I liked how he took a moment, just a brief moment -- almost an aside, really -- to extend a hearty and compassionate "fuck you" to homosexuals by reaffirming his support for a gay marriage amendment.

He also bragged that the economy has added 2.3 million new jobs, bringing us almost to where we were when he took office four years ago. Hey -- no harm, no foul.

But the nadir of a 54-minute low point was when Bush used the parents of a dead Marine to try to convince us that the 1,440-plus Americans who've died there were "defending our freedom." That guy didn't die defending me from anything. He died so a pampered rich kid -- a deserter, no less -- could feel less inadequate as a son and as a man.

Pointing out those grieving parents was the kind of cynical manipulation that we should be used to from Bush by now, but it still shocks.

Then he came to Social Security. And the cynicism blew through the House like a tsunami, wiping away all vestiges of principle, integrity and responsibility.

Here's an actual line from the speech, intended to alert us to the dire consequences if we don't act now to drastically alter a system that's worked superbly for seven decades: "In the year 2027, the government will somehow have to come up with an extra $200 billion to keep the system afloat."

Left unsaid: That's what we're paying to invade and occupy Iraq.

So somebody tell me -- is $200 billion a lot or a little? Bush tells us it's a small price to pay so Iraqis can vote without knowing the candidates. And he says $400 billion deficits, year after year, are nothing to get worked up about. But it's a crisis -- Social Security will "collapse" (his term) -- if we have to dig up $200 billion in 22 years? What idiot would believe that?

Oh -- American idiots. A CBS News poll taken right after the speech shows that 80 percent of their sample approved of what Bush said. This after Dan Rather introduced a report just three hours earlier about how the United Kingdom's 20-year pension privatization effort -- similar to what Bush is suggesting -- has been a failure, with beneficiaries receiving about half what they would had Maggie Thatcher not tampered with the system.

But here's the funny part: The Brits are looking hard at fixing their mistake and re-reforming their system. And they're using our Social Security as a model.

"We have to move ahead with courage and honesty, because our children's retirement security is more important than partisan politics," Bush said tonight. He's moving with courage, all right. It does take a type of courage to lie so brazenly to so many about so much.