Monday, January 19, 2004
STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH is coming up. The Center for American Progress offers a dictionary for those who wish to decode certain words and phrases that may appear in the speech. Examples:
There's plenty more. Even I am usually not this cynical.
UPDATE: This serves as an example of what I see as the amplification of political partisanship in the U.S. If one looks at actual policies of the past two presidents, one finds a great deal of convergence: Clinton ended "welfare as we know it," strongly supported NAFTA and other free trade agreements and balanced the budget. Bush gave farmers more subsidies than Clinton ever dreamed of and gave $400 billion worth of prescription drug benefits to the elderly. Rather than seeing these developments and policy initiatives as examples of how the American political process produces solutions that may not satisfy the ideological extremes but represent significant compromise, both sides still see themselves as siding with the angels in the face of irredeemable evil. Sad.
Accountability: The stick that dangles the carrot of federal funding.
Affordable Healthcare: (1) Healthcare for the healthy and wealthy. (2) More taxpayer money for private health insurers.
Ally: A nation or leader which helps us but gets nothing in return. (See Tony Blair.)
There's plenty more. Even I am usually not this cynical.
UPDATE: This serves as an example of what I see as the amplification of political partisanship in the U.S. If one looks at actual policies of the past two presidents, one finds a great deal of convergence: Clinton ended "welfare as we know it," strongly supported NAFTA and other free trade agreements and balanced the budget. Bush gave farmers more subsidies than Clinton ever dreamed of and gave $400 billion worth of prescription drug benefits to the elderly. Rather than seeing these developments and policy initiatives as examples of how the American political process produces solutions that may not satisfy the ideological extremes but represent significant compromise, both sides still see themselves as siding with the angels in the face of irredeemable evil. Sad.
