GOP Convention Day 1: Cleveland or Busted

I wasn't sure what to expect from the Republican Convention, but it has turned out to be more entertaining that ever I could have hoped. Too bad I no longer drink alcohol, because the theme of the evening was to disparage Hillary Clinton. The drinking game would be to imbibe every time one of the minions mentions Crooked Hillary or Lying Hillary, and I would have been wasted early into the program... Of course, I'm waiting for the Clinton Camp to rejoin with something like, what do you expect from Dumb Ass Donald???

The convention began with hijinks and chicanery, resulting with the Colorado delegation getting up en mass and walking out... Several states had wanted to amend some of the convention rules, that would have freed up delegates bound to vote for The Donald, and allow them to vote for someone else on the first round of voting, perhaps allowing for someone else to become the nominee. It takes a certain amount of the delegates to petition for a role call vote, and one had been called on from the floor. The chairperson suddenly left the stage for several minutes, and when he came back announced that three of the states had withdrawn from the petition and then had a vote by voice recognition, and of course he recognized that the ayes had the loudest side, and passed the rules without any further debate... This was when the Colorado folks got up and left, the only state to do so. Since I currently live in Colorado, it brought a tear to my eye to see them do me so proud...

So much for the boring rules and procedures, which gave way to many people shouting and booing and telling the media tales of cheating and frustration, which the media sucked up as if it were primo cocaine... Then came the prime time show...

The Trump organization had promised famous celebrities, but all we got was the boring child of Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, and a low level child television star who looked like a muppet... Then came the doom and gloom portion, designed to freak you out, and it certainly went over the top on that. This is where the vilifying of Hillary began in earnest, but I would have been pretty buzzed after the Duck guy and Scott Baio finished, and certainly was not prepared for Pat Smith, the mother of a foreign service worker who died in an ambush at Benghazi, Libya. She was a walking raw wound, with a practiced haunted look in her eyes, and her grief was raw and rubbed with salt, it was painful to witness. Then she went off the railings by accusing Hillary Clinton of murder, and complaining that the State Department stopped talking to her... What she didn't disclose was that her son's death had permanently unhinged her, and the guy's wife had asked the State Department to stop talking to the crazy woman. That the RNC brought this woman up onto the stage and tried to use her by manipulating our empathy was pretty foul and reprehensible, the poor woman needed a good grief counselor. not a stage meant for political theater...

There were a couple of good speeches about the patriotic duty of military service that were more

generic than political, and would have fit in at any high school rally across the country... Then came several black speakers who talked trash on Clinton, giving rise to the speculation that the speakers on the stage were of a more diverse background that the whole of the delegates... And then came Rudy Giuliani... Have you ever listened to a one on one interview with Rudy? The man is brash, doesn't listen, and must go on and on trying to make his ill reasoned points. His speech was inflammatory, shouted all the way through, giving one commentator to speculate that he looked like he was going to bite the head off of a bat at any moment...

As a nice contrast to the intensity and bummer factor of the previous speakers, luckily no-one committed suicide ( as close to a jihadist joke I can allow myself to make right now, sorry ), the featured speaker was then Melania Trump. I expected her to basically say that she enjoyed Donald's money very much, and if they lost, please don't deport her back to Slovenia, but she actually gave a nice speech centered around the joys of family, the virtue of hard work, and giving others the respect they deserve, no matter their background or ethnicity. If only The Donald would listen to her advice...

Turns out the advice actually came from a speech that Michelle Obama gave the Democratic Convention in 2008, and it had parts plagiarized line by line. The cable news networks began having a field day, wondering who wrote the speech for Melania, who had said that she mostly wrote it herself, and would the Trump organization fire the writer or not?

The response has been that hey, both Melania and Michelle must have the same values, there's nothing more to see here, and we are going to move on... Which means, translated into real life, that Melania is dumber than we thought, and not much at giving speeches, and she did the cribbing herself, enough to make it legally plagiarism, and please don't let her bring down Donald's campaign, we will promise to keep her out of sight from now on... Again, a pundit said at the very least, Michelle should be given a writer's fee...

Everyone got up and left the convention hall, leaving the last few speakers to give their speeches to a much emptied house, just like speaking in Congress. For those who are more liberal leaning the convention is proving a wonderful catharsis, I can hear my sister yelling at her tv from upstairs in several spots during the night, and I know the rest of the convention will be more of the same, including the embarrassing screw-ups. Tonight will showcase speeches by former rivals of The Donald, including Ben Carson, Chris Christy, and Ted Cruz, oh what could go wrong? If you hear someone laughing like a maniac, it will be me...