The speech can be divided into two parts: the part that recognized and cashed in on all the pressure toward economic justice that Occupy created* during the past four months, and the part that didn’t.

The first part you can just write off to the campaign. Come January 20 of next year—which is a Sunday, so the actual public inauguration might be held on Monday the 21st, but that’s Martin Luther King Day, so maybe it’ll be the 22nd—the Fierce Urgency of Those People will either be misplaced by President Obama or murdered, chopped into bite-sized nuggets and eaten by President Romnich and guests at the inaugural dinner.

The defining issue of our time is how to keep [the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement] alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. (Applause.) What’s at stake aren’t Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. And we have to reclaim them.

Let’s remember how we got here. Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores. Technology made businesses more efficient, but also made some jobs obsolete. Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled with costs that were growing, paychecks that weren’t, and personal debt that kept piling up.

And then there’s a bunch of other economic populist stuff, and the thing about how he’s created a commission to investigate and prosecute financial piracy, and it will work hand-in-hand with the Justice Department task force that has been charged with shielding financial pirates from investigation and prosecution and sending them off with a slap on the wrist and a cup of sweet tea, and some other things, and if for a moment the president thought any of this stuff would put a crimp in his campaign’s capacity to raise pirated funds from the pirate industry, he wouldn’t say it or do it. High-level campaign operatives were dispatched to strategic locations in Manhattan and various Caribbean isles with DVDs of a more realistic speech, along with gift bags containing bottles of 50-year-old single malt whiskey and bags of dried, salted peasant ears.

So you can write all that shit off. Then there was the Pinky and The Brain stuff about taking over the world. He praised the troops that were sent off to fight the war that he called wrong and stupid at the time but now says “made the United States safer and more respected around the world.” I guess that was inevitable;  it would be challenging to stand up and tell all those soldiers and such that their lives, vaporized limbs and brutalized minds had contributed mightily to the deeply screwed condition in which we find ourselves today, and incidentally killed, displaced, maimed or permanently traumatized almost everyone who lives in Iraq.

And Iran. We can’t forget Iran. The president stopped short of the full John Bolton on Iran, but did his best to convey the impression that contrary to the opinions of intelligence agencies in the US and, incredibly, Israel, and that of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has a nuclear weapons program and the US will smite the Iranians hip and thigh (old-timey for “nuke the shit out of ‘em”) before we’ll let them get away with building the nuclear weapons that they’re not trying to build.

All props to John Bolton, by the way. Among all the people who imply or insist that Iran is building nuclear weapons and can’t be allowed to succeed, he’s one of the few who advocate what the delusion (or lie) truly demands, which is an all-out attack on Iran to end their ambitions forever. Sanctions? Pfffffft.

And finally, for the best formulation to date, and likely forever, addressing any aspect of the speech, I turn to IOZ:

I seem to recall some generic bellicosity toward Iran and I definitely remember hearing that hoary Albrightism, “the indispensable nation.” I have always enjoyed that phrase. It suggests a single, sad bag of Cheetohs resting lazily between the coil and the glass, refusing to fall into the hopper, and a single, sad, very fat man banging a futile palm against the other side of the vending machine.

2007: 116 instances.

2008: 112 instances.

2009: 54 instances.

2010: 106 instances.

2011: 3,270 instances.

You’ll notice there’s a roughly 3,000% jump in the 2011 period from the previous high. Hey, I wonder what could account for that?

Just for good measure, here’s the result from the three-month period immediately preceding the beginning of the Occupy protests, from June 18 of 2011 to September 18 of 2011: 44 instances.

So I don’t want to hear no shit about the lack of clarity or effectiveness of the Occupy message and protests. If the president is Newton and economic justice is gravity, then Occupy is the dude who walked up behind Newton and slugged him with a branch and shouted “Gravity!” just as the apple fell upon his head.

Well. Not exactly her president. She’s Canadian, although also Floridian. Hot Sun Bakes Canadian Brain. In the end we agreed that when Rick Perry invades Iran in five years after taking office by winning 45% of the popular vote, I will deserve to be drafted and sent off to fight and presumably die in that war because I think Democrats should pursue big projects like universal health care, the cramming of which down American throats led George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Damn you, Harry Truman!

(Too, this means America will lose because if the time comes when I’m 1) drafted and 2) expected to actually fight, that will be the time when our Great Country is dead on its feet.)

This synopsis is much, much closer to how the actual discussion went than it is to a caricature of the actual discussion, although it is several days shorter than the real thing. Along the way I learned how people like me—loud-mouthed unreasoning lefties—cost Democrats the 2010 midterm elections even though though they didn’t. Because they must have! Even though independents who went for Democrats by nearly 20 points in the 2006 midterms went for Republicans by nearly 20 points in the 2010 midterms because, well, Obama. And Democrats. But a 40-point swing in a third of the electorate was not the issue; it was me. Me! Fuck! What was I thinking!

Okay. Well. Canadians, whattayagonnado.

Just kidding. Very nice people. Don’t do well in hot climates, though.

One good thing about Obama, he’s not making up crazy bullshit about Iran the way the Bushies did about Iraq. So the war really will be Rick Perry’s fault. My fault.

Where are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney living these days, anyway? Shouldn’t we be slapping sanctions on those joints for harboring war criminals? Freezing assets? Travel sanctions for top officials? Preventing their sporting franchises from competing with those in other, less benighted locales?

Light up the gated entrance at Preston Hollow with Hellfire missiles for a few nights and pretty soon a group of masked billionaires will be dropping a trussed-up W out in the street under a white flag. There is precedent!

Cheney, though: I think we all know how that will end if his neighbors try to bring him in alive. First one through the door takes a shotgun to the face.

Do the Canadians deserve Obama? Sure: they elected Stephen Harper, so their standards obviously aren’t what they used to be. And evidently most of them went home afterward and never came out to vote again. It’s possible they won’t even notice we sent Obama up there, especially if we time it for Hockey Night in Canada. At least until they start getting notices from Canada Revenue that they have to buy Aetna health insurance or else.

If they don’t notice we sent him we can’t every well demand anyone in return, but Tommy Douglas is deader’n Nixon so who cares anyway? Maybe we can work out a three-way deal to get Lula from Brazil, since he’s a free agent now. Meanwhile, Biden can hold down the fort here with one foot tied behind his mouth.

No, wait: Dennis isn’t that crazy. It was some guy called Peter Rodman, who maybe or maybe not should be dead, but definitely is so.

The other Rodman’s untimely death explains his absence from the PNAC-powered foreign policy posse that Mitt Romney, the increasingly Gumby-like leader of the GOP presidential pre-primaries, is assembling in apparent anticipation of the 2000 general election.

Eliot Cohen, another PNAC signatory and Bush administration factotum, is all in for Mitt. So is former Bush administration undersecretary of state for democracy, Paula Dobriansky. Robert Kagan, whose family is to neoconservatism as Alec Baldwin’s is to acting—or would be if all the Baldwins were the awesomely delusional but very modestly-talented Stephen Baldwin—is on board. (Kagan’s dad, Donald, is the actual PNAC signatory but they keep the crazy in the family.)

Former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, who embodies the “not quite rising to the level of overt criminality” school of legislative conduct, is a PNAC alumnus. (Involuntarily retired Minnesota senator Norm Coleman is not, but does bear the distinction of being the only member of Congress ever to lose to a Saturday Night Live cast member.)  Weber is also a bigfoot lobbyist whose firm has been supporting Pakistan’s efforts to keep Congress from cutting US military and financial assistance to that country.

The Romney list is simply a rogues gallery. Whoever wasn’t intimately involved in plotting and marketing the most stupid and destructive foreign policy adventure in US history was cheering it or profiting from it or both. The only significant names one doesn’t find on it are those who, like John Bolton, probably see Romney as irreparably weak-kneed on diplomacy and defense.

Among the more peculiar choices to fill out the team is Dan Senor, the one-time spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which for those of you who weren’t paying attention at the time is what the US occupation government in Iraq was called. Senor managed a seamless transition from the coruscating narratives created by Baghdad Bob, Saddam’s spokesman during the invasion, to his own less dazzling but equally fictional descriptions of post-invasion success.

Norm Coleman may qualify as the most bewildering member. Not only isn’t he a PNAC graduate; a quick glance at his CV seems to indicate that his only significant foreign policy experience derives from his successful mayoral quest to establish a new National Hockey League franchise in St. Paul, an endeavor necessarily involving diplomatic relations with stick-wielding and sometimes ill-tempered Russians and Canadians. If there is such a thing as an ill-tempered Canadian. Rex?

There are the Michaels Chertoff and Hayden, the former a proud father of the PATRIOT Act and the Bureau of Internal Security and now, the proprietor of the Chertoff Group; the latter, the longest serving head of the National Security Agency, with a minor in CIA and now, a partner in the Chertoff Group. Ever feel like you’re being watched? It’s probably the two of them.

Dov Zackheim was embedded in the Pentagon in one manner or another for nigh on 30 years. As a Rumsfeld deputy for Pentagon planning he helped develop the strategies for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. Promoted to Pentagon comptroller, he oversaw the disappearance of billions in shrink-wrapped pallets loaded with hundred dollar bills during the Iraq occupation and then abruptly resigned a year after the invasion; he is of course another PNAC veteran. He has written a book called “It Wasn’t My Fault: How Other People in the Bush Administration Fucked Everything Up.”

It’s an impressive group. The people in it who fucked up did so in the biggest possible ways, and the ones who executed their responsibilities well are probably worse.

And here we are apparently on the cusp of another Iraq crisis. A heroically corrupt state just this side of failed, Iraq’s government is joining with Iran’s in helping Syria’s to weather that country’s belated Spring, and the two have negotiated a number of mutual trade and assistance pacts during the past several years.

There is as yet no official word on whether or not the current Iraqi government is a party to the recently discovered “plot” by “Iran” to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in the US through the good offices of a Mexican drug cartel, which was inexplicably willing to bring its operations forcefully front and center to every US law enforcement and intelligence agency for the sake of about 12 hours worth of profit.

Given the pedigrees of the Romney foreign policy team members, though, job the second on their to do list, after nuking Iran, will be the invasion of Iraq and the installation of a pro-US government.

Because one simply can’t be too careful.

Paging Ahmed Chalabi. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi to the white courtesy phone please …

Thanks to the ever vigilant Malignant Bouffant for tipping me to the caper.

Anyway, the thing went really well, to the point that the Bushies removed Libya from the state department’s list of terrorism sponsors and by 2008 had posted Cretz to Tripoli and were praising Kerdurfer and the Libyans as “good team members” and a model for other states to emulate for getting on our good side.

It was deemed an astonishing success story by everybody concerned. Local boy Qudhifi gives up weapons of mass destruction and gets admitted to the cool kid section of the bleachers. The cowboy president pulls off a diplomatic coup. World cheers. It’s a very big deal.

So it’s a bit aggravating to see where Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who spent some time in Libya during the golden years, asked current CIA honcho and soon-to-be secretary of war Leon Panetta if he doesn’t agree with Graham that leaving Muammar Qadhafi in power would send the message to Iran that there’s no need “to fear America when it comes to developing nuclear weapons.” And where Panetta said in response that “I think it tells them that our word isn’t worth very much if we’re not willing to stick to it.”

It’s aggravating for a couple of reasons, the most immediately accessible of which is that the message is what in political science terms is called entirely the fucking opposite. The message is in fact that “if you do what we want and defenestrate whatever deterrent weapons you may have or may plan one day to have or may one day plan to have, we’ll blow your shit up at our earliest convenience.” And everybody in the room knows that Panetta’s CIA recently reconfirmed the Bush-era intelligence judgment that Iran does not in fact have a nuclear weapons program and that the original Obama testament was that the bombs dropping on Libya were not regime-changing bombs but civilian-protecting bombs, so they all know that everything in Graham’s formulation was a lie and none of them made fart noises or otherwise expressed incredulity.

The other reason is that it was entirely gratuitous. Graham could have just said something like “You guys are gonna keep blowing shit up, right?” and Panetta could have just said “Well yeah, of course.” And we wouldn’t have had to get dragged away to that completely in-your-face counterfactual place where these guys like to hang out. We would have arrived at the same result without having to submit to emotional, intellectual and political rape.

I don’t know why this particular installment rubs me so sore. Maybe it’s the perfection of it. Or maybe it’s that the exchange came in the context of a discussion about the US pursuit “of a capability to deliver conventional warheads to any point on Earth within minutes.” Whatever. May they one day drown in blood and shit.