State of the Union

No surprise here, the state of the union really annoyed me. Bush went on and on about having freedom in other countries while he's trying so hard to take away freedoms at home. He looks like a hypocrite, preaching about democracy while eroding the very principles our country was founded on. I guess I was a little surprised about how tame his stance was on Iran. He didn't say, "You disarm or we will" (from my 2004 Bushisms page a day calendar). I guess he can't threaten them the way he did with Iraq because our military is already overextended. Really I have no objection to Iran pursuing its nuclear weapons program because many other nations (including the U.S. of course) have lots of nuclear weapons, so why shouldn't Iran. It's a complete double standard that Bush expects Iran to disarm, while we won't and while we have far more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined.

Bush praised the memory of Coretta Scott King, but I don't think that he really cares about social equality in the U.S. I was surprised that he mentioned human trafficking and human rights in other parts of the world -- seemed very unRepublican of him. I think his spiel about exploring alternate energy sources was just lip service. Actually, that is the way I feel about most of his talk.

Other Observations:

John McCain looked like he was sucking on a sour lemon during Bush's speech. Coincidence? I think not.

Alito looked dazed and confused, like being present for the State of the Union in a robe was a surreal experience.

When Bush was talking about the wiretapping, there was one part where he was not reading from his prompter and it was so obvious. He was like, "If people is talking, we gotta know about it". Ha! That point was made really badly though. He was like, "Two of the hijackers made phone calls to Al Queda abroad." It's like WHAT? If you didn't suspect something was going to happen, how does the ability to eavesdrop on two phone calls out of millions make a difference? You would have to know where to look. I find it insulting that Bush implies that 9-11 could have been prevented had he had the ability to spy on civilians.

The Democratic response was not delivered well -- Tim Kaine is not a good speaker.