Thursday, February 03, 2005

the state of our union is fucked.

so he was screening again from one teleprompter to the other, scanning the crowd looking a little anxious, always glad when finding that punchline when he could pause, because the crowd would applause and cheer and stand up. when they would validate him.
like a primary school kid being tested by his teacher, well knowing he was underprepared for the test.

it was much of the usual, wasn't it?

right at the beginning, there was a brief shot of john mccain, and he looked sleepy and in a bad mood and in pain, and those were my feelings, exactly.

i had the full intend to live-blog, actually, sat up at my computer, the telly with cnn next to me, but i totally failed, because i got so enraged and also worried i would miss dick cheney having a heart attack on public television.
good grace, what was wrong with him? (besides being dick cheney, obviously.) he sure seemed to be reaching for the nitro-bonbon in the middle of it all. blessed be those wonders of modern medicine. thanks for all that ambitious, aggressive, first class research.

the only thing that amazed me this time was that dubya was quite swift at steering his ship around the cliffs of his mother tongue.
i think i heard him say "discretionary" and "substainable" without stumbling. wow.
there was one "nucular" though, and right in the middle of a sentence on "safe, clean, nucluar energy", which made me wonder for a moment whether this wasn't all an elaborate satirical skit directed by jon stewart.

to me, hearing the miserable failure talking about what he's done for the environment in his first term reminds me of mr.burns saying that the three-eyed fish is an evolutionary success.

it's that smirking. that grinning. the mousey eyes shining every time he gets to say the word "terrorist". or "terror" for that matter. he must love those terrorists and the terror they provide.

but then he got to my fave part: the one about values.
oh, how do i love them values.

so you were a boozer, dubya, and then you cleaned up your act, decided not to leave your wife, found god and daddy's friends helped you get you a job. fab.
and that's a reason why everyday people, consenting adults, who love each other should be banned through a constitutional ammendment from marrying one another? just because they are not like you? weird.

and yes, all those evil activist judges wanting to redefine your marriage! evil gay activist judges, most likely, trying to de-value your wonderful heterosexual marriage!
it's so sacred, that heterosexual marriage that we can not let it be de-valued, no? it's so sacred with j.lo, britney spears and donald trump holding up the beacon of good heterosexual marriage. oh yes, that heterosexual marriage is so sacred and special.
because heterosexuals are different, you know. different as in better. freerer. and with more liberties, too. right?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

oh, and then there's laura's new job. good idea, that, actually.
i wonder whether those inner city youth won't be smart enough to realise that an initative to "show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" coming from a president whose first act in office caused and is still causing the death of women all across the world and who starts wars based on lies isn't exactly credile.
sorry dubya, like it reads in your fave book: you'll be judged by your actions.
concerning that initiave, i hope they'll find a tagline as wonderful as "just say no".

and then he talked about equal jsutice for all, and all i could think about was damien echols being on death row for crimes he didn't commit. and about jessie misskelly and jason baldwin being in prison for crimes they didn't commit. it's been 12 years of injustice in arkansas.
i wonder how he wants to fund the training for those lawyers who don't get paid enough when covering capital cases. and i wonder which labs should do the dna tests. i wonder whether he thinks it works as it does on csi, 45 minutes, and the tests are done and the right person prosecuted. i wonder whether he knows about the waits in state labs.

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

and then came the "oh-how-do-i-love-multi-lateralism" part of the speech. i wonder whether he thinks condis being in europe today is enough to costitute "working" with us annoying europeans. too bad he never mentioned poland or called silvio berlusconi "sergio". i like that.
it wasn't quite as striking as the "axis of evil" thing, but syria, you're bad! really bad! don't you have some of that oil we like so much, too? what? you think saudia arabia and pakistan are worse than you? shame on you!

"the united states has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else."
unless you have oil, that is, of course.

"our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home." exactly. those people planting road side bombs in baghdad are the same that flew planes into the world trade center, right? what? they weren't? then...could it be, that they weren't a danger until you started that war because of a lie? hm?

in any way, i was quite shocked i had to agree with the miserable failure on one thing: democracy is cool.

it rocks. and it rocks that many iraqis voted last weekend, and that only a few were killed when doing so. yes, it's good saddam is gone. but it would have been better to have a plan for what to do afterwards.
it rocks that safia taleb al-suhail could do something her father couldn't do and voted in an election. so yeah. smart move, spinpeople. you got me with this.

that last spin thing, however, talking about marine corps sergeant byron norwood sobered me up quite quickly though.
it breaks my heart to think this brave marine, loved by his mom and dad, died in a war thinking he was protecting his mother when he died because his commander in chief lied.
he died for connections between iraq and al-quaida that never existed until the us started their war, he died for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
it deeply saddens me. the us military deserves better.
every time i hear about dead marines these days, i keep thinking that this could have been alex. i keep worrying that he might join up again because he feels so much duty towards the marine corps.
sad, this.

i hope marine corps sergeant norwoods family felt better at the end of this state of the union address and found some solace in their son's death being recognised by the world.

wonkette very eloquently put something into words i wouldn't have dared to write myself:
"10:02 Mother of dead soldier and Iraqi voter got tangled up.... sort of perfect metaphor for the war, except that it wasn't fatal."

if only the war in iraq could be untangled as easily as a pearl necklace stuck on a blazer sleeve.

so that was that. now let's wait and see which wars the miserable failure will start next week.

i actually managed to find and upside to it all though:

it's only three more state of the unions to go, right?

right.