Turn on the Republican convention right now! Bush Sr.'s on!

At last, the networks tuned in, Schwarzenegger turned up, and the delegates looked alive. Ebullient and beaming, the governor had delegates gaping up at him like Beatlemaniacs. (The Bush twins and First Lady, following him, couldn't help but be anticlimax.) His speech was self-deprecating, funny, and percussive: a compelling blend of Ronald Reagan, Horatio Alger, and "Saturday Night Live." Like Giuliani on Monday, he could also be wildly off-base. "When that lone, young Chinese man stood in front of those tanks in Tiananmen Square, America stood with him," Schwarzenegger said. Actually, the president's father coddled Chinese leaders over the objections of human rights groups and Democrats; maybe the "him" was Deng Xiaopeng?

At other mind-bending moments, as when Schwarzenegger spoke of the need to "terminate terrorism," or called pessimists "economic girlie men," the speech became indistinguishable from parody. The creators of "The Simpsons," in their wickedest Rainier Wolfcastle episode, couldn't have dreamed up a more ingenious lampoon. But Schwarzenegger's outsized personality, combined with the speech's American-Dream bona fides, suggests bright prospects, for him and the party. "My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans," he said, and the phrases resonated. Could an Austrian bodybuilder really turn thousands of new Asian and Latino voters into Republicans, effect a change in the Constitution, and end up in the White House? Like I said, funny times.

Who better than Rudy Giuliani--mayor, Mafia-buster, and New York hero--to cap Monday's program at the Republican National Convention? For the previous three and a half hours, the Republicans had thrown every verbal, visual, and biographical argument within reach onto the stage to cast themselves as the tough guys, the "You talkin' to me?" party. This was not mere deference to the host city. After John Kerry's military-heavy convention in Boston, the Republicans wanted to reassert their claim to being the party of rippling biceps. At some point maybe they'll bother trying to put a friendly face on the unrelentingly conservative platform, but for now the diversity-and-compassion shtick will have to wait: Monday was all about kicking ass.

"A Nation of Courage" was the night's announced theme. The wording may be a little tortured, but you get the point. The same goes for much of the program. The crowd got into the act by waving signs emblazoned with the theme, or "We Support the Troops." The latter was printed in military-style stenciled letters; okay, we get it. But this was just the start. [..]

St. Louis Ram Jason Sehorn and actress wife Angie Harmon saw Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Stars, and Purple Hearts, and raised him two Congressional Medals of Honor by introducing Rodolfo Hernandez (Army) and Thomas Hudner (Navy). "Thank you for supporting a leader of courage," Harmon told the vets. Ron Silver, the actor, New Yorker, and, according to his head-scratching introduction, holder of a master's degree in Chinese history, made deft use of his ability to seem at once perfectly lucid and completely bonkers. When he talked about terrorism, Silver was angry, seething, barely able to contain himself; I feared for the teleprompters. "We will never forget, we will never forgive, we will never excuse," he growled. [..]

After an understated, affecting 9/11 tribute [..] it was time for the Rudy show. Giuliani did many things last night, but deliver a speech is not one of them. Performance art is more like it. He praised Bush, attacked Kerry, spun yarns, and doubled back on himself. It was crude and nuanced, moving and goofy, stately and colloquial. You can see why he gets paid piles of money to put on this show. The performance was a delivery system, and what it delivered was Rudyness.

Giuliani was backed by a towering image of midtown at twilight. Still he managed to stand out. No demure blue or standard red tie would suit a mayor eager to slip into drag when occasion demands it: His neckwear was bright orange and striped, as obnoxious and mesmerizing as its wearer. The meaner Giuliani gets, the more he enjoys himself, and the more we enjoy watching him. He said that Kerry voted against the first Iraq war, which drew boos. "Ah, but he must have heard you booing," Giuliani said, because he later said he supported it. He hung Kerry with his own words on his vote for and/or against the $87 billion for the war; all he had to do was shrug his New Yorker's shrug. "Maybe this explains John Edwards's need for two Americas--one where John Kerry can vote for something and another where he can vote against the same thing," he said. The Democrats should count themselves lucky this wasn't on the networks: The shrug alone would have cost them a point.

Some of the Rudy show didn't make much sense, as when he called Saddam himself a weapon of mass destruction, or when he said free people always prevailing over oppressed people was "the story of the Old Testament." Some of it sounded too good to be true, like the story of a construction worker giving Bush a bear hug. The punchline is a Secret Service officer wagging a finger in the mayor's face: "If this guy hurts the president, Giuliani, you're finished." America's Mayor, finished? After a performance so thoroughly, shamelessly compelling, that's hard to imagine, even if the story is true.

here are many qualities that make a great leader," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said last night. "But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader." So leadership means sometimes being unpopular. It's an odd message for one of the country's most-loved politicians [..] to deliver on behalf of a president (a Time Person of the Year himself) who has won many a vote because of his "likeability factor" and who, for a good portion of his first term, enjoyed the highest sustained approval ratings ever measured. But the tactical brilliance of Giuliani's speech before the Republican National Convention last night was that he found a way to prop up Bush, skewer Kerry, and defend his own record all with a single, simple conceit: that popularity is overrated. [..]

Giuliani sought to play up how Bush is put down not to cast a shadow but to group him with the greats. "One of my heroes, Winston Churchill, saw the dangers of Hitler while his opponents characterized him as a war-mongering gadfly," Giuliani said. "Another one of my heroes, Ronald Reagan, saw and described the Soviet Union as 'the evil empire' while world opinion accepted it as inevitable and belittled Ronald Reagan's intelligence. President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is." If Bush is a magnet for criticism, Giuliani suggested, it is merely because, like these other great leaders, he is able to see a future world better than the one he inherited.

Then on to Kerry. Giuliani offered him as the antithesis of Bush's resolve in the face of unpopular opinion. [..] Kerry, Giuliani was saying, shifts his position with the political winds, in an attempt to remain popular. [..]

Yet the flaw in Giuliani's logic is that periods of unpopularity don't necessarily prove a politician right. He talked about the importance of encouraging "accountable governments" abroad. But at home, Giuliani seems to wave off the value of popular sentiment. What he must understand, especially if he's going to make a run for higher office, is that sometimes, when the majority of the country says you're on the wrong track, it doesn't mean that you're a visionary leader. It means that you're actually on the wrong track.

[F9/11] was an op-ed piece wrapped around visual facts. As you've seen the movie, do you believe McCain was right in stating that Michael thought Iraq was an Oasis of peace and that we shouldn't have invaded based on that premise (which is utterly false, IMO)?

Isn't it a federal law--convicts lose the right to vote?
Some of them?

Oh well, so much for not exploiting 9/11 and it's thousands of victims.

EXPECT LESS: TNR crack reporter-researcher Marisa Katz has done a little research and found an interesting thing about John McCain and Rudy Giuliani's speeches. Neither of them, despite defending the war in Iraq in detail, mentioned the word "democracy." There were plenty of references to "freedom" and some to governments that were "accountable." But no mention of the signature phrase so central to Bush's vision of the war in Iraq, and the war on terrorism in general. It's a testament to how much Republicans have tacitly ratcheted down expectations for the Iraq war, even while claiming to believe in it more than ever.

--Peter Beinart

Bottom line, IMNSHO: F9/11 was a grating exercise in obfuscating the utter flakiness of its underlying arguments by provoking every reaction it could, jerking your tears, triggering your outrage, perplexing you with scenes of hilarious insult or perplexed disbelief.

EXPECT LESS: TNR crack reporter-researcher Marisa Katz has done a little research and found an interesting thing about John McCain and Rudy Giuliani's speeches. Neither of them, despite defending the war in Iraq in detail, mentioned the word "democracy." There were plenty of references to "freedom" and some to governments that were "accountable." But no mention of the signature phrase so central to Bush's vision of the war in Iraq, and the war on terrorism in general. It's a testament to how much Republicans have tacitly ratcheted down expectations for the Iraq war, even while claiming to believe in it more than ever.

--Peter Beinart

I missed Keyes' comment on Mrs. Cheney, PDiddie.

Keyes' first comments about Mary Cheney came during an interview Monday night on Sirius OutQ, a New York-based satellite station that provides 24-hour gay and lesbian programming.

After Keyes told the hosts that homosexuality is "selfish hedonism," he was asked whether Mary Cheney is a "selfish hedonist."

"Of course she is," Keyes replied. "That goes by definition. Of course she is."

On Tuesday, Keyes defended his remarks, adding that if his daughter were a lesbian, he would tell her she was committing a sin and should pray about it.

How about Jenna and Tonic

nimh wrote:

Quote:

Bottom line, IMNSHO: F9/11 was a grating exercise in obfuscating the utter flakiness of its underlying arguments by provoking every reaction it could, jerking your tears, triggering your outrage, perplexing you with scenes of hilarious insult or perplexed disbelief.

In other words, it made you THINK. Gee, what a concept.

And before one complains about showing happy school children and peaceful scenes as disengenuous, one should at least understand the context of these scenes; that despite the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, he ruled over THE most liberal country in the Middle East, where women had MORE freedoms than any other Middle Eastern country, MUCH more than our closest OIL allies, Saudia Arabia and/or Qatar.

the urrefutable fact that Saddam's tyrannical and murderous rule actually KEPT the country from breaking out into major civil war and keeping the Sunnis, Baathists, and Kurds from killing each other.

And when one complains about mass graves, we BETTER not forget that many of the dead were killed as a direct result of America pulling out of Iraq and encouraging the populace to rise up. This was AS irresponsible and short-sighted as the current pResident Bush has been

It's these complexities that were part of what Michael was trying to explain

I will agree that Michael goes over the top many times in this movie, but if a movie can at least get you to THINK, it has accomplished so much more than watching FOX television and agreeing with everything they tell you to agree with.