Not much new to say about the State of the Union Address because, well, it didn't say much new. Substance-wise, it was more of the same, rhetorically, it was flat, and as for the delivery - well, no surprises there. Bush is still trying to pull a fast one on the American people with his social security numbers; when he said that FDR could not have imagined today's economy, it was hard not to wince at the steady rollback of the New Deal of which Bush's agenda is but the latest example. His allusions to FDR in defending his foreign policy were equally unpersuasive. If Bush expects plaudits for courage for politely suggesting to his allies in Saudi Arabia that their people get more opportunities to express themselves (meaning what? Voting for American Idol?), then we really are defining deviancy down. The moment shared between the Iraqi and American women was indeed poignant. It was, I couldn't help thinking, an interesting echo of the moment shared between grieving Iraqi and American mothers in Farenheit 9/11. Whether one agrees more with George Bush's or Michael Moore's view of the architects and consequences of that war, there's a great deal of chosen and unchosen sacrifice and suffering that should be sobering for all of us. Bush's stated commitment to the advancement of liberty, of course, didn't stop him from once more floating the writing of bigotry into the constitution. Just another reason that Bush's eager exclamations of liberty fell as flat as his last line about the long and twisting road to freedom, a pale shadow of a truly great American's promise (more urgent and more seemingly distant than ever) that "The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice."