Baggage Claim Number 4 blogged the annual NARAL dinner, and the speeches of each of the current Democratic hopefuls for the 2004 presidential election, at length.

The bottom line: only Al Sharpton wowed anyone, really. Howard Dean's heart was in the right place for the crowd. The rest? Ahem.

Al Sharpton carries a lot of baggage, from the whole Tawana Brawley fiasco to his connections to fight promoter Don King and the boxing world. He is not, in current political terms, a viable candidate for President (at least not for the Democratic nomination for President). But he can act as a spoiler, and influence the overall debate.

Considering the mealy-mouthed horde of losers that pass the Democratic party's litmus test for viability who are also in the race, that is cold comfort.

Somehow, I don't see Joe Lieberman doing a whole lot to reverse the erosion of the bill of rights that John Ashcroft . The rest…well, Dean is at least interesting in that he's unknown. Edwards is fresh meat from the same locker that we fetched the last couple of Democratic hopefuls from. The rest? Fuggedaboudit.

Looks like I'll be writing in the Zinn/Chomsky ticket again, folks. (Now that Phil Berrigan has left us for a better place.)

Click above for streaming audio of the speech from the Baltimore Sun's website.

Unfortunately, my eldest son disabled my time-shifting strategy for the State of the Union address. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I heard it all on the radio while I was working with the original silicon-based technology (clay). And boy, were there ever some whoppers in Dubya's speech.

Let's start with the domestic policy stuff. The tax cut strategy that Bush outlined is flat-out regressive. Scott Rosenberg points out the statistical lie of averages that Bush used to justify the cuts.

Then Bush paid lip service to a number of co-opted themes provided to him by the Democrats last year–health insurance chief among them. The environment — since when was building new roads through forests, cutting old growth and new oil exploration good for the environment? He made them sound good. Hydrogen powered cars? Whee.

Time to throw the right some more obvious bones. He gets in a few quick punches on abortion.

Okay, now for the world outside the bubble. He talked about aid for fighting AIDS in Africa. Hmmm. (Pundits called it a political move designed to appeal to african-americans after the whole Lott thing–maybe, but is even Bush THAT cynical?)

And then he springs the Iraq thing. Never a details guy, Bush paints a picture with broad strokes–he's leaving the fine brushwork to Colin Powell. He talks about the threat from Iraq, but he doesn't say what's to be gained, or why now. He makes vague allusions to Iraq giving Al Qaeda weapons of mass destruction–but the administration and Tony Blair already said flat out that there was no Iraqi connection to the 9/11 attacks, and he presents no evidence that Al Qaeda is getting support from Iraq.

The net result–despite a tightly crafted speech from Bush, with a few surprise topics, I'm left wondering where the beef was. There's no substance to chew on, just some promises and platitudes (some of which are bound not to be kept), and some flat-out lies about taxes (and maybe Iraq).

The politicoes NBC paraded across the screen with reactions afterward were predictable. Ted Kennedy, the loyal opposition, is used to frame the conversation about war–and that's not saying much. “The process is working,” he says. It's like Kennedy playing Mom to Dubya. “No, no, you have to eat your peas and let the inspectors finish first, and THEN you can go out and play and invade Iraq.”

I won't be surprised to see the market tank again today.

Tonight, I'll be throwing some clay around at the Potters Guild while the State of the Union address is given by our Fearsome Leader. So I'll be analog-TiVo-ing (aka video-taping) the address to timeshift it (and perhaps get some future mileage out of the footage with iMovie).

Speaking of timeshifting, Ed Cone says Dubya wants to turn the clock back to the bad old days.