We have reached the eye of the hurricane. Half the storm is over. The Republican Party held their national nominating convention all week, and the Democrats are getting ready to hold theirs next week. So we enter these few days of calm between the howling winds, and to mark the occasion we're going with a unique format here today.

Rather than our usual weekly wrapup, awards categories, and suggestions for effective talking points for Democrats to use next week, we're instead going to do something we don't believe we've ever done before -- concentrate almost exclusively on the other side's talking points. The Democratic speeches for Charlotte are being fine-tuned right now, and so we felt it was important to lay out the Republican talking points that need to be shot down next week.

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OK, let's get right to my immediate impressions of the final night of the Republican National Convention. I'm going to quickly describe the opening acts, and then get into the big speeches of the night.

Tonight, the first person I saw on stage was not named McConnell. Oddly enough, when I turned on the teevee, PBS was interviewing Mitch McConnell. Strangest thing, and total coincidence, I guess.

Connie Mack talked about Cuba and whatnot. The audience yawned, from what I could see.

There was a mandatory Ronald Reagan video, and the crowd genuflected in unison.

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I promised to post this, but I don't have time to update the site to make it easily play here. If you're interested in hearing the interview I did on Jamaican radio this Monday, with Rob Richie of FairVote.org, here is the mp3 file if you'd like to download it and play it (it's about 12 minutes long). When listening, please bear in mind that it was 5:45 A.M. in my time zone.

-- Chris Weigant

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.

Today I sat through almost four hours of convention-watching, although I apparently missed some sort of Ron Paul video at the start, which would have been a lot more interesting than seeing Mitch McConnell. For some reason, I always turn on the convention when someone named "McConnell" is speaking, which was a little eerie when I noticed it.

The audience for McConnell seemed to be either asleep or comatose. Or perhaps working off those first-day hangovers, who knows? Mitch did get in one good line about "left-wing fever swamps" but even this failed to rouse the crowd. McConnell always seems to me to be auditioning for the part of "The Owl" in a elementary school play, but maybe that's just his bad taste in glasses, I don't know (Note: I wear glasses myself, so this isn't any sort of "four-eyes" putdown, it's just those frames look wrong on his face, that's all).

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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).

I tuned in while the guy from Virginia (McConnell? didn't even catch his name, and am too lazy to look it up, sorry) was speaking. His speech was pretty boring, but he did have the best anchorman "helmet hair" I've seen since... oh, I don't know... John Edwards, maybe? This is a real accomplishment, what with Romney and Ryan setting the "perfect hair" bar so high in the GOP.

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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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Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like the Republicans just keep right on raising the bar for craziness right up into the stratosphere? Things that seemed crazy just a few months ago now seem only mildly cuckoo, in the frenzy of stark raving looniness emanating from the right wing these days.

The truly amusing part of the week, though was the mad dog that did not bark in the night. Now, mankind has been attributing bad weather to angry gods since the beginning of time, pretty much. You could indeed make a rational argument that nature's fury is what caused some of these early religions to spring up. Even today, we have otherwise-well-respected religious spokesmen who are eager to speak to the nation and decipher what is the divine reason for things like hurricanes. That is, when the hurricanes aren't aimed at their big shindig. Haven't heard a peep out of these folks this week in identifying the reason behind Isaac... strange, isn't it?

What's even more astounding, for those who like to unlock the mysteries of coincidence, is where we were exactly four years ago -- heading into the 2008 Republican National Convention. Don't have an image of this in your mind? Here's one to look at. That's Hurricane Gustav, the second-most-powerful storm of the 2008 hurricane season. Because of the storm, both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney skipped the 2008 Republican National Convention, even through they were president and vice president at the time. Nobody wanted the inevitable comparisons with Katrina, which had arrived almost exactly three years earlier. The Republicans all but canceled "Day One" of their convention as a result.

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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Happy Thursday, everyone!

We are turning over the podium to a guest author today, for perhaps the final installment of our "let the commenters write columns" experiment. The reason is good news, however, as I will be starting to write again on Tuesdays and Thursdays from now on (or until further notice), as I have reached the milestone on my writing project that was the goal for this month already. Woo hoo!

Anyway, we got the following column submission from "michty6" a while back, but didn't even have time to do the formatting required until now. Sorry for the delay! When submitted, the article was preceded by a cartoon which I couldn't use for copyright reasons -- but, thankfully, we had the perfect C.W. Cunningham cartoon to use instead.

Without further ado, I now turn the soapbox over to "michty6" for the day.

-- Chris Weigant

About the Cartoonist | Reprint Policy

Trickle Down, Trickle Out, And Trickle Up

I can't imagine how the rich and wealthy persuaded Reagan to become the biggest advocate for trickle down economics or where they even got the idea from. Personally I imagine a meeting with Mr. Burns and Count Fudge-ula (from the Simpsons) with many other wealthy people up in his castle, sitting 'round the table:

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As we approach the "convention season" in the race for the presidency, it behooves us to take another look at how the electoral math currently stands. Mitt Romney chose to announce his running mate rather early, which is just beginning to be reflected in the polling. But, starting next week, each party will likely get a noticeable "convention bump" in the polls. Because the two conventions are happening right after one another, this should stir the big data pot well into September. Which is why now is a good time to look at the state of the race, to establish a baseline to measure all this expected frenzied movement.

We only have time for a short column today, so we're only going to look at two charts this time around, and then quickly wrap up with my picks. I promise next time around we'll take a deeper look at what is going on. Let's begin with Mitt Romney's chart (click on either of these charts to see a bigger copy):

[Definition of terms: Strong means 10% or better in the polls, Weak means 5% or better, and Barely is under five percent.]

The last time we took a look at the math was two weeks ago (the vertical lines in the charts show the dates of these columns). In that time period, Romney showed some positive movement, which was dampened by some weakening. How much of this was due to the selection of Paul Ryan is anyone's guess, really.

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Today we present an article written by one of ChrisWeigant.com's most prolific commenters, "Michale." When I called for article submissions for this month, I said I would not limit the point of view presented, so (to put it mildly) this is not exactly an article I would have written myself. But it is indeed the type of article I'd write (from a very different viewpoint, of course) -- an analysis of the upcoming election and how outside events might change it, for better or worse. So, without further ado, I will turn the CW.com soapbox over to Michale for today.

-- Chris Weigant

The Middle East And The Upcoming U.S. Election

I have been reading a lot that some Israeli leaders are concerned that an attack on Iran might actually strengthen Obama's re-election chances.

If this were true, I would imagine y'all would be hoping and praying for an Israeli attack on Iran. [Editorial note: "smiley" omitted here...]

But seriously, I don't see that happening. While it's true that some Independents and NPAs ("No Party Affiliation") would rally behind Obama if he jumps to Israel's defense (which is by NO means assured) I don't think the number would be large. Reason being that Obama has burned too many bridges with Independents and NPAs for us to switch our vote based on one incident.

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