Live Blogging John McCain Speech

10:12 The documentary is as bad as the one Obama aired.

10:13 Herecomes the McCain.

10:17 Reading off the teleprompter.

10:18 A shoutout to the Bushies. That should play well with America.

10:20 Oh man. This is going as bad as I thought. He will go into scary smile when he attacks Obama on change.

10:21 I'm glad McCain with a green screen backdrop.

10:23 So far, making taking the high road against Obama. Smart move.

10:24 McCain: Making this government start working for you again.

Is McCain implying Republican leadership failed?

10:25: Delegates are drowning out McCain every time he attempts to talk about the economy. Amazing. It's like their putting their fingers in their ears so they can't hear bad news.

10:28 McCain sticking up for Palin. Much of the convention has been speakers defending their nonvetted VP candidate.

10:29 I missed Code Pink getting into the building.

McCain goes on about how Palin and him never break promises.

"Sometimes it's meant as a compliment sometimes not."

Sometimes I feel like a nut. Sometimes I don't.

10:34 McCain mentions farmers and the crowd dies.

10:36 Obama's is in the pocket of big oil. I have written posts about how much money energy compnies have given McCain.

"We're all Americans." Glad the Maverick cleared that up.

10:46 Chants of "drill baby, drill."

10:55 You should elect McCain because he has scares and Obama doesn't. That certainly is an interesting argument.

11:00 McCain recounts POW story. It's amazing story, but the Vietnam narrative will work for McCain as well as it did for Kerry. It's in the abstract. Most people didn't experience the horrors of Vietnam. Thankfully.

11:02 Shot at Obama helped get the crowd back into the speech. McCain was droning and losing the crowd.

End of speech.

This was a failure that is unlikely to convert many on the fence. People are going to judge McCain's speech against Obama's. That isn't fair, but neither is politics. McCain gave lip service to the environment and working class issues. The convention audience were hostile to that message. Republicans can be their worst enemies when they reveal their true feelings. Feeling was what McCain lacked. One never got the sense he was passionate about these two issues.

McCain's Iraq stance has become confused. He avoids talking about the timetable that Obama seeked and the Bush administration signed off on. Iraq is a political loser and McCain fails to address how Al-Qauda is growing. Iraq was not a haven for Al-Qaeda before the war. The war has given Osama bin Laden more recruits and easier ability to target American troops.