Until last night, I thought that an Obama win was uncertain only by how big the margin would be. After listening to the speech by VP candidate Palin, I’m not so sure now. Palin delivered what can only be regarded as a superb speech in terms of a crisp delivery and scrappy rhetorical barbs. With the best speech writers PAC money can buy, and with a large dollop of natural Ability, she delivered at the big event. Check out Mudflats for a fun post.
The St. Paul event center was packed to the rafters with plump, pasty-faced plutocrats and a few blond Barbie-Doll delegates within easy camera range. Conventions are engineered specifically for television and both the DNC and RNC have talented empressarios to put on a memorable show.
No matter what you think of any of the candidates, it is bound to be an interesting home stretch to election day.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
She even got the violent protesters to quiet down for the evening. Now that counts for something!
Yes, but she did much more than the normal truth stretching. She out and out lied on many fronts. These lies will be rabidly fleshed apart in the media without a doubt.
And what was with the tone of all the speeches last night? Obama’s community service is worth boos and laughs? Poor black folks don’t deserve to be helped? It seemed to me that these folks would have been just fine if Katrina had come up to South Chicago and taken them out too.
And experience? Obama and Biden’s senate experience amounts to ZERO? It was said over and over last night. Even 30 years in the senate means zero executive experience. I guess it’s a good thing McCain has Gov. Palin on his ticket to round out his ZERO experience.
Strange evening. Although she delivered an amazingly good oratory her lies and her policies will still be ripped apart.
I don’t want to get political but I was infuriated by the divisiveness and utter disdain for community service that I saw last night. Such a stark contrast from last week where the Dems offered plenty of praise for their opponents accomplishments and attacked them only on their policies.
Hi Greg, I agree with your sentiments. Don’t forget the “drill baby drill!” war chants. That was pretty creepy. It had a manifest destiny ring to it.
Jon Stewart was talking to the Newt last night on the Daily Show and brought up the interesting fact that the good Gov said that she respected her daughters decision to have the baby (because it is ultimately her decision), whilst screaming that the gov’t needs to step in and completely remove the decision from the American public. When pressed on the subject, Newt kept on trying to avoid the question altogether. It was really fun to watch him squirm and watch Jon nearly explode at the apparent lack of reasoning…
I missed Jon Stewart last night. I shut off the tube after the Palin speech. I’m trying to finish “Dracula” by Bram Stoker so I can move on to something new.
I sawc a different talk than all of you did. She had a phenomenal speech. Her delivery was very poor. She missed her marks. She never used pace or inflection effectively. She was just basically nervously reading a script. Her mannerism were stiff, showing how nervous she was.
For a scripted speech with a scripted audience, it was predictable.
As far as content and style, she showed herself to be an arrogant and sanctimonious person, just like her right-wing Christian Coalition audience expects and exudes themselves.
It scares me that we might have a 72 – plus year-old president, one small step from an egotistical person who thinks she ought to be a pitbull in lipstick. She might make Cheney and Bush seem like pacifists.
Florida Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris doing the recount then VP MILF extolling the virtues of moose drool stew. Trowl on the makeup, it’s an invasion by Planet Mabelline!
Barack Obama is a 1991 Harvard Law School graduate magna cum laude and past president of the Harvard Law Review. He is a facile grandiloquent prevaricator. John McCain is a US Naval Academy near washout, 1958 graduating class 894/899. McCain is a tawdry lying idiot. How can one tell them apart?
Greg. i laugh at your lack of political understanding.
Let us bow our heads and pray for faith-based offshore drilling for abstinence, hallelujah!
I will not vote for someone whose sole contribution to their party’s platform is an active set of ovaries.
I think I need to remind everyone of the old joke: “How do you know when a politician is lying? His (and in this case too, her) lips are moving.”
Despite the rhetoric going into an election, the outcome is practically indifferent. No one ever goes back to compare the (promised) input with the output. Compare what W did with what he promised to do. Do that for Clinton too, and … The first casulty of war is the truth, the first casulty of an election is the promises. So then, why get so twisted about what is being said today? Make a decision about how the persion is going to handle what ever is thrown at them, because things will get thrown at them – they can’t prevent that. Maybe if there is any time leftover, they will try to do some things that they wanted to do, if they can get a large enough group of Congress to go along with it.
The best we can ever hope for is one party in the White House, the other running Congress. Then we have gridlock and nothing gets done. With one party rule, it’s spend, spend, spend without control, purpose or oversight.
By the way, the violent protesters were back in full force last night. I keep mentioning them as I am in a St. Paul suburb, so this has kept me and my family away from the city all week. So for them to be quiet for even one night was a blessing, even if Satan himself/herself was on the stage.
I guess the punch line I was looking for was from Lily Thomlin:”No matter how cynical I get, it’s not enough to keep up.”