If you’re a masochist and need to read the whole thing, here. Have fun. Otherwise, I’m going to throw some shit at specific lines in this latest emanation from President Dumbass…

Unemployment is low, inflation is low, wages are rising.

1) depends on how you define unemployment.

2) the measurement used for inflation leaves out a lot. And “low” by whose standards? The debt is still shooting up.

3) rising in absolute numbers? Barely. Rising in a meaningful sense (read: faster than inflation)? Hell no. This discrepancy is why despite not having hit inflation-adjusted highs in gas prices and sustained the peak people still bitch loudly about them.

First, we must balance the federal budget.

LMBAO!!! This after 6 years of “defecits don’t matter”?

We can do so without raising taxes.

Sure. In fact, it’d be very easy. Just eliminate every piece of the government not explicitly authorized by the Constitution. Whu, what’s that? I can’t hear you, these damn pigs keep flying into my window.

In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and the Senate; they’re dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.

You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law.

Of course, what he doesn’t mention is that he’s slipped things in from his end too.

States that make basic private health insurance available to all their citizens should receive federal funds to help them provide this coverage to the poor and the sick.

Technically speaking, if government funding is involved it ain’t “private”…

We should establish a legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis. As a result, they won’t have to try to sneak in.

Y’know, you could just get rid of caps on immigration.

For too long, our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments and raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.

Says the lifelong kiss-ass to oil interests. Hah!

After a short, empty bit about alt-fuels and conservation (long story short, he implies subsidies out the wazoo, rather than dropping the ones on oil & letting the market work for once) comes the following:

[…]to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Uh, yeah, horde even more oil so the prices can be temporarily goosed, that’ll REALLY promote weaning off.

Five years have come and gone since we saw the scenes and felt the sorrow that the terrorists can cause. We’ve had time to take stock of our situation. We’ve added many critical protections to guard the homeland.

Like torture, warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, secret no-fly lists, and the tossing of “innocent until proven guilty”. Oh yeah, did I mention torture?

This war is more than a clash of arms. It is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance.

To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us.

You mean US meddling in a part of the world that was already nuts to begin with, whether for oil, apocalyptic obsession with Israel, or sheer hubris? Cuz if not, I have no idea WTF you’re referring to removing.

Radical Shia elements [in Iraq], some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads.

…and the ranks of many of those death squads are the same as that of current Iraqi security forces. Nice try though.

Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk.

Friends? What friends? The majority of Iraqis not only want us to leave, they even explicitly support attempts at killing our troops to encourage it! What part of “fuck off” is so hard to understand?

We didn’t drive Al Qaida out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.

Considering the half-assing of both wars, they can flip a coin.

The rest is even more blahblahblah, until he mentions Mutombo & that dude that stopped a guy from getting ran over by a subway train.

I come away w/ one question: why the fuck do they televise this? Seriously, other than the few brave souls who liveblog it (I don’t have the patience for that much bullshit in one sitting. Besides, Rachel Ray was on*), who watches it? As if there isn’t enough meaningless pomp in politics…

(* - yes, I watch that “Tasty Travels” show.  Two reasons: the food, an’ she’s kinda hot to me.  Nice ass for a white chick.)