State of the Union

In watching the telecast of President Bush's final address to the combined houses of Congress, a few things crossed my mind:

- It KILLS me when he says the word Nuclear. He pronounces it "Nuke-U-Ler", and we all know it's more like "Nu-Clear". A world leader having a less than firm grasp around his first language is rather discouraging...

- The speech was more of the same. I have no hard evidence, but I'm sure that many, if not all, of the statistics he presented on his behalf were manipulated to illustrate the point the was trying to make. The whole thing was loaded with hotwords (Liberty, Freedom, Terror, the obligatory 9/11 reference).

- He spent about a minute (total) on Immigration and Education, and most of it was bumping his chest about No Child Left Behind (but many schools).

I am really not going to miss seeing him speak in public ever again. His poor decisions behind the big desk aside, he's simply a horrible public speaker. He slurs his words, misreads the teleprompter and his posture is cavalier at best. With only 357 days left until someone else is sworn in, let's hope his Lame Duck-ness prevents him from digging a deeper hole for us all to climb out of. His track record indicates that when faced with a logical course of action or an illogical one, he'll choose the latter without hesitation.

*Sigh*