half-way through the speech.  The green, and then blue backgrounds were excessively bright and distracting which made the visuals disgustingly amateur. The screen behind him, and the images may have seemed like a good idea, and been appealing for those inside the hall, but on the television, they were horrible.

The content was a typical republican speech.  Accuse the Dems of higher taxes, bench legislation, surrender, and government regulation... yada yada yada.  we hear it every four years.  What made it even more disturbing is we heard no solutions for the problems Americans face.  The option for school vouchers and "standing up to family values"—LOL—are not going to fix the economy.  Neither is continuing to give tax breaks to large corporations without regulating that to receive those breaks they must keep jobs here in the US.  Neither candidate on the Republican ticket have any experience in economics and seemingly no plan.  While the Dem ticket may lack executive experience, at least Obama has formulated an economic relief plan with a bipartisan group of advisors, and presented it to the public during his speech.

Furthermore, the speech tried to avoid the discussion of Iraq, and they attempted to link Iraq and 9/11 once again in that horrible underhanded video shown earlier that night.  They know they have little to stand on in Iraq, also they avoided it.  McCain talked of not losing Iraq, but said nothing about how to win.  Does he even have a plan there?  Just to keep at an occupation, rather than to look at the war on terror objectively and concentrate our forces on what needs to be the main battle in the War on Terrorism—Afghanistan?

He criticized the Dems plan on healthcare, by trying to fear the people into believing that a bureaucrat will be standing in the way of a person and their doctor, which is a disturbingly slanted view of the Obama plan.  When in actuality the rich republicans that have healthcare and those that feel that their own healthcare is adequate will not be affected in the slightest by Obama’s plan.  Only those without healthcare—like me—will have the ability to get comprehensive coverage.  Moreover, McCain’s speech never laid out his plan for healthcare.  He just said that with his plan there would be no bureaucrats in the way.

I think the speech was a disaster in that it only addressed the issues of the far right, which McCain is still trying to solidify, while ignoring the bread and butter concerns of the average American.  If he is still trying to solidify his party at this juncture and not reaching out to independents and wavering Dems, then his campaign is in far more trouble than I could have imagined.   Overall, worst convention speech I have ever seen.