UPDATE: "What can I say about Teray-za?" How about, "She may be crazy but a couple billion buys a lot of xanax and the patience to administer it?"

UPDATE: Band of Brothers ... what about the other 80% of your fellow swift boat veterans?

UPDATE: The man that fueled the Tawana Brawley hoax and the riots at Freddy's Fashion Mart just got a shout out from the Democratic Presidential Candidate. Sharpton for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Perhaps SecDef?

UPDATE: "Mission Accomplished" dig ... good jab.

UPDATE: "Before you go to battle, you need to be able to look a parent in the eye and say ..." Right. Let's review the tape, shall we?

UPDATE: Did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam?

UPDATE: "I will never give any nation a veto over our military ..." Sort of a defensive line, no?

UPDATE: He does have Dubya stone-cold beat on the pronunciation of the word "nuclear."

UPDATE: "The future doesn't belong to fear, it belongs to freedom ..." Except in Iraq, which apparently didn't deserve freedom.

UPDATE: "shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad ..." Yeah, screw the ragheads, eh John? See above.

UPDATE: He's not doing bad. I haven't yawned once.

UPDATE: Did you know that John Kerry fought under a bullet riddled flag that hung off a gun turret in Vietnam? You know, just FYI.

UPDATE: "President ... must be guided by principle." Is he endorsing Bush?

UPDATE: Enron took cops off the fucking street? BASTARDS! Bush took away grandma's medicine? BASTARDS! Oh wait, Bush added a Prescription Drug Benefit to Medicare? Nevermind; Grandma's a-ok. (I'm still mad about Enron taking all the cops away, though)

UPDATE: Troops lack body armor? Probably shouldn't vote against funding them then ...

UPDATE: Number of families in poverty has risen by 3 million in the last few years? How much has the population grown?

UPDATE: We've been over this: outsourcing is good, John.

UPDATE: Cut the deficit in half, will you? The deficit that just shrunk by $100 billion because of growing treasury rolls ... stimulated by tax cuts for the wealthy?

UPDATE: You can't simultaneously keep the tax cuts for small businesses and raise taxes for people that make over $200,000 a year, John ... they are largely the same people.

UPDATE: Oooooh ... Saudi Royal family dig ... a page from Michael Moore. Nice.

UPDATE: John Kerry exhorts us to "make this a contest of big ideas, not small-minded attacks," less than 2 minutes after implying that the sitting President of the United States is beholden to a foreign power by virtue of business interests.

UPDATE: Ah, a dig against Bush the religious zealot. By the way, did you know that John Kerry prayed to God ... when he was in Vietnam?

UPDATE: Stem-cells. He's got Bush on that one.

UPDATE: Were you aware that John Kerry learned about diversity when he was on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta? And that all Americans are also on this gunboat? Er ... or ... something like that.

UPDATE: He signed off with Bush's tagline.

Quick Summary:

* Not an hour long (thank the baby Jeebus)

* Very effective speech ... for Kerry. Case in point: I made it through the entire thing.

* Many more attacks on President Bush than I would have anticipated ...

* Less real meat and concrete specifics than one would hope for but certainly not expect ...

Thus ends my real time blogging of John Kerry's speech. All Google links put up in real time (it's that easy to get facts, people). Now I'm going to listen to Fred Barnes pooh-pooh the effort. Good night!

EXTRA SPECIAL EXTRA UPDATE: Bill Kristol's initial impression: "What struck me was how important Vietnam is to him ..." Also, yes, Flea, balloons. Wee ... balloons.

"What the fu*k are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down. More balloons. More balloons!"

UPDATE: Beautiful! Wizbang counted the Vietnam references! I'm certainly glad that I didn't play the John Kerry DNC speech drinking game! Wizbang also draws largely the same conclusions as yours truly ...

MORE SPEECH BLOGGING:

Captain Ed

QandO

UPR

Vodka

And Malkin picks up my slack by providing a link that debunks the body armor myth ... Malkin! (That's said like "Neuman!")