The Spectrum decided to go back to the future for Tuesday night's State of the Union address, dabbling in the blogosphere. What follows is a real-time editorial to President Bush's speech.
9:08-9:11 p.m. - The president enters to fawning adulation from his supporters as he takes the podium for his fifth State of the Union Address. Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi follows in like a whipped dog, obedient and ineffective.
9:11 - Bush offers tributes to recently deceased Coretta Scott King. If he really wanted to honor her memory, and her husband Martin Luther King, he should instruct his party to stop denying African-Americans from voting. Think Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. And don't even get us started on Katrina.
9:15 - News flash: Terrorists seek WMD, Bush tells us. That's great, but none in Iraq.
9:18 - An Osama sighting! Bush actually brought up his name, though his administration doesn't like talking about the yet-to-be captured madman. But Bush falsely linked the jihadist to dictatorial ambitions for Iraq. He got a standing ovation anyway. Bush league.
9:22 - Iraq and a "clear plan for victory" are brought up, briefly. What follows is a massive array of half-truths, distortions, and propaganda. But we feel better because Bush says we're winning, because it's good to win. And we're winning, right? RIGHT?!
9:23 - Bush warns Democrats, and others who don't support his administrations policies, that second-guessing the war effort "is not a strategy." As usual it's train 'em and get out, but this smells like a shut-up and trust us strategy.
9:26 - A stern message is sent to the Middle East by Bush who says he supports reforms accross the region, followed by a warning to Hamas to recognize Israel. Will these reforms occur in your close buddies at the House of Saud? Are Kuwait, the U.A.E. and Qatar holding elections too? Remember, Saddam used to be a darling of the neo-cons.
9:30 - Iran should be scared. Bush just spoke "directly" to its citizens. You cannot have the bomb. We agree, but when Bush speaks to citizens in other nations, they wind up dying in large numbers. Just ask Afghanistan and Iraq. Be afraid Iran, very afraid.
9:36 - "Freedom's on the march..." away from our phone lines.
9:40 - Bush gives the nation a brief tax policy lecture. More tax cuts should be enacted, and the deficit needs to be reduced. Aren't these mutually exclusive? Kind of like Bush Senior's favorite 60-year-olds, Dubya and Clinton, eh?
9:45 - Bush wants to reform our health-care system. We do to, but we want it to help patients, not drug companies, please. Merck and Pfizer can live with billions, not trillions.
9:48 - "America is addicted to oil." And Hummers. So that makes Exxon-Mobil, based in Texas and partnered with the Saudis, the most profitable dealers in history. They made $10.7 billion last quarter, and just punked Congress by refusing to testify before them about their record profits when the nation was punked at the pump.
9:51 - Bush goes from energy policy to education reform. Not even Republicans clapped for this one. "No Child Left Behind Act" is deeply flawed. Test numbers might be up, the results are debatable, but so is the skyrocketing high-school dropout rate.
9:54 - A standing ovation for the recently retired Sandra Day O'Conner just occurred, but she's nowhere to be found. She must've sat this out; we can't say we blame her.
9:55 - The speech finally got good: No animal hybrids allowed. You can take that voodoo science elsewhere, Dr. Moreau. You centaurs just made the endangered species list.
10:02 - Bush concludes in comparing his efforts to those of Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Cold War presidents like Truman. That's mighty thin air for a blue-blood.
