Jumping To Conclusions

Well, as expected, the president's speech was good, not great. Still, the wife and I loved this part:

Another drag on our economy is the current tax code, which is a complicated mess -- filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year. The American people deserve -- and our economic future demands ---- a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code.

Hooray! Unfortunately, it was later followed by this part:

We will offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts, and provide direct help for low-income Americans to purchase them.

So much for reforming and simplifying the tax code. And then there's this:

We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account -- a nest egg you can call your own and government can never take away.

That's nice and all, but what's wrong with simply cutting taxes and letting younger workers keep the difference for themselves?

Well, we also liked this part (which echoes what Dick Cheney said a few months back):

Again, my opponent takes a different approach. In the midst of war, he has called America's allies, quote, a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed." That would be nations like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, El Salvador, Australia, and others -- allies that deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.

A friend of mine, with whom I was arguing about the war, not only repeated the canard that we're acting unilaterally, but when challenged on it, dismissed our allies as being "bullied and bribed" and thus inconsequential. Just like John Kerry. Hmmm, must have been reading from the same talking points. And theirs is the side who purports to "repair our standing in the world"?