…brought to you by evil empires.

[Via who else]

Jonah has some in preparation for the latest Obama borefest.

I’m not sure there’s room to be too original here. His usual phrases are familiar enough: “Let me be clear,” “make no mistake,” “this will not be easy” etc. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of thing. One different way to go is conceptual or thematic. Every time Obama suggests there’s a consensus among experts about a proposal when there isn’t, drink. Every time he claims to be aligned with the populist backlash he created, drink. Every time he suggests that History with a capital H demands that we do whatever it is he’s talking about, drink. Every time he says that he’s being “pragmatic” or “bipartisan” when he’s actually being wildly ideological or partisan, drink. And so on.

My own preference is to drink every time he says something that will obviously cost me money. If that seems like an invitation to alcohol poisoning, you could narrow it down slightly by drinking only when something will cost you money and make the economy worse at the same time.

I don’t think it would narrow it down much.

Anyway, I’ll miss it, or rather, I won’t watch it (I won’t miss it at all). I’m going to a book party for Amy Alkon in Santa Monica.

[Update a while later]

Sarah Elizabeth has some predictions:

If the past two weeks are any indication, the President’s State of the Union address tonight will be hilarious.

I don’t say that to be flippant or snarky, as I am admittedly wont to do. I say that genuinely and from a place of what I consider to be astute analysis.

Case in point: After Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in Massachusetts and what was the political equivalent of the Boston Massacre, the story line that immediately emerged out of the White House’s Play-Doh spin factory was that Barack Obama – the Harvard-educated, memoir-penning intellectual and oratorical genius – is now a populist!

If that didn’t generate a chuckle, you’d better get your funny bone examined. To put a finer point on it, the Obama administration now wants you to believe that the same guy who criticized the heartland for clinging to guns and religion, who told Cambridge, Mass., police that they behaved “stupidly,” who made fun of Scott Brown for driving a pickup truck, is now a bona fide man of the people.

I told you: hilarious.

The guy we knew from the past year and from the campaign trail – lofty rhetoric, elitist pontificating from on high – was “Obama: Live at the Acropolis.” The State of the Union will mark a new beginning. Call it the debut of “Obama: Live at Folsom Prison.”

So as we gear up for the speech, may I suggest that you include in your survival kit a six-pack of your favorite adult beverage so we can play a little drinking game called “Barack the Plumber.”

I’m still not going to listen.

[Update early afternoon]

Here are the talking points for the speech. As noted, they’re full of whoppers.