Don’t be economic girlie-men: the Republican convention on steroids

Day 2 of the Republican convention was brown people, black people, immigrants, and the most downtrodden of all, stem cells. I believe the R platform proposes giving the vote to stem cells.

That would be more of a joke if the platform didn’t actually say that the 14th Amendment applies to the unborn.

Missed Liddy Dole’s speech, but she praised Bush for restoring “honor and dignity” to the White House. Elizabeth Dole, whose husband did Viagra ads. Also, not the best line for anyone to use the day the prime speaker is the Gropenführer. Liddy also said that marriage, by which she meant heterosexual marriage, is important, “not because it is a convenient invention or the latest reality show. Marriage is important because it is the cornerstone of civilization, and the foundation of the family.” Once again, she ignored her husband, who once told his first partner in the institution which is the cornerstone of civilization, “I want out.”

Ed. Sec Rod Paige accused Kerry & Edwards of wanting to “water down” No Child Left Behind. By which he means altering the rigid testing requirements, and by which he did not mean failing to provide adequate funding, a form of watering down he and his boss support.

Jenna mentioned her grandmother and sex in the same sentence, and by the time I came out of the fetal position, it was an hour later.

But before that was the main broken-English speaker of the convention, my governor, representing the immigrants who come to this country “full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire,” full of steroids, and end up fucking a bony Kennedy. He told a story about how he arrived in 1968, heard Hubert Humphrey speaking, heard Nixon speaking, and decided he was a Republican. He told this story when he was running for governor, when he claimed he was watching the famous Nixon-Humphrey debates, so it’s nice to see he didn’t feel obligated to drop his made-up story just because its central factual component never actually happened (like his reference to seeing Soviet tanks in Austria). There were a bunch of movie references, of course; an “economic girlie men” line; he explained how voting for the Republicans despite disagreeing with them was what was great about this country; then something about America standing with political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, which means whoever vetted his speech forgot that Dick Cheney once voted against a resolution that Mandela should be freed; and there was a line that “leadership isn’t about polls,” about which I’m still undecided whether to make a pun about Austrians and Poles. Then he pinched Laura Bush’s butt and left the stage.

There was something demeaning about George Bush the Elder having been given an Arnold! sign to wave.

The big “surprise” was a video appearance by Shrub, speaking for no particular reason in front of a softball game. Which meant he was interrupted by applause when someone got a hit.
Update: it's been suggested that the game was staged.