"Strong, and will be stronger..."

In this day and age, when information travels faster than the speed of the Internet, there aren't too many people who don't know the state of our union every day. The annual speech, therefore, has become more of a good-intentions initiative, where the president, no matter the party, has the floor and their countrymen's attention undivided and uninterrupted, to share ideas and plans for the coming year. Brian and I did watch last night's State of the Union address, and in so doing, I came up with a fun tally. Here's the State of the Union, by the numbers:
40 -- standing ovations (including 1 from the Dems, who celebrated the failure of the Social Security initiative)
29 -- "spontaneous" displays of applause
16 -- veiled (or not so much) smacks to the opposing political party
15 -- times we heard " 'Merica"
14 -- references to the enemies of freedom
14 -- smirks (including 1 accompanied by a wink)
11 -- obvious intentions to tug on heartstrings
10 -- references to the greatness of democracy
8 -- implications of force against someone who doesn't do what he says
7 -- verbal dodges of anything bad going on in Iraq
4 -- references to God, the Almighty or something along those lines
3 -- new commissions that will solve nothing and cost us in taxpayer money
3 -- slams against gay marriage (including 1 comment about "activist judges")
3 -- anti-abortion comments
2 -- mentions of Sept. 11, 2001
1 -- incidents of trying to shame government officials and citizens for engaging in debate
1 -- mentions of New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, and the hurricanes (that's it for one of the largest natural disasters to hit the country?)
1 -- finger wag at the Dems in the hall
1 -- wimpy wave at the end
And finally, my favorite: 2 -- more years of listening to this yahoo.