Bush's State of the Union speech was an unnerving combination of bone-chilling and laughable.

There was an interesting moment when the speech writers and coaches lapsed and included a pause that was used by the democrats to recontextualize one of Bush's statements with applause -- "key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year" -- was followed by clapping before Bush could add that the act should be extended. The syntactic gap allowed for an instant, inverse meaning to be invoked.