I never, ever, ever should have switched over to Fox. But I couldn't resist. I couldn't help myself.

Well, why go and ruin the best political speech I've heard, firsthand, in my lifetime, with some second-rate commentary?

This is the shortest diary I've ever written. There's really nothing much more to say, other than the full-text version of the prepared speech is available via THIS LINK.

And, it looks like he stuck to the brilliant words almost verbatim.

Can everyone stop whining now?

My question for the last night of the convention is:

What do we do now?  If we thought that the ads from McCain were bad, are we really going to wait for them to get their brainstorming going during and after their convention?  Are we going to wait for a repeat of 2004?  I guess my real question is this: Is it time for the democrats to hit hard or do you think that negative ads would only hurt?

Barack Obama has just begun to speak to an audience of 75,000 Americans in Denver. Some spinners, sheisters, and hucksters like to claim< that this is the coronation of the Messiah by his thousands of adoring worshipers. I beg to differ. Those people are nothing more than empty cynics. When Americans come together, when we coalesce, when we seek a better future, and when we respond to a politician who believes in those same ideals, we are not establishing a new religion; we are following in the footsteps of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay,and George Washington. We are looking to a better future, and we are coming together and, as one nation, indivisible, we are making it happen.

The facts are these. Fifty years ago, a black man in America could not eat in the same diners as a white man - he had to walk around back and pick up his dinner by the dumpster. He could not use the same clean restrooms and water fountains - he had to seek out the dirty, roach-infested stalls and broken plumbing. He could not send his daughter to the same public schools; he had to make her walk three miles across town to the shack with outdated text books and untrained teachers. He could not walk down the street and admire the clouds; he had to walk down the street and look behind every corner, afraid of a lynching. This was not the occasional inconvenience: It. Was. Life. Every moment, of every day.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (08/27/1908 - 08/27/2008)

I've been complaining for the last few days that the Republicans were succeeding with the "Democrats in Division" story, and specifically using it to divide the Clinton and Obama coalitions, and that the Obama campaign was failing at defense. I was getting angrier as I saw more slights against the Clintons pile up, and I noted some Obama supporters taking offense at various statements by Hillary or Bill Clinton. I was beginning to fear that the divisions in the party might become permanent, dooming Obama's chances, and I didn't understand why the Obama campaign wasn't proactively shutting down the news stories that were popping up.

But after Hillary and Bill Clinton's speeches, and watching the Gallup poll show a dramatic rise for Obama today based on yesterday's post-Hillary results, I've begun to wonder if Hollede was on to something with his The Real Head Fake diary.

Nick D over at Buckeye State Blog discussed this earlier today (read "Inadequate DNC Space for Bloggers"), but I feel compelled to talk about this a little more.

Last night, around 9:45PM, I received an email detailing the press logistics for the final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.  The email covered a variety of topics from transportation to credentialing information and...

...That email also stated that a section of the Invesco Field press box would be reserved exclusively for credentialed bloggers and space in the press box would be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Let me repeat that again...space in the press box for bloggers would be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Once again, using the words of the convention organizers...

Internet access and power hookups will be available in this workspace free of charge - a service that is not being provided for other media in the press box. Seating in this space will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Using the information provided in that 9:45PM email, several bloggers (myself included) made our preparations to be in the press box at Invesco Field to reserve our space because after all, the email from the DNCC said "Seating in this space will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis."

Well, today, Nick D, myself, and more than two dozen other bloggers who are currently sitting in the Invesco Field press box have learned that first-come, first-served doesn't mean first-come, first-served when it applies to credentialed bloggers at the Democratic National Convention.

First-come, first-served means that if you're a credentialed blogger; and if you got up at 6:25 in the morning; and if you were among the first credentialed bloggers to arrive in the Invesco Field press box, then you're limited to 30 minutes in the press box.

Not only that, but once you're "rotated" out of the press box, you have to wait for one hour before you're allowed back in.

That is what first-come, first-served means in the blogger section of the Invesco Field press box.

Now, I ask you...if the DNCC went to the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Denver Post and said, "We're out of space here in the press box, so we're going to institute a 30-minute system where we rotate you out of the press box, make you wait an hour, and then bring you back into the press box for another scant 30-minute period,"  what do you think the reporters from those news organizations would say?

Well, I don't have to tell you that the reaction to such a system would be less than favorable and that's exactly how the bloggers in the Invesco Field press box are feeling.

For folks like me, who arrived early and got our space, we feel disrespected because we read the email and we made our plans according to the email, but now we're finding out in a very disappointing way that this particular email from the DNCC isn't worth the electricity used to blast it out to the 120 bloggers credentialed by the DNCC.

To borrow a line from the movie, "Mommie Dearest", How sad is that?