Trumpaganza

The Republican Convention began last night. Each night will have a different theme. The first was make America safer again. There was certainly nothing delivered in speeches last night that gave any policy prescriptions for this, it was all Clinton Obama bad Trump good, not inspiring in the least. I didn't think Rudy Giuliani, whom I once respected, could deliver a worse speech than he did at the 2008 Convention but he did it last night. He sounded like a rabid dog and that's being kind.

Patricia Smith, the mother of State Department employee Sean Smith who was killed in Benghazi, delivered a scathing and irrational attack on Hillary Clinton, blaming her directly for her son's death. I understand the emotional pain Patricia Smith is enduring and I empathize with her need to lash out and blame someone. But the blame is not on Hillary Clinton, the blame is on the thugs that murdered Sean Smith. People wrongly believe that employees of the State Department do not have a dangerous job, Benghazi is just one place among many that pose a grave threat. On the issue of the stories behind what caused it, it doesn't matter why the butchers did what they did it matters only that they did it. It's also disingenuous of Republicans to keep beating this drum when they know full well that Benghazi was not yet an Embassy but a diplomatic outpost and most importantly a C.I.A. complex that the government did not want to talk about. It's called protecting national security secrets, I thought Republicans were all about that.

Then we come to the big moment and the controversy of today, the speech of Melania Trump. It was largely lifted from Michelle Obama's speech in 2008, that's code for plagiarism. Melania said yesterday she wrote the speech herself with little assistance. I don't know if that's true or not but it's sloppy work. As I listened to it last night I thought it had a familiar tone and so it did. So many of these types of speeches have a similar cadence but large chunks of exact words being lifted is a no no.

Donald Trump promised a big glitzy Convention unlike anything ever seen. Like all of Trump's promises it came up short. It's the same old boring event. Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty, Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato Jr. are far from A-list celebrities and do not constitute an extravaganza.

In short, if you chose to skip watching it, I can't say I blame you.