Re: "The overarching theme of McCain's speech -- wisdom through suffering -- could have been lifted from Greek tragedy."

I think a more apt dramatic source for the McCain-Palin campaign would be Macbeth.

I admire John McCain. He survived more than 5 years in a Vietnamese prison camp, and became a major figure in our political life. Some have written that he bombed innocent civilians but so did the bomber pilots in World War 2, Korea, and Iraq. Soldiers don't question their orders; they obey them.

But I am also disappointed in McCain. I never believed the maverick myth because even though he occasionally voted against his party he voted with them more often than not. His few lines about the GOP having failed to bring the promised change to Washington rang hollow and I saw many delegates not applauding those lines. McCain has been in the Senate for 26 years and has taken his share from the public and lobbyist troughs.

As he spoke movingly abaout his experiences as a POW I hoped he would use the moment to remind his audience that the US has signed numerous treaties outlawing torture and that he would never allow anyone to be tortured by the US military or agents. He is the one US politician that the right wing nuts could not accuse of being soft on this issue. But he passed and never mentioned it.

His speech had almost no specifics, only the usual GOP pablum about lower taxes creating jobs (they don't and never have) and what I took as a veiled promise to end unemployment insurance as we know it. He never proposed anything about providing health care to the 46 million Americans without health coverage. He never mentioned what he would do about the mortgage crisis which is not over yet or how he would institute new regulations to prevent another crisis like it.

His speech seemed empty and there was no passion, just a recitation of old stuff. Even at the end, his call to fight left me wondering, "Fight what?" Brian Ross of ABC News has done some great stories about how lobbyists and companies have paid for both conventions and the lengths they go to to keep prying media eyes out. McCain was speaking to those lobbyists in the sky boxes and primo seats in the arena. McCain didn't seem to realize that the enemy he wants us to fight was sitting right in front of him.

On national security, I wondered, "How can they protect the country when they can't keep a few protesters out of the hall on their big night?"

His call for volunteers was also hollow because millions of Americans already do those things. They are called community activists, the people his running mate denigrated Wednesday night.

Obama is young, untested and has limited experience, but he is intelligent with what seems like a much clearer idea of what he wants to accomplish. McCain surrendered whatever maverick tendencies he might have had to win this nomination. I don't think he has the vision or the deftness to run against Obama and his own party at the same time.

I DON’T LIKE JOHN McCAIN!

John McCain isn’t Ronald Reagan, which is the principal reason I don’t like the guy.

He also may be a tad too old to begin the job as POTUS. As with family, I feel free to mention that and not be accused of age-ism since he’s not much older than I am.

In addition, McCain had that “Keating Five” stink of twenty years ago in which he was a very minor player, along with four Democrats who played much larger roles in the Lincoln Savings and Loan mess which cost taxpayers $2,000,000,000. For a review of that scandal and McCain’s part, see http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter7.html.

I’m also not too crazy about McCain’s past social life. After his return from a 5 1/2 year incarceration and torture as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, he was a changed man, for obvious reasons. He returned to discover that his wife, Carol, was crippled and disfigured. He caroused, met and fell in love with Cindy, and he and Carol divorced amicably some years later. But the fact that Carol McCain can still say, “He’s a good guy,… ‘We are still good friends. He is the best man for president” says not only a great deal about her but about her former husband and father of their three children.

For a one-sided account of that time in John McCain’s life, see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html, a decidedly negative article in a decidedly liberal British newspaper. More relevant would be his recent expression of regret for that episode in his life.

All that said and before I’m lambasted for mentioning what Democrats will dredge up over the next two months anyway, despite his many flaws, Senator John S. McCain is one of us....

(For the rest of this article, please see http://genelalor.com/.)

Yeah;

Farkin' redneck Mayor cum lately Gov-Mother-In-Law, of Wassila, AK, fires the town librarian for not culling select titles to fuel the monthly bonfire-night or the community "books-for-ass-wipes" charity. Come to think of it, a book won't kill a moose, nor will a flimsy paper back, pressed between the shoulders of a pregnant child, force them to the altar. Forget education, and spray hot lead. God Save America

I realize it's difficult to set aside the liberal garland and observe neutrally. We all want what we want . . . and filter the evidence to support our beliefs. But if you had able to do shut down the inner compass for a moment and observe neutrally, you would have noticed a refreshingly moderate and obviously earnest fellow telling his story and sharing his vision for cooperative, bipartisan leadership.

It would be lovely to live in a utopian world, but we do not. There are real problems on this earth, some of them social, some of them lethal, and we need to roll up our sleeves and start working on them. The opportunity to work alongside a person who has spent decades in positions of public service and leadership is something to respect and seriously consider. To simply ignore or disparage such a person, in favor of a younger less experienced rival with only a couple of years of public service is curious, and bordering on irrational. Unless of course you happen to judge a person not by the content of their character, but rather by the timbre of their voice, or the affectation of their oratory . . .

Stop with the kneejerk lovefest for the young good looking faker. Block out the rhetoric for a moment and you will see that McCain is a deeper, more sincere, more accomplished and more experienced person. I've been a democrat all my life, but it is obvious to me -- and to anyone who looks evenly at the choice -- that the republican candidate is more qualified to lead this nation. And that is who I will vote for . . .