State of the union speech.So what.

and..... we have not one but TWO new boogeyman to keep folks scared shitless. damn he's lucky.

WASHINGTON -- Once upon a time, we had a great wartime president who told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have George W. Bush, who uses fear as a tool of executive power and as a political weapon against his opponents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to allay his nation's fears in the midst of an epic struggle against fascism. Bush, as he leads the country in a war whose nature he keeps redefining, keeps fear alive because it has been so useful. His political Grand Vizier, Karl Rove, was perfectly transparent the other day when he emerged from wherever he's been hiding the past few months and gave the Republican National Committee its positioning statement for the fall elections: Vote for us or die.

Democrats "have a pre-9/11 worldview'' of national security that is "deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong,'' Rove said. The clear subtext was that Americans would court mortal danger by electing Democrats.

Bush mentioned the new tape from Osama bin Laden that surfaced the other day, calling it a reminder that we face "an enemy who wants to hurt us again." That's certainly true, but the warning would carry more gravitas if Bush and his administration didn't brag so much about how thoroughly al-Qaida has been routed and decimated.

And Americans would be better able to measure the threat from bin Laden if Bush and the rest of his administration didn't argue that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terrorism.'' If Iraq is the main event, then bin Laden, huddled in some cave in northern Pakistan, must be just a sideshow, right? But of course he's not a sideshow, he's the author of the 9/11 attacks, so what does that make Iraq? The answer seems to depend on whether, at any given time, Bush believes that cultivating fear of bin Laden or stoking fear of a terrorist spawning ground in Iraq would better help his administration achieve its ends.

Bin Laden does remain a threat. He would hit the United States again if he could. We do expect the president to protect us. But a great wartime leader rallies his citizens by informing them and inspiring them. He certainly doesn't use threats to our national security for political gain. He doesn't just point at a map and say "Boo."

This thread represents the classic e-forum circle jerk.

"We hate Bush!" "Bush is an idiot!" "My hatred of Bush is so righteous that I refuse to listen to him!"

How utterly idiotic, childish and impotent.

If you truly hate and fear Bush you have to listen to what he is saying.

I think it's perfectly plausible that he is not the enemy AND we are all a poor example of the opposition to the enemy. So what are you?