The State of the Union is Strong

Good to know, eh? It’s funny, actually, because he saved that until the end. Until, you know, he had the initially hostile audience in the palm of his hand, then laid that applause line on the table and the crowd erupted like face-painting Rangers fans seeing the game winner in overtime. Oh yes, Bush is the puppetmaster.

Anyway… the speech last night was pretty boring. I wrote up a minute-by-minute, but trust me, you’ll prefer my pithy observations. Bush started the night embarrassing himself fawning over “Madame” Speaker, and without even a tinge of sarcasm spoke of it being his honor to be alongside her. He went on to congratulate the Democratic party for their victory in November. One problem with that. He said, “Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate -- and I congratulate the Democrat majority.” Even when he’s trying to pretend to be humble, he can’t stop his assholishness. The use of the word “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” is a right-wing slur used intentionally to get under Democrats' skin. And if you don’t believe me, read this piece by Hendrik Hertzberg. I also find it interesting that CBS felt the need to change it to Democratic in their transcript. What else does CBS touch up for him?

What else happened?

• We are going to need Harrison Ford to go to Nancy Pelosi’s office and perform one of his replicant tests. She was blinking as though the force of her blinks could be harvested as an alternative energy source.
  
• Some domestic initiatives. Some he might have cared about (“fix” Social Security and Medicare, vouchers for kids to go to religious schools and abandon public schools altogether), some he most likely didn’t (balance the budget). And some interesting ones like a tax break for payroll taxes to help with health care costs. Payroll taxes are for working people, not rich fucks. Someone must have screwed up. He’s all over the place with his immigration stuff. It's the same old stuff, but this time it might get passed.
  
• Two things I liked – he wants to make earmarks public. I know he has his own reasons for wanting this, but I’m still for it. And then he moved into energy policy. I don’t know the details, but he wants to increase fuel economy and diversify our energy sources. I doubt he’ll fight for anything like that, but it’s nice to hear some stuff you agree with for the first time in six years.
  
• Then it goes “war, war, September the 11th, war, war, extremists, war, democracy, have patience with the plan and support the troops!” So you know, everybody has no choice but to stand and applaud. It goes on like that for a while until…
  
• The heroes in the audience section. My favorite? The Subway Hero who raised his hands like Eva Peron on the balcony (pictured above), and blew kisses to President Bush like Sammy Sosa to Jesus Christ. It was something. Also Dikembe Mutombo was sitting next to Laura… I know!

Anyway, that was about it. Jim Webb gave a pretty moving speech afterwards as the Democratic response, saying that Bush’s war is one big clusterfuck and he can’t be trusted to get us out. I liked it.

Then I watched Veronica Mars. Anyone have any thoughts to share?