After President Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East, many analysts criticized Bush for failing to live up to his pro-democracy rhetoric. Bush spoke of the importance of freedom in the Middle East, but he praised autocratic Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and didn’t meet with “one Saudi dissident or political activist, much less a democrat.”

Today in Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2008, HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that Bush’s disingenuous freedom rhetoric has retarded the global spread of democracy. Rather than “support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture” — as Bush promised to do in his second inauguration address– Bush’s policies have convinced “autocrats that mere elections, regardless of the circumstances, are sufficient to warrant the democrat label.”

In a troubling parallel to abusive governments around the world, the US government has embraced democracy promotion as a softer and fuzzier alternative to defending human rights… As such unworthy claimants as the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria wrap themselves in the democracy mantle with scant international objection, the concept of democracy gets cheapened, its human rights component cast aside.

The report also found that the administration’s efforts to rationalize “the invasion of Iraq in terms of democracy promotion,” has also emboldened autocrats “to equate pressure on them to democratize with an imperial, militarist agenda.”

Dictators have learned that conjuring up visions of Iraq can be a useful way to blunt pressure to democratize. And governments that might have defended a more robust vision of democracy are reluctant to do so for fear of being seen as joining the Bush agenda.

Roth argues that “to prevent the appeal of ‘democracy’ from being abused,”there is an “urgent need to reclaim the full meaning of the democratic ideal. Beyond elections, democracies must contain “a meaningful array of political parties, independent media outlets, civil society organizations that give citizens—including minorities—a broad range of opportunities to band together with others to make their voices heard, and a legal system that ensures that no one—and especially no government official—is above the law.” Bush should take note.

Appearing on MSNBC’s post- State of the Union coverage, Air America Radio’s Rachel Maddow noticed that in his last State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the title of his autobiography, ‘a charge to keep.’

All of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people’s business. That is the purpose of this body. It is the meaning of our oath. And it remains our charge to keep.

The phrase is a reference to a 1916 painting by W.H.D. Koehner, which Bush believed “depicted circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century.” But according to a new book by Jacob Weisberg, the painting “actually depicts a horse bandit:”

The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors.

Earlier today, the LA Times reported that former New York City mayor “Rudy Giuliani appears to be pondering an end to his long pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination.”

In a meeting in the back of his chartered plane en route to St. Petersburg, Fla., a short while ago, the onetime, longtime GOP front-runner told a small group of reporters, including The Times’ Louise Roug: “The winner of Florida will win the nomination.”

Tonight on MSNBC, pundit Keith Olbermann revealed that after Giuliani made those comments, Giuliani’s staff distributed “signed Rudy Giuliani baseballs” to reporters– momentos of an abandoned campaign, perhaps?

Responding to President Bush’s assertion that “Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), in an interview with MSNBC, noted that given the international nature of terrorism, “[If I were Al Qaeda]…I would be moving towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. So when the president tries to look at Iraq separate from the region, he is not being honest about the difficulties that we face. And the only way we will be able to resolve this is with strong diplomacy.”

Indeed, terrorism is now on the rise in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, total violence increased by 27 percent from a year ago; the number of roadside bombs increased by 425 percent between 2004 and 2007 and suicide bombings soared from “three in 2004 to more than 130 in 2007.” Similarly, Pakistan is experiencing “growing insecurity in Pakistan’s tribal areas.”

Analyzing tonight’s State of the Union address, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams suggested that “Bush’s tears” (at the mention of “men and women fighting overseas” during the speech) refocused the nation on the war on terror and the challenges of a post-9/11 world.

Tonight, in a response to Governor Mitt Romney’s assertion that he considered a VP slot on the Democratic ticket in 2004, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) assured MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews that he quickly rejected the offer. But in a July 7, 2004 interview on Fox News Radio’s The Tony Snow Show, McCain claimed that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) never offered him the slot.

SNOW: Right. But, so- I want to just lay to rest once and for all: never approached you, never hinted that he wanted to talk to you about being vice president. All that kind of stuff was made up.

McCAIN: Well, I cannot attest to that. All I can tell you is my conversations with him were private conversations, but he never offered it.

During his coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews suggested that Bush’s speech would help presidential contender Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “I tell you, tonight was a John McCain speech, in many ways,” Matthews said, citing the president’s emphasis on earmark reform and ’success’ in Iraq.

UPDATE: In an interview with McCain, Matthews suggested that McCain is the only candidate who supports earmark reform and an an aggressive war on terror.

“The President gave your speech tonight…he talked about earmarks….terrorism…it was your speech, Senator.“

During tonight’s State of the Union address, President Bush falsely suggested that the Iraq war has made America safer.

My fellow Americans: We will not rest either. We will not rest until this enemy has been defeated. We must do the difficult work today, so that years from now people will look back and say that this generation rose to the moment, prevailed in a tough fight, and left behind a more hopeful region and a safer America.

In reality, “the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.” According to the National Intelligence Estimate:

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

During his last State of the Union address tonight, President Bush proclaimed that he trusts the choices of the Iraqi people.

We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace. In the last seven years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty and these images of liberty have inspired us…In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. That is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories

But a majority of the Iraqi people have chosen to oppose a prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq. According to the latest opinion polls, a majority of Iraqis have little confidence in American and coalition forces and 79 percent oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.

While President Bush urged Congress to limit spending on entitlement programs, he made no mention of the taxing cost of the Iraq war on the economy. While prewar estimates predicted that the Iraq war would cost $50-60 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, puts the current price tag at $489.6 billion dollars; when indirect costs are considered, some economists estimate that the war has cost “more than $2 trillion.” In fact, Americans spend:

- $200,000 a minute on the war.

- $275,000,000 per day

- $200 billion a year.

- $4,100 per household

More spending is on the way. According to the AP, the “White House will ask Congress next week for another $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”