MCCAIN'S SPEECH

Ok ... Boortz blew it this morning. I wrote a wonderful missive about the speech .. and then somehow deleted it instead of sending it to the Web Wench for posting. So here I am with showtime approaching ... and trying to recreate what I can.

Idiot. Anyway ...

Substance topped eloquence last night in St. Paul. It's what you actually say, not how you say it ... and John McCain got quite a lot said last night. Watch it yourself here, or read it here.

Here are just some of the excerpts from his speech that I particularly liked:

• I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party.
• We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.
• We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.
• I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.
• His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
• We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now
• My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me. I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination.
• The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you.
• Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire.
• I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

I particularly liked it when McCain addressed government schools. The teacher's unions must have been throwing things at the TV.

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.

And then there was McCain's story of Vietnam. Compare this narrative to John Kerry's endless repetitions of his Swift Boat escapades .. and his band air purple hearts and hasty run back home:

On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.

Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.

I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

While John McCain was going through this narrative the television cameras showed people standing in Times Square in New York City with their arms crossed and faces expressionless. The American voter? Let's hope not.

SHE ALMOST TOPPED THE MESSIAH

Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention almost topped the Messiah in number of television viewers. Last week, Obama scored 38.4 million viewers for his acceptance speech. That was believed to be the biggest television audience to ever tune in for a US political convention speech. Less than a week later, 37.2 million tuned in to watch Sarah Palin make a speech on behalf of John McCain.

There is one huge difference between Obama's speech and Sarah Palin's ... people were talking about Sarah Palin's speech the next day. They were not talking about Obama's speech.

I guess that is why Barack Obama's post-convention bounce has completely disappeared. For the first time in the polls, the McCain campaign is tied with Barack Obama's.

OBAMA GETS BRIEFED

On Tuesday of this week, Barack Obama got his first intelligence briefing as a candidate. Spy agencies are also ready to brief John McCain, but have yet to do so. US spy agencies are already working on reanalyzing and updating reports from around the world, so the new president can be briefed come January.

I wonder if it was an eye opener for Obama. I wonder if he will realize the true realities of our national security once he has all the facts? That leads us to this ...

THE INTERVIEW

Bill O'Reilly had an interview with Barack Obama, which aired during the Republican National Convention on the night of McCain's speech. Many people have declared outrage at Obama for doing the interview on the night of the speech. Heh.

But even before the interview was aired, this quote from Obama was already gaining media attention ... Gawd, I feel like this is the first time I have heard about Barack Obama in almost a week ... "I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated ... I've already said it's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." Obama refused to say that he initially opposed the troop surge. But he'll be sure to remind his liberal followers, when convenient, that he was opposed to the war in Iraq at a time when it was the unpopular stance to take (and at a time when he was a state Senator).

Here's what he had to say back in 2002: "What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

THOSE OFFENDED BY PALIN'S SPEECH

I have started a little list of the people who were ... offended! ... by Republican speeches at the convention, and particularly Sarah Palin's speech Wednesday night.

1. The Obama campaign

The Obama campaign is criticizing Republicans for "going too negative at their convention." A senior official for the Obama campaign says that the "stinging" remarks from Sarah Palin, as well as others like Rudy Giuliani, could come back to haunt the Republicans in the election. He was "struck by the tone of the attacks."

2. Community Organizers

Yep. Community organizers around the country are outraged that Sarah Palin mocked their profession on the national stage. "Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis."

You'll love this response from John Raskin, a community organizer from Manhattan. "The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we're trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed. Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn't need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans understood that, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to make fun of community organizers like me."

3. Muslims

The Republicans at the RNC pointed to the fact that not once during the DNC were the words "Islamic terrorism" said. The Council on American Islamic Relations quickly jumped on the Republicans. CAIR says that McCain and his supporters are using rhetoric that many American Muslims believe marginalize religious minorities, particularly Muslims. They are horrified that McCain uses the words "radical Islam," "Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic extremism." CAIR wants McCain and Palin to use ... inclusive language: "We urge Senator McCain and Governor Palin to offer inclusive speeches at this week's Republican convention and ask that they both avoid divisive Islamophobic rhetoric. It is all too easy to use hot-button terms to garner votes, but true leaders do not exploit fear or stereotypes for political gain. We hope to hear Senator McCain and Governor Palin say they will defend the civil and religious rights of all Americans, work with the American Muslim community in making our nation both free and secure and help build better relations with the Islamic world."

Let's not forget that the leaders of CAIR have stated their desire to see American under Islamic Law. They deserve derision, not attention.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

I cannot stress to you how dangerous Barack Obama's tax plans will be for our economy.

Even if you have experience in foreign policy, what good does it do you if you are wrong on the issues? The Wall Street Journal has more on Joe Biden.

Joe Biden can't decide whether he is for or against offshore drilling. Don't worry, he's a Democrat so I'll sure he'll end up against it.

Prison update: Jack Abramoff was sentenced to four more years in prison. Oh and that slimy Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is headed to the slammer. He also no longer the mayor.

We had Dick Morris on the show yesterday. His latest column in regards to Sarah Palin says that a star has been born.

I wish this story from Great Britain wasn't true ... a soldier was forced to sleep in car after a hotel refused him a room.

Devastating news about Sarah Palin ... she attended at least one Libertarian Party meeting. It was at a Denny's. Did you know that "La Quinta" means "behind Denny's?'

A school district in Illinois is considering banning students who are failing their academic core classes from attending the prom and high school athletic events. Students are upset because they "won't have as much school spirit" and "prom is a right of passage."

A quick look at the polls ... 51% of voters believe reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage.

If McCain and Palin are elected in November, it looks like Palin will be greeted by a new friend she made after her speech ... Harry Reid.

Sarah Palin has sure been good for donation dollars ... for Democrats. That's because they are scared.

It looks like Israel is edging closer to having a woman prime minister ... the first in more than three decades.

This article out of the UK: Sarah Palin is 'the new Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan'

This is sad ... 47% of working Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck. Even if they had more money, they still would find a way to live paycheck to paycheck.

Maryland is considering outlawing sex between officials and government employees.

Baltimore saved $18,000 in ambulance services by linking their most frequent 911 callers to case workers who would then help them with medical care and social services.

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