Got up and read through the State of the Union from last night. I tried to listen to it but quickly fell asleep.

Looking through some of the coverage in the NYT, I just don’t understand the little word tally they play: How many times Bush uses the word, Iraq or oil. It’s like the WAY he uses the words is not important or at least not as quantifiable. What nonsense. This is not reporting in my book.

It helps to think about the words used in conversation and in a speech. But I think it helps more to think about the meaning in the conversation or the speech.

Ultimately, language is about ideas. Political language often is a language of misdirection or making an idea less clear so that it is ostensibly more palatable to more of the electorate. This is frustrating when you are trying to understand what people are truly saying.

I heard a funny thing on the radio this morning. A commentator was saying he has a little litany of quotes he repeats that show why people distrust government and specifically presidents:

“I am not going to send American boys to do what Asian boys are supposed to do,”

“I am not a crook,”

“I did not know anything about Iran-Contra,”

“Read my lips: No new taxes,”

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,”

or, to paraphrase, “we are in imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction.”

I googled this and found the quotes in this article.

In the middle of the last paragraph, Elizabeth the daughter called from China and Eileen called from work.

After reading the State of the Union, I sat down at the piano and played through the first two fugues from WTC by Bach.

Read the introduction and a portion of Letters to Felice by Kafka.