Welcome once again to my musings and snap judgments which I jot down right after watching the Republican National Convention speeches, and before I read what the rest of the online universe has to say. This way, my opinions might be wildly out of sync with everyone else, but at least you'll know they're not influenced by others. My Day One impressions were fairly close to what others are saying, so make of that whatever you will.

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Before I read what the rest of the online world took away from the first night of the Republican National Convention, I thought I would share my own impressions. These are hastily jotted down, after watching roughly two and a half hours of speakers and pundits (some speakers I missed because I was either flipping through the channels, some of which didn't carry every speech).

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America's oldest pastime is not baseball, or football, or indeed any professional sport. It is not going to the movies, or watching television, or spending time on the internet. It's not communicating with each other via email, telephone, or any other method. America's oldest pastime will be on full display for the next two weeks, because before any of the rest of these things even existed, America has had a love affair with politics that endures and lives on to this day. But politics -- especially as practiced during the national conventions -- is nothing more than intolerance and bigotry writ large. But, unlike the more virulent forms of bigotry, political bigotry is not only celebrated in America but actually downright inevitable -- or at least, it has been since our country began.

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Fast-forward to today, and we have a timeline: Hurricane Katrina. Three years later, Hurricane Gustav interrupts Republican National Convention. Four years later, Isaac threatens the first days of the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Draw your own conclusions.

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Democrats would do well to point out that this extremism would have serious consequences if ever enacted. Follow the logic through to the end. Put it in as blunt language as possible. This is what the Republican Party now stands for. Point it out.

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Moving right along, normally our Friday columns open with a bit of lighthearted news roundup, which is where I'd point out things like what Donald Trump is up to (always good for a laugh), and then move on to mutant butterflies in Japan due to radioactivity from their power plant disaster, which would end with a joke about Mothra.

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Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan for his running mate is already worrying some in Republican circles. These unnamed sources (most of them refused to publicly put their name to such worries) aren't just concerned that Mitt Romney may lose the election to Barack Obama, they are also raising the possibility that Ryan's choice may put at risk many "down-ballot" seats in the House of Representatives. Which leads to the obvious question: if their fears are true, could it mean Democrats have a much better chance at taking the House back in the upcoming elections? To put it another way, will we see "Speaker Nancy Pelosi" again next year?

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The announcement of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate late last Friday sent a shockwave through the political and media world. The snap judgment of what passes for conventional wisdom among the chattering class is that the Ryan pick was bold (as opposed to safe), and that the election will henceforth be all about wonky details from the Ryan budget plan. "A campaign of Big Ideas!" the pundits excitedly gasped. "Just what we've always wanted!"

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With that "fair warning" out of the way, there are two highly amusing talking points coming from the Republican camp this week. If your irony-detector is as acute as mine, you'll appreciate the GOP completely and utterly destroying two of their bedrock positions just to score a few cheap political points. I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing to be one of the more enjoyable forms of political entertainment around.

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This is the story of two political movements. As with any such movement, both eventually got to the point where they asked themselves the fundamental question of what they were attempting to achieve, and (more importantly) what methods they were going to use to accomplish their goals. This fork in the road can be summed up as: do we work within the existing system, or is the system itself so broken we should work outside the system in order to reform the workings of the system itself. One group chose one path, the other chose to head the other direction.

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