As the Stomach Turns Edition

Call this the "It-Looks-Right-If-You-Stand-on-Your-Head-Oh-and-Also-Turn-Yourself-Inside-Out" Edition. I'm gonna dedicate this edition to a dear friend who's passed on, but who SOOOOO would have giggled like a small child if she'd been here for it: Ellen Miller.

What did Frances McDormand say in "Fargo?" Oh yes, it was, "Think I'm gonna barf..."(Please, do hold your vomiting until we're done.)

Okay, Day Three of the RNC
It's going to be a long night. Pour yourself some gin and fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night. Let's start with a warm-up.

Yes, my darlings, if there's a microphone in front of you, pinned to you, or somewhere within fifty feet of you, consider it live. (Man, how are these people going to master Twitter when they don't get 20th century technology?) How Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and Wall Street Journal columnist and Republican consultant Mike Murphy really talk when they think no one's looking. Noonan: "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and that's not what they're good at, they blow it." Now THERE'S Straight Talk. The morning after, Noonan evaluates.

By the way, Wonkette is offering a free cookie to anyone who spots a black person on the floor of the RNC Convention. Washington Post reports that there are 36 of them there: "Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago."

And now, folks, it's The Night of Old Republican Favorites. Remember dancing the night away to such hit-tunes as "It's Liberals," "The Scurrilous Media," and "9/11, 9/11, 9/11"? We're Monday Morning Quarterbacking, so remember, if you start feeling too nauseous, you can always go to Jim Drinkard's terrific article on the AP wire: Attacks, Praise Stretch Truth at GOP Convention to check the facts.

Let Mitt Romney make you swoon with "It's Opposite Day!" "What do you think Washington is right now, liberal or conservative? Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? We need change all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington." The Liberals eat babies and defecate on American flag for breakfast. Yes, yes, [waves hand] we know. What else have you got?

And in case you haven't heard the rambling and thoroughly irrelevant story about the Arkansas teacher and desks story, Mike Huckabee is happy to trot it out for you again. Along with things best filed under Too Much Information. "Heck, I was in college before I found out it wasn't supposed to hurt to take a shower." Okay, Way Too Much Information.

Rudy "9/11" Giuliani, Offical Wart of these United States, leads the crowd (9/11) in a rousing chant of "Drill, baby, drill!" leading us all to wonder (9/11) just how much coke was made available backstage (9/11) so that this lengthy line of Republicans could go out there and whip this crowd up (9/11) by invoking Sarah Palin's record. Then there's this one(9/11) : "At exactly the right time, John McCain said, "(9/11) We're all Georgians." A restless America says, "Whuh-huh? But I'm not Southern. And why do I keep saying 9/11 to myself?"

And now, it's time for our headliner, America's Favorite Small Town Barracuda, Sarah Palin (of the Uncomfortable Family), who's such a maverick and a reformer that she's reading a speech written by, no joke, Matthew Scully, former speechwriter for none other than George W. Bush. Oh she's out to make a changes in Washington-- YEAH!: "I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone." Um... here's a little news flash, Sarah, actually we just consider you unqualified because you are unqualified.

Oh, and by the way, HuffPo says: "Here's a little newsflash for Sarah Palin, to paraphrase her speech: The media isn't writing about you to seek your good opinion — they're writing about you to serve the people of this country."

And Madame Unqualified also has a few words about Obama: "Listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the State Senate." If you're interested, read the list of Obama's record of sponsoring legislation. (Congresspedia)

We finish with a rousing chorus of John Rich's "We're all just raising McCain!"--no, seriously, that's the title--because, you know, he was dead. (YouTube)And well, frankly, I can't stomach any more, so I play a couple of Obama stump speeches and snarf down some Chocolate Guinness Ice Cream...

If you're playing along at home, A dictionary of Palin-guage: "Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America. White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

So what about the so-called liberal media? Time Magazine political commentator Joe Klein fires back at the McCain campaign: "There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."

I dunno if making war on, oh, the people who get your message out--your so-called "base"-- is such a cool plan."The McCain camp has been unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to hope to persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin," says Washington Post's Howard Kurtz with a few more words about the McCain tactics. "Those there that night now feel as if they are living in some sort of alternate reality in the Xcel Energy Center here," adds the NY Times' Jim Rutenberg.

As usual, we leave it to Jon Stewart to sum the struggle of a media circus up brilliantly. Interviewing Newt Gingrich last night, he laid out why he thinks it's fair game to talk about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's teenaged daughter as relates to the "choice" issue: "She's saying 'Respect my family's ability to make this decision...and elect me, so I can keep your family from having the same opportunity."

Meanwhile, back in America

Obama was out in Ohio (20 electoral votes), Biden in Florida (27 electoral votes). No, no, you all just go on about your business. Don't mind us....We'll just be touring around...

Okay, so yes, we all have ulcers now, and no, there ain't enough Pepto in the world to make listening to Day 4 of this convention easy, but remember, we're going to win this thing. Long haul. Strategy. Ohio.