Posted on 01/27/2003 9:37:42 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
During the campaign and his first two years as president, George W. Bush's oratory benefited from low expectations that he often exceeded. In his State of the Union address tonight, the president will have to reach new heights if he is to unite Americans on the brink of war and simultaneously advance his ambitious domestic agenda.
Polls show Americans are deeply divided over Iraq. Most support the president, but most doubt whether Saddam's threat to the United States is worth the cost of war and risk of U.S. casualties.
Just when the United Nations weapons inspectors are becoming fully operational and the United States' principal allies are urging that they be given more time, administration officials are dismissing the inspections as all but irrelevant. The president, however, has yet to tell Americans what he knows about Saddam's arsenal.
Instead of offering Americans blood, sweat and tears in the ongoing battle against terrorism, Bush is promising them lower taxes, more money in their pockets, increased medical benefits and a return to a booming economy. A falling stock market and rising budget deficits suggest Bush's ambitious plans might fall short of his aims.
In his last State of the Union message, Bush condemned an "axis of evil" stretching from Iraq to Iran to North Korea. Subsequent events have driven home the danger of oversimplification and bravado and the need for subtlety in crafting foreign policy in a multipolar world.
If Bush's speech tonight consists of proud boasts of America's righteousness and its willingness to forgo a decent respect for the opinions of humankind -- if it includes a laundry list of uncompromising domestic proposals designed to please those on the Republican side of the aisle -- it will not only fail, but deserve to fail.
Yeah, the NY Times, Washington Post, etc are all left wing fish wraps, but with everything that's wrong with them the one thing you cannot say is that they fail in tilting toward the views of their readers. NYC, LA, DC and all those places are Democrat havens full of liberal Democrat voters.
The Chronicle is just as biased and far out wacky left wing as the papers in any of those cities, but one thing is different. Houston, and especially the Houston metropolitan area, is nowhere near as liberal as any of those other places. Republicans hold every elected county office in Harris County, TX plus most of the big suburban counties nearby. Even the city proper is fairly conservative. Conservatives hold half of the seats on city council (which is technically non partisan) and can normally pass a bill with one of the moderates joining them. Yes, our mayor is a left wing embarrassment to the human race, but no thanks to the support given to the 'rats by the Houston Chronicle and Enron, we came within a point of ousting him with a conservative. Houston's also the only big city in the nation to pass a city charter amendment referendum that specifically BANS the city government from giving domestic partner benefits to homosexuals. The only phrase that can accurately describe our newspaper is out of touch.
By advertisers borrowing stories from the Hearst machine. As far as I can tell they do very little authentic reporting on their own. I also heard a Chronicle exec speaking once. He said that their profits came from advertisors and made it sound like they didn't even make printing costs from the copies they sold.
Definately. Perhaps more than any other market in the nation.
Competing papers, even some with conservative leanings, have made it in the liberal rat holes known as DC and NYC. They should be able to make it in Houston just fine.
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