January 29, 2003

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well.

Vast differences of opinion are to be had about the luvly SOTU, it seems, and of course upon sleeping a bit my opinion has ripened, all cheese-like.

Sullivan is rhapsodic, but we sort of expect that because he does like the perpetually underestimated Mr. Bush, doesn't he? He also has more of a personal stake in the effort to combat HIV in Africa, and it resonated strongly with him. Sullivan was right to label the domestic bits "immensely expensive and clearly liable to saddle us with at least another decade of deficit spending," but he was also right to take note of the ambitious nature of the goals set forth in the speech.

Den Beste, on the other hand, is in the depths of a miserable chocolate binge, apoplectic with disappointment:

"That's it? Consultation with allies? More horseshit in the UN building? That's the grand plan?"

A case, perhaps, of overestimating President. Den Beste is a smart fellow, and most things he's said about this war--how to do it, when to do it, why to do it--make bushels of sense. Unfortunately: he's not the President.

Green is, well, drunk. But he can stay up much later than I can, and can drink more, too. More power to him.

Lileks--who has been jumpy lately, like me--has the best sarcastic dismissal of loopy conspiracy theorists who oppose the Evil Lord Bush and his Imperialist Minions of Doom and object to the idea that we're going to help the Iraqis out:

"Yes, yes, yes, Hitler told the Austrians he was liberating them, Soviet Russia said the same to Eastern European nations, it's all about oil, Bush is stupid, Sean Penn should have Rumsfeld's job, and construction on that Afghan pipeline starts ANY DAY NOW."

The well-adjusted folks at Warblogger Watch have nothing to say about SOTU, but are content to amuse themselves by poking sticks at Reynolds.

Which is, pretty much, what President Bush did to the UN last night:

"In all of these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow a process — it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world."

The bold-type is mine, but the President did put the word in bold himself when he said it, which made me chortle. It was a big thumb in the eyeball of the bureauweeniecrats while going ehhhhhh! in an annoying Gilbert Godfrey voice.

Meanwhile, over at the NYT, Thomas Friedman pretends to be an Arab, and does a really poor job of it, too. Maureen Dowd does an excellent job of being MoDo, which means that she can dismissively call dismissive comments dismissive with a simpleton's abandon while claiming to speak for the entire Union and suggesting that planting "Athenian democracy on Mesopotamian soil" is a bad thing, not to be attempted. Mr. Raines serves up...well, not much, to be honest. Tax cut for the wealthy, radical right-wing economics, Bush's passion "reserved" for the topic of Iraq (which is just flat-out wrong), broad international support Good, unilateralism Bad, and so on.

Alterman thinks it's all about Corporate America, and essentially says that "I'm not saying that Bush is stupid--but here's Paul Krugman saying it for me." He stands with General Schwartzkopf and A Bunch Of Really Smart People Who Know About Science And Economics in his skepticism of the war effort. He also points out that the International Atomic Energy Commission has not confirmed any resumption of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which is hearty fare if you happen to think that the IAEC is a highly effective organization that has our best interests in mind. [And it now seems that Schwartzkopf isn't quite as "unconvinced" as Alterman would have us believe. No mention of this, of course. --IW]

I, for one, am somewhere between the cocoamatose Den Beste and the choked-up Sullivan. I wanted a bit more oomph! on Iraq, but I'm content (for now) to let the diplomatic portion of the effort play itself out to the bitter end. I'm all for the ambitious domestic goals, but I would like to see a bit more honest acknowledgement that we're spending ourselves into the red here, especially since certain homeland security measures are being scrapped because of their expense.

So, I'm pretty much back where I was on Monday night. Sigh...