I've been listening to the prebuttal all day. Every network and every newspaper has sought to contribute as much doom and gloom as possible in order to offset the brightness of the SOTU spotlight on President Bush. Its rather amusing to see fat and happy millionaire television show hosts and prosperous pundits moan and groan about "the homeless" and the "shakey economy" or the "sacrifices" being made in Iraq (not by them...)

Do you notice how every year when the president is announced, the aisle is full of Democrats? Sheila Jackson must be in her seat at 10:00 AM in the morning.

Its a hell-raising speech. For a president that the liberal-left has pronounced dead, he doesn't seem to know it. He is in-your-face on security issues and announcing some surprisingly bold initatives. The energy-independence issue has come front and center and Bush has staked out the top of the hill--lots of money for energy research, and again surprisingly, for zero-emissions coal-fired power plant and--ta da!--nuclear power.

That is brilliant political jiu jitsu--the Democrats have been beating the drums on energy independence for months now, and Bush has called their bluff. Time to piss or get off the pot.

I am wondering if Senator Byrd's enthusiastic support of Judge Alito doesn't have something to do with this coal initative...

Mrs. Bush looks fabulous, absolutely stunning.

This is a very good speech. It doesn't gloss over the difficulties, but asserts confidence in American character and actions. It wasn't so much an optimistic speech as it was forward-looking, ambitious but without overreaching. Somebody should take the speechwriters out for a nice dinner.

Bush carried into the speech his push back on controversial issues like terrorist surveillance, while stepping gingerly around the issue of reform in Washington.

Aside from what appeared to be classic Bush, there was a lot that looked like classic Clinton--lots of little things. That may well be a concession to the reality that in his second term he won't be getting big things like social security reform.

Tim Kaine is unwatchable, but he's actually better than the Reid and Pelosi show was. If Kaine is going to move up in the food chain, he is going to have to learn how to do television. As it is, he could profit from some tips by Dick Nixon. Lots of "we can do better" and no specifics of course.

UPDATE: Cindy Sheehan was actually in attendance briefly at the invitation of Rep. Lynn Woolsey D-CA. She wore an anti-war T-shirt that she had covered up during her entry. After being "unresponsive" to entreaties by Capitol Hill police, she was frog-walked in handcuffs to the local station and released on her own recognizance