The America We Believe In

"I am grateful for the opportunity to talk with you about the state of our union on the day of the president’s address to our country. While it is discouraging for all of us to see our country moving in the wrong direction, we need to take this opportunity to offer ideas for how to get the nation back on track."

"America is losing the most important element of our national character: We are no longer the land of opportunity for all."

"Generations before us came to America for one reason. This is the land where everyone who worked hard would be rewarded, could raise a family and could make a better life for their children. But America has changed. Now, hard work does not guarantee a decent standard of living, and our children do not believe they can achieve the successes of their parents. It should not be that way."

This is from John Edwards who was John Kerrys' running mate in the 2004 Presidential race. He gives his own State of the Union address, with some solutions he'd like to see in the comming years. He's got some good ideas, too good to ever be implemented. He emphasizes domestic issues and does speak on our foreign policy, but interestingly, not one word about terrorism, or our loss of rights. On the one subject that we all know Bush is going to mention in his speech, and use to invoke feelings of his version of "patriotism", which means we should all continue to be very afraid of "the terrorists" that only he can save us from, on that, Edwards was conspicuously silent. Should we take this to mean that he agrees with Bushs' anti-terror policies, or that neither he nor the Democrats in general, have a clue as to what to do about it?

With this being an election year, the Democrats had better have something to say about terrorism and how they'd deal with it, or else we'll just have the same crap as the previous elections with the Republicans claiming their opponants are soft on terrorist and won't do anything about it. They need to come up with an alternate plan, that we citizens can live with, or we'll be stuck with what we've got.