Random Thoughts from Last Night's State of the Union Address, Such as Was Dick Cheney Having Angina Pain or Gas?
At one point in the speech, Cheney broke into this weird smile, then quickly popped something small into his mouth that my wife Beth said could have been a nitroglycerin pill, or maybe one of those Listerine breath strips. His facial expressions are like those of an infant, every bodily discomfort comes across as a grimace, sneer, or weird smile. What is unclear is whether the discomfort we witnessed was due to chest pain or sausage and onions for dinner.

Memo to congress before the next State of the Union address: stop with the autograph hounding. What are you, ten years old? I think I saw at least one baseball passed to the president to sign on his way out. Thank God Nancy Pelosi didn't lift her shirt and ask the president to "Sign the left one." (Here is a photo taken moments before the speech of the President and Madam Speaker arm wrestling.)

Meanwhile, another of those video terrorist-grams were released the other day. It was made by the current second or third ranking member of al-Qaeda, Ayman "Buddy" al-Zawahri, who only a few weeks ago was working in the al-Qaeda mail room. He "taunts" President Bush's surge plan by telling him to bring on the "entire army." In full he says: "So send your entire army to be annihilated at the hands of the mujahedeen (holy warriors) to free the world from your evil," He might as well be in a MySpace chat room. "And another thing George, Tony Blair told Putin who told me that he doesn't really like you as much as you think." Why is terrorist-gram rhetoric so juvenile? Every terrorist-gram could be boiled down to one main theme: "You're stupid, and we hate you." What are they, ten years old?

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File this article under Ouch II, the Sequel.

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When I saw this story, I immediately thought of the most obnoxious commercial of the 2006 Christmas Shopping Season.

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Yeah, the border guards won't notice a few rare birds in the car.