The State of the Union is… small-ball

The President delivered a respectfully long 50-minute or so State of the Union speech tonight. I commend the Loquacious Pup who directed me to stop listening to it so that she could better hear the Proud Family Movie. She may be but a small child… but she has her priorities in better order than I do.
The parts I did listen to were… uninteresting. I noted the usual pandering to St. Laura Bush nee Welch… btw… you did all know she once killed a man, right? [standing ovation.] Anyway, I listened to the war president rattle off nonsense about a commission to study social security, Medicare, etc., 70,000 new science teachers (perhaps they can double as police officers, to replace some of the 100,000 new police officers that Bill Clinton ordered up at a prior SOTU, some of whom have doubtless been deployed as reservists to Iraq), funding to campaign donors in the nuclear and coal industries, and more tax cuts [standing ovation.]
The President did give a hearty welcome to both John Roberts and Sam Alito, who, we should note, was promptly greeted by the states of Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee which have proposed legislation banning all abortion (except where a mother’s life is in immediate jeopardy.) (Via Rorschach of No Capital.)
But for the inarticulateness of the delivery, one might think that new Bush family member Bill Clinton was delivering the speech; as noted on MYDD’s Breaking Blue, one wonders when we will hear about school uniforms and v-chips?
None of this matters of course: the President is simply going through a rote constitutional duty, and is eager to get off stage as fast as possible, lest he mangle our language some more. What really matters is the unbridled and unchecked expansion of executive power we don’t see… an expansion helped immeasurably by Democratic senators who somehow saw some “principle” in voting against the confirmation of Sam Alito at a time the vote meant nothing, but refusing to support a fillibuster that might have kept him off the Court.
Our Republic has survived a lot of threats in its 2 1/3 centuries. With a great deal of dumb luck, it will survive the Bush Administration. The $64 trillion question, of course… is that how you bet?