Other SOTU post-mortems you should read

Pam:

As expected, Dear Leader leaned heavily on the use of Terror Unlimited^TM. He mentioned terror, terrorism, or terrorists 21 times in that speech. My favorite section of the night, delivered in his best bogus bumf*ck hick accent:

This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaeda, we want to know about it because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

There you have it -- the neatly-wrapped-and-tied-with-a-bow justification for his domestic spying program. I could hear the Freepi from afar, giving a standing ovation for this bullsh*t.

Those of you who are liveblogging fans (and if you are one of them please e-mail me and tell me why on earth why) should also read Pam's minute-by-minute here.

Drifty:

I'm sorely tempted to heap up the adjectives, but why bother? This was warmed over turkey dinner. From 2003.

We can disagree...as long as you capitulate with everything I say.

I want to compromise...as long it's only you who gives anything up.

We can debate...but you are forbidden from bringing up the inconvenient fact of my five years of lies, incompetence and serial reckless fuckuppery.

I want to keep this civil...as long as my racist, Christopathic Party gets to continue to march unmolested under Karl Rove's banner and keep calling you cowards and traitors for political advantage.

Ignore everything we have said and done and not done for the last twenty years -- and in the last twenty minutes -- and bend over.

HoDee:

Remember this? "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Those are George Bush's famous 16 words from his 2003 State of the Union address, delivered less than two months before he sent troops into war in Iraq.

They were false. Three years later Americans are still demanding answers on the manipulation of intelligence by an administration eager to start a war.

Americans have a lot of questions that went unanswered tonight. When George Bush delivered his State of the Union address, he had a big megaphone and the world's attention. He had the opportunity to regain some degree of credibility with the American people -- more than half of whom disapprove of his performance as president. But he failed to answer the real questions ordinary Americans have about the state of our union:

Read on, McDuff...

=Sigh= I wish I knew how to quit him....

Cindy Sheehan on what really happened:

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That's Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said: "Take these steps slowly." I said, "You didn't care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That's because you were protesting." Wow, I get hauled out of the People's House because I was, "Protesting."

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."

I told him that my son died there.

More as I find 'em.

UPDATE:

Of course, thre's The Rude Pundit:

The only thing significant in the entire evening was the treatment of two mothers who lost children in the Iraq War. Bush recognized the parents and widow of Sergeant Dan Clay, killed in Fallujah last month (didn't we secure Fallujah by leveling it?), who stood to applause and cheers from the slavering politicians. Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan was arrested and led out of the gallery for revealing a t-shirt that read, "2245 Dead. How many more?" She didn't even get to hear Bush promise to kill more soldiers like Dan and Casey, as well as more Iraqi civilians, in order to honor them. He may as well have dug up their corpses and made them dance, dance, grotesquely, horribly, in celebration.