Housekeeping

Couple things I've been meaning to get to...

First, my roommate Mr. (Robert) Walsh started a blog, "Speak and Spell v2.0." He becomes the youngest and most right-wing/libertarian of this incestuous circle of blog friends, I believe.

Second, I'm gonna start trying to post a picture a day, hopefully one taken that very same day, thanks to my good friend the Optio 550. (Taking a cue from Sue, I'm opening the floor to suggestions on a name for my new camera.) Here's the one and only from today, my first day as assistant editor at the Texan. That's the couch where I do most of my sitting during the day, that's my double chin that always shows up in pictures, those are old opinion pages above me, and that's my editor's ass on the right.



Third, I guess I do have something to say about the Iowa and the SOTU after all.

Bush's SOTU made it evident that he is a fiscal liberal and a social conservative. American society, though, is moving to the left ever so slightly, and has been for decades if not forever — just look at the social "revolutions" and civil rights progress: sex, drugs, rock and roll, and all that jazz. So while Republicans may have their teeny-tiny "mandate from the people," they have won it only by adopting many liberal virtues. This is all basically old news and was only reaffirmed by Bush's tax-cut-and-spend policies on Medicare, released-prisoner training, the moon, etc.

The only reason he still qualifies as a conservative is, of course, his ridiculous adherence to supposed Christian morals. So he tells us that as long as we don't call gays evil, we're free to discriminate against them, hopefully even in the Constitution; and that the best way to prevent STDs in teenagers is to convince a lot of kids who really want to have sex to dry hump instead; and that he wants our secular government to help evangelicize by giving grant money to faith-based charities; and on and on.

Anyways, to finally get to my point, Bush's odd stance on pretty much everything led to a lot of criticism following the SOTU, as often as not coming from the right. In listening to what both sides liked and disliked, and with a little help from the fallout in Iowa (literally, after Dean exploded: "Woooaoaoaaaooo!"), I was able to start forming a list of the basic things most people want from government. This is a running list, so feel free to offer additions or deletions, but here's my take.

People want to feel safe.
People want government to spend their tax money responsibly.
People in America want to feel free.
People want to have a fair opportunity to educate their kids and make enough money to keep themselves healthy.

I know some of you don't like to deal in generalizations (cough, Kriston, cough), but this is my way of making sense of all the electoral math. Democrats and Republicans seem to have different ways of achieving these goals, but this is what everyone is campaigning on. . . . I was going somewhere with this, but then the West Wing and Daily Show came on, and now I've forgotten where. Maybe I was going to talk about how Bush is failing pretty miserably in all but one of the categories (and that one arguably so). It probably had something to do with the Patriot Act and the gay-marriage amendment, which everyone not blindly worshipping the administration or some homophobic deity seems to detest. Something about government spending and deficits being legitimate policy tools, neither of which should be opposed per se . . . perhaps. Well, anyways, Howard Dean doesn't make anyone feel safe, especially when his formerly invisible neck suddenly starts throbbing in a concession speech. Universal health care bounced around in there, obviously, as did NCLB.

Whatever. All in all, I guess I'm saying we all want the same things, so why are we hell bent on fighting each other to get there?