George W. Bush's State of the Union address has laid bare his Administration's political strategy. It is to manipulate the grief, anger and patriotism inspired by September 11 to fit the contours of the right-wing Republican agenda of September 10. What that Day of Infamy means to George W. Bush & Co. is more tax cuts for the wealthy, more money for wasteful weapons schemes and the back of their proverbial hand to those who suffer the misfortune of not being rich in Bush's America.

Viewed under any other rubric, Bush's speech--received so rapturously by a well-stroked punditocracy--is entirely incoherent. Does war demand sacrifice? Let's give more tax breaks to the rich. Did stateless terrorists attack us wielding only box cutters? Let's build a nonfunctional $250 billion missile defense system. Does the bond market demand fiscal responsibility for sustained growth? Suppose we spend down the surplus, raid the Social Security trust fund and create deficits of a size unseen since the bad old days of Reagan/Bush. Do we need allies now more than ever in the fight against terrorism? Why not alienate all of them with a unilateral declaration of a global war against an imaginary "Axis of Evil"--nonsensically invoking Hitler and Tojo for good measure? Never mind that Iraq, according to the CIA, has not attempted a terrorist act against us in nearly a decade, or that Iran and Iraq hate each other, or that Iran has democratic elections (and the winner even gets to be president) and that North Korea has nothing to do with any of this. Just to be safe, perhaps we'd better give a pass to friendly terrorists like the Russians, currently engaged in the wholesale rape and pillage of Chechnya, and China, doing a quieter but more effective job in Tibet.

Bush's hyperbolic oration, inspired no doubt by the vanity and indiscipline of his speechwriters, recalls another President's politically inspired scare tactics. In late 1947 Clark Clifford and James Rowe instructed Harry Truman, "The worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point--real danger of imminent war--the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President." The result was the famed war scare of 1948, in which that accidental President started trumpeting "the critical nature of the situation in Europe," the necessity for "speedy action," the "great urgency" of the problem of the Soviet threat. He did this even though, as State Department counselor Charles Bohlen explained in a confidential January 1948 memo, the government considered its position "vis-à-vis the Soviet better now than at any time since the end of the war."

As in 1948, we face a military threat that requires a vigorous, but proportional, response. And the government has no more critical responsibility than the defense of the "homeland." But once again the disjunction between those ends and the eternally expansive means proposed by Bush is so vast as to render transparent the political motivations behind it. Karl Rove nearly admitted as much when he recently advised a group of Republican activists to use the war in Afghanistan to win elections here at home. The Evil Empire has expired, but the Evil Axis is open for praxis.

As Slate reported, the response overseas to Bush's speech was almost uniformly disapproving, with editorialists condemning the "Hate of the Union" (The Guardian); the "distinctly disturbing" message (The Independent); a tone "more martial than ever" (Libération); containing "no hint here that he understands that he is talking of sovereign nations" (the Sydney Morning Herald).

Alas, foreigners don't vote. In fact, Americans don't vote until long after favor-seeking corporations like Enron have decided which candidates to fund in exchange for favors and after pundits have chewed up and spit out the issues and candidates sufficiently to determine who is a serious, responsible candidate and what might be prudently said about the issues on the campaign trail. For the latter reason, it is rather alarming to notice that conservative extremism has become so commonplace that even on allegedly nonpartisan broadcasts, it is treated as conventional wisdom.

Take the minor but emblematic example of CNBC's coverage of the Bush speech. The network's deal with the Wall Street Journal allows genuine reporters to provide viewers with a respite from the constant stream of analysts and CEOs showing up to hawk their portfolios and jack up stock prices. But as everyone but the network's executives seems to know, the Journal is really two newspapers: one with a crack news staff and one with a crackpot editorial staff.

During the Clinton Administration, no nutty rumor or oddball allegation about the President was deemed too goofy to publish by those editors. I have on my shelf six fat volumes containing some 3,000 pages of the Journal's editorial page fulminations regarding an Arkansas land deal called "Whitewater" in which both Clintons were found to be innocent of any criminal conduct by Republican-appointed special prosecutors. And yet following Bush's speech, the editors were invited by CNBC to comment on Bush and the Democratic respondent, Richard Gephardt, with no balance at all. To go as far left as the Journal editors are to the right, CNBC would have to convene a roundtable featuring Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Fidel Castro.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush used his State of the Union address and some other recent speeches to flex the nation's military muscle and threaten several nations, designated as the "axis of evil."

Rarely has the world heard a more belligerent American president. His tone and substance have dismayed our allies as much as the targets he cites -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

No U.S. military attacks are imminent, his spokesman reassures. And no, there's no new intelligence that makes these three nations any different now than they were last week.

Such strident statements from the commander in chief make you wonder. He's riding high in public opinion polls and is daring the world: "I can lick anyone on the block."

It seems to me that Bush has brushed off the man who knows more about war than anyone in his administration -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Powell looked forlorn as he stood with other Cabinet officers when they rushed to congratulate Bush on his bellicose speech.

Bush, closer to the hawks in his administration, has not been happy with the retired general for urging him to announce that the United States would treat the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Navy Base in Cuba in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners. Bush hasn't decided yet whether he wants to go that route.

American officials insist the prisoners taken in Afghanistan are being treated humanely but will not be designated as prisoners of war and thus automatically protected by the Geneva Convention.

Powell apparently is too dovish for Bush, who was recently dubbed a "freshly anointed American Caesar" by a German newspaper.

Considering the national gung-ho mood, I have no doubt that if Bush were to widen the war beyond Afghanistan tomorrow, he would have the strong backing of the American people, with few questions asked.

The Gallup poll shortly after Bush's speech Tuesday night gave him an 83 percent approval rating; 91 percent said his policies are taking the nation in the right direction and 64 percent thought his proposals on dealing with terrorism were "very effective."

Senior political adviser Karl Rove had already signaled that Bush would play the war card with the mid-term elections coming up in November. Rove told the Republican National Committee: We can go to the country on this issue because the American people "trust the Republican party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."

His remarks infuriated Democrats who have gone all out to support the administration's conduct of the war. They are now in a political straitjacket. Rove has made the war a partisan issue and any criticism from the Democrats would be considered unpatriotic.

Bush also put terrorists of the world put on notice if they pursue their goals or seek to develop weapons of mass destruction, he would not hesitate to take preemptive action.

Do we really have the right to attack a country without provocation? To strike first is not our tradition. When he says, "Let's roll," does that mean he believes he can undertake armed intervention anywhere in the world without any congressional or international go-ahead?

In his threatening remarks he did not bother to mention U.S. allies or Congress.

This unilateralism is Bush's foreign policy in a nutshell. Bush is saying we will go it alone. We don't need the rest of the world to take up arms against any country suspected of sponsoring or harboring terrorists.

After the Sept. 11 horror, Bush mustered the sympathy of foreign leaders with a marathon of friendly, soothing personal telephone calls. But many now are appalled at the new, pugnacious Bush. The New York Times said Britain was the only nation that came out stalwartly behind the aggressive speech.

Dimitri Rogozin, chairman of Russia's parliamentary international committee, said the speech seemed to indicate that the ultraconservatives in the administration had the upper hand.

Does the president really feel the United States is powerful enough to extend its military operations to so many places? Where is his diplomatic outreach? What makes him think that the world would be with him when he widens the war? Will the bombs be so smart they would only hit al-Qaida members and no innocent civilians?

Why hasn't the president put the case of global terrorism before the United Nations and tried to bring everyone into the act?

I remember Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson had most of the nation and the media with him in the beginning. But the futility of that war eventually turned the country against the war and the president. Retaliation was the right response in Afghanistan.

AS I WAS saying, journalists seem to heed opinion polls more than politicians. Take the Washington Post's February 9th editorial rejecting Sen. Fritz Hollings' (D-S.C.) call for an Enron independent counsel. "The coziness between the administration and Enron means that the scandal could conceivably implicate political figures in ways that demand an independent prosecutor," the Post concedes. "But that hasn't happened yet; nobody has credibly alleged a crime by a member of the administration. And as long as the focus of the inquiry remains on crimes by the corporation and its accountants, the Justice Department can handle the matter."

Compare the same newspaper's January 5, 1994 argument that Whitewater "represents precisely the kind of case in which an independent counsel ought to be appointed. We say that even though-and and this should be stressed-there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong. Nevertheless, it is in the public interest--and in the president's as well--to put the inquiry in independent hands....Nor is it protection enough to say that the investigation is in the hands of career [Justice Department] attorneys. To whom do they report?"

But that was then; this is now. Again, Enron's shady practices cost investors more than 1000 times what Jim McDougal's petty scams cost taxpayers. Shoddy and one-sided as the Post's Whitewater coverage was, its editors might argue that they'd learned something from Kenneth Starr's mad quest. Starr so discredited the independent counsel statute that the idea of reviving it makes everybody faintly bilious.

What's needed is what worked during Watergate: an independent investigator of unimpeachable integrity appointed by the Attorney General. Former GOP Senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman come to mind. Given the likely uproar when investors' names in Enron's crooked offshore "partnerships" are revealed-and remembering that crony capitalism has always been what the Bush family does best-it's going to take more than Republicans chanting that Enron's not a political scandal to restore public trust.

IN POLITICAL DEBATE, the commonest logical fallacy is the Straw Man: attributing to your opponent an argument so ludicrous it's easily refuted. Crucial to success is the art of mendacious paraphrase. Here's how a recent Democrat-Gazette editorial attacking "Daschlenomics" summarized a speech by the Senate Majority Leader: "The tax cuts that the Bush administration initiated caused the recession that began last March, even though they hadn't gone into effect yet. (Actually, consumer spending rose after the Bush tax cuts were distributed despite September 11th. But why go into detail?)"

Why, indeed? By contrast, here are Daschle's actual words of January 4th: "By 2000, not only was the deficit gone, we had a record $236 billion surplus....For the first time in a generation, both our short term and our long term economic positions appeared strong. Then the inevitable happened. Our economy started to cool. By last March we know now the expansion was officially over and a recession had begun. Every economic boom eventually slows down. When that happens, the question is not who is to blame, but what do we do to get the economy growing again?"

Did Daschle say tax cuts caused the recession? No, he plainly said it was inevitable, and there was no point blaming anybody. As the The Daily Howler has shown, the original source of the distortion was a Washington Times column by noted economist Rush Limbaugh. What Daschle also said is that the Bush tax cuts are the single largest cause of the vanished ten year surplus, meaning higher interest rates, slower growth and a looming crisis in Medicare and Social Security.

SPEAKING OF LOGICAL fallacies, here's another beauty. Chiding "pedants" (like me) who pointed out that President Bush's "Axis of evil" are enemies, not allies, Democrat-Gazette editors sneered that "They'd forgotten, if they ever knew, that the original Axis--Germany, Italy, and Japan--were also worlds apart culturally and sometime rivals before their evil designs united them in aggression."

To simplify, A is A because B is B, and perfect circularity is achieved.

A RECENT "VOICES" letter by Fred Lemon of Cabot called the Clinton administration "the most corrupt and scandal-ridden...in the history of this country." He can believe what he wants, but it's worth mentioning that not a single Clinton appointee was convicted of a crime involving government service. Webb Hubbell pled guilty to embezzling from his law partners (including Hillary Clinton); Henry Cisneros admitted lying about paying an ex-mistress to go away. Otherwise, five independent counsels struck out. No Republican administration in living memory can say the same.

To understand just how diligently George W. Bush protected the interests of Enron and its former chief executive, Kenneth (Kenny Boy) Lay, it is necessary to look back beyond last fall, when the prospect of bankruptcy loomed. The question is not whether Mr. Bush bailed out his old pal under politically impossible circumstances, but what he did for Enron when he still had a free hand.

Until Vice President Dick Cheney surrenders the secret files of his Energy Task Force, the complete history of the Bush administration’s entanglement with its favorite firm may never be known. There are, however, many significant favors on the public record–and the first took place within days after Mr. Bush’s inauguration.

On Jan. 23, 2001, the White House announced the new administration’s response to California’s rolling blackouts, which had led even conservative Republicans in the state to call for price controls. The good news for Californians was that the temporary relief ordered by the Clinton White House in December would be continued for another two weeks, until Feb. 7; the bad news was that from that date forward, there would be no further federal assistance.

In essence, Mr. Bush was rescinding his predecessor’s emergency order, issued on Dec. 13, 2000, which required out-of-state electricity wholesalers to stop withholding power from California. That order had been accompanied by a warning from departing Energy Secretary Bill Richardson: "I will not allow them to unjustly profit from these conditions." By that he meant spot electricity prices literally 100 times higher than a year earlier.

For Enron and the other energy privateers, the arrival of the Bush team was timely indeed. Enron’s stock price, having reached a high of about $83 a share in the early days of 2001, was beginning a rapid descent under pressure from investors who feared the return of energy regulation in the wake of Mr. Richardson’s action.

The two weeks of breathing space for California’s energy consumers was little enough, compared with the boost provided to Enron by Mr. Bush’s anti-regulatory policies and appointments. In the months that followed, despite the administration’s attempts at "market mitigation," the White House killed Congressional efforts to cap rates. Among the new President’s pronouncements on energy matters was a stern vow to fight price controls and a sunny promise to create a national electric grid, which would enable Enron to trade in a greatly expanded market.

On April 17, Enron reported first-quarter 2001 net income of $425 million, an increase of $87 million over the first quarter of the previous year. While $19 million of that increase reflected a "change in accounting practices"–a phrase with new meaning these days–much of the rest had come from earnings on sales of electricity and natural gas.

The Enron division that sold gas and electricity enjoyed an operating profit in those first few months of the Bush regime of $755 million–up from $429 million during the same period in 2000.

Those earnings helped to offset big losses in Enron’s ill-fated broadband venture and to stabilize the price of Enron shares. Until Congress subpoenas detailed records of Enron’s dealings, it’s impossible to know how much of those profits is attributable to price-gouging in California. But as the Houston Chronicle noted when the Enron earnings came out, the company’s rising revenues were largely due to "much higher prices received for natural gas and power sold during the winter." And nowhere had those prices escalated more rapidly than in California.

Meanwhile, on the very same day that Enron announced its happy first-quarter results, Mr. Lay met with the Vice President to discuss his company’s recommendations for the Energy Task Force. The Enron boss gave the Vice President a detailed memo that highlighted his most urgent request: Under no circumstances should the federal government take any further steps to hold down the price of electricity in the West. Specifically, the memo urged that "the administration should reject any attempt to re-regulate wholesale power markets by adopting price caps or returning to archaic methods of determining the cost-base of wholesale power." (Those "archaic methods," incidentally, were established to suppress an earlier gang of predators known as the utility trust, with support from Mr. Bush’s supposed idol, Theodore Roosevelt.)

Now the White House insists that Mr. Cheney never even glanced at that Enron memo, a claim contradicted by The New York Times in a story published one month after their meeting. Among other things, the Vice President’s task force recommended "finding ways to give the federal government more power over electricity transmission networks." This was, according to The Times, "a longtime goal of [Enron] that was spelled out in a memorandum Mr. Lay discussed during a 30-minute meeting earlier this spring with Mr. Cheney."

NEW YORK-"In four short months," George W. Bush told us in his State of the Union address, "our nation has comforted the victims; begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon; rallied a great coalition; captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists; destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps; saved a people from starvation; and freed a country from brutal oppression."

Not quite.

The victims will be mourning and litigating for years to come. Not only is New York not rebuilding, it's watching its corporate tax base scurry off to suburbia as the Bush Administration brazenly welshes on its pledge to help the city with $20 billion. The coalition is a gathering of real evil-doers, like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, that fund and arm anti-American Islamic extremists. The U.S. is no closer to apprehending Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammad Omar or their henchmen than we were or it was back in September. ("[Bin Laden] has gone silent," an anonymous Bushie told The New York Times Feb. 4.) And Afghanistan's new interim government isn't even slightly better than the Taliban it replaced.

"The last time we met in this chamber," Bush crowed, "the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school."

In all the ways that matter, they still are. Afghan women continue to wear the all-encompassing burqa, infamous symbol of Taliban oppression, out of fear of reprisals and terror of being raped by Northern Alliance soldiers. For the same reasons, they rarely go outdoors. Few schools have money to hire teachers. Women may be legally allowed to work, but Afghanistan's male unemployment rate exceeds 95 percent. If and when economic activity resumes, male-run Afghanistan will take care of the guys first.

Nothing has changed in Afghanistan, simply because there has been no meaningful attempt to de-Talibanize. Well-known figures like Mullah Omar may be in hiding, but today's Northern Alliance-dominated regime is almost entirely comprised of Taliban defectors. So while prime minister Hamid Karzai cuts a dashing figure with his green Tajik robe and impeccable English, the heavily-armed men ordinary Afghans come into contact with on the streets are merely gussied-up Talibs. Some liberation.

Nothing symbolized the excesses of Taliban rule more than that government's orgy of Friday-afternoon stonings and amputations. "Our Islam is different," Justice Minister Abdul Rahim Karimi, who took office on Dec. 24, told Agence France Press. Yet the Taliban's Sharia law-a pastiche of Pashtun tribal traditions and fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran that served in place of a modern legal system-remains in full force. "People would not understand if we got rid of it," he said.

Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif, a leading Northern Alliance jurist, described justice in the kinder, gentler Afghanistan bought and paid for by you, the American taxpayer: "There will be some changes from the time of the Taliban," Zarif announced. "For example, the Taliban used to hang the victim's body in public for four days. We will only hang the body for a short time, say 15 minutes."

People who have sex outside marriage-this includes unmarried couples-will continue to be stoned. "But we will use only small stones," he noted. Smaller stones offer the condemned, or at least the hardier among them, the chance to escape. "If they are able to run away, they are free."

As in America, this new soft-on-crime approach is contingent on cooperation and remorse. "Those who refuse to confess their wrongdoing and are condemned by a judge will have their hands and feet bound so that they cannot run away," Zarif explained. "They will certainly be stoned to death."

5:58 am: I am one of those people who lives and dies by pattered activity in the morning. I wake at the same time, hit the shower at the same time, brush my teeth exactly the same way each morning, and always manage to be in front of the TV just as 6:00 am rolls around to catch the first dismal spew from CNN. This morning I am two minutes ahead of schedule, and manage to catch the chipper man-bites-dog nonsense story that always concludes an hour of broadcasting on the cable giant. The substance isn't even worth noting, and I am treating it as noise while I pull my socks on.

6:11 am: As always, I wonder why I do this to myself. The media rah-rah for this administration is usually as sticky and saccharine as my toothpaste, but today was something truly special. Tonight, you see, is Bush's first State of the Union address, that constitutionally-mandated report to Congress.

Since the September 11 attacks, and well before, CNN and the other media outlets have stumbled over themselves in an effort to inflate the substance of the man in the White House. They treat his most egregious verbal stumbles as holy writ, and are not above editing him with a friendly pen. When he claimed that taxes would get raised "not over my dead body" some weeks ago, CNN and the other outlets expunged the cumbersome "not" from their reporting.

This morning, as I prepare to depart for work, I realize that this augmentation of the ephemeral Bush-myth-in-the-making has reached new heights of absurdity. The spokesmodel-cum-reporter on my screen heaved and sighed with pre-orgasmic bliss at the very thought of Mr. Bush addressing the nation tonight. Following this near-pornographic display was a litany of poll numbers, delivered completely without a description of what questions were asked and whom they were asked of, which described Mr. Bush as being only slightly less popular than the Lord God of Hosts.

Is this trip really necessary? The man has an 82 percent approval rating, if you believe what you hear. His War on Terra has resulted in the evisceration of the Taliban regime and the installation of a new, presumably pro-American government. He has held together a coalition of nations to fight this battle in a manner that harkens back to his father's efforts in the Gulf War. There have been no further attacks on American soil since September. Why on earth does CNN feel the need to stroke this fellow so openly and obviously?

6:42 am: A few reasons popped to mind as I pulled into the parking lot at work.

Despite the annihilation of the feudal Taliban, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still alive and free. Bush has taken pains to inform us that this doesn't matter in the long run, that we'll "get 'em" soon enough, and in the meantime here is John Walker Lindh to serve as our sacrificial goat. Never mind that the original goal of the war, to capture these two fiends, has not been met. Never mind that these two still represent a clear and present danger to the country. Some might suggest that Bush has failed. If so, then he can blame the debilitated Clinton military; after all, he did tell us they weren't up to the drill.

Meanwhile, the anthrax killer is also breathing the clean air of freedom after several assassination attempts against Democratic leaders that resulted in five civilian deaths and a great deal of national fear. John Ashcroft's Justice Department and FBI have apparently been too busy trimming the fat edges from the Constitution and Bill of Rights to catch up with this clever fellow. As with Osama and Omar, this person is a clear and present danger to the country. Maybe the three of them are with Amelia Earhart and Jim Morrison, living in sin somewhere on the outskirts of Paris. One wonders if they will ever be caught.

Looming over everything is the Enron debacle, a scandal so broad and deep that it has undermined practically every pillar of the American economy. Kenneth Lay and his friends have, in one stroke, shattered people's faith in the veracity and stability of Wall Street, of all accountants, of profit reports, of banks, and of their own retirement accounts. The vice president is about to be sued because he refuses to tell the people how much the criminal enterprise that was Enron had to do with the setting of national energy policy. The president himself will likely speak tonight of his economic stimulus plan, which is little more than a fat tax giveaway to corporations like Enron. It should be remembered that Enron did not pay taxes in four of the last five years, and it will be stated stridently in the Democratic response to Bush's speech that such a giveaway is not the cure for the recession we are still mired in.

And then there are the whispers. Like the earliest days of Watergate, they are mostly below the radar screen, but they are there nonetheless. What did the president know, and when did he know it? Did he or his administration help Lay and Enron as that company's employees were bilked and lied to? What is Dick Cheney hiding? Was the Bush administration really involved in pipeline negotiations with the Taliban in the days before September 11? Why, after all these months, are there still no answers forthcoming as to exactly how the American intelligence community managed to fail completely in its duty as the nation's sentry?

Perhaps Bush and his speech tonight are being inflated to such a ridiculous degree because he and his administration are well and truly in serious trouble. A solid president needs no props nor media sycophants. Just days ago, Vice President Cheney telephoned Senate Majority Leader Daschle to alternately plead and warn regarding the upcoming congressional investigations into Enron. Cheney made it clear that a heavy price will be paid if Daschle and his friends ask too many prickly questions.

A solid administration does not need to threaten anyone. These people are deathly afraid of something, and that stench of fear will be the miasma through which Bush will speak tonight. The media can scarcely be counted upon to make mention of it, but it will surely be in that august chamber along with the rest of the government. The game's afoot . . .

11:06 am: I have a few minutes to spare between classes, and think a brief backwards glance is in order. Our last president, William Jefferson Clinton, gave eight of these speeches in his tenure. Several of them happened while under taint of scandal. In this, he shares a commonality with Bush. The difference will likely be the balance struck. For Clinton, the scandal stories far outweighed the gravity of his speech. Recall this commentary offered by the Washington Post on January 28, 1998:

"When Dan Rather signed on for CBS at 9, he indicated the network would take the high road (in light of growing criticism of media overindulgence in the scandal stories) and report on the speech, not on the scandal. Delivering a kind of state of the network speech, Rather told viewers, 'We will tonight try to keep our primary focus on the State of the Union. We do this not because we believe this is what the president deserves or what Monica Lewinsky deserves or what Kenneth Starr deserves, but because this is what the American people deserve. We, the people, are the union and the state of the union is who and what we are.'>{? Nicely said, Dan.

Then he threw it to correspondent Scott Pelley.

And Scott Pelley immediately launched into a recitation of 'the latest' on the sex scandal, even though there really was nothing much beyond what had been reported on The CBS Evening News. Rather might have had egg on his face but the president quickly entered the hall and Pelley mercifully disappeared from the screen."

To be sure, Bill had a boatload of trouble on his mind as he gave his 1998 address. These troubles were the hood ornament on the media's coverage of the event. Dare it be said that the troubles Bush faces tonight are far more dire; the sex is notably absent, but only because the people involved in this scandal were too busy stealing from their employees, fiddling greedily with national energy policy, and undermining national security for the sake of profit to stop and get some nookie. So much for that journalistic necessity, "the hook." They might actually have to do some research to make this situation understandable to the American people. Don't hold your breath.

1:31 pm: A media hawk friend has reported to me that both CNN and MSNBC just expressed similar attitudes in their approach to the coverage of the State of the Union. Both networks stated that they did not want to seem unpatriotic or rain on anyone's parade with their coverage. How kind. How sweet. How gentle. How utterly bereft of journalistic integrity. I am pleased at this moment to be nowhere near a cable-connected television.

1:44 pm: Whoops. Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and niece to George W., has been arrested after trying to purchase Xanax from a Walgreens pharmacy with a false prescription. Some might call that fraud. Others would call it bad timing. Why don't we call it family values in action and leave it at that?

Damn. Can you imagine partying with Jenna, Barb and Noelle? Hunter Thompson, eat your heart out.

7:01 pm: Just finished watching Lou Dobbs on CNN's Wall Street program, "Moneyline." He and his fellow broadcasters had that wide-eyed look of deer scant seconds before an unfortunate impact with a fender. The Dow lost 247 points today, the NASDAQ lost 50, and the S&P lost 32. The word on the Street was "Enronitis," the name of a disease that apparently affects the stock value of any company that demonstrates even the slightest hint of shaky accounting or profit reporting. One fellow on the trading floor commented that he hoped the disease was not fatal. I fear, however, that his hopes may be dashed. This thing is only beginning.

Hell of a day for all this to happen.

8;43 pm: Picking the proper network to watch this event is a delicate choice, akin to deciding which brand of rotgut whiskey you plan to get puking sick on. It is all about the hangover. Since I began the day with CNN, I may as well finish with it. There is something to be said for continuity, and there is aspirin in the medicine cabinet.

. . . and here is Jeff Greenfield with Judy Woodruff, puffing Bush up with all their might. It is like I never left for work this morning. They've already referred to him as a "war-time president." Perhaps, at some point, Bush might actually ask Congress to declare war.

8:44 pm: The CNN screen crawl has it that Bush himself is also leaning on Daschle to limit the scope of the Senate's 9/11 investigation. Seems he's worried about misallocating resources. Seems he's worried, anyway. 8:52 pm: Dick Cheney is in the house. Thousands of D.C. residents will stare in fear at their ceilings tonight as the roar of F-14s over the Capitol Dome rattles the china on the shelves.

8:56 pm- Charles Krautheimer, a writer from Time magazine, is predicting that in one year America will have forgotten all about Enron and will be engaged in a war with Iraq. This begs some questions: was his pension affected by Ken Lay? Has he heard England and Saudi Arabia, two vital coalition members, speak about their resistance to an Iraq war?

8:58 pm- I am a sucker for the pageantry of this event. Never mind Bush and all the horror and for a moment revel in the institution and the tradition. This is a special place and event if you can ignore the politics.

9:03 pm–Karzai, the new leader of Afghanistan has arrived in the balcony to a standing ovation, and stands next to a green beret who lost an arm in combat. They didn't say where. Laura Bush is beside them both, deranged in red.

9:08 pm–The second most dangerous man in America, John Ashcroft, arrives. A noticeable chill envelops the room.

9:11 pm–"Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States!" and Bush enters the room. The pretzel wounds seem to have healed, unless a gifted cosmetics artist was at work. The applause is sustained but far from loud. The CNN heads mention the close election for the third time now as the camera finds the Supreme Court justices in their compromised robes.

9:13 pm–The congressional applause continues, and the CNN heads won't shut up. Bush just winked at someone . . . He is announced again by Speaker Hastert, as is the tradition, and another cheer is raised. One wonders if the GOP would be as gracious for Clinton in similar circumstances?

9:14 pm–"The nation is at war, the economy is in recession . . . yet the state of union has never been stronger," says Bush.

9:15 pm–A chest-beating nest of lies about Afghanistan: we've killed or captured all the bad guys and freed the women. No mention of the elusive bin Laden. Bush introduces Karzai, who will be dead in a year if Afghan tradition holds true. No leader long survives there after kissing up to the West.

9:18 pm–Bush is invoking free Afghan women again. I guess he didn't get the memo explaining how the Northern Alliance plays by essentially the same social rules as the Taliban. No matter, it sounded good. He's handling these pesky Afghan names well.

All the dead civilians are a "tribute to the Afghan people" it seems . . . and a tribute to American military might. True enough. No mention of the fact that the civilian death toll in Afghanistan has surpassed America's 9/11 civilian death toll. John Adams once said that facts were stubborn things. They also seem to be easily ignored things.

9:19 pm–Bush had "complete confidence in the troops" as the conflict began. This from the man who made it a campaign priority to denigrate America's military readiness in 2000. It could be suggested that such talk invited an attack from a determined enemy.

9:21 pm–We are ten minutes in and there has been no substance. Clinton would have listed a dozen policy ideas by now. Bush just said "nucular" while reeling off a list of fearful terrorist intentions. He says the 19 September 11 attackers were trained in Afghanistan, but fails to mention how many came from Saudi Arabia. He promises to "pursue them wherever they are," but why do I doubt that Saudi Arabia stands on the list?

9:23 pm–Bush has two great plans: bring the terrorists to justice, and stop the development of weapons of mass destruction. He says "nucular" again. He claims that terrorist camps exist in a dozen countries—Hamas and Hezbollah are named, not boding well for Mr. Arafat. "America is acting elsewhere," he states, including the Philippines, Bosnia, and Somalia.

9:26 pm–"Some governments will be timid in the face of terror. If they do not act, America will." This bellicose statement receives another standing ovation, as the congresspeople want to be with us and not against us while Ashcroft is in the room. Bush names North Korea as a weapons of mass destruction threat, and Iran, and Iraq . . . says "nucular" for the third time. Heavy on Iraq, "a regime with something to hide," they are an "axis of evil," and pose a "grave and growing danger."

9:28 pm–Bush invokes the woebegone missile defense plan, and the first signs of partisanship appear: Democrats don't stand and applaud.

9:30 pm–He moves on to his three priorities: win the (undeclared) war, protect the homeland, and revive the economy. "We must act not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans." Bush looks for all the world like he's pulling a fast one—his facial expressions are that of the boy who has just laid a tack on the teacher's chair.

9:32 pm–We have spent more than a billion dollars a month on the war, and must spend more. Bush touts his proposal for the largest defense spending increase in two decades, because "the price is never too high." Somehow, I don't think he will ever need to use food stamps because of the toll levied by that price.

9:34 pm–Homeland defense threat must be addressed: we can be protected from attack only by action abroad and vigilance at home. Bioterror, emergency response teams, border security, heightened intelligence gathering are touted . . . My God, he's actually talking policy. It took 24 minutes. His eyebrows are wandering all over his forehead.

9:36 pm–Here come the shoe bomb stewardesses. They get the biggest ovation of the night, and Bush butchers one of their names. 9:38 pm–"The final great priority" is economic security. Budget deficits will be short-term if Congress is fiscally responsible. Isn't he the one who just proposed a titanic boost in spending? He wants to extend unemployment and health care bennies—Kennedy applauds. Economic plan is summed up in one word: "jobs."

9:42 pm–Bush touts "reliable and affordable energy," and praises conservation. Did Cheney just gag? We must produce oil at home so America is not dependent on foreign sources. Will he mention alternative energy? Nope, on to trade promotion authority. The Enron-designed House energy bill is praised, Bush urges the Senate to pass it, and not one Democrat stands or applauds..

9:44 pm–"Good jobs depend on sound tax policy," as he praises his corporate tax giveaway as being "just about right." The Democrats appear stapled to their seats. "Make tax cuts permanent," he demands, and no Democrat stands. Bush now has the temerity to call for a patients' bill of rights, health care credits for uninsured workers, increased spending for veterans health, and giving seniors a sound Medicare system, including prescription drug coverage. All of these proposals were doomed by his tax cut. He knew that and passed it anyway. Rhetoric has never been more empty.

9:47 pm–Bush wants safeguards for 401K accounts, and Enron rears its ugly head. "People should not risk everything if a company fails." He wants stricter accounting and disclosure standards, accountability to the shareholders, and corporations should be held to the highest standards of conduct. Standing ovation, and did I just see as pig fly by? "We must make Social Security stable," he says, and has the gall to resurrect the harebrained scheme of investing Social Security funds into the stock market. If Enron proved nothing else, it proved how poor an idea that is. Yet he persists.

9:49 pm–The man who made his money in oil dares to mention a cleaner environment. Faith based groups rise again. He demands the same spirit of cooperation for the passage of his policies as has been seen since 9/11.

9:52 pm–The man who exhorted us to go shopping in the aftermath of 9/11 now says America has learned not to be so materialistic. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.

9:53 pm–Bush speaks of "a new culture of responsibility . . . we must not let this moment pass." I agree. Enron? Bush asks Americans to donate 4,000 hours over their lifetime to the service of neighbors and nation . . . is this a precursor to another draft? No, it's the USA Freedom Corps. Purpose: to respond to crisis at home, rebuild communities, and reach out to friends abroad. Here come the Crusaders as "the promise of peace corps."

9:58 pm–Praises "limits on the power of the state." Yes, he said that.

10:00 pm–"Deep in the American character is honor," says Bush. He will discover that fact to his woe soon enough.

10:02 pm–"We choose freedom and the dignity of every life," for the anti-choicers. "We will see freedom's victory," and he's done. A final standing ovation. The speech took a bit more than 45 minutes.

10:06 pm–First media spin: the speech was a "major turning point" because the capture of bin Laden was not mentioned as a goal. CNN seems to think he was seeking a mandate for a broader war outside Afghanistan. North Korea, Iran and Iraq certainly got the message.

In the aftermath of the 2000 election, I observed that the Republican Party wins Presidential elections when the media allows them to run "image campaigns" that are short on substance and long on opaque metaphor. Recall, if you will, how important the issue of flag burning was in the 1988 race. Never mind the Cold War, nuclear waste, astounding budget deficits or the cancer of crack addiction and AIDS. The flaming flag was all-important, and symbolized the prototype GOP campaign style. The racist specter of Willie Horton only spiced the air with menace, but the deal was done.

The media allowed George W. Bush to run an image campaign in 2000, managing to denigrate Gore as "boring" and "stiff" every time he tried to discuss vital policy questions. Tonight, we saw Bush achieve the apex of that image campaign in the halls of Congress. In all my life, I have never seen a more vacuous speech. Never before have so many dire questions been set before the American people. Never before have they been greeted with such a blizzard of platitudes.

There was no mention of Osama bin Laden, no mention of the anthrax killer, no mention of exactly where the war will move on to or how our allies will be handled, no mention of pension protections or the restoration of confidence in the stock market in the aftermath of Enron. We were urged to remember that we are free, that we bombed a backwards country further into rubble and dust.

When you watch a show like "Fear Factor," NBC's latest offering in shock reality TV, in which contestants bob for chicken feet in a vat of live maggots, eat pig rectums and swim in pools of rotting squid, you begin to realize at least part of the reason why the great foreign "they" hate us so much.

Who in the developing world, where suffering and deprivation are daily bread, wouldn't hate a people so bored, so creatively resourceless and so overprivileged that they need to manufacture fake torment for mass public consumption?

Not real torment, mind you, because uncoached, unscripted trials would, of course, be too much like art to make it into prime time. After all, the original "Survivor" could have been like "Lord of the Flies." But with its airbrushed contestants paddling around in the tide pools of their own vapidity and sophomorically interacting in prefab scenarios unworthy of a sitcom, we got instead an unfunny "Gilligan's Island." The most profound parts of these silly people's real lives play like such bad fiction that you want to shout "Rewrite!" just as they're tearfully confronting on national TV the cardboard traumas of their obscenely sheltered lives.

I want to shoot these people on sight, so it's not hard to imagine how your average struggling Punjabi, who would no doubt consider boredom itself a privilege, feels about our sanitized shenanigans. He may not be watching NBC, but he's getting the gist of our pop culture from relatives who live here or through his local propagandists to make the point. They don't have to doctor our signal much to damn us. We do it ourselves and then some. Our pastimes must seem like the petty devilry of an unworthy people who, by sheer accident of birth, exercise the grotesque prerogative of whiling away their lives in shallow distractions.

The injustice, the vulgarity is monstrous.

These days, what makes the raunchy adolescent stunts of "Fear Factor" and its ABC rival "The Chair" all the more tasteless is the real ordeal that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is undergoing in Pakistan--that is if he hasn't been murdered. The whereabouts and identities of his kidnappers, who claim to be members of the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, are unknown. After abducting Pearl in Karachi, the captors sent threatening e-mails to the news media, including pictures of Pearl with a gun to his head.

Still, here we are at home, gleefully consuming drivel such as MTV's new game show "Kidnapped," in which contestants pretend to be hostages and are interrogated about nothing more substantive than their friends' unexamined lives. Whoever loses is submitted to mock tortures such as having scorpions dumped on his head or having to eat chocolate-covered worms.

Meanwhile, back on "Fear Factor," we have the likes of chesty Chad, a recent "winner," making the following sage pronouncement on the human condition as he waited to see if he had won the $50,000 prize for which he had happily humiliated himself: "I thought I knew what stress was. But this is stress."

It's sad and unjust that a talented journalist who was making a constructive contribution to this nation's role in a global crisis has to suffer for his country's imagined sins while airheads with nothing better to do give us all a bad name doing party tricks for fast cash.