she has demonstrated very poor judgement in naming her kids track and trig...

i can see Sen. McCain echoing Mr. Burns at PAPAKHU's local fire station:

"ah yes, the fire department -- they're new, but they're good."

i can't turn away from the RNC tonight...they keep showing that jackass dressed up like Lincoln!

ugh...michelle bachmann...why couldn't they get randy bachman!?

Michelle Bachmann is both laughable and frightening. Treehugger has many ridiculous quotes from her on a regular basis.

ahh, i was wondering when the "ronald reagan RNC stroke-a-thon" was gonna start!!!

Oh dear God!!!! I think I just threw up a little in my mouth after watching that whole tribute. Or perhaps it was the First Lady's speech.

YAY Fred Thompson! Too bad we're almost to the point of no return when it comes to throwing this "great country" of ours in the shitter.

Sorry, please excuse. This whole situation is getting me a little panicked.

tuna, i'm more irritated by the distinct gravel-throated "rrraaaarrrrr!!" i'm hearing that's piercing every thunderous applause line...i think there is a giant, enthustiastic delegate next to the microphone!

have you heard it?

ROFL!!!!! YES!!!!!

so apparently i'm as bad as the north vietnamese that "tortured" mccain (only not, if you go by GWB's rules...)

If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will.


ummmm... riiiiight. keep it up, chimpy

"rarrrrrr" hey remember me, i'm fred thompson, "rarrrrrr" john mccain is the type of leader that people have looked to for millennia "rarrrrrr" we're winning a war on a concept "rarrrrrr"

that's what i'm hearing from msnbc...

although, really it's more appalled than angry...

Random curiosity... just how in fact are we supposed to pay for a war and everything else if we keep cutting taxes? Seriously. I never got that, but perhaps I'm too simple minded to understand.

yeah holz. i caught that too...i have a feeling the left wasn't so angry before gwb grabbed hold of the reins.

sen. fred thompson = chump.

and i guess, i should mention, since he's up now:

joe lieberman = double chump.

yeah, he should have edited the storm speech, it wasn't that big...

he's toast if mccain doesn't win

he's got jowl-mentum!

lieberman is a woose....He has done jack shit for Connecticut since he has become an independent.....actually he should have balled up and run as a republican. He doesn't bother to show his face in democrat country cause he is a fricking chicken.....I would go out and cluck if he came to my town. Thinking he is retiring to DC to join all of his lobbiest friends....and heck as the say he might enjoy hosting a giant crab or two in his patch. The guy is a fricking disgusting prick, driven by Fairfield County Money...screw the rest of Connecticut. You would think he might be a bit concerned about the 150 death in Hartford since the start of the year.....gang deaths...but what does he have to worry he is speaking at the Repubican Convention....and maybe he will become an Ambassador....to some nice country like Spain or Norway where no one give a shit where what he has done.... Joe Liberman Arnold....

hopefully the dems will get a big enough margin in the senate that they can ship that asswipe lieberman under the rug and i'll never have to hear his monochromaticmonotone again...

also the vice chair of the rnc intorduced sarah palin as sarah polenti...

i think pretty much everyone except john mc is getting sick of joe lieberman. and i noticed the renaming of the "whatever it is a VP does thingy person moose yee-haw" VP selection too...but don't worry -- i'll bet "she's minnesota nice!"

here's a fun, and maybe a little insensitive tangent: let's name Bristol Palin's expected baby!

given Gov. Sarah Palin's repeated selection of uncommon names for her children (Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig) i think that young Ms. Bristol would follow suit.

Here are some ideas i've been cookin' up:

Dilk

Prog

Thingle

Bort

any suggestions would be more than welcome!

cletus the fetus? naaah.

i especially liked when joe mccain, er lieberman was talking about how inexperienced he was compared to clinton, and then trotted out all the things clinton had accomplished... AFTER he became president.

Dear Republicans,

I guess when you have no standards and nobody is held accountable for anything and all you need to be able to do to get ahead is to shake a gun over your head and yell variants of "Jesus Angry!" - perhaps that's the reason your bench sucks so bad. The last remaining republicans with any decency I can think of come from states with sizable independent and democratic constituencies, save maybe Liddy Dole. The others have retired and are now lucrative lobbists for multi-national conglomerations.

I guess another way of saying it is; enjoy your suck/fail republicans. I just hope 51% of the voters out there choose not to go along for the ride.

Oh gosh, I love you guys. I'm a ball of angst right now but it helps to come here and have others to share with.

I can't watch the Repubs, I just can't. And I guess I thought Sarah Palin was a reasonably nice person until I read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?hp

Then I realized that she is just George W Redux, like a love child of Alberto Gonzales and Monica Goodling. McCain thought she was a maverick and yet her entire career has been a page (just one page though) out of the Bush playbook? Spare me.

"Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

great article WK

I heard all these Republican convention-going women on NPR this morning being totally nonchalant saying Bristol's pregnancy shows that "they're regular people" and "teenagers do these things after all".

1. Would they extend the same acceptance and forgiveness to an inner city African American pregnant teen?

and

2. Since they accept that "teenagers do these things" will they support comprehensive sex education to help prevent unplanned pregnancies?

Somehow I doubt it. Liberals definitely have our hypocracies(sp?) too but come on.

Also, snook: your comment re: clucking at Lieberman made me spit up my coffee - LOL!

i heard that fred thompson and joe leiderhosen are having a love child...

Although one of my greatest regrets is to not have voted for Gore in 2000 (Nader) I am sooo happy I didn't vote for LIEberman.

It only just started but I am tired of the Repugnicants playing the gender card and now the media-bias card. Someone needs to push back and push back hard on both those cases, Hillary?

Also, after making fun of Obama for being The One, it strikes me that they are viewing Palin as a (not so)Virgin Mary figure, Their Lady if you will. She embraces a baby for the cameras as an excuse to drill for oil that isnt there.

after watching a few snippets of this fiasco called a convention i really think that mccain is going to get crushed in the general election.absolutely no energy exists in these speakers or in the crowd. while barack is filling football stadiums, the rnc has many empty seats. maybe they are all filling sandbags in new orleans. somehow i doubt it. and damn that media for thinking there is a story about the vp elect's pregnant daughter, exbrother in law scandals and the flipflopping on the bridge to nowhere and the paying of lobbyists to pimp for her town while she served as mayor.

I love the eerie disembodied head background behind all the speakers. It feels like we're underwater.

Democrats bashing Joe Lieberman is completely backward thinking and hypocritical. One of the largest complaints thrown at the Bush administration and the previous, republican controlled, congress was that they were completely unwilling to compromise or even give the democrats the floor to speak their positions. This has led to a trench warfare style bitterness in which no dialogue between the parties can be maintained and no compromises can be reached. Lieberman represents a step forward in that he is not defined solely by party rhetoric and allegiances, but rather by a willingness to work with either party and reach meaningful compromises.

If you want to attack the Republican party for being rigid zealots unwilling to consider alternatives and compromise, you can’t simultaneously bash a democrat for compromising, otherwise your attacks ring hollow. Do you really want compromise and open dialog, or do you simply want your rhetoric to be the one that is on top?

Personally i found Thompsons speech pretty typical republican rhetoric. Though i must admit it was incredibly well delivered, and the story of McCain is really an impressive one... someone will make a movie about his life some day, im sure of it.

Some observations that prove i live in a political bubble called 'Chicago':

The most riled up responses from the delegates almost always came from the declaration that Jon McCain 'believes in the sanctity of life from conception'. And here i was beliving that divisive social issues might be trumped by Wars and faltering Economies

If you believe the speeches from last night, the republican tactic of divide and conquer has not changed. They seem to be counting on the same issues getting them elected again, and the same tactics working. Abortion, Taxes, Security, and ABOVE ALL ELSE... Fear and Spite (according to thompson)

Though many pundits are saying that the Republican party needs to move to the middle to attract centrists, im fairly certain that last nights proceedings drew not a single new vote. It had the feeling of a circling of the wagons to fend off impending doom.

Did you see the people in the crowd? I counted 2 african-americans, 1 hispanic (he spoke) and maybe 5 people under the age of 60. Ive never seen so many Old White Men and Women in one place. Have the RNC's always been so incredibly monochromatic?

I'm wondering if the pregnancy story was to bait the press into "picking on poor sarah."

the level of republican cynicism is just mind-boggling.

synergy,

lieberman isn't a democrat. he also ran on a bunch of lies last election. if CT had any balls, they'd recall his a**.

Holz,

that is the whole point. He shouldn't be attacked for breaking with his party, or do you prefer the hardline conservative republicans sticking to their rhetoric and never compromising either?

but he went into the convention saying he was a democrat that was able to cross the aisle.

the hardline conservatives can keep to their principles. they're highly flawed and have wrecked the economy, shredded constitution, overextended the military, etc.

eventually people will realize that R policies are so fatally flawed they'll either kill themselves or switch over.

at least, that's how the clintons tell it.

How could anyone have ever taken Joe Lieberman seriously?

Lieberman is a SOCIAL democrat. He supports liberal policies domestically. But he's a foreign policy archconservative—and that clouds everything else for him.

My take is that he supports the Iraq war (and a permanent US presence in the Middle East) primarily as protection for Israel.

Scary stuff. Meet your Republican Vice Presidential nominee:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html

A Jesus and Alaska filled speech to her old Assembly of God congregation. Have we ever had a potential vice president who was so inarticulate?

I agree with farwest1, and I have to say the Republicans are pretty hard-lined when it comes to the abortion thing but they don't seem to mind when Lieberman is in the house, do they? And I think he's pro-choice...So they are capable of turning it off as well....hypocrites. They make my skin crawl.

Last night it occurred to me to check how many more people actually voted for Obama in the last election than there are people in the state of Alaska. A couple of quick Google searches and some algebra, and voila... in fact, over 5X as many people voted for Obama in 2004 than there are people in the entire state of Alaska. So Obama may not have the executive decision making experience but his decisions affect a hell of a lot more people than any decision Palin has made.

One more thing, and yes, I am going to go there: has anyone noticed the difference in the design of the stages between both conventions? The Dems had what I would say was a much more embellished stage, a very typical convention set-up, while the Repubs have, ahem....a big TV? Is anyone else confused by that? Did they forget the rest of the set?

nobody likes delirious women(anti environmentalist reactionary, big oil colusionary, anti choice, secessionist with DUIs ) with a political agenda abusing power and inexperienced

what a big gamble for a even bigger loss

did you see Mccain staring at her ass and clutching his wedding ring the whole time she spoke ??? hahaha

this is horrible. but sadly funny none the less

The GOP loves Lieberman as long as he's giving speeches trashing Democrats, but they would have screamed bloody murder if McCain had offered him the VP spot (as apparently he had intended). They insisted on having a "born again" anti-choice, creationist religious fanatic on the ticket, and they got one.

So, in addition to demonstrating McCain's "judgement" in picking somebody for the #2 spot with less deliberation than most typical job interviews, McCain also demonstrates that his campaign is being controlled by a bunch of backroom religious nutcases, and that he apparently lacks the will and/or the power to do anything about it. Some maverick.

Oh the fun in reading all of your responses above...

I kept thinking last night that I was watching a pep ralley at a (rich) old-folks home.

I felt embarrassed to be white last night. Seriously. I watched the DNC and felt like I was looking at America right there in the convention hall/stadium, and I look at the RNC and feel like I am at a rich evangelical church--very, very uncomfortably wriggling in my seat in the back pew.

Looks like they could have held the convention in the meeting room at the local Holiday Inn Express and had plenty of room.

Did you all see The Daily Shows' coorespondents covering the RNC as if IT were the natural disaster?

^^liederhosen - right on
^^circling the wagons - right on

yeah i'm totally confused. i thought the democrats were about change, not more of the same. and here the republicans create a fresh, new and modern design for a political convention. what happened?

Oh Freeper Ramos, you're so funny. That's not what I meant, but you knew that, and you're so well-versed in the Republican tactic of twisting people's words around, well done!

What I meant was, why the difference? Regardless of what you think of each stage set, it seems a bit strange that there would be such a huge difference in design? I appreciate the fact that the giant TV gives the Repugs the opportunity to display a flag waving 24-7 though. Better that than show their audience full of AARP members.