Reflecting on the past three days of the convention, it seems to me that there is very little that is aimed specifically at convincing Democrats to vote for Bush. The distortions of the Administration’s record and aims seem calculated to sow confusion among any undecided voters, and the rest of the rhetoric is just red meat thrown to a rabid base. The constant drumbeat of 9/11, security, military, strength… all this appeals to staunch Republicans. Words like compassion, inclusion, and opportunity are used to cynical effect as the Groucho glasses of the Convention. (There’s more at Talking Points Memo)

Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

Convention Blogging

• Head over to Eschaton for some RNC wrap-up. Pictures to remember the night by. Tributes to a successful evening. The last word on Zell.
• Speaking of Zig Zag Zell, much is being made of his dust-up with Chris Matthews on MSNBC. (Kevin Drum has a roundup of reactions.) I’m not so sure that Miller was all that serious. As I said in a comment in AmericaBlog, I thought I detected a smile behind Miller’s eyes when he challenged Matthews to a duel. Far from being a raving lunatic, Miller seemed to be relishing his attack dog status. He tried to use the “duel” bit once and couldn’t get it in, which seems to indicate that he wasn’t saying it out of the heat of the moment, but rather because he thought it was a good line. Even his suggestion about ending the interview seemed to have a Good Old Boy’s sense of dogfighting to it.
• Also, Andrew Sullivan has a rather strident review of Zell and Dick’s appearances last night. (via Brad DeLong, who also posts a condensed version)
• And if you thought that was strident, read William Saletan, who argues that this election is increasingly becoming a referendum on democracy. (Slate, via Eschaton)
• Also, see the transcript of CNN’s cross-examination of Zell Miller. Who knew they had it in them? (Via Eschaton)
• Greg at The Talent Show has a nice comparison of the tone of the Republican and Democratic keynote addresses.
• And, for balance, Michael Bérubé covers the Right from MSG.
• Wow. Must’ve fallen asleep during Cheney’s speech, ‘cause I missed this bit. (Opinions You Should Have)

  And the rest…

• The big story from yesterday is the Salon.com article about George Bush’s lost year and the circumstances surrounding his transfer from the Texas to the Arkansas Air National Guard. (day pass req’d.) Most of the article recounts the personal hurt felt by Linda Allison when the Bushes turned their backs on her and her husband, long-time friends. It’s hard to tell if that hurt might be affecting her story. Read the article and see what you think.
• I mentioned this Brad DeLong post last night, but it’s worth repeating. George Bush’s economy is exhibiting the worst growth rate since Eisenhower, despite his attempts to state otherwise.
• And we’re not any safer than we were on September 12th. (Sid’s Fishbowl)
• Jay Rosen at PressThink sheds some light on the institutional inertia that has led to the recent failure of the mainstream press to investigate and reveal the lies behind charges like the Swift Boat Vets. In short, the mainstream press is used to a world where they are the gatekeepers of the news. In the past, the press could simply ignore a story and it would go away. No more. It looks like some of them are starting to come out of their shells, but will it be too late? Have blogs, talk radio, and Fox grown too powerful already? This report at Gadflyer of an exchange between Jon Stewart and Ted Koppel may reveal that the old press has forgotten how to use editorial discretion. (via Rhetorica)
• Though this is certainly subject to interpretation, the Guardian is reporting on the veiled hints from the Blair Administration that a Kerry win in November might be preferable to the British Government. (via Brad DeLong)
• Jack Shafer at Slate bangs his head against Dennis Hastert. (via Talking Points Memo)
• An intriguing signal appears at SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. I wonder if my screensaver found it? (Science Blog)
• Geezus, this is scary. The Guantanamo tribunals are a joke, according to the LA Times. (Washington Monthly)

• Funny line: “They tell me Edwards got picked for his good looks, his charm, his sex appeal, and his grey (Update: make that “great”) hair. I told them, how do you think I got the job.” See, Republicans can be funny.
• Is he saying anything? I can’t quite seem to focus… This guy is the most uncharismatic speaker since Steve Forbes.
• It’s not al Qaeda that needs to be “impressed with our softer side.” It’s the Iraqi and Afghani innocents who are taking a beating that need to be impressed with our softer side.
• “George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.” Actually, doesn’t the Constitution say that he has to?
• Is he just riffing now? I mean, he’s making this up, right? Kerry voted against supporting the American troops? That doesn’t seem right to me.

Zell Miller. This guy’s a Democrat?! Talk about encouraging our enemies and confusing our friends.

Senator Kerry opposed building certain military machines, yet those machines have succeeded in killing lots of our enemies. Imagine if we had to kill our enemies with old airplanes and tanks. Sheesh.

Update: Kevin Drum says it best.

Update II: Especially for commenter Ripper, see this transcript at CNN for a more intelligent discussion of why Miller’s attacks on Kerry’s voting record are problematic. A couple of quotes:

Judy Woodruff: “Senator Miller, the Democrats are pointing out that John Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets that came through Congress while he was in the Senate, and many of these votes that you cited, Dick Cheney also voted against, that they were specific weapons systems.”

Wolf Blitzer: “When the vice president was the secretary of defense he proposed cutting back on the B-2 Bomber, the F-14 Tomcat as well. I covered him at the Pentagon during those years when he was raising serious concerns about those two weapons systems.”

In my opinion, it is disingenuous for Zell Miller to suggest that voting against specific weapons programs would have resulted in a less secure America. It is also disingenuous to sidestep the fact that Dick Cheney held many of the same concerns.

Update III: And there’s more here

The funny thing is that President George H.W. Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney were pushing for even deeper cuts in the early 1990s. Cheney berated Congress for not approving more cuts. “You’ve squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend more money on weapons that don’t fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements,” he said then. “You’ve directed me to buy more M-1s and F-14s and F-16s — all great systems, but we have enough of them.”

Now the Bush-Cheney campaign is making great hay of those same M-1 tanks and F-14 and F-16 fighters.

The truth is that Kerry’s voting record was actually closely aligned with defense program cuts that Bush Sr. proposed in his 1992 State of the Union address after the first Gulf War ended. Those proposed cuts included the B-2 bomber, the small ICBM program, sea-based ballistic missiles, the Peacekeeper missile, and advanced cruise missiles. Bush Sr. bragged: “By 1997, we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office.”

Three days later, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cheney banged the same drum: “Overall, since I’ve been secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That’s the peace dividend.” During the same hearings, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell detailed plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, active armed forces by about one-half a million men and women, and to make major reductions in fighter wings and strategic bombers.

They just introduced Zell Miller as the “conscience of the Democratic Party.”

You gotta admit, those Republicans are pretty funny sometimes.

Massachusetts Lt. Governor Kerry Healey is spouting lies. You know why the Republicans get away with lying? Because the news media doesn’t have the guts to take them on. As long as they can get away with it, they’ll keep lying.

I mean, Michael Reagan conflated Country with Rock. Can’t they even tell the truth about musical genres?

Update: Related post from Brad DeLong.

Update II: Seeing the Forest has more, too.

Update III: Yet still more at the Daily Howler.

Okay, I’m fine with the Reagan tribute, but I’m a little sick of the bit about Reagan toppling communism by telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall. I think Reagan should get a fair amount of credit for his foreign policy, but he didn’t do it single-handedly and the wall didn’t come down during his presidency.

I do think it’s a little sleazy to have the representative of the Reagan Library on immediately after the tribute to sell the video.

Rick Santorum (R-PA) just repeated that unbelievably stupid conservative misconception that “liberal left-wing judges” are defining marriage in this country. Really? Who? Which? Where are they? How did they manage to

Do the Republicans really not understand that it is the legislature that makes the laws, not the judges?

More stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Michael Bérubé is my new favorite blogger. Convention coverage of Night Two here.
• Brad DeLong reprints an Atlantic Monthly article on the failures of the American response to 9/11. Worthy read.
• Corante notes that the power is shifting away from traditional content delivery methods, like TV stations.
• Via Atrios, William Saletan considers Bush’s leadership, especially after 9/11, and finds it… shall we say, somewhat wanting. More from Greg at The Talent Show, who points out that “it was pretty common to hear “Where the hell is the President?” in the days immediately following 9/11.” And a 9/11 widow from New Jersey cries in vain for accountability from our President. (via Seeing the Forest)
• Sheesh. Kevin Drum shakes his head, dumbfounded.
• Go, George Soros. (Boing Boing) Josh Marshall has the DL on Hastert’s response.
• Arianna Huffington reminds us of the record on which Bush is running.
• My new bride and I got into a big argument last night about tone versus content in these RNC speeches. We patched things up, of course, but I still think that content matters. Rudy distorted Kerry’s words. (WaPo; someone@example.com, example) Arnold just makes shit up. [UPDATE: Well, okay, not really. On listening to Arnold’s speech again, it’s clear that he was not claiming to have been watching Nixon and Humphrey debate. Rather, he was comparing their words throughout the race, a point which was made in the comments of this Daily Kos post. Sorry, Arnold. Don’t hurt me.] To my mind, it doesn’t matter how respectful someone sounds or how well they speak. At the end of the day, if you can’t trust what someone says, what have you got? (via Atrios)
• And what about having faith in the Justice Department? John Ashcroft seems determined to destroy that, too. (First Draft)
• More dissection of Arnold at MaxSpeak) Shorter Arnold at Sisyphys Shrugged. (Oh, and see Bérubé, above)
• C-Span is rebroadcasting John Kerry’s speech to the American Legion National Convention. (RealAudio stream here) It’s a very strong speech. More like this, please.
• Sid the Fish has been listening to the RNC speeches and counting references to 9/11, Saddam, bin Laden, and al Qaeda. See his results here.