I don't have any desire to watch a four day-long infomercial for a nominee who was chosen back in April. Those conventions are a distraction and complete waste of time and money. There is not a morsel of information other than who has the best speechwriter that could be derived from those shows.

Someone made a very fitting comment on Eastwood's extended senior moment speech, saying something to the effect of "it's a very fitting keynote for the RNC: an old white man arguing with a made-up version of the President."

I played a fun game during the conference, spot the minorities! For every white middle-young aged person -1 point, old white women -2, Old white man -3, wearing an outrageous outfit -4 more points from their score, wearing a cowboy hat -1 more point from their score, Asian +4, Hispanic +5, African American Male + 10, African American Female + 12 and someone getting dragged out of the crowd +4.

And yet it was probably the most cogent thing to come out of the RNC. He actually drew attention to the fact that we've been stuck in that shithole called Afghanistan for a decade now with no end game in sight, stupidly trying to wage a half-assed war with one hand while simultaneously "rebuilding" a country that was never built to begin with with the other, and all the while telegraphing to the enemy our intent to pull out so that they know all they have to do is dig in and wait us out. As much as people are ragging on Clint for his rambling, that was easily the hardest bit of truth to come out of the whole stupid pep rally, and since the DNC is going to be a vast exercise in distraction and and denialism, I don't expect it will be topped there, either.

The best part was that Eastwood bothered Obama enough for him to tweet this picture of Alfred E. Newman sitting in his chair:

What a petty little man.

I thought it was a huge display of hypocrisy, moreso that the republicans cheered for it, when even 6 years ago anyone even saying that would have been labeled "terrorist sympathizer" by the Fox News set.

Possibly, but six years ago we hadn't been there a fucking decade with nothing to show for it. And six years ago, 70% of the population didn't think we should GTFO. Opinions can change over time, and it isn't necessarily hypocrisy. They've had a lot slower turnaround than all the prominent Democrats who were on the wagon for the Iraq War, only to immediately turn against as soon as it became politically unpopular.

hmm.. Clint's speech didn't seem so pro republican to me - he merely seems to think Obama won't do enough/do what's needed quickly enough and wants someone else to try, although I personally don't think "a stellar businessman" should necessarily be more fit for the job than an attorney

I'll grant much of that was mishandled by the democrats (pulling out of Iraq at various points would have been irresponsible, and they should have known that), but in this case you have the Republicans cheering for Condi telling us to bomb Iran and Syria on one hand, then cheering Clint for "get out of Afghanistan tomorrow!" on the other, so about a 1-day turnaround, when neither side is as simple as all that.

I was always in support of "staying until the job is done," (and just disagreed at the time with how the Bush administration was going about the job itself) and still feel that way about Afghanistan, although in Afghanistan's case it will merely be a matter of settling for Taliban participation in an elected Islamic government, possibly in exchange for a couple constitutional guarantees so that they can't dis-enroll all girls from school again. That would put them more or less in line with Iran and Pakistan, at least; dangerous countries, but not the wild west of Jihad.

She definitely subscribes to the Bush style "freedom is the desire of all people, everywhere" world view that seems dangerously naïve to me, but I don't think Rice was saying we should just up and invade Syria and Iran. Rather, she was criticizing the way we've been dithering and noncommittal. Obama sounded positively Bush-like in his justification for the (unconsitutional) intervention in Libya on the basis that we will not tolerate such a massacre, but in the face of a much higher civilian body count in a much, much more strategically important country like Syria, all he sees fit to do is roll out the old threadbare cliche about us being "gravely concerned" and tell Assad not to please not use chemical weapons.

And without trying to ascribe too much of a thought process to a crowd, specifically one at a political convention where I think they just applaud for whatever sounds good at the moment, I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical to support one war effort and not another. Obama was not a hypocrite for supporting the Afghan war but not the Iraq one, and other liberals were not necessarily hypocritical to decry the Iraq War while simultaneously agitating for intervention into Sudan. It is much easier to imagine some good coming out of an intervention that hasn't happened yet than it is to see any good coming from continuing involvement in a messy ongoing conflict. That's unwise, I think, but not hypocritical.

Particularly with regards to Afghanistan, with no infrastructure to speak of and its incredibly backwards culture, it's not surprising that people would feel that there is nothing to be gained from continuing when the best we can hope for is a return of the Taliban. Any such guarantees as you mention would mean nothing, and their inevitable violations would be met with equally nothing... except more "grave concern".

I played that game while watching the Occupy rally outside the RNC. Final tally: -16 trillion.