The Czar and the Царица watched last night’s convention speeches, missing only a couple for dinner and homework with the kids.

Thoughts:

Portman: Too much a campaign speech, knocking the President around. Look, everyone there knows Obama is a dud.

Huckabee: One thing the Czar agrees with most liberals on…when a politician tries to do standup comedy, he usually falls down.

Rice: Excellent speech, although her delivery seems to be getting strange. Perhaps it was nerves, but she seems to be developing a curious accent. Anyway, for our part, her best line—mind-blowing in its greater implications—was claiming the power of the teachers’ unions is the greatest civil rights crisis of our age. That’s heady, and brilliant rhetoric…and not incorrect, by the way. As she explained, we have reached a point where you can look at a student’s zip code and immediately know if he or she is going to succeed in life. Yeah, the speech was good (see GorT’s comments below), but this point really stood out.

Martinez: Yikes, where has the GOP been hiding her? The Governor delivered a geniunely warm, entertaining, and engaging speech, and our dear Царица said her speech will do more to win women to the Republican side than anything she has seen so far. Her psychology was brilliant: she is a woman, she is Hispanic, and she is smart enough to realize that the values of each of these three categories line up with Republicans far more than Democrats. A funny, enjoyable, and quite ingenious speech by her. Let us hope she remains in the public spotlight for years to come!

Ryan: Well, we better break this into two parts.

The Not-So-Good: Ryan started out stiff, wooden, and wild-eyed. His constant throat-clearing became a distraction, and he seemed to be reading of a screen. Not bad, but a mechanical delivery of canned material.

The Good: About a third of the way into his speech, Ryan got to where he wanted to be. And he delivered a fiery sermon about the President, repeatedly calling attention to the promises of candidate Obama to the petty, dismissive DMV his administration has now become. Finally, and perhaps too late for some viewers, he did what he does best—explain the financials of government, why the country is truly and genuinely in serious peril, and how there is just enough time to rescue it. Yes, he gets into numbers pretty heavily, but does so repeatedly in a direct way that anyone can follow.

The speech was hardly masterful, but it was worthy of any of Reagan’s best, actually. Wow, was all we kept saying. And the later it went, the more Ryan relaxed into who he really would be as a vice-president. And he lives up to the stereotype that Paul Ryan is a funny, witty, family man with deep beliefs and a rocket-fuel-powered intelligence.

Who on earth are the Democrats going to get as a Paul Ryan debate stand-in for Joe Biden? There isn’t anyone remotely associated with their campaign who can even imitate him.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.