The Bush speech

Well, I made myself listen to all 45 minutes or so of Bush's State of the Union tonight. Sure enough, it was one more encore of his endless droning about effectively having to be emperor instead of president -- needing to "surveil" in whatever way he wishes without warrants. And as always, of course, he simply skipped mention of FISA, even though that act's availability of warrants has allowed and continues to allow 100% of what is needed to provide national security.

Bush reaffirmed his belief that the U.S. should be charging around the world building "democracies," even though the most recent of these "democracies" one after the other have been electing fundamentalist fanatics to office. As one commentator put it, the founders of the nation intended to spread democracy by example, not by military force. The rest of the speech? Almost nothing about Iran. Nothing at all about North Korea. Almost nothing about Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans.

Perhaps what surprised me most in the commentaries that I saw was the number of Republicans who seemingly don't want to be anywhere near His Lordship's coattails.