My Fellow Citizens;

If you’re like me, that whole speech last night is a bit of a blur. In fact, it was almost blurry enough. Almost. If Bush wins the election, next year I’m going to have to resort to some of those harder drugs that the kids have apparently stopped taking these days. Facile lies and unkeepable promises are so much easier to take when they come out of the mouth of a seven-foot tall magenta lizard.

Anyway, I’ve prepared this partial guide to what was said and what wasn’t last night. Annotation was a tougher task this year - after last year’s contretemps over all those really detailed references to certain weapons programs, this SOTU address strenuously avoided names, numbers, and - when possible - nouns:

“Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities…” - This line will be quoted quite a bit in the coming months, and you have to admire the carefulness of its construction. For instance, note that Bush didn’t say “weapons of mass destruction programs-related activities.” Word order is important - he’s talking about activities in programs related to weapons of mass destruction. There’s a difference. In this construction, the Iraqi Beaker Manufacturing Collective’s annual softball game would qualify. [By the way, the final score was The IBMC All Stars 17, Saddam’s Sluggers 12 (Kay Report, page 6711).]

“Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands — (applause) — Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq. (Applause.)” - Even a Democrat like myself has to acknowledge that this is a nifty bit of presidential sarcasm. Amazingly, all but one of our 35 allies (Britain) managed to avoid any fatalities whatsoever until long after the war had ended! Given the enormous breadth of the coalition, that’s pretty impressive. One can only hope that US military commanders can pick up some pointers from their Macedonian and Latvian counterparts while they have the chance.

“Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people’s voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage. (Applause.)” - Remember: When gays start marrying people, only married people will be gay. Or something like that. The point is, we’ve had 27 amendments to the Constitution, and not a single one has involved excluding a group of people from something. That’s a little embarrassing. This one would finally fix that problem.

“In two weeks, I will send you a budget that funds the war, protects the homeland, and meets important domestic needs, while limiting the growth in discretionary spending to less than 4 percent. (Applause.) This will require that Congress focus on priorities, cut wasteful spending, and be wise with the people’s money. By doing so, we can cut the deficit in half over the next five years. (Applause.)” If you’re like most Americans, you’re not quite sure what limiting the growth of discretionary spending to 4 percent means, though it does sort of sound like a way to reduce the deficit to some extent. If you’re an economist, you are crying. It’s roughly the same as saying that the coming year will see a massive reduction in budgetary spending-related program activities.

“And tonight I pledge that we are going to track down and capture the man who planned the 9/11 attacks, the man who founded and to this day leads the Al Qaeda terrorist network, Osama bin Laden.” - Oddly, this line wasn’t actually in the speech. TelePrompTer error or something, I guess. The President did mention Saddam Hussein by name five times, though, and September the 11th three times. So that’s something.

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All-in-all, the State of the Union Address served its purpose and also managed to break some new ground. This year’s speech, for instance, featured the first sarcastic applause break in SOTU history (”Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. (Applause.)”). That, at the very least, is progress.