WATCHING THE AFTERTALK, I think that Jeff Greenfield has it right — Arnold’s speech evoked optimism, and enthusiasm for America and for the common man, in a way that — once — was associated with liberalism but that has now become a hallmark of the Republicans.

UPDATE: Schwarzenegger transcript, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon didn’t like any of it, even Arnold, but he reports that Pat Buchanan, who was standing next to him, really didn’t like Arnold.

Roger’s commenters seem to feel differently, though. My sense is that the Democratic convention speeches played better in the hall than on TV, and that these speeches are playing better on TV than in the hall.

LAURA BUSH: Competent, but no Arnold. Stem cell research must be polling strongly.

UPDATE: ABC’s insta-analysis says she played well with women. Well, I’m not a woman.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But Halley Suitt is, and she loved Laura’s speech:

I thought Laura Bush was excellent tonight. She delivered a great speech, hitting just the right note, with her remarkable dignity and integrity which gives her an awesome quiet power.

I suspect she touched a nerve in many people, but especially in mothers. She dared to say our children will be safe again and her husband will make that happen.

If it had this much impact on Halley, of all deeply-Bush-disliking people, then it obviously delivered a punch that those of us with Y chromosomes can’t fully appreciate.

JENNA AND BARBARA: Arnold’s a tough guy to follow. But they didn’t follow him very well. Okay, the hamster joke wasn’t bad.

UPDATE: Well, if this was the plan, I guess it worked.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Noggle: “They didn’t do too well, but they’re just 22. What was I doing at 22? Stocking the dairy section at a grocery store. However, I was doing open mikes, so I would have had better timing.”

But Ann Althouse liked them: “They are fun and self-effacing.” Maroonblog agrees: “Not so bad.”

Then there’s this mixed review: “It felt like bad MTV VMA filler, but I totally want to ask them both out.” On the other hand, some female viewers were less impressed: “George P. Bush does have a beautiful smile. The word “yum” does come to mind. The twins didn’t impress me much – tried to be too cute, and it didn’t fly.” Hmm. The Bush clan — something for everyone!

Er, except for James Lileks. But Gerard van der Leun gets the last word: “Not every moment can be a perfect gem, folks.”

GREAT ARNOLD LINE: “I was a little boy — I was not an action hero yet.”

UPDATE: Here’s a recent immigrant who likes Arnold’s speech. “I didn’t think anyone could match Rudy’s performance last night, but Arnold is doing it.”

I thought it was excellent, too.

POWERLINE IS ON A ROLL: Now with a photo of the Al Franken shoving match!

THE KERRY CAMPAIGN MUST BE HOPING that the Republican Convention will distract people from things like this. And this. It might.

UPDATE: Douglas Brinkley probably has similar hopes.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE has thoughts on Bush’s “ownership society.”

LEWIS LAPHAM WAS LOST IN TIME: Jeff Goldstein reports that Salon is Lost in Space.

I like Lost in Space!

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more extensive thoughts on the Salon piece.

ACE OF SPADES OFFERS sitemeter advice for bloggers.

ANN ALTHOUSE, who is on a roll, is liveblogging the Republican convention. “My TiVo has caught up with the live feed and I can’t fast forward. Aaaah!”

UPDATE: Don’t miss these late-breaking comments from Virginia Postrel. And Ambra offers a scathing review.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here from Ed Morrissey.

JOHN THUNE HAS CLOSED THE GAP with Tom Daschle.

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS ENDORSES GEORGE W. BUSH: Powerline has posted an exclusive video interview. Excerpt: “I know what John Kerry’s against, but I’m having a little trouble figuring out what he’s for.” Franks also responds to criticism that Bush lacked a plan to “win the peace.”

UPDATE: Transcript here — covering more than just what’s in the video.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here’s audio. And there’s more here, from Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics.

TURMOIL IN THE KERRY CAMPAIGN: Mickey Kaus is asking the right questions.

Kerry campaign spin: “The new additions strengthen an already impressive campaign team!”

The guy they need is Joe Trippi. Er, well, really he’s the guy they needed a month ago. . . .

UPDATE: Tom Bevan has a Kerry turmoil roundup.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Contrary to the Kerry press release, Mel Levine isn’t new. His appointment was announced two weeks ago.

MORE: Reader Heidi Gunther emails:

Kerry is having Serious problems, almost deadly. The media is giving him an extra minute in the neutral corner to catch his breath because they have so much invested in him. The news guys want him to win so badly that they will sacrifice their reputations to get what they want.

Watch for mass retirements in the media when Bush wins.

Hmm. Interesting. Read this, too. And there’s this, from N.Z. Bear:

Let’s be serious: can anyone actually imagine Kerry, or his senior advisors, suddenly interrupting a staff meeting to declare: “We’re screwed! Get Joe Lockhart on the horn — he’s the only one who can save our asses!” . . .

The even worse news for Kerry is that despite the exceptional job his campaign has been doing at executing political hari-kari, the Bush team hasn’t even started to attack him yet. . . . Kerry’s recent Swift-Vet-driven collapse is the political equivalent of a boxer being clocked by a random spectator on his way to the ring.

Ouch. Stephen Green has further thoughts.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: BoiFromTroy reports that CNN is refusing to air the Log Cabin Republicans’ ad, calling it too controversial.

You can see the ad here. What do you think?

UPDATE: John Kalb thinks the ad is unfair to Jerry Falwell.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Demmons observes: “Remember, Falwell’s the guy who said gays and feminists were to blame for 9-11.”

Good point.

MORE VIDEOBLOGGING from Powerline.

THE BELMONT CLUB has harsh commentary on France’s response to the hostage-taking, which appears to consist of wandering around the Middle East looking for someone to surrender to:

This suggests that the French diplomats are attempting to link the release of the French hostages to changes in the method and manner in which the Iraqi elections will be held. The mere fact that France is negotiating implictly means there will be a quid for the quo. After all, in 2003, European hostages held by Al Qaeda affiliate Algerian Islamic militant Group for Preaching and Combat were released in exchange for $6M dollars, according to Deutsche Welle. There were even demands from German politicians to force the ex-hostages to reimburse the state for the payout. . . .

Paying tribute is all part of the nuanced foreign policy of former great states. But whether the French ante up with secret political concessions or payouts, the result will be the same. More Americans and Iraqis will die as the price of French appeasement. Yet the French will not escape the carnivorous attentions of the terrorists in the end. Promises by blackguards are made to be broken.

Indeed. They’d be better off taking Iyad Allawi’s advice.

THIS has got to be an embarrassment.

JAMES LILEKS offers convention thoughts and some media criticism. Excerpt: “Read the papers, and you might wonder why he’s quoting Cheney. Read the blogs, and you know exactly why.”

WELL, THIS IS CHEERFUL:

U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating a series of thefts of official vehicles and uniforms, including an Air Canada uniform, amid fears al-Qaeda operatives could be acquiring such items for a terrorist attack.

Reports about stolen government and company identity cards, trucks and uniforms have been coming in from across the United States in recent months, leading to warnings the incidents might be related to a terrorist plot.

I’ve been quite critical of homeland security, but in truth we’ve gone nearly three years without a major attack on U.S. soil — which few of us, I think, would have dared hope for in September of 2001. But that’s no reason to relax now, as stories like this illustrate.

ERROR-CORRECTION UPDATE: Well, maybe. A while back I ran this post, noting that the Los Angeles Times hadn’t corrected a false statement to the effect that none of the people in the Swiftboat Vets ads had served on Kerry’s boat. (The LAT has since corrected the error.) I also noted that The New Republic had made the same mistake.

Reader Jonathan Miller, however, says that TNR was only referring to the first of the Swiftboat ads. That’s not entirely clear from the language, but to the extent it’s true, then the TNR statement was (I think) literally correct — though of course, it loses a lot of force once you realize that the statement wasn’t true of the ad campaign as a whole, and that in fact an ad featuring Steve Gardner, who served with Kerry longer than anyone else, appeared the same day the TNR piece was published.

Nonetheless, since we here in the blogosphere strive to outperform the mainstream media on stuff like this, I’ll note the point, and I should have been more clear about the difference between the Los Angeles Times’ point (which was about the group) and the TNR point, which was about the ads. Given that, as best I can tell, TNR never corrected its egregious Suriname error, this seems on the generous side. But why not be generous? It’s only pixels, and nobody thinks less of you for correcting an error, or even a statement that might have created a misapprehension.

UPDATE: Jason Zengerle emails that TNR has, in fact, corrected the Suriname error, with a correction appended at the end. But the free subscription that they sent me doesn’t work any more, and so I can’t see it. I did check the article for several days after I posted on it originally, though, and saw no correciton then.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ah, here’s the correction:

Correction: This article originally stated that Islam was the majority faith in Suriname. In fact, Suriname is only about 20 percent Muslim, and has populations of Roman Catholics, Hindus, and protestants of roughly this same size. We regret the error.

I don’t know when it went up, but it’s nicely done.

LEWIS LAPHAM’S TIME TRAVELS: Nick Schulz writes that it’s the tip of the iceberg:

That’s right, Lapham wrote about the GOP convention speeches before anyone even stepped to the podium. Lapham has apologized for what he’s calling a “rhetorical invention,” use of “poetic license,” and a “mistake.”

But the only “mistake” Lapham made is in revealing for all to see what has long been known by anyone who pays attention to the news: the major media routinely bring to their coverage of significant political events a predetermined storyline — you might want to call it a “Lapham”. Facts that undermine the storyline are ignored or explained away as aberrations to The Truth. For the editor of Harper’s and other establishment press figures, it really makes no difference to them what will be said at Madison Square Garden because the Laphams are already set, loaded in the scribblers’ word processors and television anchor tele-prompters and ready to go.

We at TCS have seen Laphams at work at a number of gatherings we’ve covered over the years.

A “Lapham.” I like that. And TCS is on the lookout for more Laphams, and asks you to email them with any examples you happen to run across.

LAZINESS, BIAS, AND INEPTITUDE: My TechCentralStation column looks at how these characteristics have combined to produce a media meltdown this election year.

SOMETIMES, I ALMOST FEEL SORRY for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

JULIAN SANCHEZ spots something that seems right:

I spot the one Ben Sherman in a solidly Brooks Brothers room (actually Benetton, I discover, but Benetton trying to look like Ben Sherman) and try to suss out how gay Republicans are feeling in light of the Federal Marriage Amendment push. And his answer’s a pretty good one: That the gay rights issue is largely a generational one, and that it’ll be won inside of 10 or 15 years as a result of demographic changes regardless of which party’s in power.

That’s how it looks to me.

I DIDN’T WATCH the Convention programming tonight, but Ann Althouse did. (More — devastatingly harsh — thoughts here.)

UPDATE: Roger Simon has a pithy summation: “John Kerry should take speech-making lessons from John McCain. And if McCain is busy, he should try Giuliani.”