STATE OF THE ONION: Did you watch Bush last night? We didn't -- went out and supported the US economy by purchasing a sofa instead. For coverage of the event, I turned, as always, to America's No. 1 weekly news source: My ass.
Just kidding. I pulled up The Onion and read its lead story: "President Creates Cabinet Level Position to Coordinate Scandals."
"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.
The centerpiece of Bush's plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.
THE STATE OF THE UNION IS AWFUL: I almost wrote about this over the weekend, but restrained myself. You can see how long that lasted. Here it is, short version: I can't remember a moment in my adult life in which the fundamental foundations of our Republic and the world at large were this compromised and unstable. Will 2006 be worse than 2005, which wasn't exactly a stroll in the park? Damned if I know. What do I look like, a psychic? All I'm saying is that multiple conditions favor outcomes that could be really crappy.
YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a great group that's soon to become as maligned as the ACLU, has sued AT&T for assisting the NSA with its warrantless domestic spying program (via Slashdot).
H5N1 REACHES IRAQ: And not just bird deaths, either. The WHO confirmed Monday that a teenage Iraqi girl died of the disease on Jan. 17. Remember that thing I just said about how conditions right now favor some really crappy outcomes in 2006? Uh ... this would be one of them. BTW: The big media hasn't really sorted out the importance of this: It's not even mentioned on homepages of the WaPo or NYT sites at this hour (although the NYT is promoting a story about China's spotty response to the disease).
BLOGS ON BUSH: Liberal David Corn: a "comic-book defense of the war in Iraq." Words of the night? "Retreat" and "isolationism." Corn: "Did a new memo come in from the pollsters?" Smug A-List conservative Glenn Reynolds: "The delivery was, for Bush, good, and the substance was mostly good, too, though the cloning-ban stuff didn't thrill me. The Presidential Commission on entitlement reform was also very lame, though realistically it's probably all he can do." Military-themed conservative Austin Bay: "The 'terrorist surveillance program' is the correct way to phrase it." (Editor's note: Yes, it's the correct phrase if you're intent on helping people miss the point). Liberal kos (Markos Moulitsas Zúniga): "Nowhere near as good or powerful as last year's (which I thought was his best speech ever). This was, frankly, more of the same ol'." And Wonkette: "Seriously, shouldn’t the Democratic Response have been Governor Kaine just saying, 'WTF, Mr. President?'”
A great idea from pioneer Chris Lydon: Blogs of the Union.
LUNCH-HOUR UPDATE: From this afternoon's Blogometer, which focused on the SOTU: "We'll get into issue-by-issue critiques of the speech below, but it's worth mentioning here that conservatives were anything but enthusiastic about the speech." Democrat Senator Nancy Pelosi's headline at The Stakeholder: "It Was a Nice Break from Reality TV." And there's this from War Liberal: "Did he really call for a ban on 'human-animal hybrids'? Is this a real concern? Are we at war with the Lobster People again?"
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