Hank Fox tallies the words used in Bush's state of the union speech…which I missed. Which I won't bother to listen to. The only word I want to hear him say is "Goodbye," but apparently his speech was all about "Terra'."
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Turns out that GOP message guru Frank Luntz doesn't think much of the Bush administration's communication strategy across the past eight years. In an interview with NPR's On the Media (audio above, transcript), here's part of what he had to say about the Bush lexicon:
FRANK LUNTZ: I don't think…
Like Jason Kuznicki, I didn't watch Bush's speech last night, but read it this morning. One of the charms of reading the speech in text is that you get to laugh knowing that such an inane speech was interrupted by applause approximately 14,873,994 times (the other advantage is that when you read…
Well, Kevin Drum's prediction about the State of the Union address is a bit vague and general:
Bush's theme may well be that he's right and his critics are wrong; and his vision may well be of a year of partisan trench warfare with congressional Democrats.
But Chris Mooney gets specific:
A while…
Bush's treatment of global warming in the State of the Union address was pretty uninspiring, unless you like vagaries. I have a Seed piece going up about this today so I won't say more, except to point out the actual language so you can see for yourself:
America is on the verge of technological…
Sorry, PZ, the term is "terrr." It's pronounced (or "pronouncified," if you're GWB) with exactly one-and-one-half syllables.
Fascinating how Bush threatened several times, with sternly pointed finger, to veto the vote of the People, and then lectured Congress on how important the People are to him.
Just once, I'd like to see Congress rise and yell back "and we will override your effen veto".
He must have been talking about Tara. She has a great blog. I didn't even know Bush liked to read blogs.
style.org has a neat tool to parse this and other other state of the union speeches. With pretty colours even
Bush may not have used the word "science" at all, but he DID call for a "complete ban" on the "buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human bodies" which got a standing ovation from the Republicans.
Besides his war crimes, his tax cuts for the rich, Baby-Killer Bush will go down for his veto of SCHIP, which a minority of Retuglican think-alikes upheld.
Praise Jesus for compassionate conservatism for insurance companies.
That tool is amazing #4. I parsed out of curiosity Terror vs. Israel. Since 2004, Bush has mentioned Terror 105 times. In that same time span, he has mentioned Israel 5 times. So Bush is far more concerned with scaring the shit out of the American public, and sweeping his sick desires for a Jewish State and the Rapture etc etc under the rug. Sick Zionist fuck.
are you sure he wasn't talking about terror?
I have terrorist laminate in my kitchen! It's "green Terra"
Who knew Formica had connections to Al Queada?
How many "sorry"-words were there?
And the production of that laminate is. . .formication- of course the republicans are against it.
In his SOYU speech, GW called for vouchers so inner city kids could attend private and alternative schools and more money for alternative education and faith based organizations. As has been posted by others, he, and other rethuglicans, are out to destroy public education. He needs his vetoes overridden, i.e. slapped down so hard his pen hand is a bloody stump. Hmmm. . . maybe he could be charged with theft (in addition to war crimes) after he leaves office and renditioned to Saudi Arabia.
For any FBI or Chenybots reading, the above was an example of hyperbole. I am disgusted with, disgraced by, and ashamed of the leader of our nation.
Out of curiosity I parsed "threat" versus "diplomacy". As can be expected, "threat" peaked with 16 mentions just before the Iraq war, then tapered off as the war went to shit. Mentions of "Diplomacy" don't outnumber "threat" until 2007.
http://style.org/stateoftheunion/parse/?q=threat&q2=diplomacy&wordsize=…
Of course, just parsing those two words doesn't prove anything by itself, but it is interesting that it fit the pattern I thought it would be.
That's easy, Bush has never said he was sorry for anything. I checked it out on the style.org site and the word "sorry" has never appeared.
Anyone surprised?
Not surprised. Closest Bush ever came to apologizing was after Hurricane Katrina when he admitted fault for handling the situation poorly. Didn't apologize for it, though, and I don't think he's ever admitted fault for anything else.
Cocksucker! I(We)can't stand the Bastard!!
Weird, I parsed "wanker" and "George Bush" and came up with nothing. Now, if you parsed some of my speech I think the results would be somewhat different.
PZ sez: The only word I want to hear him say is "Goodbye." In my fantasy world, we'd also get to hear him say "Guilty, Your Honor."
did he mention "vegans"?
no?
he doesn't mind after all?
So did he mention us folks in Yurp at all?
Oops, sorry that should have been ultra loyal airstrip one.
"God" wins out over "science", 19-12, using #4's tool.
Which is kind of a surprise. I didn't think the score was going to be that close.
update: "faith" beats "science" 31-12. Much more Superbowlish.
Though I'm hoping the Giants will win this year.
This should probably be anonymous, but I'd like to hear Bush say, "Please don't waterboard me a tenth time."
What's the matter, don't you like "swimming"?
Bush covered all Four Horsemen in this SotU. I counted 20 variations of "terror", 6 surge, 1 famine, 1 genocide and 1 disease.
I didn't listen to the speech either. What's the point? His words and actions are rarely ever connected. And I feel sickly ever time I see his stupid smirk.
And I feel sickly ever time I see his stupid smirk.
It's not just that. There's something about his "s"...bugs the shit out of me; can't listen.
Here's the corresponding tag cloud
"We gotta liberatize those Eye-rackinians!"
Um, Bush DID use the word science.
"On matters of life and science, we must trust in the innovative spirit of medical researchers and empower them to discover new treatments while respecting moral boundaries. "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080128-13.html
He also used the words "sciences" and "scientists".
Certainly not trying to defend him or anything but it makes me not really trust Hank Fox all that much.
"On matters of life and science, we must trust in the innovative spirit of medical researchers and empower them to discover new treatments while respecting moral boundaries. "
Moral boundaries defined by religious fundamentalists who have neither the intelligence nor the education to understand what it is that scientists really do all day in those mysterious labs.
By "empower" he means threaten with fatal funding cuts (or no funding to begin with) if said medical researchers don't play by the religious rights' rules. And while I agree that cloning human "bodies" (dead bodies? partial bodies? what does he mean exactly?) may not be a particularly ethical path for current science to take, I am all for the cloning of human organs/stem cells for transplant and research purposes. Too bad he didn't have two functional neurons to rub together so he could address the difference, but in Jeebus's eyes, it's all an abomination anyway, right?
None applauding more vigorously than Senator David Vitter, you may be sure.
Christopher Morris cut up Bush's speeches and pasted them back together so that he actually told the truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacked_MP3
The video of the 2003 State of the Nation address is pretty well done.
I didn't see the word dezhizhunzh on the list either. He used that like eight times.
My reaction to Bush's speeches is always to think basically, how nice, POTUS can read (more or less) at a 5th grade level. I doubt he has much actual input into what he's going to say other than to nod his head in agreement as Cheney dictates to the speech writers. I do wonder how many rehearsals they go through making sure he doesn't stumble over too many big words.
Incidentally, I read an analysis a few years ago that speculated that the less interested Bush is in something the more he stumbles as he talks. Apparently, he's quite articulate when the subject is something he actually cares about, like professional baseball or what type of chew toys Barney prefers.
Barney schmarney - Dubious speaks clearly and in complete sentences when he's ordering or threatening violence (at least according to Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon, iirc).
My bad, Brian. I'm another of those Americans who can no longer bear to hear Bush speak. I used the word list from the Time Magazine site, trusting that it would be complete.
I've added a correction to the post.
"Dubious speaks clearly and in complete sentences when he's ordering or threatening violence"
And he trips over his own tongue any time he tries to claim being interested in helping the poor, improving education, fixing the health care mess, ending the war in Iraq rather than prolonging it. . .
Bush is a murderer, and our Congress cheered him again and again.
Hilarious and/or McCain will continue the murder.
If you don't want to read or watch the actual thing, I wrote up a useful clarified summary.
Brian W. (#30) :
Hank Fox relied on Time's list of all words used at least 3 times. Words used only once or twice (note variants such as 'sciencetist' are counted seperately) were not listed. This is obvious to those who followed the links.
MBL, #48: LOL!!! My monitor is now drenched with tea, much of it delivered through my nose.