Originally Posted By Mr X ***She's adequate. Hardly what I would call "a dynamic speaker".*** I should add a caveat here...I don't think she's a bad speaker at all, but what I saw from her at the RNC didn't impress me. It might have something to do with the recent trend of printing highlights of what they're going to say before the fact. Certainly makes the speeches come off as completely scripted and insincere (on BOTH sides). And I got that feeling as she was delivering the speech as well...the crowd started cheering prematurely at times, making it obvious that they were waiting to hear those exact words...lame. So, in fairness, no I don't think she's not "dynamic" or "exciting", but I didn't get that impression from her delivery at the RNC. Not at all, really. Plus, as someone else mentioned, it sure didn't feel like she was speaking from the heart...more like reading someone else's words (someone very angry and nasty, at times).
Originally Posted By plpeters70 <<It says a lot about who some of you are as human beings and quite frankly it's very sad.>> Says the man who advocates torture...
Originally Posted By Mr X ***It says a lot about who some of you are as human beings and quite frankly it's very sad.*** In addition to the torture thing, it's really ballsy of someone to question others "as human beings" and act all holier than thou. What's wrong with people being pissed off and rather sarcastic about the lip service of yet another right winger who has already contributed greatly (90-95% contribution in any case) to the mess we're in. I mean, let's call a spade a spade. There's a lot of reason to be angry at that party, AND it's leading representative..that's not a personal attack on the man, that's a sentiment towards the entire group and all the bad things they're responsible for and NEVER own up to. I don't think there's anything wrong with people being flippant or angry about the Republican disaster at all. Certainly not a reason to call their character into question (though that's what the NeoCons do best, right?).
Originally Posted By Mr X It doesn't stop there, DAR. It never does. That's the part you refuse to understand.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I especially liked when he stated that doing what's best for the country means more to him than the R or D next to a person's name.<< Yes, so did I. I appreciated the sentiment. Then I thought back to the nasty campaign ads of August and the sneering, sarcastic speeches of the night before and I knew that it was just a line. I don't think McCain believes it anymore. You may disagree. It was a speech better designed to reach moderates. Anyone who wasn't listening to the rest of the convention might believe it, too. But they revealed that there's been NO change in the RNC, not a bit. We heard the anger, the dismissiveness the night before from Palin -- all said with a smile -- and Romney especially. I was glad McCain didn't pile on, but I'm not sure he realizes how poorly the night before played among moderates. That wasn't a changed party from 2004, it was exactly the same snarky, superior smugness. If that works for you, great. Doesn't work for me.
Originally Posted By mawnck I'm gonna put on my asbestos undies and make a statement here. If it weren't for Palin and some of the other speakers, and my knowledge of some of the issues that are at stake here, I would be seriously considering voting for McCain after that speech. In fact, I actually hope President Obama will consider giving him a cabinet position. The message that he's going to stand up to ANY Congressman who doesn't put country over party is an appealing one to this liberal. However, my earlier concerns still stand, and I still know that Obama is a better match for the qualities and positions I want in my President. I'm sure my opinion of McCain will be changed about 100 more times between now and November. Especially if Ms. Squawk Box delivers a few more poison-laced harangues with him standing there and nodding. There was definitely plenty of "code-speak" going on - references to born-again buzzwords and bible verses that would be instantly familiar to the wackier practitioners of the Christian religion, but that the average Presbyterian might not notice. The smooth stones thing is a good example. I don't recall much of that in McCain's speech (it still may have been there - I'm not that sort of Christian, by God's grace), but some of the other speakers were making extensive use of it. Oh BTW - the commentators on NBC said that green background was yet another technical glitch. Either God or McCain's technical crew don't want him to win the election.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "Oh BTW - the commentators on NBC said that green background was yet another technical glitch. Either God or McCain's technical crew don't want him to win the election." This looked to me like incredibly bad set design. The green behind him was actually the lawn from some house they were showing behind him. They kept rotating images as he spoke, and for some idiotic reason the bottom part of whatever they would show served as the backdrop behind whoever was speaking. No thought went into that at all it would seem.
Originally Posted By Mr X That was no technical glitch. Looking at the bigger picture, there was some sort of a house on a hill behind him (NO idea what it signified, but anyway it was a big picture on the jumbotron). It's just unfortunate that the part of the 'tron you could see was puke green.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>This looked to me like incredibly bad set design. The green behind him was actually the lawn from some house they were showing behind him.<< Not at first. When they first went to him it was a solid lime-green screen, top to bottom. No house, no lawn. The house with the lawn came up a minute or so later. Not that it wasn't incredibly bad set design, especially for TV purposes. They'd obviously gone to great lengths to insure that the color from the screen was adjusted to look accurate on camera, but then you couldn't tell what was on the screen when they showed the speaker. They had this inspiring American flag towering over McCain, but on TV - solid blue background. Weird.
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 "one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor." Mr. X, this reference is to the David and Goliath story. A small boy with a smooth stone and a slingshot, killing a big giant with lots of armor. Basically meaning a "little guy"...like Huckabee, I guess, can come in and knock down the "big guys" with just a small, smooth stone. Yeah, that worked out really well for him, didn't it?
Originally Posted By utahjosh <-Last week during Obama's speech not one person who might not be voting for him offered any snarky commentary during the speech. Here I noticed a lot of sarcastic comments where if one bad word was said about Obama it would have been bedlam. It says a lot about who some of you are as human beings and quite frankly it's very sad.> It needed repeating.
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 Well, Obama got pretty trashed leadign up to the speech. I am surprised there weren't people on here bashing his speech, but then again, maybe they didn't even watch it? At least the non-Republicans on here bothered to watch McCain's speech...
Originally Posted By utahjosh I watched it, and could have been here mocking it, but it's not my thing.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Last week during Obama's speech not one person who might not be voting for him offered any snarky commentary during the speech.<< You are correct. The whole chat room concept kind of grew out of the spontaneous discussion on the Sarah Pawlenty topic. Which was Tuesday night. I can only speak for myself (as, admittedly, the OP of this topic), but the main reason that I wasn't on here snarking at the Dems real time was that I was busier last week, and not able to watch TV, post, and do what needed doing at the same time. I would've had plenty to say, believe me. However, your criticism is noted, fair, and not disputed, at least by me.
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 Ok, so I watched McCain last night, anxious to see what he would say. There were quite a few things I noticed about it, and the speeches/videos leading up to it. First of all, I have to say, I liked the video montage they did for Cindy McCain. It made her appear much more personable, and gave quite a bit of info about her character, which I liked. Her speech wasn't bad either...just not delivered that well, but hey, she did ok. Second. Did they really have to bring up 9/11 again? We get it, and frankly, they need to take a new approach to it. It's kind of hard to take them seriously when the message has not changed in 7 years... Third, McCain's speech. There were parts I really liked. It was nice to finally hear him place blame on the current administration (without being specific) for our country's situation. It was also nice to hear him try to reach out to both sides of the aisle, and mention that we need less yelling and fighting. The problem with that though, is that in the intro to his speech he said that next week they would be "back at it"...so, what did he mean, exactly? Not to mention, it was kind of ironic he was the one calling for no more attacking, but he was the one doing most of it. So, which side is he on? He did lay out his plans for change, but I really didn't hear anything new. School vouchers, really? So, basically you're going to give up on fixing our public schools and give money to churches and private institutions? There were lots of code phrases thrown in there, which I really didn't like. I found that all his policy changes were there to appease the base, but not really anything of substance for the middle ground. The "keep jobs here" thing sounds good, but it's a little too vague...it really could mean working in the fields, as some have said here. The drilling for oil thing is such a straw horse...I hate that it's used as a catch-all. Also, do we really want more nuclear power plants? Anyway, I just wish he hadn't pandered to the base so hard in that segment of his speech. His POW story was/is great, and we've all heard it many times before. He needed to be more brief with it...it's a little overkill now. Also, there were quite a few veiled attacks on Obama in there...so much for being nice. Then we get to keeping America safe. Do we really want to piss off Russia? Yes, there are evils in the world, but he listed only Iran and Russia? What about North Korea...that's been forgotten for some reason. The genocide in Africa? Somehow, that's not important...but avoiding another cold war is? It really was like two different speeches patched together. There was some good in there, but it got outweighed by the bad stuff in my opinion. Oh, and I noticed something else throughout this week. Everyone was making light of Obama's Community Organizing experince. Even going so far as Guilianni laughing at it blatantly. However, many of the speeches were laced with the word "community", using it in a positive light. So, how can Obama's service be laughable, but at the same time you're all saying how the world is a community, and America is a community, and we need to build a community....it makes NO sense to me, and seems like a total contradiction.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I wish we had the "Stadler & Waldorf"-ing of the DNC convention last week. I would have participated. Maybe in 4 years. ; )
Originally Posted By plpeters70 <<Second. Did they really have to bring up 9/11 again?>> Probably because the Republican party doesn't really have much to be proud of, and the only thing they can crow about is how they handled 9/11, and how we haven't had any other terrorist attacks in this country since. It's not like they can talk about how great the economy has been these last 4 years, or how peaceful things have been in the world.
