It hasn't even been 24 hours since Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's speech in St. Paul and already a tribute site has been created to the protesters who disrupted him on stage.

The site, The Ground Noise and the Static, derives its name from the response Mr. McCain offered to supporters after members of the anti-war group Code Pink heckled him onstage:

My friends, my dear friends ... Please, please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static. I'm going to talk about it some more, but Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.

Another McCain heckler, Adam Koresh, was interviewed by The American Prospect's Dana Goldstein.

Lacking McCain's own compelling personality and affecting presence, his convention speech would have been an utter disaster. His staff owed him a better text and a better stage.  Repeating the same old material that has been recycled so often this past week and over the past ten years does not create a convincing image of change. Or so I argue here.

ST. PAUL—Here's Sean Hannity, Fox newscaster and conservative hero, signing autographs on the floor of the convention as though he'd just won the nomination.

"Where in Alabama, darlin? What's your name darlin? Destiny? Your destiny is in politics."

"Where you from? I'm from Santa Barbara. High five."

Guards told the crowd to "back up. Back up. Ma'am don't push."

He was interviewed by a woman from KGMB Channel 9 Hawaii.

"If I have one word for Sarah Palin, it is 'authentic.' I love Hawaii. I can't wait to get back. Aloha," he said.

"Sean, you are a great American," said one man.

"No, you are a great American," said Hannity.  read more »

ST. PAUL—Eight years after he first ran for president, Senator John McCain of Arizona accepted his party’s nomination tonight with a speech that touched necessary bases, but was considerably less well received than the one his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, delivered the night before.

The speech was short on applause lines, and the early inconvenience of a protester in the rafters booing with a “McCain Votes Against Vets” sign in his hands didn’t help. Nor did the response of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” from the crowd, an attempt to drown out the heckling. McCain even seemed bothered when people applauded at his mention of their home states as he told the sad personal stories of victims of economic circumstances and a casualty of war.  read more »

Eight years ago, when he first sought the presidency, John McCain presented himself to the country much the way he is presenting himself now—as a battle-scarred American hero who had endured unspeakable physical and mental abuse for his country and who had emerged from it to pursue a life of courageous and principled public service.

Only back then, the Republican establishment, which just spent the last three nights in St. Paul feting him as living shrine to all that is righteous and noble about this country, didn't see him in such glowing terms. They called him a Democratic plant, challenged his heroism narrative, and rallied around—like their lives depended on it—a well-connected son of privilege who had shown exactly zero interest in serving his country in Vietnam, preferring the comparative light-lift of the Texas National Guard.  read more »

Last night Mike Huckabee thanked the “elite media” for unifying the Republican Party behind the McCain-Palin ticket.

“I wasn’t sure it could be done,” he said, drawing happy laughter from the crowd.

There were "boos" directed at the press stand last night, and a few more attacks before it was time to file. The media were sitting right there, in plain view, half of them in a section to the immediate right of the stage and all the rest on the left. Arranged by affiliation, they sat quietly in their assigned seats, typing on their laptops with their little hands. The New York Times reporters sat in one row, The Washington Post in another, and so forth; instead of individual desks, each of these was equipped with a long, black surface that resembled nothing so much as a trough.  read more »

In two separate speeches yesterday, Rudy Giuliani lauded the virtues of Sarah Palin’s small-town executive experience.

During an address to the New York delegation at the Marriott hotel in Minneapolis, he said “Sorry Senator [Obama], if the city is not big enough for you--they are probably that group of people who cling to religion and guns.”

And during his keynote address to introduce Sarah Palin at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul later that evening, he said “I’m sorry Barack Obama doesn’t feel her hometown is,” he paused, “cosmopolitan enough.”

But during his own run for president, the size of the city apparently mattered to Giuliani.  read more »

Yesterday, Republicans, seemingly at once, started attacking Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer.

"What in God's name is a community organizer?" asked George Pataki at a breakfast.

"What do they do?" Giuliani implored during his speech last night.

And Sarah Palin, in her enthusiastic address, said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

So community organizers are now organizing themselves.

John Raskin of the West Side of Manhattan, founder of Community Organizers of America, has already launched a Web site (Community Organizers Fight Back) demanding that Palin apologize.

Of course, they're not exactly the target demographic for Republicans, especially in New York.  read more »

Former Life Magazine managing editor Bill Shapiro sent the above cover of the magazine from September 2004 (left) to Jim Romenesko's blog as a nod to Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whom many have noted resembles Tina Fey.

Media Mob was just struck by how similar Ms. Fey's pose is to the most recent cover of Rolling Stone (right), which features the 30 Rock star along with Chris Rock and David Letterman.

Ad libbing as he warmed up the Republican convention crowd for their vice presidential nominee, Rudolph Giuliani quipped: “She got an 80 percent approval rating. You don’t get those kinds of numbers in New York!”

Of course, getting those numbers would be just as easy for a New York mayor or any other mayor or governor if they were able – like the charming hockey mom -- to send $1200 to every man, woman and child in their jurisdiction thanks to a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

But wait a second. Didn’t Rudy tell us that she had reduced taxes and cut government spending?

Actually, for all her boilerplate conservative rhetoric about the wonders of freedom and the evils of taxation and government, her career reflects a penchant for raising taxes and redistributing wealth.  read more »