Are You Done Yet? Edition

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

-- George Orwell, Animal Farm

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself."

-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), Vol. I

Where oh where to start...? Alcohol, if you please, my good man. And lots of it. No, just bring me the bottles, honey. No, all of them. Line them up. Right. Here.

Sorry for the late start last night, folks. Had to teach and um, missed the McCain acceptance. In real time that is.

Catching up from last night, Joe Biden calls Palin' speech "amazing." Um, question in the back, Mr. Biden...do you mean "amazing" haha? And Barack addresses Palin's attack on Obama's work as a community organizer: "Maybe that's the problem, that's why they're out of touch and they don't get it--cause they haven't spent much time working on behalf of those folks." Oh, and by the way, he's in York, PA. Where he now holds a 3 to 5 point lead. Shhh, don't tell the Republicans.

In another natural disaster/coincidence, of the sort that have dogged the Republican Convention, the GOP 's final convention day has somehow inadvertently fallen on the same night as the NFL season opener. OOOOOooooh. Tough choice! Kickoff or kicked in the groin?

Wonder what was going on behind the scenes at the Convention? Comedian Sara Benincasa's hilarious Palin vlog on Youtube.

Okay, on with the show. They show a video introducing Cindy McCain. There's a bit about how he romanced Cindy Lou and how they both lied about their ages when they met. Uh-huh, this is the guy Cindy will describe not twenty minutes later in her speech as the man "who always speaks the truth, no matter what the cost."

As always at moments like these, I wonder to myself how must John McCain's first wife Carol must feel. McCain and Carol were still married at the time of John's cocktail party romance with Cindy. John and Carol were still married for the six months that he pursued Cindy. He actually got the marriage license to marry Cindy a month before his divorce from Carol was granted. It was such a downright scummy thing to do that even the Reagans cooled their friendship with McCain over it.

Cindy McCain gives The World's Longest Introduction to a Candidate, Who's Already Been Introduced About Six Times in Three Days. Says Cindy, "From its very birth, our party has been grounded in the notion of service, community, self-reliance..." OH, is that like, um...um, "COMMUNITY SERVICE"? Oh right, community service sucks if it's Barack Obama doing it. It only counts if you're a dilettante.

Aww, we should cut her some slack. Given the way Republicans feel about putting underqualified women on the ticket, maybe Cindy should be running. She doesn't have brains, and doesn't know anything about policy (Cindy McCain being interviewed by Katie Couric. No, no, don't skip this one. It's too delicious, if only for the moment when you realize that Cindy has no frakking clue what the phrase "overturn Roe v. Wade" actually means). But she does have the one thing you need: money. Remember that Yellow Slicker with jewels outfit on Tuesday? Vanity Fair says it's worth $300,000. Maybe Cindy should be at the top of the ticket -- this campaign is being run off of her fortune after all. Ever wonder why this boy from Virginia and Annapolis is the Senator from Arizona? Because that's where Cindy's money and family connections are.

But where is our headliner? "Wake up, wake up!!" cries Dennis Kucinich. You're on! I don't have anything pithy to say about this speech to be honest, it's just a recap of the homespun Republican cliches that they've been using since Reagan. If I'm being perfectly frank, I haven't seen the whole speech. I nearly fell asleep watching it, except when the protesters were dragged off. He should thank them. They awakened half his snoozing audience.

Tom Ridge says: "John Bush is very much his own man..." I'll let you just watch this one. I love Freudian slips.

So how much is Mrs. Palin helping John McCain? ABC's new poll tells the story in the ideological center: "Among moderates, Biden registers as a net 15-point positive for Obama. In the same group, Palin shows no effect on support for McCain."

That's pretty much how the press is feeling after Palin's snipes at the "reporters and commentators." But Jack Shafer of Slate points out, "Palin's mixed message says: Please respect the privacy of my family—as I exploit them. Respect my family's privacy, but let me wrap myself in baby Trig to prove my anti-abortion stand. Question for the Commission on Presidential Debates: If you let Palin nurse Trig as she debates Joe Biden on Oct. 2 at Washington University, will you level the field by letting Biden bottle-feed one of his grandchildren?"

Paul Krugman, in the Times, warns about the politics of resentment: "One of the key insights in "Nixonland," the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon's political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates' resentment against the Franklins, the school's elite social club."

Meantime, Fox News' O'Reilly Factor has started airing the Obama interview--in pieces of course--sound bytes if you will.

And what of Hillary? The QUALIFIED woman. "Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday." (NYTimes) Speaking of Florida, word is that McCain wants to roll out Palin too in Flroida. Did anybody else notice the hurricane headed that way? I think folks in Florida might have other stuff to worry about....

I love Helene's solution. Every time she gets upset by all this, she donates $5 to Obama's campaign. It's a form of retail therapy. You're not the only one, Obama has raised $8 million since the Palin speech. And you get a t-shirt.

So that's it, folks. GOPers have invoked "God" 43 times, and the Dems only said "God" 22 times, so Republicans win...for now....We ARE DONE with this GOP convention. Really, I'm done with it.

Look Now into the Future
Three presidential debates:

• Friday, September 26, 2008 at the University of Mississippi's Gertrude C. Ford Center in Oxford, Mississippi, moderated by Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of The NewsHour on PBS. This debate will focus on foreign policy and national Security.
• Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at Belmont University's Curb Event Center in Nashville, Tennessee, moderated by Tom Brokaw, special correspondent for NBC News. This debate will have a town-hall meeting format.
• Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at Hofstra University's Hofstra Arena in Hempstead, New York, moderated by Bob Schieffer, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and host of Face the Nation. This debate will focus on domestic and economic policy.

And mark your calendars for the Veep debate:

• Thursday, October 2, 2008 at Washington University in St. Louis' Field House Gymnasium in St. Louis, Missouri, moderated by Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent on The NewsHour and moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS.
  

I leave you with this quote:

"...there was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, 'and this will always be the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology... Hatred and contempt must be directed at particular individuals."

-The Goebbels Diaries, H. Trevor-Roper (ed).