So the president of these United States delivered his State of the Union address this past week. GW opened his speech with a rather long-winded diatribe about terrorism, American military action in the Middle East and the very real cost of freedom.

With American casualties in Iraq increasing in numbers throughout the preceding months, the President is now in the unique position to explain to the American people how it makes sense to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer’s wages to rebuild the political infrastructure of a country on the other side of the world.

A country with little to no ties to the terrorist network responsible for the twin towers, a country that posed little to no immediate threat to the United States. His tone was patriotic and nationalistic with an unwavering intention. He dropped names, those of high-ranking officers now living in cages on Guantanamo Bay, the token of a successful campaign.

He implored congress to renew the Patriot Act, the single most controversial piece of legislation created since the twin towers fell, a suggestion that met with a rather awkward response from the assembly.

All in all, the terrorism topic composed about one third of the address’ total runtime. Next, Bush addressed the war on drugs, trailing into a rather obscure digression about the great ills of steroid abuse, where GW really chided those athletes who took drugs to enhance performance.

A kind of unconscious response to Schwarzeneger winning in California, I suppose. Not exactly the most pressing issue, but why not. From here it was into some fundamental Christian values and a little ditty about abstinence that was oddly reminiscent of the old, ” you’ll get hair on the palms of your hands” tactic. GW declared that any teenagers who took it out of their pants before respective marriage vows were exchanged and the conjugal bed rightly consecrated were most assuredly bound to contract a horrible and crippling venereal disease. Ouch!

This statement provided a nice transition for the gay marriage issue. Bush has been under considerable pressure from the Christian right to amend the constitution since the whole Massachusettes fiasco broke out last year, and Bush needs a strong fundamentalist backing to secure the November election, an ironic truism when one considers the problems in the Middle East.

The right got what they paid for, a soft-spoken threat to the heathen hordes, no queer eye for the marriage tie. The next big fish was the economy. Bush praised his tax cuts and declared the current economy a success, which it is, if you were already rich before the tax cuts. He reaffirmed his dedication to the No Child Left Behind program, a sticker program for a world where the correctional system is now empowered to mediate classroom conflicts and school funding continues to wade in the same abysmal hollow it has always called home.

Bush closed on Medicare/Medicaid, the great whore of political speech writing material, solemnly vowing to do something to fix the whole Medicare/Medicaid thing. In a rather touching final moment, Bush’s speechwriter’s thoughts turned toward the higher things in life and called for the will of the great man God in heaven to come and guide our nation through these troubled times. What can I say? Long live the king.