CONVENTION NIGHT TWO.

Chris Cox of the NRA is, unlike his beef-faced senior officer Wayne LaPierre, a bland doughball, head almost perfectly round and face almost uninterrupted by features. But he can yap the party line as well as anyone. He tells us "a Hillary Clinton Supreme Court means your raht to own a fahr-arm is goawn!" Also, Hitlery has Secret Service, which is hypocritical for someone who doesn't want all America to be Westworld. The worst and most typical thing is his reference to the NRA as "the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America” — which I guess is their way of telling white people that they're not racist, but actually advocates for arming all and even black people, under the right circumstances. Ha. Look up Huey P. Newton Gun Club on Google; look at the older articles by National Review gun nut Charles C. W. Cooke, when he was pimping that club as a sign of how Second Amendment activism and wingnuttery was for all the races:

In August, as the outrage over the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., dominated the news, an African-American group calling itself the Huey P. Newton Gun Club took to the streets of Dallas, rifles in hand, to protest. Local businesses were supportive, and the city’s police chief confirmed in a statement that his department “supports the constitutional rights of all.” On Twitter, the hashtag #blackopencarry prompted a warm response from conservatives.

Then look at wingnut stories about that Club after the recent Baton Rouge shooting, e.g. this one from Breitbart News: "EXCLUSIVE – MILITANT BLACK GUN CLUB FOUNDER ON BATON ROUGE COP KILLINGS: ‘NATURAL LAW TO TAKE UP AN ARMED APPROACH’..."

According to reports, Micah X. Johnson, who carried out a deadly shooting against police officers two Friday’s ago, “liked” the Huey P. Newton Gun Club on Facebook... 

The past two weeks, armed members of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club have been seen at demonstrations in Dallas and Baton Rouge...

Haven't heard from Charlie Cooke about the Gun Club since then. I bet he's real disappointed that his favored black avatar of Guns Everywhere hasn't passed muster, and hopes he can find another group of black gun nuts that his cracker buddies can endorse, some of these days -- but no need to rush into that until after the election.

UPDATE. Ugh, who doesn’t hate Paul Ryan — that fake-suffering, fake-hopeful face, that lacquered hair, that slightly-too-large jacket meant to make him look younger and slimmer. “I found some other things to keep me busy,” he says fake-humbly about the 2012 election, and laughs at stupid Obama and Biden who’ll be cooling their heels in some big-gummint hellhole while he’s on the dais with Donald Trump

“Have we had our arguments this year?” he says, and there’s a rueful hoot from the crowd. But those are “signs of life,” Ryan says, rather than the garbage fires they appear to everyone else. The “Democratic Part Establishment,” by contrast, offers “a third Obama term offered by another Clinton.”

Ryan also throws in “politically correct” — drink! “Four more years of it?” he says, referring to national leadership without racial slurs. The crowd is agin it! Also, the libtards “look down” on them, etc. “Wages never seem to go up… When it comes to ideas, the advantage goes to us.” Heh, check the 2012 wave of “reformi-cons,” and the Trump-friendly “Cure for Trumpism” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, and you’ll see “ideas” are something the wonks play with in the back room while the big boys play Ooga Booga and Conan The Republican.

Ryan’s a terrible attack dog, but the 327 people on the convention floor give him a lot of support, especially when he runs sentences together at the end to signal the climax. (He drops “America” from the “God Bless America,” one would like to think out of shame.) So this convention is not a total departure from tradition.

UPDATE 2.  Fuck, ABC’s running that golf chick and not letting me listen to Renfield — I mean Chris Christie! Christie is mad because “we’ve seen the Justice Department refuse to prosecute her… as a former federal prosecutor” — yeah, once upon a time people trusted him with that job! Well, it was Jersey — “I welcome the opportunity to hold Hillary Rodham Clinton accountable…” The crowd chants “Lock her up!” Christie, used to being humiliated by the boss, welcomes this turnaround.

Anyway, as Form Fed Pros, he promises, “I’m gonna present the case now against Hillary Rodham Clinton!” He means for this to be a mock trial, like Night of January 16th, but his argument is more like Libya is a mess, so she’s guilty right? Boko Haram, so she’s guilty, right?  And the crowd screams Guilty! If he asked them to scream Kill the bitch, or The gun is good, the penis is evil, they'd do that too. He even knocks Clinton for sucking up to Putin! Yeah, in defense of Putin's buddy Donald Trump! (In his gilt tower, Trump is laughing his ass off and wondering what he'll do to shame Christie when he gets back -- maybe make him eat a cowflop.)

I can't imagine that, each time the goons chant "lock her up," I'm the only one who thinks that, no matter how debased we've learned Christie to be, this is beneath contempt.

UPDATE 3. There's no need to repeat anything the attractive and poised Tiffany Trump is saying. What's maybe important is: Why is this important? I mean, everyone knows that every single one of the 27 family members whom Trump is having speak at the convention is, in the broader scheme of things, a waste of protoplasm, wealth-holders burning up capital, the effluvia of Trump's ambition. Nothing any of them has said in any venue has ever been noteworthy except as something to attach to a boldface name in a gossip column, or believable even when it's about the patriarch. (The guy at ABC News says he heard some "cute anecdotes" about Donald Trump. Please forward them.)

UPDATE 4. That was a nice "Star-Spangled Banner."

UPDATE 5. Forgive me, PBS just showed this afternoon's Trump convention manipulations and I thought for a second we had started all over again. In the tape, Reince Priebus is explaining to an uninterested and/or cowed audience that none of the challenges to Trump's candidacy were ever going to get anywhere, and brings in some poor, terrified woman to read some rules about the times, dates, and business of the Convention they're right in the middle of. Priebus is now speaking Parliamentarian super-fast like a tobacco auctioneer, which must look like shit to any normal people listening in -- and I'm sure none were. Wow -- and these are the Constitutionalists?

The really sad (Sad!) thing was, I missed Donald J. Trump Jr.'s speech, which I'm told was exactly what you would expect.

UPDATE 6. Crazy motherfucker Ben Carson is on, raving about the “politically elite” — yes, that's "politically elite," not "political elite"; I guess his brain sagged at the nexus of “politically correct” and “ruling elite,"  caved in on itself and smushed together. He's descrying “the narrative that’s being advanced by some in our own party — that a Hillary Clinton Administration wouldn’t be so bad…” The crowd snarls. “They’re not using their God-given brain,” assures Carson. Because, he warns, Clinton’s Presidency would be something America “may never recover from.” At first I thought he meant she’d make herself dictator for life — he’s capable of that sort of hyperbole  — but no, he meant she’d appoint judges who would have a “deleterious effect for years to come,” which to hear him tell it would be just as bad.

Then he gets into Saul Alinsky — and the crowd boos! They know about Alinsky, unlike most normal Americans, including the Democrats who are allegedly in his thrall. “Let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky," says Carson. "In the dedication page of his book he acknowledges Lucifer…” And guess what — Carson doesn’t get the joke! He goes into a weird tirade about how God is on all our money, yet Alinsky and the Democrats want to worship Satan — which is like saying, “Ellen Burstyn was in The Exorcist, so if you ever go see Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore you’re trying to take God out of our lives!”

Then Carson talks about Thomas Jefferson and the crowd knows immediately without any prompting because he is crazy Ben Carson that this is Tree of Liberty/Blood of Homosexuals time and they go screaming nuts! “He knew," howls Carson, "that we the people would recognize what was going on, and we would rise up…” REBEL YELLS! Perhaps Carson wanted to explain further, but they’ve already shoved him off stage as GE Smith and his Band of Mercenaries plays Shining Star and the old folks shake their butts and a Code Pink demonstrator carrying an anti-racism banner is grabbed and dragged out of the hall.