Andrea Mitchell seems like a nice person, but she is a serious lightweight when it comes to journalism. Rick Davis walked all over her and got out some of the most ridiculous charges imaginable against Barack Obama - paramount among them the idea that Obama went negative first. This is a crafty conflation of attacking on the issues vs. attacking on questions of character. Obama has yet to do that. McCain does nothing but that. Good grief, but my 15 year-old son could do a better job than Mitchell and getting the facts out of Davis.

"Who would ever vote for the menacing or ridiculous shadow Obama of talk radio?"

Um, I would.

It's summer vacation for academics and Paglia has clearly dialed this one in. Sounds like she's trapped in a car with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and a tire pressure gauge. A total misreading of what's happening on the campaign trail. There isn't a drill big enough to help John McCain. Viagra's the only option and even that can't help an oil rig in a hurricane. I look forward to next month's column, when Paglia's vacationing mind returns to her body.

I get that you're a Republican troll and trying to be funny and all but someone needs to tell you that you just come across as, well, creepy and weird and as unfunny as most Republicans.

...except of course if it were earlier, when he would have been criticized for picking someone too early. You see, according to the MSM (that means you, too, Salon) everything Obama does is wrong. Only Republicans do things the right way (and the Clintons, but same thing). That's why they win presidential elections. When Obama was leading in the polls, he wasn't leading by enough. When he's trailing in the polls, it's all what happened to the lead (the same one that didn't really count to begin with)? When he announces his VP, all sorts of idiotic complaints will be conjured out of thin air about why he/she was the wrong choice. We liberals are pathetic self-haters invested only in self-sabotage. It's like the Stockholm Syndrome writ large and political. We now completely identify with our Republican captors out of fear and intimidation. I say it's time we start taking some hostages of our own and surrender forever this lily-livered, nervous-nelly hand wringing. We want the White House? Let's take it, dammit. We have a candidate. Let's line up, focus, and help get him elected. His VP choice comes when it comes - and when it comes we support it and stick to the campaign messages. And we bring down the House of Bush and McQuickDraw once and for all.

The Clintons did themselves and the party a world of good - and they did it with grace, style, and force.

I thought the whole convention was great (in spite of the hectoring the chattering classes that it wasn't). From Michelle Obama's powerful and human presentation on Monday, to Hillary's stemwinder on Tuesday, to the Clinton-Kerry-Biden trifecta on Wednesday - the whole thing was powerful, moving, and affirming.

And there was plenty of red meat, which I'll net out thusly:

John Sidney George Walker Bush McCain '08!

Nuff said.

You almost don't have to say anything about any of this. It's a parody that just writes itself. McCain's is the greatest train wreck of a campaign in history. It's like he's just completely disconnected from reality. What's he going to announce next? Maury Povich for Secretary of State?

John Podhertz at Commentary/Contentions actually had the gall to compare this speech to Obama's 2004 convention speech. Crazy. This speech was dark, angry, hostile, and confrontational. Obama's uplifting and inspiring.

The good news is that Palin graciously took the gloves off and invited all kinds of opprobrium in return. Obama will characteristically rise above it (as he should; she's not worth any oxygen), but it's time to take it back to them. May each lie be debunked and called out, may all the negativity be emphasized, may the undecideds see a clear picture of four years with this kind of nastiness, and may we all just hammer away on the following: nasty, negative, dark, angry, hostile. The new Republican brand.

and I'm a guy!

What a long, amazing trip it's been.

I am not one of those anti-Paglia CAPS LOCK hysterics who waste no time devouring her columns before insisting in Letters that Joan Walsh fire her immediately or, DAMMIT, they'll cancel their subscriptions. Paglia can say whatever she wants to say. More power to her. But it was, well, depressing to see her scurry past Obama's triumphant and historic victory in a breathless dash to the right-wing radio hit parade. Obama's birth certificate? Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn? How could she have overlooked the burning question of whether or not Malcolm X is Obama's real father?

The problem with this column - and with Paglia's drift since the Palin nomination - is not in what it says but in what it's willing to overlook. Palin was never attacked by the Obama campaign at all. If anything, they ignored her. Ditto the mainstream media - the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight - who, we've learned since last Tuesday, were brimming over with damning secrets that they kept from the American people. Her presence didn't factor into the Obama campaign's winning strategy one way or the other. The most potent attacks on Palin came from Republicans themselves. Kathleen Parker, Chris Buckley, Francis Fukuyama, Bill Weld, and on and on. The left didn't have to do anything at all. The right was busy eating its own. And then there were the polls - something Populist Paglia studiously avoids. By election day, majorities on both sides acknowledged that Palin simply wasn't up to the job.

All of that reveals Paglia's column to be more of a template than a thesis. She could have written it in 2000 and just changed the names.