New Game: Drink when your President makes you ashamed!

Tonight is the State of the Union address, wherein President Bush will say the words "terror," "evil," and, "freedom," over and over again until someone shoves a nail up their nose and punctures their brain simply to end the grating sensation all that nonsense makes when it rubs up against the rational mind of an informed citizen. That is the constitutionally mandated method of determining when to stop the speech. I, however, will not be watching it, for the first time since about 1995. (One thing I will say, is that Bush is much better than Clinton at making a concise speech that hits his policy points in a simple and direct manner...Clinton SOTUs famously went on for hours and hours, this is probably because Clinton was a much better policy President if a less adept being-on-TV President). Though God knows that I'll read all the coverage tomorrow.
Quite frankly, I can't take it. I just can't anymore. It's not that they're bad speeches (though they are) it's that the simple platitudes are both unworthy of the great stage that is the SOTU and that the assertions are so obviously faulty. Seriously, I assume politicians are lying to me, what is upsetting is when they do it so brazenly that it demonstrates contempt. He'll be (by all reports) rolling out ideas about HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) that workers will deposit money in, tax-free, for future heath care costs, instead of company plans or governement healthcare. The rationale is that then they'll make better market choices (because, as you know, when dying of cancer, you like to comparison shop for the cheapest treatment), and that a market system will reduce the inefficiencies of the current system. The problem is that it's the market elements that make healthcare expensive and hard to get now. Imagine if there were no Social Security, no pensions, just your savings account for retirement? Yeah, that would be bleak...in fact it was bleak back when that was how it worked, that's why we changed it. This will decrease coverage and increase the cost of healthcare. No one disputes that--the advocates of HSAs don't dispute that. (More about HSAs and the market here, and here, you might have to scroll a bit). But Bush will say the opposite.
Dahlia Lithwick wrote a column on Slate.com about Bush's odd behavior: he's not advoicating a policy and asking you to go along with it, he's just doing what he wants to do and telling you to go along with it for your own good. He's not saying what he's doing is good, he's saying that because it's him that's doing it, it's good.
So I can't take it. It's actually painful for me. He's so obviously lying, stupid, or both. You know that feeling you get when you're watching a movie and the hero is about to ask out the pretty girl and you know that he's going to get turned down hard but he's gonna do it because he believes so you just can't watch because you are embarrased for the hero? That's how I feel when I watch the President make a speech, it's like there's no way you can say that much bullshit with a straight face unless you are completely clueless, so I'm embarrased for the Prez. I'm going to get some beers and watch Richard Dawkins' documentary: The Root of All Evil. It's about how religion is ruining the world; written, produced, and narrated by Richard Dawkins, Oxford evolutionary biologist and prolific author of such books as "The Self Gene." I dont' necessarily agree with Dawkins on all of this, but it seems like the least Bush-y thing I could possibly watch. Some might say porno, but I feel like there are too many parallels.