DNC: Barack Obama and Joe Biden speeches

Just in case you missed them, here are the complete speeches of Barack Obama and Joe Biden on Thursday night.

 

 

Jehmu Greene: Right-wingers behind Mitt Romney, not his wife

Political commentator Jehmu Greene, a liberal Fox News contributor, drew surprised murmurs on Thursday morning when she appeared to take a shot at Mitt Romney's wife Ann during a speech to the Democratic women's caucus.

"Behind every man - what is it that they say? - there's a good strong woman. A great woman," Greene said. She paused for effect, then said: "Let's talk about what's behind Mitt Romney."

Disapproving "oohs." Surprised murmurs. She continued:

"This man - he's a good man, like President Clinton said last night, he's a good family man, he cares. But behind him, he has made it clear who sets his agenda. When they attacked Sandra (Fluke), he made it clear who sets his agenda. He didn't say 'not in my party.' When they decided they wanted to redefine rape, where was his voice? He didn't say 'not in my party.' Behind every good man is a great woman, behind Romney are a bunch of great cons right-wing ideologues who want to take us back not to 1950 - 1910."

Moderate applause. Then Greene appeared to realize she may have overreached. She concluded:

"And I'm sure Ann Romney is a great woman behind him, but we have to be clear about who is pullin' his strings, who is settin' his agenda. And his agenda is not our agenda."

Ann Romney gave a well-received speech about her husband at the Republican convention last week. Many women in the audience on Thursday did not view Greene's riff as an attack on her.

"I think what she was really saying was, 'Who are the people that are influencing Romney?'" said New Jersey's Carol Watchler.

"Maybe it's not that woman who has good family values and a beautiful background and what she brings to her family, but that he's being packaged - that people are feeding him the lines. I think that's what she was saying: behind him, there's a whole mega-money-machine that is trying to skew America."

All hail Bubba, king of ad-libbing

(Mladen ANTONOVGettyImages)

Bill Clinton ad-libbed a significant amount of his speech, over 2,000 words of it.

"Numerous times during Clinton’s peroration, which eventually drew to a close just before eleven-thirty, the machine appeared to have conked out, the same words frozen on the screen," said the New Yorker. "It hadn’t backed up; it had simply stopped because the former President had departed from this prepared remarks, which were pretty long to begin with, and ad-libbed to his heart’s content"

Some say the improvisation helped his speech, here are some examples:

The text: "I believe that with all my heart."

The speech: "Whether you believe it or not, I just want you to know, with all my heart, that I believe it. I believe it. Let me tell you why I believe it."

Text: "It gets worse."

Speech: "Folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. And you won't be laughing when I finish with this."

He ad-libbed personal anecdotes:

   

So this is personal to me. We moved millions of people off welfare. It was one of thereasons that in the eight years I was president, we had a hundred times as many people move out of poverty into the middle class than happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. It’s a big deal.

And ad-libbed slogans on the fly:

    It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test.

DNC: Bill Clinton's speech

In case you couldn't stay awake, here is Bill Clinton's entire speech to the Democratic National Convention last night:

 

The Star's Daniiel Dale captured the reaction of five Democrats after Clinton's speech here

We have other speeches from last night here

Sandra Fluke: Why woman Rush Limbaugh called 'prostitute' is speaking at DNC

(Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Months ago, Sandra Fluke made headlines when Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" and "prostitute."

"What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex," he said.

At the time, Fluke was testifying on the limited contraceptive coverage in Georgetown's University's insurance plan.

(Limbaugh later apologized, saying he "chose the wrong words.")

Since the Limbaugh incident, she's become a prominent women's activist taking on male personalities in media today. Here she talks about life post-Limbaugh.

Recently, Bill O'Reilly suggested that condoms will fall from the convention roof on her.

Fluke had a response ready. “I think it’s clearly offensive to see a bunch of guys sitting around laughing about dropping condoms on a woman,” Fluke said on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Monday. “Obviously, that’s offensive. But I try to just not pay attention to it, look past it and focus on the policies that I care about.”

Tonight, she is speaking at the DNC. The feminist superstar is key to the Obama campaign, because she reminds people of Republican's so-called "war on women" and is an advocate for birth control, a pillar of Obamacare.

YouTube blocks DNC videos for copyright infringement

People wanting to watch Michelle Obama's speech last night couldn't do so through BarackObama.com or YouTube because it was flagged by copyright claims.

Viewers who tried to see the videos were given this message:

"The most likely culprit is YouTube’s pre-emptive content filters, which allow large media companies to upload content they claim to own and automatically block videos that an algorithm decides matches their own," says Wired.

It's not the first time a video has been blocked. Last weekend, a similar algorithim blocked the livestream of the Hugo since fiction award ceremony and an official NASA recording of a Mars landing was blocked by a "rogue DMCA complaint."

The issue has since been resolved. Michelle Obama's full speech can be watched on YouTube here.

Weather forces Obama's speech to move indoors

Democratic officials are moving President Barack Obama's convention speech Thursday indoors because of the possibility of severe weather.

Obama had planned to accept his party's nomination in an outdoor football stadium before a crowd of up to 74,000 people. But Obama officials said forecasters have predicted severe thunderstorms between 9-10 p.m., raising concerns about the safety of supporters, volunteers, staff members and law enforcement.

Officials said Thursday's entire program would be moved indoors, including Vice-President Joe Biden's speech.

The events will be held at the Time Warner Cable Arena, the site of the first two days of the convention. The move will significantly reduce the number of people Obama will speak to in person.

--The Associated Press

DNC speeches: Michelle Obama's and Julian Castro's

Just in case you missed them, here are the complete speeches by Michelle Obama and Julian Castro:

 

Julian Castro:

 

Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech, Mitt Romney's closing speech

Many at the Republican National Convention loved Clint Eastwood's speech. But for others,  the 82-year-old Oscar-winner's conversation with a chair was "kinda odd," writes the Star's Daniel Dale. Judge for yourself:

 

Finally, Mitt Romney took the stage for a speech in which he tried to increase his 'likeability' with mixed results, writes the Star's Mitch Potter:

 

Paul Ryan's speech doesn't satisfy fact-checkers

While shooting bullets into President Barack Obama's track record during his keynote speech Wednesday night, it seems Wisconsin congressman and vice-presidential nominee failed to plug a few factual holes of his own.

NPR breaks down what the fact-checkers had to say about the speech. Even Fox News' Sally Kohn took a hard stance on Ryan's fibbing.

In one example, PolitiFact nails Ryan for fudging the story of a General Motors auto plant that closed down in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. This is what Ryan said Wednesday, referring to a 2008 campaign address Obama made in Wisconsin:

"My home state voted for President Obama," he said. "When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."

As it turns out, the GM plant closed before Obama took office.