For some strange reason we have lost our title bar. I hope you people don't find it too difficult to find us when we jump around like we do from blog to blog. Well, you've found us now. As you know many candidates have declared for President from both political parties, so it's going to be a crouded field in both parties. My hope is that as many as possible stay in the race for as long as possible so that we have a spirited contest in the next thirteen months or so. As you know it's almost inevitable that we will have a nominee from each party before the month of Febryary 2008 is out. That is just thirteen months from now so the candidates are getting into the race none too early. Hillary Clinton is way ahead in the polls at 41% or something whereas O Bama and Edwards are down at around fifteen percent. It is said Hillary Clinton deliberately declared the time she did so as to pre empt coverage away from the anticipation of the President's State of the Union address. There is no doubt she is the most accomplished campaigner and she has more actual experiance than just about anybody if you count her time as first lady as well as the Senate. I'm just worried neither I nor the American public will be able to put all her "negatives" behind me. The one time I still agree with Rush Limbaugh is when he is talking about Hillary because it causes all those old Republican feelings to surface. Wel'll see.
The President gave his State of the Union speech tonight and one thing I noticed about it is that it was shorter than normal. It was only 49 minutes by my timing, complete with the many, many applause lines. The President’s speech could be divided into three parts. Domestic spending, and then the Iraq War and terrorism in general, and then kind of a UN and NATO section. Finally there were four “Gee whiz” stories where various individuals were honored for their courage in life. While these testimonials are inspiring they seemed to be making up for a speech that was already vastly short on specifics. Many of the things the President said at the beginning of the fleeting speech I can agree with. He bragged that we were “ahead of schedule by three years” in cutting the deficit in half, though as Al Franken points out, this “half” figure may be half of a projected figure one year that never materialized. Otherwise the President was engaging in Orwellian thinking by bragging about a full employment deficit. Nixon used to talk about a balanced budget under full employment and this is why deficits in bad economic times was permissible. By having such a large deficit at an economic peak leaves us nowhere to improve. The President bragged that we were in our forty-first month of economic expansion of jobs. However as Jim Webb points out, Andrew Jackson said the proper measure of a nation’s economic health was by measuring not our economic Apes, but its base, ie – the welfare of all the working stiffs. The President never mentioned lagging wages or how it used to be again as Jim Webb points out that a CEO made twenty times the average worker and now he makes four hundred times. The President included one line about “fixing” social security. I agree. And the way to do that is to raise taxes on the rich. The president got an applause line about cracking down on ear mark legislation that “I never see and it never is discussed in committee but never-the-less has the force of law”. The President talked about No Child Left Behind and I agree that we must maintain high standards in our schools with standardized testing. The president talked about this tax credit Al Franken talked about where if you’re in a high income bracket the government will give you a lot more economic aid than if you’re in a low income bracket. I’m open to suggestions from anybody –even Hillary- for ideas to solve health care. We don’t need “Tort reform”. You should always be able to sue your doctor in court. I agree however that “Medical decisions should be made by doctors and patients and not by insurance companies”. Does the president really mean that? The President went on to talk about immigration. I am in basic agreement with the President here. Unlike Thom Hartman I believe it’s inevitable that we’ll have “guest workers”. People will always come here to get a job and I believe we need to find a way to accommodate them and not waste border patrol resources tracking down aliens who would be legal under Bush’s proposals tonight. The President talked about energy and we not only need ethanol but methanol or wood alcohol too. I salute the president’s goals for ethanol and alternative energy usage by the year 2017. I hope we exceed the president’s goals in this area. We need to continually improve car mileage. This is good. We also need to increase our national oil reserves and we also need to re-invigerate our domestic oil industry, which has languished badly. I’d like to propose another energy saving idea and that is to legalize hemp. Paper and other products made with hemp are of better quality and save trees, and also put fewer industrial pallutants into the air. The President never got around to talking about embryonic stem cell research or global warming or the now rising crime rate or police on the streets. There was a lot of stuff that was left out of the President’s speech this year. When it came to the
BUSH BABIES FOR
Disc One
Muscle of Love (Alice Cooper)
Writing on the Wall (Ted Nugent)
Ma, Ma, Ma Belle (Electric Light Orchestra)
No More Mr. Nice Guy (Alice Cooper)
Fireworks (Blue Oyster Cult)
The Art of Dying (George Harrison)
The Lying’s Over (
I Miss The Rains Down in
Another One Bites The Dust (Queen)
Who’s Gona Drive You Home (Cars)
I Love The Night (Blue Oyster Cult)
Love Hungry Man (AC – DC)
King of the World (Steely Dan)
Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)
Silver Spoon (Grace Slick) - solo album
Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent (Dr. Demento hit)
The Seven Deadly Words (George Carlen)
Jet Pilot (Bob Dylan)
Low Spark of Hi Heel Boys (Traffic)
This is a Federation album. The front cover is four men dressed in baby clothes in giant baskets with a lot of brush around them. The four are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Larry Elder, and Bill O Riley, and they are all in “black face”, even Larry. Of course being in black face may not be politically correct but the Federation often isn’t.
Other titles for this album considered were “Rapture or No Rapture” and also “The Seven Deadly Virtues”. There was a slightly different line-up that was in effect exactly one day and on January 24th. we came up with this line-up with more songs. Today is the anniversary of the day January 24th. 1979 when I had my most painful root canal surgery ever. I was in pain for most of the next week, being under-medicated. We at the Federation had wanted to use “Thick as a Brick” in its entirety for a long time. So we'll give it "honorable mention" here and recomend you buy it. It’s a more logical choice then either the President’s State of the Union address, or a dissertation about the Rapture slated to be March 17th. of this year. Only the Federation knows for sure. But when you come right down to it, in truth it is really the President himself who is “Thick As A Brick”.
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