And so we’ve been given the state of our Union, as seen through the eyes of President Bush. What I’m most amused by this morning is the press and their reaction to the State of the Union address from last night. I purposely listened to the speech myself last night, tuning into Fox about 9:08pm EST. I noticed that for the most of the first half of the address, President Bush focused on internal and national based concerns, including healthcare and education and tax cuts. For the second half of the address, he described his thoughts on and alluded to the proof of Iraq defying the UN-based resolutions, with regards to the lack of weapons disarmament. He also points out that we used diplomacy throughout the 90’s with North Korea, who purposely stated that they abandoned their nuclear program only to discover eight years later that they lied and are now nuclear weapons capable. Judging by what I saw today on TV and heard on the radio, the press missed the first 40 minutes of the address last night.
The only thing I’ve seen to have any amount of reaction is the “coming war”. Well that and whether or not Iraq is a threat at all. I’d like to know what happened to the rest of the news from the broadcast last night. I feel sorry for all the people that were too busy to watch it for themselves – they don’t even know that we’re slated for a tax break, if Congress and the Senate passes the Bill. If you’ve grown to feel like this “coming war” is the only thing everyone is talking about, around your office, school, or home, you can thank the media for that. It’s getting more airtime on the tube than porn on Cinemax at night.
Fox News did have something new this morning, that I had missed last night. It seems at 8:59, the major networks carried a commercial by devote Democrat Susan Sarandon. Dear Susan has shot her mouth off on almost every issue over the last half decade that can get her a bit more limelight in the world. Her, and Tim Robbins – her husband and whipping boy, have been to every press covered protest that they could find in the last few years. Don’t get me wrong – she has the Constitutionally assured right to protest whatever she likes. I can even respect her for speaking out on certain issues; it would be easier to do if she had something good to say. She has the money to get her face on a commercial 30 seconds before the State of the Union, saying to America “What has Iraq done?” followed by a bit by a former ambassador answering “Nothing!” My comments to Susan are this: How concerned would you be about everything that you have time to protest now, if you had a nine to five job to work everyday? Better yet, how easy would it be for you to go traveling all over the nation to express your gracious opinions, if you didn’t have the millions that you’ve nicked through Hollywood? That’s what I would like to know.
On the lighter side of the news, I think my new PowerBook has a faulty Combo Drive – it keeps spitting out all of my CD’s and DVD’s now… it worked for a couple of days, if you kept putting the disc back in, but now it won’t even read (or even spin) the disc at all. Also, I’ve noticed that this American Idol phenomenon is an old show reborn. A successful old show at that – has anyone else figured out that American Idol is simply a season long episode of The Gong Show? Just thought I’d mention that too.
What I really want to know is how Steve is dealing with the whole Susan-commercial thing. Give the amount of bile that Susan causes him to create every time he sees her or hears her, it should be interesting to see his reaction to this latest barrage of press that she’s gotten. He’s a Democrat, too, so here’s a personally disliked woman bringing “his team’s” message to the world… quite an interesting twist, eh?
Oh, and to answer the posed question, about “What has Iraq done,” Susan, I say this: “Nothing! …yet.”