Mickey gets it:
You know how sometimes you put on one of your favorites songs and you’re tapping your feet and listening very closely to the singer and you suddenly realize … he’s faking it. It’s the fifth take and he doesn’t care anymore. Or that’s what it sounds like. It could be a good song, by a good group–it happened to me recently with the Decemberists. It happens all the time. But it sort of kills the effect.
I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel about Fred Thompson.
All over Howie Kurtz:
In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child’s parentage.
I’ve never seen such a brutal collision between the fantasies of ideologues – "Sarah Palin is the future of the GOP" – and reality than this Palin pick. Well, actually I can: the Iraq war. Same neocon fantasists behind it, same absolute fixation on ideology and political tactics, same contempt for good governance, same unhinged arrogance, same ignorance of the actual facts and then pathological attempt to cover them up.
"Perhaps I’m focusing on an irrelevant issue, but the presence, or non-presence, of [Levi] Johnston on the stage tonight strikes me as important. It’s one thing for delegates to be understanding and compassionate about the fix these two teenagers have gotten themselves into. It’s another to actually celebrate it. And, given what we’ve learned in the last few days, if Johnston is up on stage with his girlfriend and the Palin family, and Republicans are wildly cheering, it will certainly look like they are celebrating this situation…
I don’t usually engage in these scenarios, but I’ll do it here. If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families," – Byron York.
I have to say that the 2008 Minneapolis St Paul Convention and the 1968 Chicago Convention have some eerie parallels. An unpopular war, a deeply divided country, and a ruling party having a mental breakdown on live television. In Minneapolis St Paul, in some kind of freak political weather system, all the centrifugal forces that have been tearing at the GOP for two decades now have merged. The veneer of a serious governing party is colliding with the reality of a theocratic, fanatic base. The pull of foreign policy realism is busting up against an unrepentant neoconservatism made even more extreme by the McCain candidacy. The whole collision makes one want to look away.
And when you see who may inherit the spoils of this disaster, we can only breathe a sigh of relief. The Democrats do not have their version of Nixon to swoop in, and triumph. They already have their Reagan.
(It was close though.)
From the blog BandofThebes.
I’ve noted the bizarre locution Bush used last night to describe the torture endured by John McCain. I hope the press corps will follow up. But one piece of evidence that the omission of the t-word by Bush was deliberate comes in Fred Thompson’s speech as well. He went on at length about the hideous treatment handed down to John McCain in Vietnam. It was the longest section of the speech. Wanna guess if the word "torture" came up at all? Here’s the whole thing:
On October 26, 1967, on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, a surface-to-air missile slammed into John’s A-4 Skyhawk jet, blowing it out of the sky.
When John ejected, part of the plane hit him — breaking his right knee, his left arm, his right arm in three places. An angry mob got to him. A rifle butt broke his shoulder.
A bayonet pierced his ankle and his groin.
They took him to the Hanoi Hilton, where he lapsed in and out of consciousness for days. He was offered medical care for his injuries if he would give up military information in return.
John McCain said "No".
After days of neglect, covered in grime, lying in his own waste in a filthy room, a doctor attempted to set John’s right arm without success … and without anesthesia.
His other broken bones and injuries were not treated. John developed a high fever, dysentery. He weighed barely a hundred pounds.
Expecting him to die, his captors placed him in a cell with two other POWs who also expected him to die.
But with their help, John McCain fought on.
He persevered.
So then they put him in solitary confinement…for over two years.
Isolation … incredible heat beating on a tin roof. A light bulb in his cell burning 24 hours a day.
Boarded-up cell windows blocking any breath of fresh air.
The oppressive heat causing boils the size of baseballs under his arms.
The outside world limited to what he could see through a crack in a door.
What was done to John McCain was a war crime. His enduring of it, and his refusal to be released ahead of his fellows does indeed speak to enormous character, which is why so many of us love the man. But today’s great crime is that what was done to him is now being done to others … under orders from the president of the United States. You can either defend this, or you can use semantics to cover it up. The Bush administration has chosen the worst of all paths in this, and the taint of their actions is now spreading.
We have to start speaking English again. Asking Fred Thompson directly whether he believes John McCain was tortured in Vietnam is a start.
[Update: one other thing. Thompson does not mention, again bizarrely, the stress positions that feature very prominently in McCain’s own account of his torture. Why not?
I checked the transcript this morning and the biggest bombshell in this campaign so far, in my opinion, is the following section of Bush’s speech:
John McCain’s life is a story of service above self. Forty years ago, in an enemy prison camp, Lieutenant Commander McCain was offered release ahead of others who had been held longer.
His wounds were so severe that anyone would have understood if he had accepted.
John refused. For that selfless decision, he suffered nearly five more years of beatings and isolation. When he was released, his arms had been broken, but not his honor.
Fellow citizens, 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.
Now have you ever heard someone recount what was done to John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton and not use the word "torture"? I haven’t. "Beatings and isolation" is a bizarre phrase to use to describe the torture that was done to John McCain. I’m sure McCain thinks so.
Am I being persnickety? As with the Trig story, there’s a very easy way to find out – if the press will simply do its job. A White House reporter needs to ask the president, quite simply, if he believes that John McCain was tortured in Vietnam. Just ask. Use that specific word. See if he can answer.
The reason he put it this way, I infer, is that if he describes what was done to McCain as torture, he has incriminated himself for war crimes.
I repeat: The reason he put it this way is that if he describes what was done to McCain as torture, he has incriminated himself for war crimes.
Now prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong.
A far more enthusiastic endorsement of Obama from two years ago than his stilted endorsement of McCain last night:
The crickets are chirping … Where are they? It’s the Republican convention and all Jonah Goldberg can say is:
I prefer crowds that chant "U-S-A" to "O-B-A-M-A."
Er, that’s it. And by the way, Jonah. Obama’s crowds do chant "U-S-A".
San Jose, Costa Rica, 7 am.
The Dish 