Looking at this recap, I’m convinced that I made the right choice to play Gears of War 2 rather than watch…

This might not be the most popular thing to say, but publishing every single reader comment made things a bit rushed and very cluttered.  Also, wish Dale had been there.

More thoughts on the speeches
Obama’s delivery was quite good.  But his ideas were so, so bad.  Not in the “he doesn’t share my values” sense, but in the “this is really obviously going to fail” and “one part of his agenda just flatly contradicted the other” senses.  We’re going to be unraveling all the knots in this thing for a while — they were hitting him with substantive points, over and over, in Cato’s CoverItLive session. 

Like the guys at Cato, I did think that what Obama said about torture is nice — I think we should have a clear opposition to torture as policy, full stop — but Bagram and rendition hang over his words ominously.

But I’m sure Obama’s fans just ate it all up.  If they had been capable of seeing the gaping chasm between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, they wouldn’t have elected him.  All he really has to do, I guess, is show up and read in his usual cadence.  I guess we haven’t had much in the way of good rhetoric to contrast with his, lately.

Jindal’s delivery was obviously not good.  But there were structural problems with the speech, too: he took forever to get to the point, and he kept returning to that word, “anything.”  Lesser concerns: why all the talk about Louisiana and (as if Republicans need to remind everyone) Katrina?  By the time he got down to something I cared to hear — Republicans’ alternative plans for recovery and an admission that the party itself needed to recover from a massive credibility deficit — he had already cemented the speech as a disappointment.

And he didn’t even deliver these with the kind of fire appropriate to the occasion.  Bobby: you’re responding to an explosion in government power and waste, and the people you’re trying to lead against it feel they have nobody to represent them who wasn’t part of the problem.  Give them something.  Some convincing path to reform for the party, and a path back to sane policy for the country.

Here’s the part about the Republican Party’s drunken spree:

In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear — because our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility.  Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington.  Republicans lost your trust — and rightly so.
Tonight, on behalf of our leaders in Congress and my fellow Republican governors, I say:  Our party is determined to regain your trust. We will do so by standing up for the principles that we share — the principles you elected us to fight for — the principles that built this into the greatest, most prosperous country on earth.

Doesn’t that just beg for more details?  But he moved on immediately thereafter.

Ugh.  Part of me wanted to just turn out the lights and call it a night, but I’ve got work to do.