The State of the Union Is "Suck It, Fuckers":
Let's get one thing straight right here, right now, for every right-wing fuck doll in the media who gets up in arms about how "rude" the Democrats were for shouting "No" when Bush stood up last night and said, "Fuck your Social Security. I piss on your retirement": From the Buffalo News on Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union speech: "At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left before Clinton finished talking." What did the Republicans boo for? Because Clinton dared to say that there were some things that government must do.

Let's get another thing straight: the moment when Safia Taleb al-Suhail embraced Janet Norwood, whose son was killed in action in Iraq, resides in a stomach-churning netherworld between revolting and disturbing. It was revolting for its exploitation of the pain of this mother as a political prop for Bush's speech. Byron Norwood, a Marine Sergeant from good ol' Texas, was killed in the destruction of Fallujah. It was disturbing because the media's perception of the hug was such a product of desired delusion: please, please, please don't let this mother's son have died in vain, please don't let that man on the podium have sold us a bill of goods.

And the Rude Pundit is sick of hearing how "bold" is every fucking thing Bush proposes. If George Bush took a shit in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Orrin Hatch would appear on Fox "News" to declare how bold a shit it was and how mighty a loaf was pinched out and how are the Democrats going to deal with a President who is unafraid to take a dump with a stone Lincoln staring at him. It is not "bold" to target gays for isolation and denigration in the Constitution; it is not "bold" to cut domestic programs that mainly help those in poverty so that massive tax cuts can be made "permanent;" it is not "bold" to say that you want to create a Social Security system that no longer guarantees a retirement benefit for seniors and that cuts benefits to others; it is not "bold" to hinder scientific developments under the veil of "protecting life;" it is not "bold" to declare that that we should make sure that people on death row are actually guilty; it is not "bold" to imply that you will use military force to impose your political will on other nations. If this is what passes for "bold" in this America, then, indeed, cowards should hold their heads high and declare that their pusillanimity is actually "bold" retreat. Or maybe such "bold" people will just ink their fingers purple in solidarity with Iraqi "voters." Or the truly "bold" will dress in purple (like Condi).

But there he was, as ever, smirking, winking before talking about AIDS, looking around at every pause in the 88 applause interruptions (really, the most exercise Dennis Hastert gets all year), and telling all the nation, those who love and those who hate him, telling all the world, "Suck it, fuckers." And it didn't matter if Bush once again invoked weapons of mass destruction and state sponsors of terrorism despite the fact that the last time he did so he was lying. It didn't matter if he was lying about the "crisis" in Social Security. It didn't matter that he contradicted himself over and over within the speech, saying, for instance, "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else" just before telling Saudi Arabia they better hop on the democracy bandwagon. It didn't matter if he portrayed Iraq and its people as grovellers at the feet of the mighty USA. Because he knows you better suck it, America, and don't neglect his balls while you're down there suckin'.

Bush ended "his" speech with a quote from Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 Inaugural Address, where Roosevelt included the famous words of poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth." Of course, the Republicans are desperately trying to co-opt FDR to justify their destruction of his works. But one wonders if Bush has read the entirety of Roosevelt's Second Inaugural. See, because in the rest of it, Roosevelt said, "We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster." Huh. Just the thing that the Republicans booed when Clinton invoked such ideas in 1995.

In the rest of the speech, Roosevelt spoke about putting "private autocratic powers" in their place as "subordinate to the public government." And he spoke about the millions of people in desperate poverty and the soul of a nation that needs to help its own: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." Damn, how short a time is history when we look upon such notions as too radical to even be discussed.

By contrast, George W. Bush says, Yeah, lap it up, America. You are playing a sucker's game where the winners have already been promised the prizes.