It’s been pulled apart by wolves all over blogland today, so I’ll leave it alone. Substance aside, the speech made me glad I don’t have to listen to this man very much; he manages to combine pretentiousness and contempt in a way that demands a new word - pretemptuous, perhaps. Or goratory. He’s a better extemporaneous speaker than Bush, but that’s not exactly a rare distinction. Bush often seems distracted, as if he has just realized there is a weasel in his pants and he’d best finish up and get out of here so he can tend to this here weasel. And when he gets wound up he’s often like a man with a wheelbarrow full of rocks going down a hill, trying to keep his balance and his cargo intact. I don’t care. He’s good with a prepared speech, because he has a secret weapon: he means it.