The Republicans rebutithith

10:35 p.m. -- This is Cajundog, signing off.

10:34 p.m. -- The freest political system ... that money can buy. You better have a good PAC.
Americans can do anything. Do another shot.

10:33 p.m. -- "Republicans lost your trust and rightly so."

10:32 p.m. -- (Insert group here) can do anything. Down another shot.

10:31 p.m. -- It shouldn't take a disaster to create innovation ... but it helps.

10:30 p.m. -- We believe Americans can do anything. Take a shot.

10:29 p.m. -- Drill, baby, drill.

10:28 p.m. -- We believe Americans can do anything ... as long as they cut taxes. Instead of monitoring volcanoes ... umm, you knew where that was going.

10:25 p.m. -- A Hurricane Katrina anecdote. Oh no you didn't.

10:23 p.m. -- Umm, do I care about Jindal's childhood? He just dissed Mata Bharat.

10:20 p.m. -- He's only been a governor for a year. Not exactly a "political Jedi Knight yet." According to Robert Travis Scott of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Calls him the "George Will" of the GOP. Ugh!

Approaching the mound is Cajundog Millionaire Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, where chickens are not animals: legally speaking.

Live blogging the State of the Union Address

10:06 p.m. -- Peace Out! Good night everybody! I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip the wait staff.

10:04 p.m. -- A poor grade school girl in South Carolina wrote to Congress seeking aid for her school. To bad she didn't have well-endowed PAC.

10:03 p.m. -- Greenberg, Kansas ... because Greenberg, Texas is a podunk.

10 p.m. -- As we stand at this crossroads in history ... we wait to get hit by a bus.
"Hope is found in unlikely places," ... under the bus.

9:59 p.m. -- The obligatory line regarding peace in the Middle East.

9:57 p.m. -- Our armed forces will finally get a pay raise! GITMO is to be closed. "Living our values make us safer and stronger. ... The United States does not torture."

9:55 p.m. -- He will end the War in Iraq! Wait, there's a war in Iraq?
"I will not allow terrorists to plot against the United States from safehavens half-way around the world."
Pakistan is so boned.

9:47 p.m. -- "We do what it takes to bring this deficit down."
Congresscritters don't like the idea of cutting earmarks.
Two trillion dollars in savings in the next federal budgets. Good luck getting that through Congress.

9:44 p.m. -- Our schools need more reform. "Dropping out of high school is no longer an option."
Oh hey! Something the GOP can stand up for.

9:43 p.m. -- Health care will not wait ... we start next week.

9:40 p.m. -- The crushing cost of health care. "We can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold."
Are the legs of Congress' GOP members broken?
We will cure cancer ... umm is this the State of the Union or an episode of the West Wing?

9:39 p.m. -- Speaking of our auto industry ...

9:36 p.m. -- Energy, healthcare and education. The three priorities. Oh, and did we mention it's time for America to lead again. Renewable energy ... umm, by the way, where is Bender?

9:33 p.m. -- He's providing a historical perspective. Oh, oh, Obama's prepared for this exam.

9:31 p.m. -- "It's not about helping banks, it's about helping people." Somewhere, a bunch of bank executives are now drinking themselves blind.

9:30 p.m. -- "Our job is to solve the problem." Good luck with that.

9:27 p.m. -- Banks will be held accountable. Expect the Stock Market to crash 300 points at opening bell tomorrow. It'll give new meaning the words Ash Wednesday.

9:25 p.m. -- "Nobody messes with Joe!" Ain't that right.
Even if we get the economic stimulus right, it'll be choked off if the banks don't start lending again. When there's no lending, the economy grinds to a halt. Oh, oh, new lending initiative to fund another bank executive's bathroom remodeling plans.

9:23 p.m. -- You'll have to wait until April 1 to see that tax cut in your paycheck. Figures.

9:19 p.m. -- The Day of Reckoning has arrived. And we're off to the economic agenda.

9:17 p.m. -- Biden is already bored, looking at the State of the Union commerative booklet.

9:15 p.m. -- He's going to speak frankly. And the lead off ... the economy. Who knew?
"We will rebuild, we will recover." We will build it stronger, better, faster. We have the technology.

9:14 p.m. -- Speaker of the House ... then the prez.
BTW: Who let the generals out?

9:12 p.m. -- Speech. Speech!

9:11 p.m. -- Is male pattern baldness a constitutional requirement for holding federal office?

9:08 p.m. -- Barack Obama has just entered the Chamber. Sorry, no autographs.

9:07 p.m. -- Okay, one more puff, then the president will be ready for his close up.

9:03 -- Madam Speaker, the President's Cabinet, which will be followed by his sink, furnature and toasters.
He's got a pair of cabinet members who look they're still in high school! How did that happen?
And here we have Madam Clinton. She's not bitter. Oh no, not at all ... didn't the post of Secretary of State used to be the stepping stone to the Oval Office in the Pleoscene era of American politics?

9:02 p.m. -- Okay, who lost the president? Probably stopped for a smoke.
Oh wait we did find his wife.

9 p.m. -- The Chief and associate justices of the Supreme Court!

8:59 p.m. -- The Dean of the Diplomatic Corps has just arrived! Make a hole!

8:55 p.m. -- Our meeting will come to order and a rather large committee consisting of approximately half of the chamber is to go out and get the President and escort him to the chamber. How could they possibly screw that up?

Totally random camera shots: A woman shaking hands with a member of the Capitol police in the upper gallery; the cast of thousands invited to witness this address.

8:47 p.m. -- Is Pelosi wearing a green hoodie to this affair? Must be good to be the Speaker.
Oh look, it's the Gentleman from Arizona, or his floating head at any rate wearing a cream colored tie no less. He should have let his Bloggerette daughter dress him.

8:45 p.m. -- 'Grand Gaffer' Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi take their places while everyone else continues to try to file into the chamber. The Attorney General will be watching the proceedings from an undisclosed location ... in the event of an emergency.

8:40 p.m. -- The Senators are now traveling, two by two, to the House Veal Fatting Pen, umm Chamber. Whomever is the last Senator to leave, please turn out the lights.
The first 'well-duh' observation of the evening by Floyd Norris: "There are no easy solutions."

8:33 p.m. -- We interupt this chattering to cut to camera three for a gratutious shot of President Obama's departure from the White House in his spiffy new ride.

8:30 p.m. -- Hey, we have a financial system problem. Who knew?! Statuary Hall is perfect for a political perp walk. Congresscritters twittering pointlessly about how they turned up two hours early to get good seats for the show. Ugh!

Oh look! A gapper's block on the floor of the Senate. Could it be any whiter? And there's Joe Liberman talking to Andrew Jackson.

8:25 p.m. -- Cajundog millionaire, at 37, will be offering his audition for the next election this evening. "He's meant to symbolize the new face of the (GOP)."

8:20 p.m. -- Military economy is linked to the economy. Please, what planet does Foukara live on? It's all off the books spending anyway. Obama will get the money to spend on Afghanistan from the same place that Bush got the money to spend on Iraq: from the next 10 generations.

Our Man George Mitchell is the go to guy for middle east peace. Oh, and forget that two-state solution in the Middle East for awhile, it's deadlocked.

8:15 p.m. -- Floyd Norris of the New York Times has no neck. Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal looks like an 'alien gray' wearing a mop. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana will offer the rebuttal for the GOP.

It's Al Jazeera's Abderrahim Foukara. The crash of oil prices has affected the psychology of the Arab Wall Street and the fear is that Americans will buy less and send prices down even further.

8:10 p.m. -- Your debt is now more than $10 trillion. Expect the GOP to taunt Obama as a tax and spend liberal, despite their own credibility deficit that is now about as steep as the Federal debt.

8:05 p.m. -- Why do we CARE what the reaction on Wall Street will be. They screwed up the economy. The taxpayers are bailing them out. Their only response to being told to jump ought to be "Sir! Yes Sir! How high sir!"
8 p.m. -- After a day of conjecture and 'what to expect' it is T-1 hour. The nattering has begun in earnest.

And so it ends

The battle between the Gray Lady and the Lobbyist is now over. The settlement of the defamation suit between the New York Times and Vicki L. Iseman is being carried out on the Web. The NYT does not have to put a retraction (or, apparently, anything else) in its print edition regarding a story on her dealings with the Gentleman from Arizona. If you expect much in the way of illumination or wisdom, you're asking too much.

The new sultans of Swat

One has to wonder what the long-term effects for innocent immigrants will be in the Faustian bargain the Pakistani government struck a deal with the pro-Taliban Movement for the Implementation of Islamic Law. The cease-fire agreement allows for the application of Shari'a law in the Swat Valley. There is some question about what kind of shari'a law they mean to implement. If present results are any indication, the kind they intend to implement has grim consequences for the future. It seems that Taliban partisans in the Swat Valley of Pakistan are threatening those families with American relatives putting them in a rather nasty bind. Their ideology can be seen in the murder by beheading of Aasiya Hassan who was divorcing her Islamic television station founder husband Muzzammil Hassan (a station ostensibly to counter Islamic stereotypes -- insert tasteless observation here). This policy of appeasement may not even bring lasting stability to the nation of Pakistan. And the rollback of Pakistani troops from the valley may only make matters worse.

The insolvent International

“The International” wants to be taken seriously as a thriller of our times with a message. Unfortunately the time it really reflects is a decade past. The movie is all about a big evil bank doing big evil things and why it remains impervious to justice.

Anyone who has seen the superior “Lord of War” will be familiar with this movie’s message. Anyone familiar with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) will be readily familiar with the plot of this movie. The International of the movie isn’t even a thinly veiled version of the notorious bank as it is chartered in the same country and has the same corporate initials but in a slightly different order.

The movie has as many changes of international venue as a “James Bond” movie and its leads don’t get much to work with. It’s a financial thriller in the first act, becomes a detective shoot-em-up in the second act and ends as a bad revenge-actioner-want-to-be in the final act. None of it works very well. The shoot-out in the Guggenheim Museum of Art is particularly jarring and seems to have been shoe-horned in at the behest of some studio “suit.”

The twin themes of the movie are that power belongs to those who control the world’s debt, and that entities like The International that provide the world powers with a service will continue to go about their business and remain beyond the long arm of the law. Both are powerful themes. Neither are served well by this film.

Bump and grind

The Brits and French had an Atlantic traffic accident with a nuclear-armed nuclear submarine from each country bumping into each other. Part of the reason is France's secrecy regarding the deployment of its missile boats. Part of it is oceanographic geography. Both vessels were badly bruised with le French boat Le Triomphant, with it's damaged navigational array, getting the better of the British sub H.M.S. Vanguard, which had to be towed. This comes as French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepares to make the push for the reintegration of France into the NATO fold. While the damage to the vessels may not have been enough to cause environmental damage, it seems clear that if France is going to rejoin NATO it ought to consider giving up some of it's secrecy to avoid a similar collision in the future.

Saudi Arabia's musical chairs

Saudi Arabia inched closer to modernity this weekend as King Abdullah showed the door to a pair of religious hard-liners and opened a deputy cabinet minister's seat to a woman. Saudi Arabia's Grand Ulema Commission is getting new representation by moderates. Sheik Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the chief of the religious police (who will probably not be attending this year's religious policeman's ball) has been sent packing along with Sheik Saleh al-Luhaidan who issued a fatwa allowing the killing of television executives who allow the broadcasting of immoral content (although THAT show would get great ratings). Norah al-Faiz would be the highest-ranking woman in the Saudi government. It remains to be seen if she'll be more than a token presence. The real question is whether this represents real reform in the Kingdom of Saud, or if it's just the momentary blowing of the desert sands.

Satellites of love

It's getting crowded up there. The U.S. Strategic Command, which tracks everything in orbit apparently missed the likelihood of an orbital mishap when a Russian and American satellite collided in low earth orbit over Siberia in a rare mash-up. Moving at 6 miles per second, the crash involved one of the 66 Iridium communications satellites and an out off service Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite. The crash occurred 485 miles above the earth and the risk to the International Space Station and other orbital assets is still being determined. Apparently the rules that currently exist for the maintenance of orbital traffic are sketchy and no one wants to designate a traffic cop. With so much junk in orbit it's only a matter of time before another accident occurs. When that happens, it'll be interesting to see who hands out and who gets the ticket. Just as long as the owner doesn't have AIG as the insurer.

Kabul go kaboom

On that other front in the GWOT, you know, Afghanistan, the Taliban demonstrated their ability to mount an offensive by attacking the Afghan Ministry of Justice. Twenty were reported dead and 57 injured in an attack ahead of the arrival of President Obama's special envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke. It seems that at one point, the justice minister was locked in his office for his own protection. Apparently this strike was the same kind as the one carried out in October against the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture. Now that the Taliban has flexed its muscles, we'll see what happens when Holbrooke flexes his.

Election 5769

Israeli voters are choosing a new premier. Their two main choices are a former female spy for Mossad and a former general and two-time prime minister. They are running for the chance to be bounced from power on corruption charges like outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Despite the bad weather, election returns were running at 60 percent, which lagged slightly behind the 63.2 percent in the 2006 election. Security and the recent kerfuffle with Hamas are top issues in what has turned out to be a tighter race than expected. Palestinians were banned from Israel for the duration. Whomever wins the election, it is expected that no one party will have enough seats to run the Knesset themselves which will mean a coalition government is in the offing. Stay tuned.

Stimulating the stimulus

Only a few days into the job and President Barack Obama is already facing trouble getting his signature legislation passed. Going on the stump in Hoosier Territory, he remains very popular but the stimulus package -- not so much. Part of it is the elephants in the room who won't play ball. Part of it may be that the public would rather have the $10,000 in their pocket rather than have their money handed over to someone else to boost the economy. But as the deal inches closer to passage some problems are likely to linger rather than get resolved. Don't expect any immediate miracles.

Get out of Purgatory free card

The Vatican has decided to revive Plenary Indulgences. For non-Catholics and for Catholics under a certain age, the practice is a decidedly curious one. In keeping with the "What You hold on Earth, I'll hold in Heaven" deal Christ made with Peter, the most recent keeper of the throne has brought back this practice, probably so he can be absolved in his turn for ex-excommunicating a Holocaust denier. It only works to get out of Purgatory though, not Hell. Funny how that works. In the Catholic mythology, Purgatory is the place for those who aren't bad enough for Hell but aren't good enough for Heaven. But Purgatory is only for Catholics, which of course leaves everyone else scratching their heads. And of course, there are rules to this sort of thing. You can't buy them outright anymore, and not every church is making the offer. So check the fine print.