SOTU by the Liar in Chief

Sorry for the terribly unoriginal title -- all I have for you tonight is a link to a site doing what I don't have time for; debunking Pres. Bush's speech line by line (or maybe lie by lie). Thinkprogress.org, a new blog, kept real-time track of his speech and rebutted it (didn't catch the Dem. rebuttal from down here in Brasil, or the SOTU for that matter, but dimes'll get you dollars that it wasn't very good -- or at least not as complete and unequivocal as I'd like).

I don't really see the point in watching the SOTU, anyway -- it's not that it's unimportant, it's that the most important real-life part of it are the analyses of it. The SOTU bears so little relation to reality -- what happened to going to Mars? To steroids in baseball? To the Niger uranium? etc. -- that paying attention to it itself is practically an exercise in futility. The Cliffs Notes is usually more than sufficient, and what is usually more important is the meta-news that is generated -- that is, when the news story BECOMES the story. When "the news" says he did a good job, this becomes the news, if they say his approval went up or down, this story (in my opinion) is as or more likely to continue that trend as the speech itself. (Though the "Axis of Evil" portion of the 2002 SOTU was definitely news in itself -- but nonetheless, the reactions of allies and opponents was far more important than anything he said, as everyone noted that the 3 "axes" were non-aligned, and he doesn't seem to have a plan for North Korea).

Alright. I'm out.