by Frank James
President Bush's final State of the Union speech is scheduled to start in less than an hour. Your devoted Swamp reporter is in the House Press Gallery where all of us journalists--reporters and photographers-are waiting until the doors leading into the chamber itself are opened.
It promises to be a historic night: this is the first time the Bush Twins, Jenna and Barbara, have deigned to come to the SOTU.
More importantly, the next POTUS may be sitting in the room. Sen. Barack Obama is supposed to attend tonight. I believe Sen. Hillary Clinton is scheduled to be here too.,
My Swamp mate, Mark Silva has already set up the themes of tonight. The president will hit the Iraq War and the economy hard. He'll also inveigh against earmarks.
In a yearly ritual, we are being shown the short video that instructs us how to put on the emergency hoods in the event of some kind of terrorist attack that involves poison gas. As we do every year, we journalists laugh at the part where we are informed to breathe normally if we must don the hoods and run for our lives. Right. .
We won't be live-blogging the speech since print journalists aren't allowed to bring laptops inside the press gallery seating area that's actually in the chamber. Ditto cell phones and cameras.
We're waiting for the final security sweep of the press gallery by the bomb-sniffing dog before we are finally seated.
The world's press corps is here. Well at least the German press corps is here. Several German journalists next to me were just having a spirited conversation about "Obama" and "Chicago."
Looks like they cancelled the security sweep. We must all look fairly harmless.
We'll try to post something as soon after the speech as we can.
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Comments
I am nauseated by the levity with which President Bush is treating the State of the Union Address. In a rather dire time world-wide, the President tells jokes and scolds Congress for "loading up bills" and instructs them to immediately pass a very ill-conceived tax bill? Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, or Independent the country needs inspiration in a time when the world hates us and has monetary control over us.
Posted by: J B | January 28, 2008 9:28 PM
Mark and Frank,
Are the Republicans still wearing their "Bush Republican" buttons or are those all in the dumpster outside now?
Posted by: John E | January 28, 2008 9:46 PM
How many Republic Party politicians are wearing American flag pins on their suit's lapels?
Posted by: BC | January 28, 2008 10:55 PM
This was to have been Gore's last SOTU.
Shame on citizen's who call themselves Americans & let this thief steel the presidency.
Posted by: RomanB | January 28, 2008 10:57 PM
RomanB,
AGAIN, Tennessee has 11 electoral votes and [if] Al Gore would have won 'HIS OWN STATE' he would of had 271 electoral votes and he would have been president, but do you idiot libs blame Tennessee, no, you blame Florida...you nimrods!
W. Mondale lost [49] states to R. Reagan, but at least Mondale won his own state of Minnesota.
GET OVER IT!
Paulo
Posted by: Paulo | January 28, 2008 11:40 PM
Hey Mark,
How many bathroom breaks did Larry Craig take?
Posted by: John E | January 28, 2008 11:47 PM
I noticed McCain's handlers kept him away from the speech so that cameras wouldn't be rolling when he takes one of his 7 daily cat naps. They didn't want a repeat of last year when old man McCain fell asleep during the speech. A safe strategy that no doubt didn't cause a lot of money to change hands considering the odds were 3 to 2 that he couldn't make it thru the entire speech nodding off. Please nominate this Democrat McCain.
Posted by: jackson | January 29, 2008 10:22 AM