McCain's Speech Last Night

I finally got a chance to watch Senator McCain's speech fron last night, and I don't even know where to begin.

He looked out of his element, with a tendency to smile and chuckle at most inappropriate places.

His audience looked too rehearsed, their reactions didn't seem at all spontaneous, like they'd picked up a batch of random homeless people off the street and offered them all a meal and a warm bed if they'd agree to chant as directed.

And his speech... his speech was so full of misdirections and outright falsehoods I don't even know where to begin. He implies that Obama's plan to get us out of Iraq isn't listening to the generals on the ground when we've seen a steady stream of generals miraculously leave their posts and be replaced by those who say "stay the course". General Shinseki was the first, and most recently General Ricardo Sanchez, who has written a book similar to Scott McClellan's, but which has largely been overshadowed by that other work.

He talks about Obama's plans for greater spending, but recently someone looked at all of the things McCain has promised to spend money on and determined that there's simply no way he could pay for all of them even if we let all of the Bush tax cuts lapse, meanwhile he's insisting on making those tax cuts permanent and adding new ones of his own.

I'm going to have to go through the whole speech and write up a complete rebuttal to it, but damn, if this is all McCain has to offer, then either the Republicans or the nation are in deep trouble.

Liam.