Is it possible to be disappointed in a speech that you had low expectations for?

I had a much better reaction written which was then lost in a tragic browser mishap (my PowerBook is in the shop, typing this on my work laptop, a PC that I’m not used to). Here’s what I remember.

The speech was very blah overall. It was not bold, not especially ambitious, and very partisan. It even lacked the touching photo ops and visual imagery of speeches past. No Iraqis in the audience hugging the mother of a soldier and the like. Not that I like that sort of cheap emotional tug, but at least it gives the speech some weight.

Did you notice the sheer number of straw men in the speech? Who are these isolationists? Do you know people that truly advocate no trade or forward diplomacy? And these human-animal hybrid scientists? Who are these people and are they common enough that they deserve special mention during the State of the Union speech? They were weird points of emphasis, like when he used to call out those that believed that Arabs were incapable of forming a democracy.

I was surprised at the strong defense of the NSA program in the middle of the speech. I had a set of links that I had prepared for that topic as well, but based on the pre-speech reporting, I chose to focus instead on healthcare. I’ll include those links at the bottom of this post.

Health insurance wasn’t much of an emphasis in the speech but we’ll see if he spends more time on it over the coming weeks and months.

The President continued to make bold, misleading assertions in this speech. His claim that previous Presidents had authorized the type of domestic spying he’s getting heat for is misleading at best. He failed to mention that it was legal under previous presidents. The law was amended during Clinton’s presidency by a Republican Congress. I don’t feel like I need to agree with him on everything… but at least be straight with the American people. That’s all I want.

The Democratic response was more direct and blunt than any I remember. I really appreciated Gov. Kaine crticizing the President where he and the Democratic party disagree. I don’t remember the response last year, but I remember the Daschle/Pelosi responses that were too polite and too respectful. The Democratic party owes it to the American people to call a spade a spade. If the President misleads the American people and the press isn’t going to call him out, we have to rely on the minority party. This was the best balance of respect and honesty that I’ve seen in a while from the Democratic party. In fact, aside from Kaine’s obvious nervousness, the response was excellent.

I’d be happy to hear what you thought. Feel free to respond below.

Oh, by the way, what was up with the whole Cindy Sheehan thing? Prior to the speech, CNN.com was leading with the story that she was going to be attending. Then, right as Bush was walking in, the announcer on the TV said she was arrested by House police. Details are unclear, but it seems like she was arrested for a t-shirt. On the day that Coretta Scott King died, too…

A transcript of the speech can be found at the Washington Post.

NSA Wiretapping links

• Phillip Carter goes over the Bush response to the NSA program.
• Atrios pointed out that the administration opposed the type of FISA changes that would’ve made the domestic spying easier to do. That’s inconsistent…

I’ve been collecting links for the past week or so to build out some background reading for tonight’s State of the Union address. There is going to be a lot of the typical pomp and circumstance that surrounds the address, including the staged touching moments and political pandering (Justice Alito, anyone?). The President faces a number of political challenges so, like the 2005 address where he unveiled his Social Security non-plan/idea, this year he looks to focus on ambitious domestic initiatives to take focus off his other failures. So, it will be tax cuts, energy policy, and a healthcare/health insurance initiative tonight.
(Click here to read the rest of this post)

Atrios highlights a great article in Editor and Publisher that covers a recently uncovered letter from Upton Sinclair to a California lawyer talking about the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Unfortunately, the article talks about how the contents of that letter have been used by right wing tool, National Review editor, and syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg to smear Upton Sinclair.

Before I go any further, I want to suggest that everyone read the article. It’s a fascinating bit of history and a well written story. The politics of Goldberg’s response only motivated the article but aren’t central to it.

Sinclair wrote a book, Boston, that was ultimately sympathetic to Sacco and Vanzetti’s case. Because of that, Goldberg decides to (yet again) bash liberals. He ends with:

Never mind. Clooney’s fans, like Sinclair’s, always order the usual. And always seem to get it.

Quite pithy. And ultimately amusing considering the, uh, paucity of diverse opinions at the National Review. One might say the same of Goldberg’s fans who, like Rush Limbaugh’s fans or Bill O’Reilly’s fans, always order the usual victimhood and liberal bashing and deceit. And, they always seem to get it.

Of course, any article that begins a polemic against some ill-defined group of people with a quote from a movie star, well… that might be a warning flag.

In case you missed it, poker champion Annie Duke was on The Colbert Report. She was a surprisingly good guest, rolling with the chaos that is a Colbert interview. Some guests just can’t handle the sheer over-the-topness of the show. You should check out the Comedy Central site later to see if they have the clip online.

In what has to be a record, I’ve just finished filing my 2005 Federal Tax Return. It’s amazing what owning a home can do to motivate you to file that return as early as possible. That, and well, there’s that looming wedding which makes the refund check more than a nice thing.

One problem I ran into this year was that H&R Block discontinued TaxCut for the Mac. I’ve happily used that software for the last 3 years and was looking forward to using the new version this year. So, I was faced with the choice of either switching over to TurboTax or going the web route with H&R Block.

Ultimately, I chose using the online tax preparation tool, TaxCut Online Premium. A word of warning, I had trouble getting started using Safari. For some reason, I was unable to launch the application and I don’t think it was the popup blocking in Safari. I switched over to Firefox and had smooth sailing from that point on. There were some visual glitches in the interface. For example, some of the buttons seemed to only show their top half (they’re the green slivers you’ll see). I was able to get through the whole preparation interview, though, and file my federal taxes.

Overall, the online offering felt a lot like the Mac program from last year. It offered all the features I needed at a reasonable cost. The help was as robust as the desktop application and the UI made smart use of JavaScript and DHTML. I wish that they had a desktop application, but I’m sure I won’t miss it. Hopefully, filing my state returns will go as smoothly and I’ll have a successful experience with the product.

One nice thing in the report at the end of the product shows you your effective tax rate vs. what bracket you’re in. My effective tax rate was 12% lower than what it should be according to the tax schedule. Had I donated another huge chunk of money to charity (something like $8K more), I would’ve actually dropped a bracket. Something to ponder when comparing our tax brackets to those in other countries.

The Connecticut software hasn’t come out yet, but once that’s out, I’ll be done my taxes earlier than ever. Gotta love it.

Many Republicans, including Sen. Martinez (R-FL), have returned campaign contributions linked to Rep. Bob Ney or Jack Abramoff as a statement against the corruption. Well, Sen. Martinez has a tough choice: Abramoff co-chaired a $250K fundraiser for him. Will he return all of it? Read the rest.

There’s an interesting bit of reporting over at TPM. It’s not clear if this means anything, but a private photo studio that does the photo shoots for a lot of Republican events deleted all the photos in their archive with Bush and Abramoff together. They keep the photos they take and resell them along with rights to publish, etc. Thus they have them all cataloged and available. TPM called the studio as part of their research into what kind of relationship Bush and Abramoff had. Read the story, it’s hard to believe why the studio would do this on their own… The existence of these photos aren’t secret.

If you’re looking for an interesting gift idea for me, Josh just sent me a link to this fancy t-shirt.

Dan Froomkin, writer for the Washington Post, had an interesting chat on washingtonpost.com. Worth a good read if you want a feel for the various scandals and news items going on in Washington.

In a discussion about Washington Post brouhaha with Howell, Jay Rosen unleashes this bit of wisdom:

Q: Let me tell you a danger I see and get your reaction to it. This isn’t a comment on your decision with the post.blog, but a larger problem. There’s a danger when journalists look at complaints about the news from people involved in a political struggle and discount them because they come from partisans. The highest rates of participation in politics and in the arguments found in newspapers have come during periods in our history when things were intensely partisan. A partisan might be defined as someone who gives a shit about the outcome of the political stuggles read about in the Washington Post in such splendid detail.

It seems to me if you’re dismissing the complaints of the partisans you’re reacting in exactly the wrong way; they’re your best customers. They’re way involved in the news. You have to find a way of hearing them, or your sunk. Of course some of them are crazy, excessive, extremely rude and they say things for shock value or just to rage at the machine. Maybe it’s hard to find the signal in the noise, but that is exactly what the press has to do. There’s an idiocy to partisan complaints; there’s also the heart and soul of politics in them. No political journalist can afford to ignore that, and no online editors, either. I’m afraid that after an incident like this, more will. What do you think?

Do we expect our representatives to be partisan at times? Does a two party system work better or worse when representatives are partisan? Is being partisan inherently wrong or right? Something to think about.

On a side note, I’m sorry about the relative quiet around here. With the launch of Josh’s blog, we lost the second most prolific author on FatMixx. I’ve also been a little burned out on essay blogging and needed some time off. I’ve been getting the itch to write more, though, so I’m going to take the State of the Union address as an opportunity to do that. I’m also going to do more technology stuff as topics come up (there are some ideas that I’ve been putting off).

Plus some more feature changes will be coming to the site.

Update: Salon has a great overview of the whole WaPo/Howell/Abramoff reporting controversy. The report is thorough and does a very good job of airing the facts in addition to both sides explanations.