State of the Union

Ballot Boxing

Weren't home to watch this week's State of the Union? Take our crib notes—jotted down during the broadcast—from a politics-obsessed (and slightly left-leaning) MC editor:

• Nancy Pelosi looks very, very sleepy. Let's turn down the heat and pass around the Starbuck's, people. You're making the most successful democratic experiment in the history of the world look like a snooze-fest.
• Dubya just called Columbian drug dealers "purveyors of false populism." Even his script writers don't know what that means.
• Did he just make fun of Hill and Barack on taxes? Maybe there are people who want to pay higher taxes, he said, and in that case "the IRS takes checks and money orders." Oh, snap!
• Great moment: Charlie Rangel was just shown laughing heartily after Bush said "nu-Q-lar."
• Yes, George, wouldn't it be great if there were an "international agreement with the potential to stop and reverse green house gases..." Oh, wait, there is! It's called the Kyoto Protocol…and it's waiting for your signature.
• Energy security. I love it. We will scare Americans into building wind turbines.
• "Buying and selling of human life" should be illegal? Thank you Captain Obvious.
• Do you think Laura anesthetizes her hands before the speech, to be able to sustain that kind of enthusiastic clapping? Everyone else is phoning it in, but she's just shy of painting her face and whipping out the giant foam finger.
• Just over 50 minutes. Nicely done, W. Now put the Sharpie down. It's past your bedtime. If you watch Kathleen Sibelius's folksily-written, frozenly delivered snooze of a Democratic reaction you'll be fast asleep in no time.