The president gave a speech last night.  I didn’t watch it.  I need to be able to read the synopsis of political speeches these days because I can’t quite stomach the queasy feeling I get half the time.

And so, I missed the moment everyone’s talking about this morning: South Carolina senator Joe Wilson yelling, “You lie!” when President Obama said that his vision for reformed health care wouldn’t cover illegal immigrants.

Here it is in case you missed it:

I find myself in a quandary here.  I’m not entirely sure where I stand on health care reform (yes, the system is broken, and I am mystified by people who think that a government run plan will be more of a burden than a privately run one, apparently on the basis that it’s more “American” to have corporations do it, because corporations are never, ever evil), but I know where I stand on this.  (And if you don’t know, you clearly didn’t read my post from Monday).

The New York Times, in its fact-checking recap of the president’s speech (interesting read), points out that the president is speaking true on this point (and most others … although some of them need to be read creatively).

I keep going back to this: W. was president for 8 years.  He stood up in front of Congress year after year and bragged about how well the war on terror was going and how Iraq was always under control.  Did anyone stand up and yell, “You sent our men and women to fight a war whose sole benefit was to line the pockets of the Vice President?”  No, they didn’t. And it would have been a far more intelligent thing to say.

In fact, this morning, both parties are at pains to remember any occasion on which a presidential address was interrupted in such a manner.  This is not the British Parliament.  We do not have a system that encourages smart retorts in Congress (and, let’s face it, it’s more fun to watch it happen with British accents.  The Brits are so much better at coming up with deep-cutting nasty comments that sound perfectly reasonable on face value).

I keep coming back to this: it’s obvious that the political rhetoric in this country is such that the president has to keep proving his worthiness of being in the office of president … the one that he was elected to, and by a much more definitive margin than his predecessor ever received in two terms.  It’s like people just assume that he’s less than human and not fully American, and it’s up to him to constantly prove otherwise.

In more amusing news, a California state assemblyman from Yorba Linda, one of the true champions of pro-family legislation (that would be pro-conservative definition of family, natch), resigned after bragging to a colleague about an affair without realizing that his microphone was on and that his comments were going out on public access television and preserved on tape for posterity.

Not only that, but it seems that this was his second mistress.  He wasn’t only cheating on his wife — he was cheating on his other mistress, too.

So much for pro-family values!  Although, he did put his money where his mouth is: part of the bragging included the revelation that he didn’t use a condom.  So maybe he’s a true Christian™ after all.  God wants babies!  They’re delicious!

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