Porchside Musings.

  Now the end of August, thankfully both political parties have now had their conventions, a pair of far more mind-numbing events than usual this year. Normally one at least has the actual nomination vote to watch with those over-inflated declarations of the grandeur of one's state before a delegate submits the vote count from their state to be tallied. What made those micro-speeches fun were two things.... First he/she was in all likelihood suffering from the mother of all hang-overs after a week-long binge of cheap booze and partying hardy away from work and family. Which made his/her staid deliver to the cameras one heck of an acting job. Second, the odd little bits of trivia they were boasting about were for the most part actually true. Not that anyone else cares that much about Illinois, the folks who live there consider these factoids very important. What was to be avoided were the headliner addresses. Delivered by either a war-horse or sometimes an up-and-comer, these often