Live-Blogging the Immigration Address: No Amnesty for Bloggers
7: 53 PM: Welcome, readers. Yeah, we've decided to liveblog President Bush's speech tonight on border security and immigration. Warning: we're not sure how interesting this will be. We can't promise funny either. (It would be much more entertaining to watch this guy liveblog the speech.)
7: 55 PM: CNN, however, is quite excited about the address. Since this afternoon, they've been doing a minute-by-minute countdown to the speech. We're just excited about an excuse to eat Tostitos and salsa (medium).
7: :59 PM: HA, we just got a five-second clip of the president saying stuff we weren't supposed to hear. Apparently the president was "rehearsing," and the network pool picked it up inadvertently. (Rehearsing? Didn't know he did that -- could have fooled us.)
More after the jump.
8: 01 PM: Props for the snazzy electric blue necktie.
8: 02 PM: "For decades the United States has not been in complete control of its borders." Indeed.
8: 03 PM: Notes that we are a nation of laws, and a nation of immigrants. If we had proposed a drinking game (some of you asked for one), we'd say take a drink each time Bush says warm-and-fuzzy things about immigrants.
8: 05 PM: Reiterates that we don't have full control of the border. Sure, take another drink.
8: 07 PM: Explains how the deployment of the National Guard units at the border will work -- the big news of tonight's speech (but news that we already knew about).
8: 08 PM: Discusses "catch and release." Isn't that a fishing thing? Or the flirtation technique Reese Witherspoon taught Jennifer Coolidge in "Legally Blonde"?
8: 12 PM: Proposes new identification cards for immigrants, employing "biometric technology." Cool beans. (Whatever happened to that microchip implant idea ?)
8: 12 PM: He opposes amnesty. Go ahead, take a drink, you know you want to.
8: 14 PM: "Melting pot" -- enjoy a mixed drink.
8: 15 PM: Emphasizes the need to speak English properly. Jeez, this is too easy. Did anyone catch the subject-verb agreement problems about five minutes ago? (E.g., "when the date [for the hearing] arrive...")
8: 18 PM: What, that's it? It's over? Sorry it didn't last long enough for you to get drunk -- or even mildly buzzed.
8: 20 PM: Lou Dobbs looks really orange. But he's not as enraged as one might expect. No veins are popping out of his head. One of you wrote this to us before the speeh:
Tonight, President Bush will go on television and talk, for the first time, about a domestic issue. he will say stuff like "We can't control our borders" and that these workers "want to be Americans" and blah, blah, blah, and "They do jobs Americans don't want to do" and about 50 more blahs on top of that. The real deal is that Lou Dobbs has dedicated his very mediocre career to making us all hate immigrants. Way to go Lou! Tonight, the President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World will interupt some damn fine television to announce that he is jumping on the bandwagon. Fear the Gobble. Fear it.
Disappointed that Lou wasn't more ballistic? Sorry, Wolf Blitzer must have given him some tranquilizers before the speech.
8: 25 PM: Tony Blankley is now on our television -- in a salmon-pink, contrast collar shirt. That's our cue. Gotta go put the laundry in the dryer.