RNC Day One: A Post Mortem

Hopefully you are not like me and you had far better things to do than glue yourself to a seat in a local coffee-house and force feed yourself heaping bowls of fear, loathing, hatred, hypocrisy and warmongering. If you DID have something better to do, then you may not be aware of what all happened at the First Day of the Republican National Convention.

If you asked me to recap the day in a sentence, I would just say “It’s like they wrapped an episode of the three stooges up in an American flag while vomiting jesus bits all over the veterans and crying mothers”.

In short, here is a recap of the days events.

To start the only republicans that seem to have a brain left in their heads stood firm and demanded a roll call vote on whether or not to implement new RNC rules. The verbal vote was VERY close, and several states demanded the roll call vote for clarity and accuracy. I mean, that’s what this convention is all about right? Votes, representation and equality? Well apparently not, because the Chair decided to just bowl right on by this request. For the next 15 minutes chaos reigned as the scripted RNC tuned into an actual convention. Even the chair abandoned his post because it’s apparently too much to ask that they deal with things as they arise.  “I think the Republican Party will and should elect Donald Trump,” Birkeland said. “But the delegates have to matter, or we should not come anymore. If we’re put here to rubber-stamp it, I should’ve saved $5,000”—her costs for the week in Cleveland. “Let the body of the party speak! Otherwise it’s a dictatorship.”

Eventually the steam died down, the bullying er, I mean ruling majority had squelched the resistance and that was that.

Well, not exactly. As the convention recessed for dinner, Kera Birkeland, over in the Utah delegation, had tears in her eyes. “Now’s not a good time,” she said. “I just got yelled at and threatened in the bathroom.”

“They started calling me names, calling me stupid,” Birkeland said. “They said I should die. They said the Utah delegation should lose its police force and should all die, that we should have backed Trump and were too stupid to know that. I explained I didn’t want to stop Trump or take away the nomination, that it would have helped unite the party to have a roll call. They said I was too stupid to know what the roll call was about.”

Yeah, the party that wants to bomb the shit out of people who disagree with their ideology are strong arming and threatening people with death if they don’t fall in line. I’m shocked.

So, after order was gained the morning was fairly uneventful. The evening however was far more interesting.

The evening session was a mish mash of Arguments from Ignorance, fear mongering, war mongering, lies, damn lies, theft, WWE-like entrances and plagiarism.

To define the three-ring event, Donald Trump emerged from backstage like The Undertaker stepping into a Summer Slam Arena. Trump was emerging from his private circle of hell to introduce his third wife, Melania. Here’s where it got nasty. Someone, no one in the Trump camp seems capable or willing to say whom, basically stole Michelle Obama’s speech from 2008. But don’t take my word for it, watch them side by side and decide for yourself.

Personally I think they had a rat in the writing staff, I mean, she even got Rick Rolled without noticing. But that might be what you get when we have all of these immigrants coming over here, stealing our speeches…. (see how stupid that sounds?)

Rudolph Giuliani, former beloved mayor of NYC and Hero of 9/11 had his turn. He was a complete hit. He was very pro-police and armed services, as expected. “We – we know – we know the risk you are taking, and we say thank you to every police officer and law enforcement agent who is out tonight protecting us (HUGE cheers) – black, white, latino, every race, every color, every creed, every sexual orientation.” (slightly more reserved cheering as the words sank in)

“When they come the come to save your life, they don’t ask if you are black or white. They just come to save you!” (Standing ovation, despite we have plenty of video, testimony and riots in the streets that profess otherwise).

“We also, reach out. We reach out our arms with understanding and compassion to those who have lost loved ones because of police shootings – some justified, some unjustified.” You can actually watch people shift uncomfortably in their seats, because as we have seen this party likes to identify the ‘us’ and the ‘them’ and have no grey area between the two.

“Those that are unjustified must be punished. Those that are justified, we must apologize to”. This broke everyone’s mind and the crowd was simply silent, minus a few resounding BOO’s from the crowd. Take from that what you will.

These were the two big ringers for the night, but the evening was also smattered as I said with a mix of other ‘great speakers’ like Michael Flynn who still holds to claims that Clinton’s email server usage was a crime, which the FBI concluded it was not. He also made bald accusations that Obama was concealing actions of the Islamic state, even though their workings have been publicly documented.

Most of the night was filled with TV personalities presumably because TV is as close to reality as they can get. The list included Happy Days child star and subsequent nobody, Scott Baio and Willie Robertson. Yep, the openly racist, redneck from a Hunting show. There was some guy from MTV ‘Reality TV’ but I literally glazed over during his and Snookie 2.0’s speech.

The rest of the night seemed to be just an appeal to emotion. Wave after wave of crying mother, was paraded on stage to show how horrible illegal immigrants are. To ensure that no one left that arena not understanding how they are all drunken, murderous criminals.

The last part of this convention I want to discuss is the talk that John Tiegen and Mark Geist (authors of “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi”) gave. This was a 20 minute recanting of events that cannot even BEGIN to be verified. But hey, we all already realize that facts, evidence and truth aren’t going to stand in the way of the RNC in making everything maligned in the world the fault of the current administration, even though there has been a pretty powerful republican presence throughout the terms. They actually did a great job staying away from any accusations that could be vetted, but stepped what looked to be ‘off-script’ to claim Clinton had watched the entire thing go down from a drone feed, a claim already concluded to be untrue. Remember, in the US we are innocent until proven guilty. So when the House Select Committee of Benghazi concludes that there were all kinds of failures in the area, but that Clinton was not culpable… you really should let go of the claim, it just makes you reek of desperation.

Now, on to day two.

#nevertrump

Full list of Day One Speakers:

Monday, July 18: “Make America Safe Again”

• Willie Robertson, CEO of Duck Commander and Buck Commander, star of Duck Dynasty
• Gov. Rick Perry, Former Governor of Texas
• Marcus Luttrell, U.S. Navy SEAL
• Scott Baio, Actor and Television Producer
• Pat Smith, Mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith
• Mark Geist, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Fought in Battle of Benghazi
• John Tiegen, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Fought in Battle of Benghazi
• Kent Terry and Kelly Terry-Willis, The Brian Terry Foundation
• Antonio Sabato Jr., Actor
• Mary Ann Mendoza, Immigration Reform Advocate
• Sabine Durden, Immigration Reform Advocate
• Jamiel Shaw, Immigration Reform Advocate
• U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, TX-10
• David Clarke, Sheriff of Milwaukee County
• U.S. Representative Sean Duffy, WI-7
• Rachel Campos Duffy, The LIBRE Initiative
• Darryl Glenn, El Paso County Commissioner
• U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas
• Karen Vaughn, Mother of fallen U.S. Navy SEAL
• U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama
• Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City
• Melania Trump, Businesswoman and wife of Donald Trump
• Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, U.S. Army, retired
• U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa
• Jason Beardsley, Concerned Veterans for America
• U.S. Representative Ryan Zinke, R-Montana