For the
2007 State of the Union Address I was all set to play the Terror* Drinking Game, wherein you drink every time Bush mentions
terror or one of its cognates, but this year, Greg Palast and his kids turned out to have
a much smarter idea for a SOTU drinking game:
There was that tongue again. When the President lies he’s got this weird nervous tick: He sticks the tip of his tongue out between his lips. Like a little boy who knows he’s fibbing. Like a snake licking a rat.
In his State of the Union tonight the President did his tongue thing 124 times—my kids kept count.
Indeed, it was an awful night for those of us playing the Terror* game: it was a full twenty minutes in before the Decider mentioned "terrorists." That's a long time to go without a drink when you're listening to George W. Bush.
Last week I was trying to do some MLK-related Flickr Blogging in honor of the man and the holiday, but I just couldn't get the words and images to come together right—and where MLK Jr. is involved, I very much want to get things right. Perhaps the stakes are just lower with George W. Bush, I don't know, but I hope that the following Random 2007 State of the Union Address Flickr Blogging at least gets something right. Pressed for time, I used The Method.
"Thank you very much. And tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own -- as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker. (Applause.)
In his day, the late Congressman Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. from Baltimore, Maryland, saw Presidents Roosevelt and Truman at this rostrum. But nothing could compare with the sight of his only daughter, Nancy, presiding tonight as Speaker of the House of Representatives."
Neither could anything compare with the sight of this, coming at him across a Berlin hotel room in the decadent waning days of the Weimar Republic—but that's another story.
"The rite of custom brings us together at a defining hour -- when decisions are hard and courage is needed. We enter the year 2007 with large endeavors underway, and others that are ours to begin."
"Rex here just made a similar large endeavour on the carpet. Didn't ya, Rexy? Didn't ya? Oh, that was a big smelly large endeavour, oh yes it was." "Rrrrrrr."
"Some in this chamber are new to the House and the Senate -- and I congratulate
the Democrat majority. (Applause.) Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities. Each of us is guided by our own convictions -- and to these we must stay faithful."
"The mere mention of 'convictions' in relation to the Bush Administration makes my nipples explode with delight!"
"A future of hope and opportunity requires that all our citizens have affordable and available health care. (Applause.) When it comes to health care, government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children. And we will meet those responsibilities. For all other Americans, private health insurance is the best way to meet their needs."
"Pretty much every other developed nation has rejected the idiotic assumption that, as
Tom Tomorrow has said, parasitic middlemen (aka insurance companies) have to be allowed to make a profit before people can have access to health care. It seems obvious that
public health insurance is in fact the best way to meet these needs."
"Indeed. That line about 'private health insurance' may well be the most blatantly unsupported assertion in all of Bush's speech. Mmmmph. *slurp slurp*"
"And one of the first steps we can take together is to add to the ranks of our military so that the American Armed Forces are ready for all the challenges ahead. (Applause.) Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. (Applause.) A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. It would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time."
"Perhaps this Civilian Reserve Corps, whatever the hell it is, would be interested in my fearsome JAZZ HANDS!"
Reactions to the 2007 State of the Union Address have been...unenthusiastic.
"I spent weeks building this 'Bridge to the Future', but he hasn't used it once. Harrumph."
"I sure am glad I went with Palast's game and not the terror one. Thanks to that tongue thing, my doors of perception have been opened WIDE. Wooooooo."
As we contemplate the remainder of the Bush II presidency—as we watch our national treasure spilling into the sands of Iraq, and our national prestige spilling into the drains of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and our own government sneering at our own Constitution, and the gap between rich and poor widening, and the Earth warming, and the ocean levels rising—it is good to remember that, over the course of history, many other great civilizations have crashed and burned. It was probably foolish to think that ours would be any different.
(Random Flickr Blogging explained here; photos from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Labels: Random Flickr Blogging
