Re: DNC National Security Day!

I have been inspired by Mick to recount my impressions of National Security Day at the DNC. 

Most appalling three paragraphs spoken consecutively

I heard Sen. Harry Reid start to speak via my radio and threw the thing across the kitchen after listening to the opening three paragraphs of his speech. 

Wars were funded by, impossible without, and usually fought over oil.
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nazi invasion of Russia, Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait, and countless other conflicts have been based in whole
or in part on the world's addiction to oil. Even today, dictators and
authoritarians from Venezuela to Russia, from Sudan to North Korea, base
their actions-and their power to oppress their citizens and threaten their
neighbors-solely on access to or sale of oil on the world market.

    Since the turn of the new century, those hard facts have come home to
America in the most vicious way. Attacked at home by oil-funded terrorists,
at war abroad with oil-funded insurgents, threatened in global markets and
faced with acquisition of our industrial base by oil-funded multinationals,
we must defend America or face her utter destruction.

    If we continue to follow this slippery, oil-slicked, downward-winding
path, our citizens will shiver in darkness as our resources hemorrhage to
Third World thugs whose only virtue is their control of petroleum-based
energy.

I know I'm not the target audience for these speeches or really for any part of the convention but this level of propaganda and deceit makes my head and my patriotic heart hurt.  There has to be a way to address the issue of oil's role in modern warfare without pretending that America has been some sort of innocent victim of that warfare all along.  And that last paragraph is the worst.  Our resources are going to hemorrhage to where and whom?  Is that just a very confusing and dishonest way of saying that it's our oil, they just live (at our pleasure) on it?   

Funniest sentence

From Joe Biden:

You know, my mom taught her children -- all the children who flocked to our house -- that you're defined by your sense of honor and you're redeemed by your loyalty.

I'm sure.  Look, after eight terrible years of a president who spoke to us on a third grade level, I'm all for elevating the discourse but not only do I not understand what that sentence means in the context of how one communicates with children, I don't believe it.  I stopped watching after that.   

Best speech of the night

Rep. Patrick Murphy, from the 8th Congressional District of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.   

For eight long years, we've had a president who rushed to stand with soldiers at political rallies but abandoned them at Walter Reed. We've had a president who spent billions on private contractors but not on body armor for our troops. We've had a president who was there for the photo ops, but AWOL when it came to doing right by our veterans. It is time for a change.

Comments

[Mark Gisleson]

Biden may have restated his mother's message in more adult terms, but I certainly recognized everything he was saying because I had Irish neighbors who lived by that code.

Joe betrayed us with the bankruptcy bill, but before then he'd been a real soldier for working class Americans.

I'm very happy with this convention so far, and am feeling good about this fall.

[eRobin]

C'mon - his mom looked like she didn't even know what the heck he was talking about.

The Barriers to Bankruptcy Bill was a serious betrayal, one that calls into question Joe's sense of honor. Now I guess he'll be redeemed by his loyalty. I can't wait to find out where those loyalties lie.

re: the convention

My opinion doesn't matter to the Dems but I'm looking forward to watching Obama tonight. He's really got to thread the needle and no matter what he does, the people who tell people what to think will say that he failed to give enough real information about how he plans to get all this great change in place. They're smart to hammer him on this since poll after poll shows that people are always suspicious of pols who talk about change. They are held to a higher standard of proof than other pols.

If he builds the whole thing around a new energy economy and challenges/inspires us around our own Apollo project, I think he can get it done. (I've been giving candidates this advice since 2004.) Anything less and he probably will fail. On the bright side, he will be able to be redeemed by his loyalty.