The President's SOTU speech. The good, the bad, and the ugly GOP responses.

CNN instant poll on Obama’s State of the Union pic.twitter.com/1WyEcllaX8
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) January 29, 2014

I am just going to use this post as a one stop shop for SOTU attacks, ratings, and trivia.

Above you can see the CNN instant polls.

Here ABC News gives you the breakdown by the numbers:

 As all the talk about the words in President Obama’s State of the Union address begins, here’s the speech by the numbers: 

80 applause interruptions 

15 minutes, 36 seconds – total length of those interruptions 

3 laughter interruptions 

40 standing ovations (19 of them bipartisan, 21 Democrats-only) 

36 rounds of bipartisan applause 

42 rounds of Democrats-only applause 

2 rounds where it was too hard to tell

Here is Rachel Maddow confronting  Rep. Huelskamp over this tweet, and many others:

Obama politicizes the military to end his speech. Totally expected, Mr. President. #SOTU
— Cong. Tim Huelskamp (@CongHuelskamp) January 29, 2014

Maddow challenged Rep. Huelskamp on-air over his strange and arrogant comments. 

“I have to ask you if that was tongue in cheek — do you really believe that was ‘politicizing’ the military,” she asked. 

Hueskamp responded that the GOP “actually invited our own veteran,” and claimed that the President “ran against the military” and “highlights them when it helps politically.” 

Never mind that President Obama spent hours with the troops during his vacation in Hawaii over Christmas, and made most of that visit off-limits to the press — so it wasn’t “political.” 

Maddow would not let the Tea Party member from Kansas get away with that. 

“How did he run against the military?” 

“It’s pretty clear — he wanted to bring the troops home, he wants to close Gitmo, he wants to do all kinds of things…” 

“Is bringing the troops home your definition of being against the military?” 

That’s when Huelskamp lost it. 

“You know they’re hiding the truth on Benghazi,” Rep. Huelskamp said. “We’re looking for them to come forward, let those folks testify who were on the ground.” 

“It’s also the responsibility of Hillary Clinton,” he added. “Just a few months ago she said what difference does it make? Two days ago she says it was the biggest regret in her life.” 

As the interview progressed, Huelskamp accused Maddow of “being a cheerleader” instead of a journalist. 

“Did you just call me a cheerleader?” she asked, shocked. 

“I don’t know, maybe you have that history,” Huelskamp quipped. “If it was Bush, you would be jumping and screaming.” 

“You’re amazing,” Maddow responded, clearly shocked and irritated.

Yep, that went well. What a douchenozzle!

Here are a few of the GOP responses:

First the official Republican response featuring  Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the gist of which apparently was that she really wanted to thank God for allowing her to give birth to a child with Down syndrome. (The Rubio thirst starts to hit her at about the 2:00 mark.)

Then there is the Tea Party response courtesy of Sen. Mike Lee.

Yes this Mike Lee, seen standing between the Lunatic from Lake Lucille, and Rafael Cruz wearing his Brokeback Mountain jacket.

Then Rand Paul gave HIS response to the President's speech, because....well everybody else got to. (You'll be happy to know that Paul got through the entire speech without bringing up Monica Lewinsky. However he did call government stupid, which of course would be less true if he and Mike Lee were to resign. Oh, and House Republicans called it blatant self promotion.)

There was apparently yet ANOTHER response delivered by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtine of Florida, but I don't know who the hell that is.

There was also a response from the aforementioned Lake Lucille Lunatic, but it is so full of moosepoop that it is really beneath our notice. (Besides she didn't write it.)

By the way here is the actual transcript of the speech so you can see for yourselves that it was pretty damn good.

And finally here is the best expression of the entire night.

Go ahead, try not to smile.

What made it even better is that it happened right next to Speaker Boehner, who had this expression on his face.

In many ways I think THAT summed up the different responses to the President's speech last night.