*Sung to the tune of: "If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands"

Thanks for posting that! I hadn't seen it. Too right! ...and not hard to sing!

Well, I took a pass on the State of the Union Tuesday and we went to see Steve Earle instead. His voice was pretty trashed, and he ended early, but he never once said "NUKE-U-LAR". Plus, we got to play a little hoop in the summer beer garden of a punk bar after the show, so it was what I'd call a well-rounded evening.

I did feel obliged to read the text of Tuesday's SotU address. A fair amount of it was hooey, but there were a few interesting bits in there ($15 billion for AIDS, emphasis on treatement...)

I read bits like " The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity. " and I think that you could probably hear bits like that pouring out of the mouth of Jed Barlett -- Aaron Sorkin does try to give his fictional president a veneer of Christian religious piety.

A few days before the SotU address I was listening to about 10 minutes of a speech about politics and Bush (by Molly Ivins, I think) and she said that regardless of whether Bush is the brightest bulb in the box, he is sincere and *does* believe in what he is doing in terms of religion and destiny. Hmmm, should I be reassured by that or scared? I think "B".

I'm pretty hard on Shrub, but i don't find much to dissuade me. I was reading a review of a new book by David Frum, who was a speechwriter for Bush in 2000-2001. The most interesting bit was about Bush's long-time advisor, Karen Hughes:

"Hughes rarely read books and distrusted people who did -- anything she did not already know she saw no point in knowing"

and on Bush's faults: "often incurious and as a result ill-informed"

Granted it's the opinion of one guy and he has to say *something* saucy to sell books and make a million, but I gather he *is* a credentialed Republican, and I suspect that when Frances Fitgerald writes the Shrub version of "Way Out There in the Blue" in 10-15 years, things will be shown to be just this bad or worse.

Is it too much to want a president who is smart and is curious about the world beyond our borders?