The Republican National Convention Day Four: My Friends, It's Finally Over And I Survived! (And Did You Know McCain Was A POW?)

Hi everybody. It's over! Whew. Thank God! If I have to hear one more person talk about McCain being a POW I don't think I can be responsible for what I'll do. If they were trying to take a compelling story and turn it into a joke, well, mission accomplished. I found The Best Political Team on Television (TBPTOT) to be much more palatable tonight. Obviously I didn't agree with some of what was said (and there's no reason I should), but most of their retardedness seemed to be gone. I guess they have to have a night of flail during each convention. Remember the desperate grasp for a narrative during the first night of the DNC? Also, it seems some of TBPTOT has been eating their snark Wheaties. Anyway, it's about time for those lovable bullet points. Be sure to savor them; it's the last time!

• There are no words. No, actually, there are some words. Political Intelligence has them.
  

• I tuned in for what I thought was the beginning of Tom Ridge's speech, but he was only on for like a minute. I'm not sure what happened there. Perhaps I should go on Orange Alert.

• In the Cindy McCain film we learn that both she and John McCain lied to each other about their ages. Aw, love at first lie. That's so cute.

• Cindy McCain's humanitarian work is genuinely admirable. Too bad about the drug use, charity stealing, and cheating with a married man. Yeah, that stuff wasn't in the video.

• I found Cindy McCain's speech rather unimpressive, and therefore non rage inducing. In other words, I almost liked it.
  

• I like how the audience erupted into applause when Cindy McCain introduced the woman sitting in her box. "She suffered unimaginable horrors and was made to watch appalling havoc wreaked by her family." Yay horrors? I think the clapping-gun was jumped just a bit.

• Ha! Even Anderson Cooper seemed to be getting sick of John McCain's story. He noted we've been hearing it every night now and the guy already has a TV movie and biography about it. Seriously.
  

• Republicans trying to dance is funny. Dudes, this is how you dance.
  

• Oh my God, the pundits actually discussed the lack of substance in the prior days of the convention.

• The McCain video was an extreme exercise in deja vu and wholly predictable. War hero. POW. Faith. Country first. Lower taxes. Pro life. Small Government. Will kill Bin Laden with his bare hands. Stuff like that.

• McCain began his speech at approximately 9:11 PM. Just saying.

• McCain is giving his speech in front of a green screen?! Again? If he can't even get his background right, how's he supposed to lead the country?

• McCain: "All people are created equal." Unless you're gay.

• Protesters! Oh noes! It's Gitmo for those sad saps.

• McCain: "Americans want us to stop yelling at each other." Pssst. Can you tell that to all the speakers that came before you?

• McCain jumps on the change bandwagon. Hello! It's your party that screwed us over in the first place.

• USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

• McCain: "I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it." There comes a point when a statement is so simplistic and without context that it becomes utterly meaningless. My friends, we are at that point. Also? Republican chanting? Scary.

• McCain: "My fellow Americans, when I’m President, we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we’ll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles." We will have free pizza Fridays. We will make it rain candy bars. We will go back in time and make your junior high school crush fall in love with you.

• Oh, the weird grimacing is getting worse. Maybe it's because the speech is going on forever.
  

• More POW stuff?! Is he kidding?! Jeebus, enough!
  

• This is the part where Eliza literally falls asleep. I wake up to McCain yelling and then the blaring up the awesome tune, "Raisin McCain." It's more than disconcerting.

• Bwah! They have fireworks on their screen. Kinda hard to follow Obama's display, huh?

• And . . . it's over. Finally. Apparently that means it's time for Anderson Cooper to tease Wolf Blitzer about the band.

• Tonight's winner for weirdest pundit statement goes to Dana Bash: ". . . nothing John McCain likes more than confetti." I hope he likes balloons too because there were a lot of them.

• Speaking of which, we go back to TBPTOT, and, oh noes, where's Anderson? Why, he's behind a big balloon! Okay, TBPTOT is getting really bored, apparently. The Wolfbot thinks it's like Times Square on New Year's Eve and asks Anderson if he's gone, to which Anderson basically replies, "uh, duh, I've only been hosting CNN's special for the past five years." Ooh fight! Fight! Move along, people; there' s nothing to see here. Seriously, there's nothing to see here. They're just kidding around. We're never going to get TBPTOT to go batsh*t insane like the MSNBCers. (Again!) They're going to kill each other over there!
  

• Jim Acosta: ". . . red states as red as Sarah Palin's lipstick," Really? Is this seriously how it's going to be now?

• It seems Sarah Palin has a French manicure. Anderson does not think the RNC crowd is going to be happy about the French part. Bwah! Bringing the snark!

• David Gergen thinks the supposed "substantive stuff" in McCain's speech actually didn't work because it was all just a retread of Republican ideals. Wow. Thank you!

• They're grading the dancing? Yeah, TBPTOT is spent.

• They played "Don't Stop Believing" on the convention floor. Sadly, the RNC did not cut to black.

• Don't ever say Jeffrey Toobin holds back, y'all! He thinks McCain's speech was "shockingly bad" and the "worst speech by a nominee that I've heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980." Daaayum!!

• Anderson then piles on, wondering if the Republicans sent all their speech writers to Sarah Palin's hotel. Oh, snap! Anderson Cooper 360 has just done a 180 from last night. I like it. Others will not. One more day and maybe he would have found that middle ground.
  

• Even Leslie Sanchez is getting punchy, complimenting the "Guys and Dolls" outfits Anderson and the Wolfbot have going on. Anderson informs us they were up until 4 AM coordinating. Like the Wolfbot has to sleep anyway. Also, I would pay money to see those two doing this.
  

• Anderson Cooper to Leslie Sanchez: "Isn't the subtext that the Democrats don't believe in country first? Do you really believe that?" Now that's what I'm talking about. Excellent question.
  

• Haha! The Wolfbot is so happy that McCain didn't criticize the "liberal elite media" in his speech. Leave it to Anderson to break his little heart (or at least short his circuits), by reminding him that McCain is actually friends with a good number of people commenting on their panel.
  

• Hm, now that I think about it, the sound of balloons popping during an event such as this one is probably mildly terrifying.
  

• Anderson Cooper tells us he's not sure if tomorrow he'll be going to cover Hurricane Ike, though if Tina shows up, he'll definitely be there. Sadly, it took me almost a minute to get this. Because apparently, I'm retarded.
  

• I'm going to use this last bullet point to further make clear why I think TBPTOT did so much worse last night. This isn't about them not being as fawning about McCain's speech as they were Palin's. Last night there were very, very clear and easily debunkable untruths told; tonight the water is murkier and will most likely require research to fact-check. Also, last night they latched onto a narrative that is now completely irrelevant (whether Obama should have picked Clinton). It was a complete waste of time and extremely unhelpful. Finally, they gave the impression that truth doesn't matter. Performance wise, Palin's speech was a hit (though unnecessarily smug). But an overall success? She lied repeatedly. If that's a success . . . . my how far we've fallen.

I didn't really have time to search the Internets tonight for fun stuff, so I'll try to bring you that in a subsequent post. For now, I thought I'd do a little updating on Hurricane Gustav. I know the storm is probably a distant memory now for those not affected, but it disturbed me how quickly the media pulled out of the region after New Orleans was deemed spared. When the world isn't watching, bad things can more easily occur. Of course, that doesn't mean the storm's aftermath wasn't covered at all. It looks like CNN still has some correspondents down there. This video from the AP shows the less than adequate conditions evacuees had to deal with at some of the shelters. This other AP video focuses on the homecoming of New Orleans residents. Finally, NBC has a report from Houma, Louisiana, ground zero of the storm.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this a couple days ago, but apparently we've invaded Pakistan. And since that's kind of disturbing, I shall leave you on a happy note with Jon Stewart, the most trusted name in news (click here if it doesn't work for you):



Goodbye, St. Paul! Thanks for the nightmares!