State of which Union?

I prepared myself (or so I thought) to endure the entire State of the Union address last night. I was prepared for to hear the same speech I had heard numerous times before. But after 30 minutes I had to change stations, I just couldn't take it. Yes, I know we are supposed to be impressed that W's finally caught on to our energy crisis and the fact that maybe oil-based energy isn't the best for our future. But does he deserve some kind of fucking award for showing up to the party 30 years late? Well, this is America, and we give our kids $5 for every passing grade. And why was Cheney smirking throughout the entire energy policy portion of the speech?

But I switched over to my local PBS station. I was shocked to find that they were NOT broadcasting the idiot's speech. What they were airing was much more important, shows about the true state of afffairs in our country and the root causes. One show, entitled "Lives for Sale," covered the issue of human trafficking - specifically from mexico and central america into the US. They discussed many of the reasons for the mass immigration into the US and what some groups are doing to - are you ready for this - FIGHT POVERTY in these countries so that people NEED NOT leave their homes and their families to seak jobs paying more than $2/day. WOW. What an idea. Fight the root causes of an issue. So are they saying that so-called "illegal" immigration might be due to some larger problem? NAFTA? Corporate abuse of the working class populations in the Americas? Interesting.

The other show was on the meth epidemic in the US and, when you get down to it, the fact that pharmaceutical companies are a major reason meth became a problem in this country. It was good way to shine some light on the ridiculous amount of power placed in the hands of lobbyists for major corporations. Fortunately now that Democrats are in charge, the power of lobbyists and their corporate campaign contributors will come to a halt. Wait, smell that? Hmm, smells like sarcasm.

But the discussions today centered around the president's lame speech in which he said . . . well what did he say? Stay the course. America must succeed. (I didn't know there were people in government saying we shouldn't succeed.) There are problems. These problems need to be solved. We need to work together (spell "irony," George). Blah blah blah repeat.

There was some sense spoken last night, but it wasn't by GW or any of the annointed Democratic "frontrunners" for the presidential nomination in '08. Check it out: http://speaker.gov/newsroom/multimedia?id=0011; or just check out a good piece on the good words here: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0124-21.htm.

Now, where's my beer?