First Day of the DNC

I will start this blog by saying my immediate opinion on blogging is that it is pointless. As i begin my blogging, few readers will cast their attention onto what i am nattering about. 7.2 billion people are on this rock and they now all have a voice. It waters things down a bit. Moreover, it does seem a touch pretentious. "Hey everybody, listen to what I have to say!". Maybe 10 years ago I felt the need to be heard and to have people give a damn about what I thought, but now, not anymore. My title includes the adjective cynic. Read on and will not understand why I am a cynic, but hopefully you will find my musings funny and insightful. All I could hope for is that you walk away with a different perspective. If you really want to know why i am a cynic, you can buy my book when it is done. It is called "Memoirs I Wish I Couldn't Remember". It is about my career is EMS, the things I have seen and done, and why I hate the world. I will say just one thing about why I am a cynic about blogs - Everyone now has a voice, however few are really experts and authorities on anything other than their own point of view; said narrow mindedness equals ignorance. That being said...

I am anxious to hear Michelle Obama's speech tonight. All of the media stooges have been saying how Ann Romney humanized her husband, and how good of a job she did. Tonight, The First Lady will probably talk about why people should continue to trust in her husband. She does. Of course she does. She has national power and status, a cushy agenda of exercise and gardening, and her biggest problems are which aide gets what chore. She has over the last 4 years publicly spoken about what a great father he is and there have been jokes about who really wears the pants in that family. Coming from the uptight world of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it is refreshing to have some humanity and 21st century family relatable content to us commoners. Also, Barack wrote often in "The Audacity of Hope" about how hard it was on his wife and how thankful he was to her during his campaign for the Illinois Senator seat. I seldom saw Dubya or Herbie Walker deferring the spotlight to their wifeys. Bill Clinton quite routinely made comments about Hilary and their marriage seemed convenient, we all know that Hilary was really running the country and we also know what really went on behind closed doors with the open legs of interns.

I watched only the last night of the RNC. I did not get to hear Ann's speech, nor did i get to hear Paul Ryan. I did however hear Jane Edmund rave about how great a man Mitt is. I personally thought Clint Eastwood was both very funny and very out of line. I never took Dirty Harry to be a shock value comedian, but at age 82, the reinvention is either genius or senility.

Marco Rubio did give a fantastic speech. He spoke passionately about his Cuban immigrant father was a bartender, standing all those years behind a bar so his son could stand behind a podium and introduce the next potential POTUS. It was a great speech. I have just heard it a few dozen times before.

Mitt Romney's speech was long. I don't know the exact length but it was around 45 minutes. To summarize, "I'm a great guy, I'm a great guy, I'm good for this country, I'm a nice guy, and I am a good guy". He first spoke about his upbringing, hard work, and character. He spoke about how his father was one of the Motor City blue collars, then ran for and won the Michigan Governorship. Later, he spoke abot how he and 7 friends started Bain Capital, and then his voyage into politics... vaguely.

So, my perception is he grew up in the auto boom, probably north of 8th and 13th mile, in upper middle class, then in upper upper class upon his dad becoming governor. Maybe he had some hard times, but it doesn't sound like he grew up with much adversity, but rather a boring straightforward middle class upbringing and he didn't see much hardship until the 70's when he was at Harvard. He certainly didn't see Vietnam.

His personalization of his speech was good, but then he started talking politics. It was really nice hearing him say that he wished Obama would have succeeded. That was really schmoopy. But then he proceeded to point out the obvious sentiment and opinion, but not state much fact or have much objective point to what he said. He spoke about how the nation is worse than it was four years ago. He spoke about the economy and unemployment. The speech began unraveling at this point because of conjecture. He spoke of the deficit being higher than GDP for the first time in history. Unfortunately, that was incorrect on the Governor's part.

Romney's most objective moment when he spoke about fixing the economy with his "5 point plan". The only problem was he failed to go into any detail about WHAT his plan involved. When it comes to a national audience who is feeding mostly off emotion, i understand you don't want to lull people with details... Lord knows how those details are such a bore! However, if he really wanted to win over the minions and even the naysayers, throw down the gauntlet right then and there. Maybe he should have spoken less about what a good ol' boy from the midwest he is and and get right to how he is going to fix our economy.

The train really came off the rails when he spoke about how he was going to handle things differently if elected. He specifically mentioned Obama's failure to curtail Iran's development of nuclear capability and carte blanche trade restrictions removals with Russia and Putin. Romney stated that he would certainly impose and enforce much tougher restrictions if President.

Didn't the cold war end 60 years ago? WTF was the point of that comment? Way to isolate Russia. I would bet a paychect advisors of every country in the world watched that speech. Not only do we not have any reason to ostracize Russia, we really don't have the money or resources to back up Romney's boneheaded mouth. I feel like we just saw an inkling on Romney's foreign policy skills. Speaking of mouth, Romney at one point made a comment about how we need more businessmen in Washington and less lawyers... Romney has a law degree from Harvard. Yeah, he's a regular old midwest American good ol' boy.

So tonight is the opening of the DNC. I don't know that i will watch much more than the last night, maybe 2. What i hope to see is less ego stroking and more objectivity, less conjecture and more fact. It shouldn't be hard.