corrente

Via the Amazin' Froomkin in Wapo, Robert Kaiser, a Washington Post Associate Editor has a very interesting addition to the CW. Of the SOTU, Kaise writes:

Bush often describes a world whose features are all highly debatable, if not simply invented. He proposes 'a comprehensive health care agenda' that will leave perhaps 50 million Americans without health insurance. Is that comprehensive in any meaningful sense? He promises big economic benefits from legal changes, 'tort reform,' that independent economists say cannot have more than a small economic effect even if enacted, which is not likely. He promises to increase the size of Pell Grants, not noting that they have shrunk far below the level he promised when he came into the White House. He proposes to reduce American dependency on foreign supplies of energy, when independent specialists say that as long as we need oil, we will be heavily, and increasingly, dependent on foreign suppliers. Bush spoke of a free and sovereign Iraq as though all was well there, but Iraq is a country in terrible straits, with most uncertain prospects.
(via WaPo)

With apologies to Spinal Tap:

There's such a fine line between faith-based and delusional.

So Kaiser does fine up to a point. But then he goes mushy:

Bush didn't invent the rosy scenario approach to politics, of course. There's a lot of tradition behind this kind of wishful rhetoric."

It does look, though, that the consequences of Bush not being in the reality-based commmunity are slowly sinking in to the [cough] great minds in the Beltway who control our discourse. 2005 should be interesting....