Causing Deprivation.

I was at the movies during Dubya’s State of the Union address — I tried to watch it online this evening after my Radicalism sections, but Quicktime died in mid-sentence, so I just ended up reading it. And, while I thought it was very well-written as per the norm, my thoughts on the address have been colored even more than usual by the punditocracy. So, with that in mind, I’ll avoid being derivative and just direct y’all to the following:

Fred Kaplan: “Some of the president’s statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, ‘We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing.’ This is just false.“

Chris Suellentrop: “You could call Bush’s idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act…This was the Greatest Love of All speech, in which Bush asserted that The Children Are Our Future. But before you sign on to Bush’s proposal, be aware that what he’s offering is pretty tough love.“

Will Saletan: “Tonight’s State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He’s just flexible about when to apply them.“

Joe Conason: “Although George W. Bush and the White House aides who craft these public spectacles become increasingly adept at manipulating the feelings of his audience every year, their underlying method remains the same: to shade inconvenient realities with rhetorical vagueness and outright deception.“

E.J. Dionne: “Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush’s State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.“

Freaks of the NSA.

“The sources of this anarchism [the Columbine massacre] are 30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house, and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family altogether.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan introduces us to J.D. Crouch, conservative freakshow and, naturally, the new deputy national security adviser. In case you were wondering about his foreign policy inclinations, Crouch also appears to be against missile treaties and, er, pro-chemical weapons.

Wardrobe Malfunction.

“Auschwitz, great…are the Packers playing?” By all that is good and holy, what was Dick Cheney thinking? It’s the 60th anniversary of liberation from that Hell on Earth, and our veep, as the Post wryly put it, “was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.” Even at occasions where it seems well nigh impossible to make the US role in world affairs look bad, this administration plays the Ugly American to the hilt. For shame.

Whence the Evildoers?

War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.” Lucasfilm reveals the Episode 3 title crawl. You know it’s sad times when the opening lines of a SW prequel display more nuance than the most recent inaugural address.

Cooking Rice.

“‘I really don’t like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly,’ Mr. Dayton said.” In a display of dissent that bodes well for the Dems’ outlook in the coming term, several Senate Dems — most notably Ted Kennedy, Mark Dayton, Carl Levin, Evan Bayh, Robert Byrd, and Barbara Boxer — use the Condi hearings to call out the administration on Iraq. (Newcomer Ken Salazar and Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, rolled over immediately.) Update: She’s through, but not before racking up the most No votes (13) in 180 years (since the “Corrupt Bargain” backlash against Henry Clay in 1825.)

Freedom on the March.

Alright, enough partying…let’s get it on! In keeping with the conclusions of Sy Hersh’s recent New Yorker piece, Cheney stops by Imus before the inauguration to rattle the saber at Iran (using Israel as the bad cop.) I can see it now — Iran: We’re really pretty sure this time they’ve got WMD. Update: Iran rattles back.

Freedom, Yeah!

“America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” Really? Well, dang, that was easy. But who’s going to break the news to China, Russia, and the Saudis, for starters? As per many of Michael Gerson’s Big-Moment speeches, Dubya’s Second Inaugural was a well-crafted piece of prose with some nice rhetorical flourishes and an eye to history. But, stylistic flair aside, Dubya might as well have been declaring himself the President of Mars, for all the grounding this speech had in contemporary reality.

“The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Freedom…I can dig it. Reminds me of the end of Braveheart. But, as Slate‘s Fred Kaplan already aptly questioned, “What is this thing called ‘freedom’?…Does ‘freedom’ always mean a Western-style, or pro-American, democracy? Whatever freedom is, how do we go about spreading it?” And, for that matter, isn’t this the guy who once told us there “ought to be limits to freedom?”

I know we shouldn’t expect nuance from this president, but today’s speech was even worse than usual (as well as being somewhat distasteful, given the very real problems with “freedom” Iraq is facing right now.) The only things I learned from Dubya’s speech are that freedom rains down like a benediction (in fact, exactly like a benediction) on the peoples of the world, and, whatsmore, that evildoers hate them some freedom. And that was about it. Seriously, he sounded like he was kicking off that goofy rave in the second Matrix.

On the domestic side, I was somewhat surprised that Bush didn’t push the Ownership Society meme a little harder — he only mentioned it once — but I guess that’ll probably get more run in the upcoming State of the Union. (Perhaps he didn’t want anyone reminded of Colin Powell’s “You Break it, You Own it” Pottery Barn rule when they were supposed to be drinking in the sweet, sweet freedom.) That being said, Bush did manage to squeeze in some Grade-A chum for the pro-lifers — “always remember that even the unwanted have worth” — which he then half-heartedly tried to mask with a plea to end racism. (Freedom, yeah! Bigotry, no! Serenity now! I think I got it.)

All in all, the inaugural wasn’t an embarrassing speech as delivered — Gerson’s too good at his job for that. But, like too much in this administration, it was all style and no substance, offering false simplicity and sanctimony in the place of good ideas or hard-won truths. In short, it was just like Dubya.

The Halftime Score.

Monica who? On the eve of Dubya II, Salon‘s Peter Dizikes offers a short but comprehensive list of this administration’s scandals thus far. Thirty-four and counting…not that you’d know it from watching the evening news.

Blowback.

“Sometimes, words have consequences?” So do actions, Mr. President. The CIA has at last uncovered an indisputable link between Iraq and terrorism…Unfortunately, we created it. “[A]s instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops.” (Apparently, we were too busy not finding WMD to spend any time securing these conventional caches.) My, oh my, this administration has really done a bang-up job of making Americans safer, haven’t they? Just think how safe we’ll be after four more years.

In my country, there is no problem.

Somebody tell Tuscon. “The State Department is insisting that, contrary to the impression you might get from all that vitriol spewed by Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat Sagdiyev on ‘Da Ali G Show,’ Kazakhstan is not a ‘a wild den of misogynistic dog-shooting Gypsy- and Jew-haters,’ as faux Kazakh journalist Borat once put it, but rather a perfectly nice country with little record of anti-Semitism.”