Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.

That sentence is never going to be topped in a Bush State of the Union address, and I don’t think there’s any point in hoping for one.  So the slushing about on the Iraq War brought out only one minor cringe last night — a simple bit of rhetoric that “This is not the war we expected, but it is the war we have and must win”, or something to that effect — which poses the eternal question “Who’s this ‘we’?”  So, such stuff aside, what I’m left with in watching a Bush state of the Union Address, then, are two items.  #1: The upteenth not to be followed up on and punted into the far flung future insistence that we find alternative sources of energy… a wink and a nod to the Corn Belt for the pointless pursual of Ethanol.  And #2:  The absolutely insane issues brought up as a major policy battle.  Granted, Clinton was good at piling up minute policies that don’t particularly affectme,  anyone I know, or anyone I may know in the immediate future — V-Chips anyone?– and wrapping them up into a laundry list, but Bush manages the feat of singling them out.  Who can forget?

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos?

Or:

99 words on the topic of Steroids.

The great thing about that moment was that when Bush mentioned Steroids, the camera flashed over to the invited professional athlete in our midst, New England quarterback Tom Brady, who — so far as I know — does not use steroids.  (There was another professional athlete that Bush mentioned last night, who is doing things in Africa.)

I can’t recall anything of this sort last night, but the affect of priming a minute item and centering focus on it is to cover up the fact that there are no real popular policy initiatives that the president desires to force forward.  The spirit of this did come last night when Bush introduced the founder of the “Baby Einstein” company — something I would very much like to look into to see if this product placement was a kickback to the campaign contributor — Disney.

Oh.  And Bush wasnts to restart the French Foreign Legion.  What, you say that you didn’t catch that one?

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