HEY, REPUBLICANS, IS THAT ALL YOU GOT THIS MORNING?

I watched a fair amount of the convention last night. I missed Ted Strickland (though I've been savoring his soundbites -- I just heard, on the radio, "If Mitt were Santa Claus, he'd fire the reindeer and outsource the elves"), but Deval Patrick was strikingly good, Lilly Ledbetter was terrific, Julian Castro got better and better as his speech went on, and Michelle Obama -- well, here's ex-Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings on Twitter:

Mrs. Obama, I brung you these here posies.(stares at shoes, twists one foot in circle on White House porch)

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) September 5, 2012

Wow -- she's America's sweetheart.

I vaguely worried that this was all too voting-bloc-oriented -- non-religious-right women, Hispanics, gay people. But that's politics in this century, for better or worse -- targeting groups, targeting appeals. Also, many Democratic blocs aren't obsessed 24/7 with politics the way right-wingers are, so they may need a nudge before they'll get out and vote.

But I was impressed -- Democrats were proudly talking about political philosophy. They were defending presidential accomplishments. They weren't supposed to be able to do the latter, and they're supposed to be afraid to do the former. I think it gave voters a reason to vote.

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I woke up and looked at Memeorandum this morning and I was surprised at the lead item. I'm not surprised that right-wingers would be trying to "win the morning" in the blogosphere by agreeing to swarm onto one story, but, um, this is the best you could come up with?

"Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To"

... A video that showed on the convention floor Tuesday night offered an unusually direct embrace of the role of government in American life: "Government," says the narrator, "is the only thing that we all belong to."

UPDATE: An Obama aide emails that the Charlotte host committee, not the Obama campaign, produced the video....

Wow! Omigod! Golly gee! Here's the shocking clip, from a video that Team Obama didn't work on and that 99.9% of American never saw (I'm sure it aired only on C-SPAN). Sensitive viewers may want to leave the room during these 17 seconds:





The basic point is, um, correct, for one thing -- we don't belong to the same churches or schools or other groups, and we ought to own the shared manifestations of community that are our national, state, and local governments. That's democracy, no? A winger blogger says this 17-second clip "throws American identity under the bus." Hunh?

Mitt Romney tweeted, "We don't belong to government, the government belongs to us." His implication is: If you say you belong to something, you're saying you're its servant! You're saying it owns you!

I can see why he'd be sensitive about this. I belong to the Democratic Party. Romney belongs to the Republican Party. I don't think the Democratic Party owns me -- I'm just sort of a shareholder. Romney? Well, I think he feels that belonging to the GOP -- especially the modern wingnut GOP -- means that it does own him.

The rest of us, Mitt, are made of stronger stuff.

Oh, well. I'm sure the campaign is going to make a dozen ads about this and put references to it in the stump speeches of Romney and Ryan and redesign the backdrops (not "We Did Build This!" but "It Belongs to Us!"). I'm sure Team Romney will cook up some silly Twitter hashtag that all the wingers on Twitter will dutifully participate in, the way they all participated in Empty Chair Day, and the way they buy all those cookie-cutter Democrats-are-the-Antichrist books that all say the same things. Now that I think of it, I guess the right really does think "belonging" is slavery. That sure seems to be how they belong to the conservative movement.

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And speaking of small-beer attacks, here's the (non-convention-oriented) story that leads the "Hot List" at Fox Nation right now:

Obama Only President Not to Visit Billy Graham Library

Holy crap! How can Obama possibly recover from that revelation? Game changer!

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UPDATE: From Hurling Dervish in comments:

So when Mitt Romney went to Poland and announced that ""Our nations belong to the great fellowship of democracies," he thinks that other countries own the United States of America? Hey, wait a second!

Heh. Indeed.