Friday Morning Reads: The Good, The Bad and The Hologram?

Good Morning!

Kat is still out of power, so that means y’all are stuck with me today. 😉

I must admit that real life has been keeping us busy lately, as for the RNC Cavalcade of Comedic Horrors…well that is just one show I can’t even bring myself to watch. One thing is certain, when I do read up on the night’s performances, I have to think, what the hell is that. Take last night for instance, we had Mittastic and the fabulous Clint Eastwood.

Full transcript of speech here: TRANSCRIPT: Mitt Romney’s Speech at the Republican National Convention – ABC News

I guess it is all real, and not some dream where we find ourselves waking to Pamela Ewing in the shower. Romney accepts GOP presidential nomination

Of course, there were more of the comparisons between Obama and Carter: Romney calls Obama a ‘disappointment’

And promises to save America from Obama, Romney Vows to Deliver Country From Economic Travails

Alright, let’s pick through this speech of Romney’s with a few opinionated critiques:

3 Beefs With Mitt Romney’s Convention Speech

Mitt’s Safe and Unadventurous Speech- Howard Kurtz

Mitt Romney Takes It to Mr. Hope and Change – Ron Fournier

Mitt Romney, Capitalist Saint – Molly Ball

And finally the fact checkers: Fact-Checking the GOP Speakers

But, there was one act that seemed to have folks scratching their heads. Clint Eastwood gave a performance last night…to an empty chair.

Clint Eastwood Delivers Bizarre Rambling Speech To Empty Chair

Clint Eastwood opened up the primetime portion of the Republican convention with a rambling, mumbling and often incoherent address next to an empty chair that was meant to represent President Obama.

A creaky Eastwood began by defending Hollywood’s notorious liberal reputation to the crowd, claiming that there were in fact many independents and Republicans in show business.

“Conservatives by their nature play it close to the vest, they don’t go around hot-dogging it,” he said.

He went on to act out an interview with the empty presidential chair that noted, among other topics, Obama’s inability to close Guantanamo Bay.

“I thought it was because somebody had a stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City,” Eastwood said.

Eastwood, who did not seem to use a prepared text of any kind, went on for about 12 minutes. A Romney campaign official told CBS that Eastwood was “ad libbing.”

Here are a few links on that.

Eastwood’s ‘Invisible Obama’ skit amuses some, confuses others

UPDATE 3-Did Clint Eastwood lose the plot at Romney’s convention?

Eastwood goes off-script in Romney endorsement

For a full transcript: Clint Eastwood’s GOP convention speech: Full transcript

And then, The Gipper, Ronald Reagan was supposed to rise from the dead…

No…that’s not it.

Let’s try this one.

No that is not it either…

RNC Scrapped Plans To Debut Reagan Hologram (Which Is Real) This Week

Earlier this week when the Republicans announced a mystery speaker for the final night of the convention, some people joked that it would be a hologram of Ronald Reagan akin to the surprise Tupac hologram that took Coachella by storm. Well, it turns out that a hologram Reagan actually exists, it was going to make an appearance right outside the convention this week, but the RNC asked the makers to delay its because they didn’t want it to “overshadow” Mitt Romney‘s speech.

Overshadow Mitt’s speech, how could they even think that…I mean, maybe that is why Clint was talking to an empty chair?

Reagan hologram is real, was planned for RNC debut

Despite some conflicting reports, Yahoo News has learned that a holographic projection of former President Ronald Reagan is in the works and was originally intended to debut outside the halls of the Republican National Convention this week. But its official unveiling has been put on hold until later this year or early 2013.

“It wasn’t officially going to be part of the convention,” Tony Reynolds, founder of crowdsourcing website A KickIn Crowd, told Yahoo News in a phone interview Thursday. “It was going to be outside of the convention at the Lakeland Center.”

[…]

However, Reynolds says he discussed the idea with a number of Republican activists who asked him to delay the project out of concern it would overshadow Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech.

“At the time he hadn’t chosen Paul Ryan, so I think they were a little worried about his energy,” Reynolds said. “Even in a hologram form I think Reagan’s going to beat a lot of people in terms of communicating.”

Oh, so they are holding the second coming for a later time. Interesting.

Just a couple more links for you this morning. I found this next headline interesting as well:

David Koch breaks from GOP on gay marriage, taxes, defense cuts

And then Erza Klein has this offering, A not-very-truthful speech in a not-very-truthful campaign

Honestly? I didn’t want us to write this piece.

The original pitch was for “the five biggest lies in Paul Ryan’s speech.” I said no. It’s not that the speech didn’t include some lies. It’s that I wanted us to bend over backward to be fair, to see it from Ryan’s perspective, to highlight its best arguments as well as its worst. So I suggested an alternative: The true, the false, and the misleading in Ryan’s speech. (Note here that we’re talking about political claims, not personal ones. Ryan’s biography isn’t what we’re examining here though, for the record, I found his story deeply moving.)

An hour later, the draft came in — Dylan Matthews is a very fast writer. There was one item in the “true” section.

Jason E. Miczek – AP

So at about 1 a.m. Thursday, having read Ryan’s speech in an advance text and having watched it on television, I sat down to read it again, this time with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the “true” category. And I did find one. He was right to say that the Obama administration has been unable to correct the housing crisis, though the force of that criticism is somewhat blunted by the fact that neither Ryan nor Mitt Romney have proposed an alternative housing policy. But I also came up with two more “false” claims. So I read the speech again. And I simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true.

I want to stop here and say that even the definition of “true” that we’re using is loose. “Legitimate” might be a better word. The search wasn’t for arguments that were ironclad. It was just for arguments — for claims about Obama’s record — that were based on a reasonable reading of the facts, and that weren’t missing obviously key context.

This link from TNR caught my eye, because of the use of  one of my favorite classic films in the post: An Annotated Guide To Romney’s Abortion Comments

I sometimes get the sense that Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is one big exercise in gaslighting the country. If you’re not familiar with the term, it comes from the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film “Gaslight,” in which a man tries to convince his wife that she’s imagining things and going insane when in fact he is an evil creep.

For the record, I am not calling Mitt Romney an evil creep.

Gaslighting is at times the only explanation for Romney’s willingness to say things that are breathtakingly false. The most recent example I have in mind is an interview he gave on Monday to CBS’s Scott Pelley that touched on his ever-morphing position on abortion rights. Unlike Herman Cain, who made absurd statements about his position on abortion during the primaries because he appeared to be genuinely unaware of the past 40 years in U.S. politics, Romney is not stupid. But he is banking on the hope that voters are.

Well, that last part about the stupid voters…you all know where we stand on that point. The article then takes us on a shorter version of Romney’s interview.

Scott Pelley: “The platform, as written at this convention for the Republicans, does not allow for exceptions on abortion with regard to the health of the mother or rape or incest. Is there where you are?”

No, my position has been clear throughout … uh … this campaign.

You got that, ladies? Like three-quarters of Americans, I oppose that constitutional ban in our platform. Just don’t ask me in front of a bunch of donors. And as I keep telling you, my position on abortion has always been clear. Marvelously clear. Ha ha. Ha.

Just take a look at the rest of the link, it is quite amusing.

And that is all I got for you this morning, catch y’all later in the comments!