might not work out exactly as planned.

How you arrived at that as my point is quizzical to say the least.

This statement was made earlier by Karl Rove.

Ask any military leader of the day and they will tell you that Vietnam more than likely would have had a diffrent outcome if not for the interference from the politicians.

My response was confirming one of the many parallels to Vietnam that politicos did get involved in the process and proceeded contrary to the advice of their military experts. I guess you didn't get it.

To Anon Jan 29 10:37 AM

Your comments: Anonymous said:
Some more random thoughts on the SOTU:
(one)Republicans absolutely failed to practice fiscal responsibility. There was no attempt by this president to submit balanced budgets to Congress.
AND: (two) Democrats and Republicans need to look at the legacy of Bill Clinton when it comes to fiscal responsibility by reducing government where possible and lowering taxes.

First of all President Clinton was just a mouthpiece for the Newt Gingrich Contract with America; I wish Newt hadn't made Clinton look so good. Does NO ONE have a memory here? That contract was what brought America's economy back on track.

Second in reference to there being no attempt by this president to submit balanced budgets to congress...well actually I don't think he personally prepares them. Remember when President Reagan wheeled in a dolly with boxes of binders and a stack of paper about 4 feet tall which was the "proposed budget" by congress and he criticized that? We were all with him then. (except for you youngsters, but I'm sure you've heard about that).

Now you have Bush, and the first thing that happens practically in his presidency is 9/11 which collapsed nearly collapsed our economy just by the mere hit to the two buildings that housed so much financial information and so many companies in America. Then there is the cost of the war on terrorism, just how are you supposed to balance a budget when you have to pay for a war on a moving target?

But you are right, this Republican Congress didn't do much to help. I think they have behaved badly. But when no one has a memory...we keep re-electing ineffective people.

Let me not mention a name here, most of you will know who it is anyway. When the County of ORange had a previous make-up of its Board of Supervisors, one particular person voted to increase the retirement of a particular group of county employees that would eventually BREAK the county. The current County Board of Supervisors are now trying to UNDO that.

Yet, that particular person that cast a deciding vote to cost that much for taxpayers has been elected to a higher office. It is most amazing that his fellow republicans rallied around him, endorsed him and were pleased with his new status in the state.

I wonder, does ANYONE keep track of what ANYONE does here?

A tired republican....I want Newt Gingrich for President, but barring that I'll take Romney.