9:12 p.m. - Introduction of Bush, continuing applause. Cindy Sheehan in attendance, but wait, she’s been arrested and removed from the building. Fine. The last thing the crowd needed was another white man in it.

9:20 p.m. - Bush mentions Syria, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran. “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it”. Translated into local languages for those nations, “you may be next, Sparky”.

9:28 p.m. - No apologies for Iraq. Kerry mouths something to the Senator next to him… probably reminding him that he served in Vietnam.

9:32 p.m. - Nook-lee-er, not nook-ya-lar… no reason to nitpick though. So far so good.

9:37 p.m. - “The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks… we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.” In other words, “Impeach this!” Hillary sports her usual velociraptor grin.

9:43 p.m. - Bush: “Make the tax cuts permanent”. Dems react like Michael Moore after being told by the Krispy Kreme manager that they’re out of donuts.

9:45 p.m. - Bush mentions his dad’s friend, Bill Clinton, causing another velociraptor grin from the woman Bill loves… Hillary did the same.

9:50 p.m. - “I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year”. Uh huh. You’ll have better luck getting Barney Frank interested in going to Hooters for lunch than of getting dozens and dozens of lawyers to pass medical liability reform.

9:51 p.m. - “America is addicted to oil”. Addicted? Bunk. If my car ran on kumquats, I’d buy kumquats and jam them in the gas tank, and all without getting the shakes from the lack of oil.

9:54 p.m. - “Fewer abortions in America…” Democrats, dead babies don’t applaud.

9:59 p.m. - “Ban cloning”. Dozens of people with similar ideologies, silver hair, wearing dark blue suits, red ties and reading glasses applaud.

10:04 p.m. - Could be the beer talking, but Nancy Pelosi is… still not very attractive.

10:05 p.m. “We move forward… confident about the victories to come. May God bless America.” Michael Newdow just coughed up blood.

End of speech, start of parade of media analysis and of course the Democrats response, which in the past couple of years featured desperate members of the donkey party looking like they were offering pleas in a political hostage video.

All in all, the speech (transcript) was pretty good. No “swinging for the fences”, which is in character for Bush, but it was nice to hear him directly address wiretapping with a no apologies approach, along with many other major issues.

Hey, anybody have bail money for Cindy Sheehan? No? Good.