Barack Obama succeeded in creating one of the most powerful tools of persuasion last night, he created a spectacle. A speech can be given by almost anyone at any time or place but a spectacle, a dazzling moment in time when an audience transcends their own self and becomes one with the collective whole to receive a message can be timeless. It is also powerful and dare I say dangerous.

I watched last night as an independent observer, a critic who was looking for substance over style. The giant crowd, the blinding lights, the history lost on me, the music and the fireworks, the tightly choreographed display were all kept outside of my mind.

I heard a good speech that was light on specifics and made major claims like “every dime has been accounted for” when Obama spoke of his economic policy. It was a claim Clinton attacked; McCain will too. I heard a claim that received much applause, that McCain was unwilling to take the fight to bin Laden’s cave let alone the gates of hell. I didn’t know what it meant or how Obama would be different. That was most of his foreign policy section.

Yet to those who were in attendance, including the parade of media hosts and pundits, the spectacle transcended.

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Update 2: Multiple sources now confirming, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be John McCain’s VP pick. (yes, I was so wrong on this!)

Update: The word is I am wrong and it won’t be Romney… But ABC News reports Palin is still in Alaska. However other reports are small plane came from Alaska owned by McCain bundler and woman matching her description was on.

After a day of misdirection, making the media believe it would be Gov. Pawlenty, John McCain will announce his pick today and it is now confirmed he will not be joined by the Gov. A little bit of further misdirection is making some say Gov. Palin from Alaska. While I would LOVE to spend the next few months looking at the very fiesty and nice on the eyes Ms. Palin, it won’t be her in my opinion.

The safe money? It has been and always will be Mitt Romney. A man that can put Michigan in play, a man that can get fiscal and social conservatives together, a man that can do a lot for McCain and rile Dems.

We will see, but that is my pick.

Tonight Senator McCain will speak directly to Barack Obama via an ad to run in battleground states. Meanwhile Drudge is reporting McCain’s runningmate could be named tonight at 6pm with confirmation coming at 8pm just ahead of Obama’s speech. If both occur this will be some pretty clever counter programming leaving the news media with the choice of ignoring the other party nominee or taking airtime away from the highly staged Dem Convention.

Well it only took three days of relative boredom and wasted money to ramp up the DNC Convention but last night President Bill Clinton stood up and hit it out of the park. His speech was everything that was good about Senator Clinton’s the night before but more. He went further than any Democrat could have hoped in supporting Obama and was the first and only speaker thus far who created an actual intellectual and philosophical argument for supporting the ticket. Clinton was Clinton and my big question is “WHY DID THE DEMOCRATS NOT SHOW HIM OFF DURING NETWORK COVERAGE.”

Clinton’s attacks against the Republicans and McCain were rather light, but in the end that wasn’t his job. His job was to unite the party, quash the endless media frame that there was a massive schism and bring the house down for Biden. He did it.

After Clinton warmed the crowd up at the 9:00 hour there were some relatively forgettable speeches and lots of downtime until the nominating show of Joe Biden. After an emotion charged video walking the audience through the Senator’s life, Biden took the stage. While he did a good job I have to say the speech was lacking overall. The attacks were soft against McCain whom Biden heaped praise upon. Most of the speech, like all the others thus far, was about linking Bush to McCain while acknowledging the Senator’s stunning personal story and sacrifice for the nation.

The job of the VP candidate is often seen as an attack dog and in this Biden lacked. The Democrats are going to have to do more than run against George Bush. They need a platform, one I still could not see last night. They need an issue and they need a way of connecting their vision of the world to the countries. Iraq has almost entirely been taken out of this convention as an issue. Discussions of the economy center on emotional stories with almost no explanation of policy or solutions. There has been no real philosophical exploration of how the turmoil around the world fits into the lives of the people. Just attacks on oil companies and President Bush.

As in 2000 and 2004 I still have no idea from this convention what makes a Democrat a Democrat. I just know the Dems are not President Bush.

Last night delivered the much lacking and needed energy, tonight needs to deliver more than just the slogan of “change” and the reminder that Barack Obama is not George Bush.

The LA Times is reporting that Senator Joe Biden’s family has deep business ties with the Senator’s largest donor, Illinois law firm SimmonsCooper.

From the LA Times Blog:

One of the senator’s sons — Hunter, a Washington lobbyist — and the senator’s brother, James –received a $1 million investment in their purchase of a hedge fund company from the senator’s largest political donor, an Illinois law firm, SimmonsCooper. The brother and the son subsequently repaid the $1 million to the law firm, which specializes in representing asbestos victims.

From the full story

In addition to providing financing for the hedge fund deal, SimmonsCooper picked the law firm of another of Biden’s sons, Beau, to work with it on dozens of asbestos cases in Delaware. “It was only natural that we worked with my friend Beau Biden and his firm,” said Jeffrey Cooper, former managing partner of SimmonsCooper.

And SimmonsCooper employees have donated about $200,000 to Biden’s campaign efforts since 2001, making the firm his No. 1 donor. All told, SimmonsCooper employees provided much more money to Biden than to any other senator during that period, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

His family’s financial dealings could be troublesome for Biden, who tonight becomes part of a Democratic presidential ticket that has vowed to reform Washington’s traditional money culture.

From the “funny places campaign ads turn up online” comes this story at Clickz where DNC ads sit proudly above “Car Wash Babes” and “Celebrity Tramp Stamps.”

Hat tip to my sister-in-law for sending in the link!

I have to admit I stopped watching MSNBC a few months ago as the network quickly descended into Obama mania but I still occasionally tune into Scarborough Country to watch the awkwardness between Micah and Joe. I do admit though I am disappointing I have been missing this crazyness!

First check out Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann getting into it:

Then see Scarborough & David Schuster duke it out

I was less than impressed with the opening of the DNC on Monday and day two was only slightly better.

The first thing I have to note is pacing. If I were running the convention from the very moment networks kicked in at 10:00pm until 11:00pm when they start pulling back would be filled with entertainment and discussions of actual things the Party plans on achieving. Instead there is a lot of downtime between events when the audience, frankly looks bored. It is bad enough the audience generally looks disinterested during the few hours before but once network coverage hits, they should have something.

Worst of all last night the keynote speaker wasn’t in the broadcast lineup. You could catch him on cable or PBS but the big three missed him. In some ways it was probably good for the Democrats. Mark Warner preached a nice sermon on togetherness but did little to excite the crowd or give reason for those watching to jump on the Obama train. That left Hillary Clinton as the only highlight for viewers.

After a powerful introduction video that looked style-wise the way her campaign commercials should have looked all along, Clinton herself fired up the audience by going through hers supporters list of achievements and conceding the loss while embracing her competition. While she gave ample direction to her voters to unite the party, she gave little reasoning beyond continuing her work for followers to stay the course. There was no explanation for viewers beyond the notion that Obama could continue her fight.

While she mentioned McCain as a friend before declaring he was wrong for the country, she also gave little in the way of substantive attacks against him. Instead she followed the Democratic line of argument which can be summed up as “McCain = Bush = Bad.”

Finally she offered no refute of her endless attacks against Senator Obama. She did not argue for his strength as a commander-in-chief or give an indication as to why he is now experienced enough for the 3AM call. This was a hard speech to make and no one could expect her to give a full refutation of every campaign argument, but there was nothing that spoke to Obama’s true nature, her personal experience with him or why she now believes he can lead. A viewer could easily assume there is no closeness between the two and Clinton, while hoping for her part, was most likely hoping for a chance at a return in the future more than for a titanic fight in support of Obama.

While the media seemed to delight for a time after the speech and while Clinton the job she was tagged for, I don’t know that she reached many people or advanced a line of argument.

I have to admit, I am looking forward to hearing the other Clinton tomorrow night more than anything else this week. The convention has almost 100% steamrolled over his legacy and it will be interesting to watch and see if he attempts to bring it back into the spotlight.

When I first started saying many months ago that election 2008 would look a lot like elections 2000 & 2004, I did not have many supporters; but the evidence keeps mounting in support of my stance and last nights Dem Convention opener reminded me of the previous conventions in tone and style, not to mention a striking lack of message. James Carville is getting headlines for making the same observation about the opening event but you don’t need to be a political expert (just someone who isn’t a die hard Democrat) to see there was little to nothing substantive or even in style coming out of Denver.

The lineup was hard enough to understand. Opening a convention on a night of “unity” with a cast of characters that are widely distrusted by conservatives and conservative leaning independents was puzzling. Giving them absolutely nothing to say other than “please like me, I am not terrible” was absolute insanity. As for specifics, I understand why Michelle Obama had to work so hard to convince America she loved it, but the pure fact that she did only reminded viewers that there was doubt she left open in the first place. Few Americans probably know much about her and last night she reminded them what they did know, they might not have liked. Her “I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a sister” sentiment was triumphed by MSNBC and many Dem commentators but I predict it will be easily forgotten by Thursday.

Nancy Pelosi, possibly one of the most hated figures not just in the right but increasingly by all observers, did little to help herself, though smartly she was kept off of the network time, at least for now. Caroline Kennedy, while I know its blasphemy to say, brought the entire presentation to a screeching halt in my opinion. If you didn’t get into the “emotion” of the moment simply from your love of Kennedy alone, you were left with a presenter who needed one large injection of energy and another of personality. Her delivery dull, her face unmoving, it was anything but exciting.

All the speeches, especially Ted Kennedy’s, were laden with cliches and empty rhetoric. There were no specifics, no policy, no attacks, no substance to speak of. Just the typical talk of Obama’s “oneness” and declarations that like Neo in the Matrix he will somehow free us all from our troubles. Despite the attempts it is still hard to see many Americans latching onto a biography that starts in Hawaii, detours into Indonesia, journeys into the Ivy League and ends in vast wealth and power.

There was a very healthy dose of asserting America was somehow lost in a maelstrom. While it is a point of view many in America may share it is difficult when looking at the lengthy national divides and periods of depression in our nation’s history to take such a disillusioned stance.

In short, night one in my humble opinion, was a waste of time that gave little to the audience outside of the convention hall. We will see what night two brings.

CBS Denver reports on the story.

From the article:

Authorities in suburban Aurora had stopped a pickup truck for swerving between lanes early Sunday morning in what they thought was a routine drunk driving incident.

But in the rented vehicle of Tharin Gartrell, a 28-year-old convicted felon (see photo), they found two high-powered scoped rifles, ammunition, sighting scopes, radios, a cellphone, a bulletproof vest, wigs, drugs and fake IDs.

According to Brian Masss of Denver’s KCNC Channel 4, under questioning Gartrell implicated two other men — Nathan Johnson, who is 32, and Shawn Adolph, who is 33 — and Johnson’s girlfriend, Natasha Gromack. Johnson also reportedly confirmed the plot to FBI and Secret Service interrogators.

But the television station reports that under questioning the men admitted there was indeed a plot to kill Obama during his speech before some 70,000 supporters and a nationwide television audience.