I’m a little high on pepperoni, cheddar cheese and tea right now, but here’s my immediate reaction to the State of the Union address (For a more considered response, tune in to The Exchange in the morning; I’ll be on with Arnie Arnesen):
1. Bush returns to his initial appeal for bipartisanship from 2001. Democrats made sure that never happened, and it probably won’t happen now. Alito’s confirmation vote today shows just how excessively partisan Washington has become, and it was nice to hear the President (who shares some of the blame for fanning partisan flames) remind us that it doesn’t have to be that way.
2. Big-vision foreign policy up front, domestic policy later. Bush clearly loves foreign affairs. He believes he is using American might to force positive change in the world, and he enjoys that. He isn’t so keen on domestic policy. It’s like math homework. He does it because he has to.
3. Nice statement to the people of Iran, but how about a statement to the president of Iran? Or to the U.N. about Iran? A bit weak, I thought.
4. The best moment of the night was the Democrats’ giddy reaction to Bush’s lament that Congress didn’t “save Social Security.” Childish and knee-jerk, just like their position on Social Security. They didn’t even realize they’d set themselves up for a fall, and they eneded up looking like schoolkids.
5. Enough with the spending and “investment” initiatives! A “competitiveness initiative”? What does the federal government know about competitiveness? Republicans used to believe that the economy functioned best when government got out of the way. Bush keeps sticking it back in the middle of the road.
6. Here’s Bush’s 2006 SOTU. Here’s George Washington’s from 1790. I like Washington’s better.
A sheriff in Ohio has one-upped New Ipswich Police Chief W. Garrett Chamberlain, who made headlines last summer by arresting illegal aliens for trespassing. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones is billing the federal government for the cost of jailing illegal aliens.
“Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don’t believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county, to begin with?” Jones said in an interview with The Washington Times. “They are in my jail because they have committed crimes here.
“It’s time the federal government should at least pay for the criminals they let stay here,” he said. “If they don’t want to pay for them, then they can deport them.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded by coming to Butler County, interviewing the illegals, and detaining them for deportation. Imagine if every sheriff in the country did this.
Rep. Charlie Bass will have a Republican primary challenge. Unlike last time, when Mark Brady ran as a conservative against the moderate Bass, one GOP insider commented to me this morning that Bass might look like the conservative this time.
Berlin Mayor Robert Danderson is running against Bass in part because, he says, Bass hasn’t brought back enough pork.
Sen. Bob Clegg has expressed interest in challenging Bass. He criticized Bass for asking Executive Councilor Ray Burton to resign after he was found to have sheltered a sex offender. He also said Bass should bring home more federal money.
That’s remarkable. Bass finally acts somewhat conservative, taking a tough stand against sheltering sex offenders and calling for cutting federal spending and limiting earmarks, and that’s what draws the fire of fellow Republicans.
Paul Hodes must be licking his chops.
This is a great idea. An absolutely fantastic idea. Until it gets hacked.
Former Manchester Mayor Bob Baines has landed a new job as “Executive in Residence” at Southern New Hampshire University. “Baines will assist the university in a number of capacities, including corporate outreach, enrollment, developing partnerships in the private and public sectors and teaching,” says an SNHU press release.
“Bob brings skills and knowledge that are both broad and deep, and we are extremely lucky to have him,” SNHU President Paul LeBlanc said. “Bob’s leadership and steady hand were integral in revitalizing downtown Manchester and ensuring its economic growth and financial health.”
The former mayor told me this morning that he starts the job today.
As first reported in the Union Leader on Jan. 6, UNH has ordered that the song “Black Betty” by Ram Jam no longer be played at UNH hockey games. The song was banned because some influential person (UNH won’t say whom) found it racially offensive, though the song was originally made famous by Leadbelly.
Personally, I agree that the lyrics are offensive, and not just to blacks. The song is about sex with an eager black woman, probably a slave. I wonder where the femenist outrage is?
Some UNH students and alumni are upset and want the song to return. It isn’t going to. And while they talk about tradition, I don’t think the tradition of playing a Ram Jam song trumps the legitimate concerns about the song’s terrible lyrics. This is one of those minor controversies (it made FOX News yesterday) being called political correctness, but it’s really a matter of being polite.
Besides, the guy who plays the music for UNH hockey games told me he replaced “Black Betty” with “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. How can that not be considered an improvement?
As if to confirm our editorial on city parks last week, Manchester’s Finance Office has released a report concluding that the city’s parks and recreation facilities are not being used to their full potential. Many amenities sit vacant for months, and the city misses numerous opportunities to bring in new revenue from advertising and additional events.
Maybe now aldermen will get serious about making the most of the facilities we have. But first aldermen will have to bring on board Parks and Rec Director Ron Ludwig, who is resistant to the making the changes needed and claims it is part of the city’s mission to provide parks that don’t have ads.
Everything you know about the Challenger tragedy is wrong, says NBC News space analyst James Oberg. According to Oberg, everyone in the cabin lived, probably unconscious, until impact with the water — at more than 200 mph.
The staff of Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., has rewritten his Wikipedia entry to delete the reference to his having broken his term limits pledge, according to the Lowell Sun.
I’m getting a lot of comments from people who leave fake e-mail addresses. I understand the desire to keep that information private. Don’t worry. When you fill out the comment form, you must include an e-mail address, but it is not published. It’s just so I’ll be able to contact you if necessary. No one else will see it, so there’s no need to fake it.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Rago reports from a forum in which E.L. Doctorow and Tony Kushner portray the communist spy couple as innocent victims. Kushner goes so far as to say they were murdered. Doctorow has won a National Book Award, and Kushner a Pulitzer.
This week we feature newly elected Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, who upset former mayor Bob Baines last fall. Guinta has a short reading list at the moment, but it’s a varied one:
Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. “Morgan and I read different books to the kids every night and this is one they love and always want read to them,” the mayor said.
The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown. “I didn’t get my summer break this year so now I’m getting a chance to catch up with it,” Guinta said.
The Manchester Parks and Recreation Master Plan. “Perk of the job — plenty of free reading materials,” Guinta said.
And speaking of Manchester and free reading materials, the city library has children’s story time several times a week. You can check the calendar for dates and times. Also, the Friends of the library winter book sale is tomorrow from 9 to 2.
If you have young boys who aren’t particularly interested in reading, you might want to take them to the book sale and story time. Statistically, boys are worse readers than girls, and if they don’t pick up the reading habit early, their poor literacy can hold them back in school, and later in life.
Richard Whitmire, an editorial writer for USA Today, had an excellent piece on boys and literacy in The New Republic last week. He didn’t get the Lawrence Summers treatment, even though he wrote:
“The brains of men and women are very different. Last spring, Scientific American summed up the best gender and brain research, including a study demonstrating that women have greater neuron density in the temporal lobe cortex, the region of the brain associated with verbal skills. Now we’ve reached the heart of the mystery. Girls have genetic advantages that make them better readers, especially early in life. And, now, society is favoring verbal skills. Even in math, the emphasis has shifted away from guy-friendly problems involving quick calculations to word and logic problems.”
Apparently, claiming that men and women have inherently different mental facilities is OK when the claim is portrayed as beneficial to women, but not OK when portrayed as beneficial to men.
Anyway, it’s a good article, and Whitmire concludes, as does educator Tony Brown in an op-ed in the Union Leader today, that high standards and lots of studying are the keys to good grades and a promising future. Funny how that works.
