THE STATE OF THE UNION - Live blog!

9:11 - I thought it was really classy for the President to open with his rendition of "That's Amore."

9:13 - The segue into the "Money Song" from Cabaret worked out less well.

9:17 - Damned good point about the Dresden Dolls: "Near as I can see, the whole act comes down to a good-looking chick warbling about how much she wants to sodomize a robot. I say if someone can make a living doing THAT, there's still hope."

9:19 - The squirrel joke from Up works better when a dog tells it.

9:22 - This section of the speech would have been a lot more persuasive if Obama had not started talking in Chinese.

9:24 - His theory of the Ripper murders needs work. There's no real evidence that Mary Kelly was the final victim, since reliable witnesses saw her that morning.

9:25 - Government loans for a solar roofing company? Obviously, this man is a socialist. It all goes back to Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House and something something Federal Reserve...

9:28 - His Klingon is impressive, but that is not you conjugate Qap.

9:30 - Obama just insulted the Super Bowl. He hates America. And he's gay.

9:32 - "Valerie Bertinelli -- still mega-doable." Agreed.

9:34 - I feel queasy. To prove his bipartisanship, Obama drew out the name "Boooooehhhner" while licking his lips.

9:35 - "People need to train for new jobs and careers in today's fast-changing economy." Someone should tell him that the changes mean that even people with degrees can't find jobs. And can't pay back their student loans.

9:38 - Infrastructure. Good idea. It's about time Obama hits the road.

9:40 - Obama wants to expand wireless internet. Farhad Manjoo wants to constrict it. Battle of the titans!

9:42 - I liked his tribute to Jack LaLanne. Nice form on those jumping jacks.

9:44 - Seriously. Obama says that he has signed trade agreements with India and South Korea. He says that these will create jobs in this country. Ohhhhhhhh yeah. That's a topic for a blog post.

9:45 - Did you notice the loud applause for deregulation and the tepid applause for sensible laws to ensure safety?

9:46 - Why does Joe Biden look like he's in Cinemascope and everyone else isn't?

9:47 - Roswell was real? Jeez, he just sort of slipped that in, didn't he?

9:50 - Here it comes. Social Security and Medicare.

9:52 - "Medical malpractice reform." John Grisham should write a new novel called The President.

9:54 - I didn't know Obama programmed the White House web site by himself. Drupal is a lot tougher than Wordpress.

9:57 - So, we can expect no money from the government to create jobs, and we have no reason to believe that the private sector will create any. But we're going to put more people in schools with incredibly high tuition fees.

10:00 - See? Things are going GREAT in Afghanistan! We'll be building Pizza Huts there real soon.

10:01 - We've sent a message to Al Qaeda in Pakistan: "We will defeat you." Osama must be quaking in his sandals.

10:04 - He did Tunusia without once mentioning anything about Tatooine...?

10:09 - Oh my god. CNN deliberately darkened and widened the face of Joe Biden! This can't be the random flaw of a video codec -- it must have been DELIBERATE! Someone get this to Markos Moulitsas!


10:11 - Heh heh. He said "drilling."

10:12 -- You know, he does the Grinch song better than Thurl Ravenscroft.

Final thoughts: Josh Marshall had a better line than any of mine: "For [the] sake of clarity, I will from now on abbreviate 'win the future' as WTF."

So. Right now, there's only one thing I want -- for someone to give the Democratic response.

UPDATE: Michelle Bachmann has not spoken yet. Nevertheless, I think Representative Raul Brown of Georgia has the stupidest response of the evening:

Mr. President, you don't believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.

I think Broun completely misinterpreted Obama's comments about dialectical materialism.

UPDATE II: I'm watching Bachmann now. God DAMN, what a liar! She speaks as though the deficit was created by jobs programs, when in fact it was created by bailouts to billionaires. The economic melt-down was directly produced by deregulation, and now those same Wall Street thugs who got us into this mess support the tea partiers. The "stimulus" bill she derides was no such thing. It consisted largely of tax cuts. Notice that the tea partiers never talk specifics when they imply that Obama has wasted money on "socialistic" jobs programs -- because he has done no such thing.

Then Bachmann ended with more than a hint of the "Hitler the lefty" meme that has infected our national discourse. How dare she make reference to the Iwo Jima flag raising? The Tea Party movement, which she represents, is funded by the Kochs, who are trying to spread the ideas of the John Birch Society -- and the JBS was founded by people who had previously opposed both FDR and America's entry into World War II.