Finally.

And secondly, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding to say that the war on terror is only Osama bin Laden. The war on terror is to make sure that these terrorist organizations do not end up with weapons of mass destruction. That’s what the war on terror is about.

I think I said it better, but it’s nice to finally see Bush making this distinction, because it’s a big one.

And so, what I’m telling you is, is that sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you think they’re right.
…
People love America. Sometimes they don’t like the decisions made by America, but I don’t think you want a president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing.

You go, W!

Now, forget all this talk about a draft. We’re not going to have a draft so long as I am the president.

He should have gone further with this - it’s Kerry who seems hell-bent on increasing our military ranks. The ‘I’ needs to be in bold, italicized, underlined, and in eighty-point font. And maybe blinking.

And he certainly should have made his point more explicit and forceful when rebutting this gem from Kerry:

Now, I’m going to add 40,000 active duty forces to the military, and I’m going to make people feel good about being safe in our military, and not overextended, because I’m going to run a foreign policy that actually does what President Reagan did, President Eisenhower did, and others.

Because of course, there are 40,000 Americans out there right now, saying to themselves, “self, I think I’ll join the military if Kerry is elected”.

We have a deficit. We have a deficit because this country went into a recession. You might remember the stock market started to decline dramatically six months before I came to office, and then the bubble of the 1990s popped. And that cost us revenue. That cost us revenue.

This should have been said earlier, and louder, and more clearly. Attacks on Bush consistently blame him for the recession from which we’re currently recovering, but anyone who’s not an idiot can trace it back to the irrational exuberance of the Clinton years.

Now, for the people earning more than $200,000 a year, you’re going to see a rollback to the level we were at with Bill Clinton, when people made a lot of money.

And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I’m sorry, you too.

My jaw was on the floor as Kerry said that, and I was even more flabbergasted as I realized nobody in the room seemed to be offended. If I looked around a crowded room and proclaimed that everybody there looked poor, I would consider it an insult. Maybe it’s just me.

I own a timber company? That’s news to me. Need some wood?

That belongs on a t-shirt.

Embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. I’m the first president ever to allow funding – federal funding – for embryonic stem-cell research. I did to because I too hope that we’ll discover cures from the stem cells and from the research derived. But I think we’ve got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science.

Here’s something I haven’t ranted about before. I must remember to do so at a future time. Bottom line on my position: You’ve got to draw a line somewhere, and it’s pretty much got to be arbitrary. If you’ve read Brave New World, try to imagine how they’d handle stem cell research. And then, hopefully, realize that that isn’t the right way to do it.