The Doors of the 21st Century (now known as Manzarek-Krieger for legal reasons) with Ian Astbury — Roadhouse Blues, live 2004.

It wasn’t quite The King’s Speech (10 nominations) but the State of the Union, with members of opposition parties sharing seats, showed True Grit (7 nominations).

And now, the moment I have been both anticipating and dreading: Michele Bachmann’s State Of The Union rebuttal… or possibly State Of The Union rebuttal rebuttal. Because Tea is apparently A Party Unto Itself now, and Michele Bachmann is their leader. Mainly by virtue of being the craziest of the crazy.

The Republican Party selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to deliver their response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Ryan is best known for his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which effectively calls for privatizing the entire social safety net, including the elimination of Medicare as we know it.

Please take a look at my analysis of the full speech, which was released about an hour ago. Also, if you want to look at a scorecard from last year’s State of the Union, look at this HuffPo checklist from 2010.

Let the liveblog begin.

Much of tonight is about a plan to “win the future” – ironically the buzzword that Newt Gingrich frequently has used in the title of a book. This is a relentlessly optimistic, even jingoistic, speech about how America can stay on top in the future. He will say that “the world has changed” and He highlights “five pillars” for the future that are critical, in Obama’s view, to the economy. These are innovation, education, infrastructure, budget deficit, government reform. All of this is part of the “Sputnik moment” to react to competition from overseas and make America a leader again. I join this call for a Sputnik moment by endorsing better data collection of radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. What, have we all forgotten the real meaning of Sputnik?

The mortgage traders at Bear, who now are spread out across the financial sector, sold purposefully bad securities to investors – emails revealed show that they told superiors they were selling “a sack of shit.” They got data on their pools of mortgages bundled up in securities deals that came back with high percentages of bad underwriting or even loans already slipping into default. They falsified that data for the rating agencies to get AAA ratings, never told the investors about the bad loans in the pools, and sold the shit as gold. But it gets worse.

They got paid by the investors for selling the mortgage-backed security, AND they got paid by the originator for taking back the bad loan. So Bear traders made money on the same mortgage twice. Only the investors could force a put-back on an originator after the security was sold – Bear Stearns didn’t have a legal claim on the loan after they sold it. They did so anyway.

Ellen Nakashima reports in the Washington Post that the “Gorgon Stare” surveillance technology that was first discussed in early January now appears to be failing to meet its design specifications but still is likely to be deployed to Afghanistan late this winter. Nakasihima’s report notes that the technology is being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, which has headquarters in Sparks, Nevada.

Shahien Nasiripour reports that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will forward multiple individuals responsible for the financial meltdown to state and local authorities for potential criminal prosecution, in accord with the imminent release of their report. If we wanted to understand why Republicans on the commission suddenly begged off the report a month or so ago, this could be the reason.

The incredibly rich aren’t like you and me, they don’t need to worry about breaking the law. . . because the I.R.S. is now handing out amnesty like candy.