Democrats are always so disappointing when they talk about the economy in speeches. Barack Obama's speech last week, while good, was long on pandernomics and short on the sort of basic insight into the rational inadequacies of economic indicators etc. etc. that could actually win over people's minds. Of course, as we noted when we read that giant Times Magazine story on Obamanomics, such things do not exactly lend themselves to pithy soundbites! Maybe it takes a true leader who has actually run a business to explain this stuff. Meet Mitt Romney! He gave a speech on Wednesday that no one watched. They missed out, because it was crazy. We have boiled it down to 42 soundbiting seconds of tried-and-true Republican rhetoric! Watch and be schooled, Austan Goolsbee!And just for Mr. Dismal here is the speech in its (admittedly more contradictory!) entirety.

Who's the Bigger Celebrity Now? The Hollywood Reporter sends word that John McCain's nomination acceptance speech broadcast from the GOP Convention was the most-watched acceptance address in history, surpassing Barack Obama's Aug. 28 speech by 500,000 viewers: 38.9 million to 38.4 million. The Republicans had more than wind in their sails, though; momentum from Sarah Palin's blockbuster appearance Wednesday night worked together with a lead-in from the NFL season opener, which mainlined more than 13 million viewers straight into McCain's convention-closing remarks on NBC. Fun fact: The speech outdrew George W. Bush's 2004 appearance by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The GOP is a hit! Still! [THR Feed]

• According to Nielsen, John McCain's acceptance speech at the RNC was watched by more people than Obama's speech last week. [TVWeek]

Did you miss Barack Obama's sit-down with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News's O'Reilly Factor last night because were watching the convention, or you had better things to do altogether? You didn't miss all that much. Video of the relatively gentle interview below.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck flew into Minneapolis today to host a luncheon for the terrifyingly taut-faced First Lady candidate Cindy McCain, and though The View's resident conservative has hardly hid her feelings on the presidential election, she's also remained relatively mum on the subject of Michelle Obama — until now. The two women met for the first time when Obama guest-hosted The View in June, and Hasselbeck's catty comments may ensure that the visit was Michelle's last. Says the New York Times:

John McCain and his running mate are both indeed political outsiders by character. Their record of going against the Republican establishment—McCain in Washington, DC and Sarah Palin in Alaska—is undeniable and the designation of "maverick" has been succesfully affixed by sheer brazen repetition at this week's party convention. The Obama campaign's response—even after Palin's unusual performance last night in St. Paul—has been merely to repeat that the supposedly independent-minded hero at the top of the ticket has in fact voted with George Bush 90% of the time. Wrong answer. McCain's campaign has admitted to the candidate's greatest vulnerability: it's precisely because he's such a maverick that voters shouldn't trust him with power. The Democrats should accept McCain as a maverick—a dangerous maverick—and turn that quality against him.

No plans for 9/11 day yet? Why not enjoy Barack Obama and John McCain at Columbia, one of those Elitist East Coast Ivy League Colleges of The Elite, where they will talk about civic duty for "ServiceNation, an organization that aims to increase public service participation." You know, "public service participation" like "community organizing," which, as we all know, is gay and elitist and not something seriously important like shooting wolves from airplanes. Anyway. We assume Obama will talk on behalf on public service and McCain will become confused and angry and speak against it. [CollegeOTR]

Google has kept its camera-mounted Priuses away from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's Chicago house, a tipster notes — even the entire neighborhood. Start your vast left-wing conspiracy theories! Did Obama pull strings with Google to maintain his family's privacy?Come on: Images of Obama's house are all over the Web. There are aerial views of the home on Google and Microsoft's online maps, as well as shots uploaded to Flickr. The small wealthy community or North Oaks, Minnesota was able to block Google's Street View cars from entering their neighborhood, but that's probably not what happened in Obama's. Despite what you've heard Hyde Park, Obama's academic enclave and home of the University of Chicago isn't quite entirely a South Chicago colony for the elite. At least, not according to the conservative Weekly Standard:

Yesterday we described some of our 2008 campaign fantasies and asked you to do the same. And many of you did! We got stories that ranged from the terrifyingly (and depressingly) believable to the so out-there that only someone who doesn't believe in science could, uh, believe them. Our favorites are after the jump. "Victory is near for Team Obama with a walloping 10-point after Sarah Palin calls John McCain 'McDreamy' during her nomination acceptance. As will.i.am and fergie take the stage at the Obamaluvuyou.com Ice Cream Social, chief consultant David Axelrod starts grinding on the wings with an un-named field office intern. An errant iphone snaps a few frames of the ill-fated hip-swerve-age and erupts on the web within the hour. Axelrod resigns, is replaced by Biden's consultant who quickly shoots a new ad featuring Obama-Biden smoking cigars in the back of a pick-up truck in Scranton, hoping to pick up values-voters turned off by the scandal. Chaos erupts as Sarah Palin's increasingly pregnant daughter and her boyfriend get married in Atlantic City, hoping to court the mid-Atlantic. The wedding is televised with Rev. Rick Warren officiating. McCain seems ripe for upset Obama when he keels over in his home voting poll in AZ. But the eastern states have already cast their votes and amid the confusion and seeming Obama victory, new voters flock to western pollbooths, admittedly, to "fuck shit up," making Sarah Palin the first president to turn the white house into an igloo for a liberal-baiting seal hunt and all moose bbq." —A. Moss "McCain wins election, thanks to Diebold. One week before McCain/Palin are about to take office, there is an attack on the US. America freaks. Two days later, McCain has a heart attack and dies. This means that Sarah Palin is about to take office at a time of war. But that can't happen. So instead, President Bush declares martial law, citing precedent of FDR and suspends the swearing in ceremony. Public breathes sigh of relief. Bush remains in office for another four years. RIP American democracy." —bertyapple "OMG, what if Obama picked as his VP a fella with hair plugs and blindingly white teeth who had been rejected by the American voting public in every national election in which he competed? And then, when the Democrats are all 'aww, man, I totes thought we had a chance this time,' what if McCain picks a crazy high-school-hockey-stud-humping, badger-trapping, wilderness lady with virtually no experience in anything except killin', fuckin' an' eatin' what you kill and/or fuck? Then the Democrats will be all, 'hahahaha, you picked white trash for VP.' And then, what if the huge, mushy center of the country is all, 'fuck all ya'll 'cause she's more like us than ya'll' and elects her and Jesus comes back?" —Nard "Hillary Clinton expresses disgust at the media-driven savaging of Sarah Palin and elects to act as a godmother for a child. After a period of intense negotiations, she declares her intention to run as an independent third-party candidate with Sarah Palin as her running mate, holding a quick convention in a non-denominational church. They decide to call it the Women's Party of America, representing centrist issues like deficit cuts, faith-based care, and medical reform. The race immediately dissolves around sex lines, and the cantankerous combination of Hillary and Sarah become media lightning rods as the likes of Carly Fiorina, Janet Reno, etc. join the cause. Historic women's-rights advocates endorse the platform, Hollywood doesn't know what to do, the media starts counting fat stacks of cash, and the entire race becomes distorted. We go to the polls on Nov. 5 with absolutely no clarity on how the sexual or racial fissures in our country will smash against the system." —ADismalScience And many more...

Us Weekly's (amusingly) gratuitously aggressive coverage of Sarah Palin has triggered a full-blown culture war! We have some of the vicious hate mail to prove it. (From "Juno.com" email addresses, to lend the whole saga a somewhat literary flourish!) That lady Ted Kennedy killed is invoked. So is some language too hot for Peggy Noonan! Some notable specimens and a message for Janice Min after the jump.

"Biden's comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin." [Guardian]

Remember how Sarah Palin wasn't going to attack Barack Obama tonight, according to a front-page Wall Street Journal article? So much for that. Palin railed (as would otherwise have been expected) against the Democratic presidential candidate as a book-writing pansy community organizer who would treat the job of the presidency as a chance for emotional growth, unlike Palin who did actual work leading a metropolis of 6,000 people, firing a chef from the governor's mansion and marrying an actual Eskimo. The applause and laughter from the convention floor sounded ginned up but the pundits approved (as we predicted); CNN was impressed and over on MSNBC Tom Brokaw, who hated liberal colleague Keith Olbermann's kind words at the Democratic convention, said Palin "could not be more commanding or engaging." Probably tomorrow or later tonight everyone will go back to talking about the bridge to nowhere, the love child, the trooper scandal and so forth, but for the moment Palin has successfully changed the subject, which is no small accomplishment. Click the video icon for two of her more effective Obama slams.

The Internet campaign strategist who made Howard Dean a frontrunner in 2004 says Democrats who write off Palin as a crazy Bible-thumping prom queen will be in for a surprise: John McCain's presumptive running mate will be the centerpiece of an attack on Barack Obama's record as a change agent. "She isn't Dan Quayle," Joe Trippi writes, "and besides, Dan Quayle was elected vice president." Most of Trippi's opinion piece for CBS rehashes stuff you know, so I've excerpted his talking points:

How does an unwed teen mother like Jamie Lynn Spears occupy her free time, now that the father of her baby is out touching tongues with predatory cougars? Why, by taking an interest in politics, of course! In the tradition of amateur pundit Lindsay Lohan and Swiftian theorist Albert Brooks, Jamie Lynn is the latest celeb to weigh in on the Sarah Palin Juneau scandal, but the starlet isn't content to confine her thoughts to a mere blog post. No, according to CelebTV, she's actually sending a gift to fellow teen mother Bristol Palin:

As if this Ben-Hur-esque election season hadn't already been crazy and exhausting enough, along came Sarah Palin on Friday, Republican John McCain's strangely selected (determined by tea leaves? gleaned from the position of the sun? through phrenology? by listening to whispers on the wind?) pick for running mate. She's the governor of a sprawling and empty Northern wilderness, she's a former beauty queen, and she's got a knocked-up outta wedlock daughter. It doesn't get any better, does it? Or, you know, maybe it could. We have some sorta-believable fantasy campaign stories in mind that would ensure that this batshit insane campaign season could finally be deemed complete and, perhaps, the Best Election Season Ever. What if little Bristol Palin (the pregnant daughter) fled to abortion-happy Canada, causing some sort of international incident? Or wouldn't it be terrific if Scottsdale Retirement Community Barbie Cindy McCain was found to be keeping servants as modern-day slaves, paid next to nothing and sleeping huddled and cold under the stairs? Ohh, and what if an old paper of Barack Obama's from Harvard was discovered, and its topic was an avid defense of Huey Newton? These are all sort of wonderfully plausible (in a silly way), and we're curious to see if you can top them (we're sure you can). Send us your ultimate fantasy campaign plotlines and we'll democratically publish our favorites.

• Barack Obama, who had a secret sit-down with Roger Ailes three months ago, will appear on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday night. [WaPo, The Caucus]

Is Us Weekly biased? That's what Fox News has been saying all morning in light of that "Sarah Palin, Governor of the Rhythm Method State" cover. But (in stark contrast to so many of the other things we hear on Fox News) we did not want to believe Us Weekly had a political agenda, mainly because, as with Fox News, we like to forget that whoever Us Weekly is targeting at is actually allowed to vote. But in the face of mounting evidence that the network might be on to something we gave the issue a thorough examination, and it pains me to report that Us Weekly is biased. So biased. You could be forgiven for wondering if the whole rag wasn't being bankrolled by a big gay homofag! (If not Hamas!!!) Here readers, the evidence:Its owner is Jann (pronounced Yann, like the first syllable of "Yanni") Wenner Jann Wenner not only gives money to Democrats, he has such a hard-on for some Democrats his other magazines have been known to run images of Democratic candidates with sporting actual hard-ons. (Fig. 1) Also, ever since he came out of the closet after in his mid forties, Jann Wenner has been a "known homosexual." Us has a known toxic love-hate relationship with probable neoconservative Angelina Jolie. Despite her estrangement from her Republican father*, Angelina Jolie has persistently refused to tow the typical Hollywood liberal line, telling interviewers she hasn't yet decided which candidate will get her vote in the November election and allowing that she is fond of John McCain. Savvy observers will note, however, that Angelina Jolie's conservative leanings, aired most publicly in her February Washington Post guest op-ed piece supporting the McCain-backed troop surge, actually predate the conception of Bristol Palin's unborn child. Surely Us has been "keeping tabs" on Jolie's political sympathies, and quite possibly applied pressure in the case she threatens to break from the socialist liberal Hollywood homodoxy. Do you think it's a coincidence that their harshest attack on Angelina's fitness for motherhood coincided with the theretofore deadliest form of exactly the sort of insurgent attack the troop surge was engineered to combat? ("Yes" is actually the right answer to that question, just to be clear!) (Fig. 2) Today's headlines speak for themselves. COVER STORY: Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed EXCLUSIVE: Cindy McCain's Half Sister: I'm Voting For Barack Obama EXCLUSIVE: Tim Gunn: "No Contest" — Michelle has better style than Cindy Father Of Bristol Palin's Baby: I Don't Want Kids But in fact, Us has been tacitly endorsing Democrat Barack Obama ever since it branded the Illinois senator Just Like Us in February. (No such pronouncement was made of John McCain, whose appearances in the magazine have thus far been limited primarily to his surprise show of support from The Hills star Heidi Montag, which the magazine immediately undermined by quoting Heidi's fiancee Spencer Pratt saying he "didn't think America cared" who Heidi supported.) Meanwhile, when Obama nakedly dodged a question posed by the magazine earlier this year, the magazine managed to "package" it (so to speak) in a way that seemed to paint the Democratic senator in a favorable light. IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, though, the media crit mob is probably right that going all "Kos" on Palin — and seriously, how exactly does a Troopergate cover line sit next to "Halle Berry First Baby Photos!"?? — smacks of hubris and recklessness, if not another outright attempt to distance itself from the heartland and paint itself as the trashy supermarket tabloid of privileged thin Blue Staters who just like killing brain cells. Either way, it's kind of tacky. But um, then, we are the ones who just spent the last hour assessing the policy agenda of Us Weekly.

Liberal peacenik Barack Obama's top secret sit-down meeting with Fox News ahead of the election was revealed in Vanity Fair this week by Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch's chosen biographer. So Fox News overlord Roger Ailes decided to go on the record today about all the various machinations at the shadowy back room confab. Did Ailes really have a "cordial" conversation with Obama, as he claims? Or was it actually a "frank discussion," as Obama's people claim? Read the tea leaves before Barack appears on Bill O'Reilly's show tomorrow: The time: three months ago. The place: some hotel room. The players: Obama, his advisers, Ailes, and Rupert Murdoch. Obama's angle: You people at Fox News aren't being fair:

Palin Fever: Celebrities the world over are fired up about potential VP Sarah Palin and eager to weigh in with the fruits of their opposition research. The latest multi-hyphenate to opine is Albert Brooks, writing on the Huffington Post under the barely disguised pseudonym "A. Brooks." "Do we want a president who cannot communicate to their own child that possibly having a baby a year after you get your driver's license is not the smartest thing to do?" asks Brooks. "Is this the new way for women to break the glass ceiling? To have their daughters throw their babies at it?" Perhaps not, but it would sure make for a hilarious summer tentpole at 20th Century Fox! [HuffPo]

While all of Hollywood waits with bated breath to hear the reaction to VP pick Sarah Palin from the only actress who matters — her doppleganger, Tina Fey — headline-friendly Lindsay Lohan has decided to wade into the political waters, spouting off her own, unsolicited thoughts on the matter from her Myspace celebrity blog. Now that Palin has revealed that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant, she's become fair game for the Us Weekly set (indeed, she's snagged that cover as well as the front panel of OK!) — and who knows that territory better than Lohan?