SOTU #5

OK,OK no more upchucking.

The Boston Globe:

But on the issue most responsible for the erosion of his power, the war in Iraq, President Bush came looking not for advice and counsel but for a rubber stamp for his decision to escalate US involvement with more than 20,000 troops.
....
Describing the war's current downward spiral, Bush said, "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in." It is also exactly the fight that many outside his narrow circle of advisers were predicting before the war began.

The Strib.

But if last night's speech was designed to change the national subject -- to make voters forget the catastrophe in Iraq, to overlook Bush's string of disastrous judgment errors, to forgive his administration's record of arrogance and secrecy -- it's too late for that. Last November voters asked for a change in national leadership, and little the president said Tuesday night suggested that the right sort of change will start in the White House.

Obviously Bu$hCo humbly didn't want to mention his great victory in New Orleans.

New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

In the president's State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

By contrast, in the days ahead of the president's address, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia compared the U.S. money being spent on Iraqi reconstruction with the fraction committed to the Gulf Coast rebuilding. And, chosen to give the Democratic response to Bush on Tuesday, Webb brought up the continuing struggle of Katrina victims right away, listing ''restoring the vitality of New Orleans'' just behind education and health care among his party's most pressing priorities, according to the text of his speech distributed in advance.

My emphasis. Hearing Sen. Webb immediately bring up New Orleans made the effort of wathing the SOTU wort it. That's what y'all call leadership.