Sotto Voce: The Democrat Convention

I didn't watch more than 5 minutes of the Democrats' convention, plus I'm probably two days late writing about it, but that doesn't mean I can't mutter things under my breath.

There's always been more people at Democrat conventions, at least as long as I can remember. Not that "more delegates = more votes" is a political equation I would count on.

Plus, there's the media in attendance too. All told, there are probably three times more Democrats at a Democrat convention than there are Republicans at the GOP's. Really helps make our side look like the beleagered last stand at the Alamo.

Michelle Obama got rave reviews for her speech "humanizing" Obama. Someone must have given an earlier speech humanizing her.

I mean, she can talk all she wants about "public service" and "helping the less fortunate," but do you ever get the idea she spent much time at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter before she became famous?

Plus, she's always demeaning her husband saying stuff like how, at dinner, he's the last person who gets to talk about his day, and his story is often the least important. Haw Haw. Honestly, if it turns out he has a little honey on the side, most of us wouldn't blame him.

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but I don't think she's ever spent much time publicly trashing her husband. Privately, I'm sure it's a different story.

In a normally functioning politcal system, Jennifer Granholm's name would be mud. She presided over a real economic depression in her state, including the near-death of its signature industry and the actual death of its largest city. But, there she was in prime time, bellowing like a pinkie-ringed precinct captain about saving "1 million jobs."

That number about how the auto bailouts "saved 1 million jobs" was so ludicrous (it included every conceivable downstream job, including Sander Levin's) only a party secure in its never being fact-checked could put it forth. As even Michael Moore noted, Obama fired plenty of people, not just Rick Waggoner.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan has to deal with "fact checkers" getting out the green eyeshades over the fate of the Janesville GM plant and its idled workers. No downstream job numbers allowed there, of course.

And, don't you just want to bet that the "1 million jobs saved" metric included the Janesville folks?

Sandra Fluke's make-over came out pretty well. She may need those free birth control pills after all.

The right-wing equivalent to Sandra Fluke is probably Carrie Prejean. Another instructive example of how Republican heroes are denigrated while Democrats are elevated.

Media bias isn't just about tearing down Republicans. It also protects Democrats, and don't think they don't know this and revel in it. Bill Clinton can make these rambling hour-plus long speeches filled with half-truths and inaccuracies, secure in the knowledge that the pundit class will react as if he's the Hillbilly Demothenes.

Still, if there's one thing the convention made clear, it's that Bill Clinton is a much more able politician, not to mention president, than Barack Obama.

Lots of talk about Voter-ID and not wanting to "go back to the old ways," as if John Lewis got his head bashed over not having a freaking drivers license.

Is there ever going to come a time when conservative media folks start asking civil rights figures like Lewis why it is they joined the Democrat Party when it was Democrats who were defending segregation? (and before that the "peculiar institution?") Maybe Lewis got beat upside the head, but our side has people who got shot upside the head freeing Lewis's grandparents.

They had Obama's speech on all the TV's at the gym, of course. I looked up at one at the moment the close-captioning said "we have doubled the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector." (Yayyyyy!) I know he's a partisan and all, but how can he say that with a straight face?

Same with a crap about Romney's tax returns and how he "only" pays 13-15%. Obama and every other liberal knows that Romney probably pays more, in sheer dollars, than the average joe, even at the reduced Evil Rich Guy Rate. They also know that, at some point in the past, Romney paid the much higher corporate rate on the $$ he earned and then invested and is now living off of. Of course, they're not trying to appeal to peoples' rational side, but to their irrational (read: dumb) side.

The GOP may be the stupid party, but what should a party be called when its rhetoric is designed by Ivy Leaguers to appeal to stupid people?

I keep waiting for all those average Joes bellyaching about Romney's low rate to finally start to wonder, hey, why should we be taxed on our incomes in the first place? Been waiting a long time for that one.

And, did the people complaining about Mitt Romney's jet-ski (stop flaunting your wealth, sinner!) ever raise a peep over Ted Kennedy's yacht? I know which of the two the average American is likely to have in his garage.

If I were a real libertarian, I would have watched the Dems and been overcome with despair at the prospect of ever seeing my ideal society in my lifetime. As the Dems are happy to make clear, there are untold millions of people out there who are happy to look to the gov't as the solution for every problem you can imagine.

"If someone can't do the job, we gotta let 'im go"