Balder And Dash

We tried to do a live blog of the State of the Union address at the Michigan Messenger, but had some technical difficulties. As always when listening to such speeches, I am reminded of HL Mencken's brilliant description of the rhetoric of Warren Harding. It applies just as perfectly to all such speeches today:

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the top most pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.