"A Charge to Keep" or, "The Slipper Tongue"

A friend who heard the president's State of the Union address has drawn my attention to the 2d paragraph: "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. It remains our charge to keep." The emphasis is mine, and of course leads us back to this previous post about George W. Bush and his favorite painting -- which for the President depicts a Methodist circuit-rider with A Charge to Keep, but in the reality-based world apparently depicts a horse thief fleeing his captors who, "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."

[A discussion of the painting and its significance may be found on pp. 89-90 of The Bush Tragedy, by Jacob Weisberg (2008, Random House).]
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Taxes, Terrorists, and Iraq
And speaking of the State of the Union address, The New York Times published a very interesting graphic showing frequency of the words that were used in this and each of President Bush's previous State of the Union addresses. This year's winning words were: Iraq/Iraqi(s); Terror/Terrorist(s); Tax(es), with the 2d tier finding Al Qaeda and Freedom(s). Popular words from previous addresses that were missing or out of favor this year include: Health Care; (Health) insurance; Medicare; Retirement(s); Social Security.
Other notables:

• Weapons of mass destruction/murder disappeared after 2006.
• Bin Laden, not mentioned until 2006, was mentioned once this year (the same as 2007).
• Surpluses was mentioned once this year, after being absent since being mentioned more than a half-dozen times in 2001.