8 Ways to Sunday

The Nation’s David Corn, author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, picks Bush’s State of the Union address in this snarky and informative article. I didn’t watch the speech myself, since I didn’t feel like having a rage-induced aneurysm last night. Had one of those in November, and I’m not due for at least another couple of weeks.

Particularly interesting is Corn’s note that Bush’s dire prediction of a bankrupt Social Security system by 2042 is completely at odds with the findings of the Congressional Budget Office, which determined that by 2052 the program would only be able to pay three quarters of scheduled benefits. As Corn says, this is indeed a problem but it’s hardly the catastrophe that the administration is gleefully touting.

There was apparently much political theatre afoot on both sides of the isle: Bush trotted out a female Iraqi voter and the parents of a dead Marine for a tear-jerking moment; Republican legislators waved purple-stained fingers in a show of solidarity with those who voted in Iraq’s January 30th election; and Democrats jeered, hissed, and chanted “No, no, no…” in response to Bush’s exaggerated claims of Social Security’s eminent demise. All they needed was a couple of clowns on stilts and a lion tamer, and they would’ve had a regular three-ring circus.

In other news, The Washington Post analyzed the dissent among moderate Republicans in an article available on MSNBC.com.

Other good SOTU-related discussion around the blogosphere:

• Kevin Drum at Political Animal liveblogs the speech, blasts the contrived “Rube Goldberg Folly” that is the GOP Social Security “reform” proposal, and brings up some interesting poll results showing how the left should (and should not) discuss the Social Security issue.
• Shakespeare’s Sister marvels at the irony of filling a speech with freedom rhetoric, then proposing a discriminatory amendment to the Constitution
• Mike at Running Scared proposes that the State of the Union address be renamed to something more fitting, like “The 2005 Presidential Commercial (Extended Edition).”