LIFE IS GOOD, here at the secure undisclosed location. I didn’t follow the State of the Union speech — I’m at a hotel with the InstaWife and no kids, an opportunity too good to be wasted on political speeches. But Stephen Green and Tacitus provided blow-by-blow coverage, so the Blogosphere was on the job.

From what I’ve seen, Bush did pretty well on Iraq, and got a passing grade (with perhaps an extra point or two for audacity) on the domestic side. However, if you grade on the curve with Gary Locke plugged in, he gets an A. (Andrew Sullivan would give Bush an A outright.) What I saw of Locke in the playback looked weak, and others seem to agree. He came across like a city councilman. Not a bad city councilman, but not somebody ready for primetime at the national level, at least not yet.

UPDATE: Just noticed that they were dissing me for my absence over at The Corner, where they were blogging in realtime, too. Heh. Well, they get paid the big bucks for that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, here is a piece noting the Tolkien resonances in the speech. And Matt Welch assembled a focus group on the State of the Union. Plus there’s a link on his page that’ll let you subscribe to the Los Angeles Examiner! Go for it.