urbanmennonite.com

Here we go … the end is in sight.  I hope I’ve got enough left in me to stomach the endless references to September 11, Hanoi Hilton, “drill baby drill” and winning the war in Iraq.  Remember to play the drinking game!

By the way, McCain raised $1 million in the 24 hours after the Palin speech last night.  Obama raised over $8 million.  Looks like wasn’t just the Republicans that got their base energized last night.

I got home just in time to listen to Bill Frist talk about AIDS in Africa.  First, he might be the most boring speaker I’ve ever heard and second, he clearly is incorrect in thinking anyone in that convention center cares about kids dying of AIDS in Africa.  They can’t even muster up some half-hearted applause.  Maybe they are conserving their energy for the big speech tonight.

So apparently the big question being answered tonight is “Who is John McCain?”  Which is weird because McCain has been around for a thousand years. Is there anyone who doesn’t know about the POW experience, the “maverick,” blah, blah?  I would hope that the question being answered would be more like “What is John McCain going to do for America?”  But that’s just me.

There’s some lady talking about the Oklahoma bombing and then linking that to the fight against terrorism.  I know the Oklahoma thing happened like 13 years ago, but weren’t the people who did it Americans?

Oh dear.  Here comes the terrorist September 11 video. Conveniently, no one is going to mention that about twice as many American soldiers have now died in our response to that attack as actually died in the attack.

Holy shit! A slam against President Bush in the video: “America will win this war.  We will have a President that knows how.”

Some people not liking the 9/11 video very much.

Oh Lindsey Graham.  You poor closeted man. I’m sure there’s very little you know about “straight talk.”

Lindsey Graham mentions HWIFDTM.  He shall never be forgiven. I hope the Democrats never speak to him again the entire rest of the time he is in the Senate.

These Republicans keep talking about “winning” the war.  What does that mean?  What does victory even look like?  Can someone tell me what exactly victory is supposed to be here?  Oh, a nation that rejects Al Qaeda.  A place where a Muslim women can have a say about their future.  See what’s ironic here is that Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before the war.  And Iraq — as nasty as Saddam was — was actually one of the more enlightened regimes regarding women.  Since it wasn’t ruled by religious leaders.

Did you know that McCain would rather lose an election win a war?  Drink!

And now they are showing the Palin video that they were supposed to show last night but didn’t because Mad Dog Giuliani went crazy long.

Did you know that Sarah Palin was a hockey mom?  Drink!  And her kid is going to Iraq?  Drink!

Do you know how Palin raised money for infrastructure without raising taxes?  Earmarks.  You paid for it, American taxpayer.

Wow, Tom Ridge is also boring.  I disliked the speakers last night but at least they were interesting.  He keeps pausing, waiting for the applause and then the audience finally catches on that they are supposed to applaud.  He’s kinda like some dad sitting his kids down for a “serious” “talk” about their “future.”  If he can’t get his kids to listen to him, why should I listen to him?

What does that mean: “We are all called to serve as long as we call ourselves free?”  Lots of talk tonight about service to the community.  Too bad no one believes it after yesterday’s bashing. Oh, I guess the only kind of service that counts is the kind where you carry a gun and shoot at non-Americans.

Ah, the glowing documentary on Cindy McCain.  We’re going to talk about adoption.  We are going to talk about sons in Iraq.  We are going to talk about her NASCAR-loving ways.  We are going to talk about her as a mother, daughter, wife.  We are not going to talk about pill addictions.  We are not going to talk about huge inherited fortunes that enable private jet transportation and ten homes.  We are not going to talk about $300,000 outfits.  Seriously, this “documentary” makes her look like Princess Diane.  Is that why there are so many pictures of her in short hair?

Intro to the kids … those boys ain’t bad looking.

Hmmm … hate to say it but this speech isn’t bringing them in.  What kind of father is John McCain?  The kind that marries someone half his age three months after leaving his first wife.

She’s telling one version of their life and marriage.  But there’s several other versions out there. I think the campaign is trying to paint her as a Laura Bush-redux.  But it isn’t working.  For one thing, Laura seems super-approachable and down to earth and humanizes her husband considerably.  Cindy is not nearly as warm with her platinum-blonde hair, perfect makeup, sparkly diamonds and very shiny, very structured, very expensive suits.

Stop talking about your kids! Either they are fair game or they aren’t.  You can’t complain when the other side and the media talks about them and then present them, all splayed out for political consumption, for your own purposes.

I hear what she’s saying.  I don’t necessarily disagree with what she’s saying.  But boy, is she boring.  Not as boring as Frist but more boring than Ridge.  And that says something.  And again mentioning Georgia and Rwanda which clearly just confuses the delegates who keep wondering what’s going on in Atlanta.

Oh, reconciliation and repudiation of revenge and violence is OK for the Rwandans but when America gets attacked we have to go kick somebody’s ass.  Does no one get the irony there?  Why is Cindy McCain celebrating an state approach of forgiveness and reconciliation when her entire political party is dead set against it.

Did you know Sarah Palin is a hockey mom?  Drink!

Everything is boring tonight.  Maybe I’ll switch it over to the game.  Because that’s what everyone else in America is watching right now.  Oh, guess not.  It must be over.

And here we go.  Finally.  First the video.  Apparently, we should elect John McCain because his grandfather? father?  was a general in WWII.   And we are going to hear about every single moment in McCain’s military deployment.

Did you know that John McCain was a POW?  Drink!  And tortured? Drink! For five years?  Drink!

But just so you know that even though McCain received the same torture techniques as the Gitmo guys, it’s only torture when it happens to John McCain.

And then he came back to America with a smile and entered the Senate … armed with a new, young wife and her substantial fortune.  And he’s pro-life (only when running for President though!).

And again with the exploitation of the youngest adopted daughter.  Seriously.  Leave your kids alone!  And stop with the 9/11 imagery.

Did you know John McCain was held hostage?  Drink!

Is that freaky voice Fred Thompson?  It’s really spooky. And I’m sure the lights out was super-effective in person but didn’t work at all on TV.

I don’t know why the Republicans booed NBC last night… because Tom Brokaw is being all simpering and hero-worshiping tonight.

Oh my god.  They have him in front of a green screen. AGAIN!  Do these people never learn?!  And the camera just panned to a protestor with a sign saying “McCain votes against Vets.” The camera quickly pans away but the damage has been done.  The next camera shot is a bunch of people trying to see if that guy is going to get Tasered and hauled away by pepper-spraying “freedom” protectors.  I will personally give that guy a medal.

Yes, yes.  We all love your three-thousand 96-year old mother.  We get it. And why do you get to stand behind a podium but Cindy didn’t get to?

They changed the screen behind him so now it looks like there are green ghosts behind him. Oh.  It’s corn.  It’s a corn field.  See, again, effective in the convention center, not effective on TV. Oh, now they’ve switched to a blue screen.  So not better.

How the hell did Code Pink get in there?  This man wants to control a country and he can’t even control security at his own freaking convention?!  Maybe because all the cops are beating the protesters outside?

I don’t know if McCain should be using the “Change” theme.  I really think that when most of America hears it, they think of Obama because he pretty much owns that one. [Apparently McCain said "change" ten times in the speech.]

And they still haven’t changed the blue screen. Do they know those screens are just gifts to late night comedians, YouTubers and Comedy Central?  How can they master a country if they can’t even master basic stagecraft.

At least he’s getting — sort of — to some policy issues.  He’s talking about the kind of economic pain that a lot of Americans are feeling and using examples of his own legislation.  That was effective.

Did you know he’d rather lose an election than lose a war?  Drink!

Cheer for Matthew until the crowd realizes that he’s dead.  Dead in Iraq.  “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake.”  Remember who said that?  No one at this convention.

Here come the President Bush slams.  He very nicely doesn’t mention the President by name and he makes sure to include Obama and the Democrats in those criticisms but it’s clear that it’s Bush he’s talking about.  “We’re going to get back to basics.”

Ha, ha… he talks about what Republicans believe in.  None of which they have practiced in the last 8 years.

And there’s the pro-life shout-out and the camera immediately goes to Palin.

He’s talking a lot about what the Republicans are and what they believe in and how everything he does will do good things for America while Obama will do the exact opposite.  And yet, there are absolutely no details to this.  None at all.   I couldn’t tell you a specific policy thing that McCain is going to do for Americans in his time in office. Oh, except increasing the Earned Income Child Tax credit.  Which Obama also supports.

And another slam on George Bush without it actually being about George Bush.

One week ago, I was watching a historic moment when a stadium of 80,000 people and 38 million television viewers saw a man speak about who we were, what we were going to do to change our country and call us to the road ahead.  It seems like a bazillion years ago.

Why is McCain stuck on Georgia?  Does he want to start a war with Russia? What is going on with that? Maybe he’s going to send Palin to negotiate since she’s familiar with Putin and all being that she lives so close to him.

John McCain was 5 when they bombed Pearl Harbor.  5!  That just reminds everyone of how old you are.

You hate war. That shut up the rah-rah kick-them-in-the-ass people on the floor.  I thought that was effective. Sadly, his approach to an enduring peace is  more war.  But still, that was the most heartfelt and honest thing I think he said all night.

When he says he’s fighting for “you,” it would be more effective if  he looked straight into the camera, rather than at all the delegates.  Who are mostly fat-cat Republicans.

Did you know he was tortured?  Drink!

Did you know he was captured and tortured?  Drink!

Did you know that he refused to be released before his other men?  Drink!

Why does the audience keep missing the applause lines?  They are about six words behind him so it makes it sound like they are applauding that others were hurt worse than he was.

Did you know he was tortured?  Drink!

He’s getting a little misty-eyed.  And the camera is picking out every veteran in the place.  Which is effective.  And it sounds like this is the end of his speech.  And it’s a pretty good closing.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.

I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

You may not agree with all of those sentiments but you can’t argue with the emotional honesty he brings to them. It’s a good closing.  It is the closing, right?

Oh, it’s not.

Here are the things that you can do to make America better.  Funny.  A lot of them sound community service based.  But surely he couldn’t mean that.  Again, Wonkette wins the random live-blog comment of the night:

He just told us to “teach an illiterate adult to read.” No silly, that’s the Welfare State’s job! And then he mentions a few other ways in which you can put Country Above Self. Basically, they read like a job description for a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.

And now’s he’s getting them on their feet.  Stand up and fight.  The problem is that he’s totally talking over the crowd and no one on TV (or the convention center) can hear what’s he’s saying.  Just standing and fighting. And the crowd seems into it.  Sort of.

Wow, that was a really long speech.  And not very interesting.  Here comes the family.  Wonder how much her outfit cost tonight.  And that Mr. Palin is hunky.  Oooh … here come the hunky McCain boys and the hunky bad boy Levi.  He cleans up good.  I’m shallow.  I know. But after three days of watching overweight Texans in bad-fitting but expensive suits boogie down to bad music and atrocious countrified covers of songs I like, I need a little something. And hunky small-town bad boys are just the thing — they make me nostalgic.

Man, that is a whole lot of white people.  Except for Elaine Chao and her father in the front.

View of the entire convention center and it looks like there were a lot of empty seats behind the podium.

The guys on PBS are divided on whether it was a good speech or not.  Michael “My Hair Wouldn’t Move In a Hurricane” Bechloss called it McCain’s greatest speech.  Mark Shields is all, like, please bitch.  David Brooks is conflicted.

Al Hunt is giving him an A-minus?  That seems generous.  Al says that he thinks Obama did slightly better emotionally connecting to the audience.  Does he remember Obama’s speech? Geez. How soon we forget.

Takeaways from the evening:

• The next 60 days are going to be brutal.  I may not live through them
• I still can’t believe they put him in front of a green screen.  Who was producing this thing?
• Republicans don’t have any music that isn’t either country or older than 1989.