As if morale at CNN could get any lower. Its parent company has chalked up $100 billion in losses in a year and CNN founder Ted Turner just joined the throng of executives saying buh-bye. Meanwhile Fox News is still firing on all cylinders. Now if only MSNBC would finally throw in the towel, fire Phil Donahue and hire more conservatives so that it can begin to compete with Fox News…
Seymour Hersh wasn’t kidding when he said that North Korea might be next. Tony Blair’s been dropping hints:
Tony Blair today pledged that after dealing with Iraq, the UN would confront North Korea about its nuclear weapons programme.The prime minister was giving an impassioned defence of the government’s position on Iraq during his weekly question time when an anti-war MP shouted: “Who’s next?”
Replying to the heckle, Mr Blair said: “After we deal with Iraq we do, yes, through the UN, have to confront North Korea about its weapons programme".
“We have to confront those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass destruction,” he added.
To another cry of “When do we stop?", Mr Blair answered: “We stop when the threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with.”
The Note has more stuff about the SOTU today than any single person could hope to digest. I like the Jake Tapper quote best. It’s always fun to watch liberals agonize:
But thankfully for Bush, his opponents – theoretically, at least – come from the Democratic Party, an organization maybe best captured late in the speech when a camera caught Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who at least appeared to be in deep slumber, while his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., wiped his nose with his hand.After the speech, Kennedy the Elder called for a do-over, demanding a new vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq since “the world has changed.”
With the possible exception of the Washington Generals, is there any group less inspiring than the Democrats? Has Rove slipped saltpeter into their Yoohoos? I’m not just talking about the fact that Daschle let the brigands at the Wall Street Journal and Family Research Council outlap him on outrage at Trent Lott’s longing for Dixie. More specifically, who was the Einstein who brainstormed Washington Gov. Gary Locke as the designated Democratic rebutter? Locke – chosen at least in part because he’s chairman of the Democratic Governor’s Association – currently has 30 percent approval ratings in his own state. The only thing he said in his astoundingly unimpressive response that I can even recall – and I’m writing this two seconds after he finished – is the same sad refrain beginning “Make no mistake: Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant, BUT …” Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
When Colin Powell does his Adlai Stevension thing at the UN on Feb. 5, he’ll have photos to pass around:
Powell will arrive armed with extensive imagery from satellites and other sources showing Iraqi trucks hauling materials away from suspected weapons facilities shortly before U.N. inspectors arrived, U.S. intelligence sources said Tuesday.“It’s photographic evidence of the shell game the Iraqis have always employed,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said. The imagery suggests extensive “sanitation of sites” and is bolstered by intercepted communications indicating a broad pattern of deception, the source said.
…
Intelligence officials say the evidence includes a series of pictures taken over the past two years showing normal dump trucks being brought in from a port to Baghdad on railcars, driven to a military base, lined up outside a facility and converted to rocket launchers.
Other photographs show vehicles believed to be specially equipped for transporting biological or chemical weapons materials, the sources added.
Lost in the SOTU frenzy was the Democratic response by my Governor Gary Locke (D-WA). Locke’s speech was one of the worst I’ve seen by a politician. You can read some of the local reaction from the Seattle Times, hardly a conservative bastion:
Locke was a minor leaguer pinch hitting in the all-star game….and he struck out on three pitches.The real Democratic response was given by Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi before the SOTU.
Before the president announced his $674 billion tax cut plan, most people expected it to be only around $300 billion. But the president wasn’t about to negotiate with himself. By proposing an elimination of the dividend tax, he upped the ante and forced Democrats to make more concessions. Now “moderate” senators say that they’re willing to support accelerating the 2001 tax cuts, but are skeptical of the dividend tax elimination. So the president’s strategy of asking for the moon has paid off. He’ll get most of the $300 billion package he was supposed to propose, plus some dividend tax relief.
Oregon’s politicians decided to give voters a choice: Raise taxes to balance the state budget or cut funding to “popular” programs like schools, state troopers and medical treatment for the elderly and disabled.
Anti-tax groups didn’t even bother to fight, thinking that voters would choose spending cuts. However, the people opposing cuts ran a determined grass roots campaign to highlight the consequences of the cuts. The Washington Post had a glowing article (of course) about their efforts yesterday, with a poll showing the voters torn with 48% for tax hikes, 48% for spending cuts and 4% undecided. Well, voters voted yesterday and voted 56-44 for spending cuts, not tax hikes.
You’re going to be up to your ears in SOTU analysis over the next couple of days; so here are a few interesting non-obvious things about it:
1. This SOTU can be described in one word: “Resolute.”
2. Bush focused on a surprising number of issues that are supposedly important to African-Americans. Mentoring for kids, drug rehab, AIDs in Africa.
3. When Bush was talking about tort reform, the camera had the good sense to focus on John Edwards. The “wildly gesticulating, empty-headed, pretty-boy trial lawyer” (as I like to call him) didn’t seem at all happy.
The White House has put out SOTU excerpts here. I’m not going to read them. I’m going to listen to the speech so that I can have a better understanding of how most voters see it.
I hate to say anything about the Iraq situation, given that you’re probably getting hit from all sides with Iraq news; but I’m tired of this Kabuki dance. Meetings at the UN, inspectors holding forth, the televised soap opera that is the inspections process. Enough already. Can we just bomb them and get it over with? Can we pretty please see that juicy evidence that the president is holding back for the day the bombing starts?
One reason that the economy is soft and the stock market is dipping is because of all the uncertainty around Iraq. Sure the president’s SOTU will go a long way in tying these threads, reassuring the American people and boosting his job approval ratings. But we need closure on Iraq before Americans can get back to working hard and focusing on their daily lives. Besides, a quick and decisive victory in Iraq will do more than any economic stimulus package to boost morale, improve consumer confidence and bump up those right-track poll numbers. It’s been a year since the “Axis of Evil” SOTU. Let’s get it over with.