Monthly Archives: February 2005

General, Politics

SOTU

I missed an opportunity last night. The phone rang and a mechanical voice said “This is a political poll, it will take about 45 seconds, Did you watch the Presidents’ State of the Union Address?” This was like five minutes after the speech, while the Democrats were starting their response.

I had listened to it on radio (NPR) and was sort of watching the video on NBC. It is strange to watch the delayed video with the radio audio. Works a lot better with Football games. I wonder if NBC was delaying their feed in case they had to bleep the President.

Anyway, I thought a second and hung up on the machine. If it had been a live voice I probably would have responded. It would have been interesting to find out what sort of questions the pollsters were asking after the speech.

I don’t think the President has defined what is “broken” about Social Security and how his private accounts would “fix” it. SS is working the way it was designed, it’s not broken. The original design parameters don’t appear to be valid anymore.

It may be time to design a new system from the ground up. Of course, people who have worked on implementing new computer programs know the difficulties of implementing a new system that does what the old does plus more features that meet the new environment while keeping the old one active. I don’t know, I am still looking into the problem. (Since I am one of those under 55, I am in potential trouble. I don’t actually hit 65 until 2018, the year SSA goes red.)

General

Victory

I just happened to hear noted Bush apologist, Rush Limbaugh, on the radio at lunch. He was addressing Pelosi’s post SOTU remarks that Bush hadn’t defined a timetable for getting out of Iraq. He responded that there has always been an exit strategy, it’s called “Victory” and once victory is achieved we will leave Iraq.

I think Rush is in one of word re-definition phases ( seems to be a daily phase) . Near as I can tell “Victory” was achieved May 1, 2003. This is almost two years later. (Hard to believe we have been over there for so long.) ” Mission Accomplished” is “Victory” in my book. The President saying “the battle in Iraq is a victory”, is “Victory” in my book. So, when are we leaving? Or, how is Rush defining “Victory” today? I really can’t take more than a few minutes of him, so I didn’t stay past the commercial to hear more. Of course, by then, he had already digressed on to an attack on whiney Democrats.