Presidential candidate John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention drew more television viewers than his rival Barack Obama attracted at the Democratic party’s event last week, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen Media Research.Across all broadcast networks Thursday, Sen. McCain’s speech ended the night with a 4.8 rating/7 share, compared to Sen. Obama’s 4.3/7 average, according to overnight numbers from metered households in 55 U.S. markets measured by Nielsen. These ratings are preliminary, however, and are subject to change.NBC’s coverage of Sen. McCain’s speech started directly at the tail end of the opening game of NFL season, with the speech pulling in a 6.3 rating/10 share, topping Sen. Obama’s speech last week by 26%.

Clank!
*rattle rattle rattle splash rattle rattle rattle *

The flagship of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet dropped anchor off Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti on Friday, where Russian troops have been patrolling since last month’s war with Georgia. The USS Mount Whitney, a sophisticated command warship based in Italy, is the third U.S. vessel to arrive on the Georgian coast with humanitarian aid for tens of thousands displaced by the conflict over Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia.

~click for video~

Russia said on Friday that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was encouraging Georgian aggression by supporting Tbilisi’s bid to join the NATO military alliance. Cheney told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Thursday that the United States was fully committed to Georgia’s bid to join NATO.

“The new promises to Tbilisi relating to the speedy membership of NATO simply strengthen the Saakashvili regime’s dangerous feeling of impunity and encourages its dangerous ambitions,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters. Nesterenko said the arrival in a Georgian port of the USS Mount Whitney, a sophisticated command warship, may breach a 1936 convention on naval activity in the Black Sea, but he ruled out any military action by Russian forces over its presence. “Should the convention be violated, then the issue should probably be considered by the United Nations or other international organisations because we are talking about violations of a well-known international agreement,” he said.

*flopsweat*

Russia’s central bank intervened heavily to support the rouble on Thursday as analysts said $21bn of foreign capital might have been pulled out of the country as Moscow paid the price for its conflict with Georgia.

McCain promises us the CHANGE we need?
Can you believe the nerve of the Republicans to criticize Biden on some trumped-up plagiarism claim, yet they blatantly steal Obama’s core theme?

Got that right.

Your morning’s open-thread thing.
I’ve been pondering the impact of Palin. Her populist-libertarian/conservative (I think) message seems to be much more interesting to the Republican base than McCain’s bipartisanism. The question is, can she co-opt the populist issues from the false pseudo-populism of the Dems’ liberal/socialist/progressive (i.e. fascist) quagmire and steer the two parties back away from the brink of evolving into a European political spectrum (as Reagan did)? Might be interesting times.

Meanwhile, at the 2009 VP’s residence.

Close the book.

Whoopie whooping

“Community organizers do too have responsibilities! 

So there.

nyaaaa.”

The best she can do to is compare the adversities that McCain went through in the Hanoi Hilton with Joe Biden’s adversity in losing his wife and child in a car accident. [no mention of any Obama-adversities...]

Yes they’re both terrible adversities.  But how did she manage to miss the difference?!!?

I predict a revival:

Stolen from DBKP.

Close the book.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve scaled the number of posts displayed on the main page to cut back on load time and experiment with bandwidth usage.
Because of our volume of posts, they tend to fall off the main page much faster so don’t forget to check the next page down there at the bottom of the main post body at least once a day.
You’re sure to miss something of you don’t.

Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday.

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides said they were counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to rebut Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain. Those governors include Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Some Democrats were urging Mr. Obama’s campaign not to underestimate the potential power of Ms. Palin’s speech, even among voters not aligned with either party: On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs, some Democrats said the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Senator John Kerry was four years ago when he ran against President Bush.

“What McCain has done with Governor Palin’s nomination is aim right at a demographic that Obama needs to address quickly: noncollege-educated women,” said Mike McCurry, a former spokesman in the Clinton White House.

They really can’t help themselves can they?

Keep tryin’, Democrats. You’re so cute when you fail miserably.

Well it seems some more* of our European friends are enamored with our Sarah......too.....

Somehow I can’t see any of this gang of miseries doing a Palin and thrilling a continent with a speech of intelligence, wit, fire and vision................

And look who doesn’t like her......

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Other Democrats have charged that the Republican campaign to paint the Illinois senator as an “elitist” is racially charged, and accused them of using code words for “uppity” without using the word itself.

In August, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) told reporters, “When I hear the word ‘elitist’ linked with Barack Obama, to me, that is a code word for ‘uppity.’ I find it extremely offensive and John McCain should know better.”