In the last five years, the tax relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses, and families -- and they have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth. Yet the tax relief is set to expire in the next few years.

and savings is at what level?

Now a skeptic might think "what about the deficit?" so he addresses that immediately.

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending -- and last year you passed bills that cut this spending.

This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another $14 billion next year -- and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

$14 billion? So hundreds of billions in tax cuts and 14 billion in spending cuts? Nonsecurity discrentionary spending seems to mean that will be mostly coming from social programs like students loans. This works since educated people might realize that the math doesn't add up. No, I'm being unfair it doesn't take higher education to see that the math doesn't add up.

Yeah, not like we could be using that $880 billion dollars for anything. Like, oh, paying down the deficit, or helping rebuild the goddamn Gulf Coast.

t /one note

I was going to post about the SOTU, but I don't think I can do any better than this, so I'll just repeat it:

Sorry, Smirky McMonkeyface. When you kill thousands of civilians in an unjust war that you lied in order to start, I don't think you believe in the God-given dignity of ANYTHING.

Yeah, that says it all.

So, I finally heard back from American Airline after my lost-bag issue last month. It was a really thorough and apologetic email, and they gave me 2000 frequent flyer miles. I guess that's something.

A friend of mine was travelling from Newfoundland on WestJet, and there was a windstorm, and their flight got cancelled as they were waiting to take off, but all the gates were full, so they couldn't get the plane to the jetway, so they had to deplane onto the tarmac. My friend has to travel in a wheelchair, so they had to lower her down, but first they covered her with blankets, and she said generally, they were really great. She said she also watched another Westjet employee offer to personally escort a woman to her hotel, because she had never stayed in a hotel before.

When my friend got home she wrote a letter to Westjet praising the employees for their service and kindness. Westjest responding with a thank you letter and a voucher to cover the cost of her flight. It's amazing when you get a good response for telling them about bad service, but for complimenting them, I think it's unheard of.

Um, somebody let me know when the quoting stops.

::goes in corner, sings lalalalala::

When my friend got home she wrote a letter to Westjet praising the employees for their service and kindness. Westjest responding with a thank you letter and a voucher to cover the cost of her flight.

Wow, that's fantastic. Of course, I know I've never written a complimentary letter....

The retirement of the baby-boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire federal budget. And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices -- staggering tax increases, immense deficits, or deep cuts in every category of spending.

Raise the cap and national health care, right? Well, for Social Security he is suggesting studying the situation which if I know my government talk means that we aren't going to anything. Wonder why he brought it up.

Now for health care there is a little bit more.

For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and help people afford the insurance coverage they need.

And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB-GYN -- I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year.

Electronic record keeping. Okay fine, but everybody says this. He seems to be confusing Health Savings Accounts and letting small businesses pool together. I don't think these are terrible ideas, but they are tweaks, like putting new spark plugs in a car with a busted transmission. One concern about the Health Savings Accounts is that I think it provides an incentive to skip preventive care.

Medical liability reform. Hmmm... every study I've seen have shown that it won't have a significant impact on health care costs. However, I think there are problems with the amount of medical litigation. I thought that the plan that Edwards and Kerry were suggesting made more sense to me that just capping awards.

If it makes you feel any better, Theo, you can go read in the NYT Dining section about plaintains. Baked, fried, boiled, -- okay, mostly fried.

I have never quite gotten to love plaintains; I find they're like what would happen if a potato and a banana loved each other very much. But very few things are actively terrible if they're deep-fried and doused with lime juice and salt.

(There's also a bit in the Times about Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt arriving in the US, where they let slip -- for the first time, afaik -- that it's not vague "injuries" they're talking about, but traumatic brain injury. The article's tone was a lot more positive than the reporting from Sunday, but, TBI and Iraq: usually bad.)