JIM LINDGREN ON PALIN’S SPEECH SO FAR: “After a middling start of her speech, Sarah Palin hit her stride. Palin’s speech so far is MILES better than Biden’s — and will probably be better than McCain’s.” I agree; her biggest problem is keeping the applause from stepping on her lines.

UPDATE: She’s effectively using her history and family to note that while Obama and Biden talk about helping ordinary Americans, she’s actually got a lot of experience on the subject, while their knowledge is more, um, theoretical.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you.”

MORE: Reader Daniel Hollenbaugh emails: “Glenn – As a Republican, I almost hate to say it, but after seeing Sarah speak, I can’t wait for Saturday Night Live to return. Tina Fey will make a hilarious Sarah Palin.”

FINALLY: A little slow at the beginning, but a very strong speech, well-delivered. It’s as if she’s done this speechmaking thing before. The crowd is certainly behind her, and the fiance is on the stage with the whole family — and with John McCain. It’s like they’re taunting the press and the Democrats to go on with the baby-talk. As I’ve said, I don’t think they believe this hurts them.

Plus, politicians have speechwriters? Why wasn’t I told?

Orin Kerr: “I thought Palin was a natural tonight: She was as good as Obama can be, and I think that’s pretty damn good.”

And, from the comments: “Too bad it’s not a Palin-McCain ticket.”

A reader emails: “New Sarah Palin Topic: Is Air Force One safe from E-bay?”

Lorie Byrd: “Obama’s response — the speech was written by George Bush’s speech writer. Wow. How lame is that?”

The New Republic: Focus Group: Palin Was (Alarmingly) Strong. Some people are acting alarmed.

If you didn’t see it, judge for yourself — John Stephenson has the video.

Beldar is swooning.

And some thoughts from Roger Simon, who was there.

Dale Carpenter: “On the substance of it, I was relieved the speech was free of red-meat social issues. It was about economics, reform, cutting taxes and spending, and national security. In other words, it focused on the kinds of things that made McCain an attractive candidate beyond the social-conservative base of the party. After all the caricaturing of Palin in the past few days as some kind of religious extremist, the silence on these issues was noteworthy. . . . For someone who’s closer to McCain than to Obama on matters of economic and foreign policy, the main concerns about Palin are whether she has the knowledge, depth, experience, and general preparedness to be president. If you didn’t have these concerns before tonight, of course, the speech was great. If you did, like me, the well-executed and poised delivery of prepared remarks does nothing to allay them.” You can’t allay that stuff with a speech — giving speeches tells you some things, like how well somebody performs under pressure — but not everything.

RUDY WAS FUNNY; I thought his delivery was a bit overdone in places but it went over well with the crowd.

UPDATE: I see Jim Lindgren thought the same thing.

DAN RIEHL IS EXPERIENCING deja vu all over again.

OBAMA AND MCCAIN will appear together at Columbia University next week.

FRED THOMPSON: What are we going to do when Michael Moore leaves the scene? Cry.

MORE TARGETED CANCER TREATMENT using nanotechnology.

DAVE WEIGEL REPORTS from the Ron Paul rally.

ANN ALTHOUSE will be liveblogging the Palin speech tonight. I’m going to try to watch it; I’m pretty beat after less than four hours sleep, but I plan to stay up.

UPDATE: Some excerpts from tonight’s speech: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: The excerpts release just showed up in my email. Click “read more” to see it.

MORE: Josh Trevino has comments.

CRAIG TURK IS blogging from the RNC. (Via Volokh).

CAR LUST: Remembering the Frazer Manhattan.

MICKEY KAUS: “Is Bob Shrum working for McCain too? I just went back and watched the video of the McCain/Palin rollout in Dayton, Ohio. I hadn’t realized that McCain’s introductory remarks were boilerplate Shrumian populism. . . . Doesn’t it show how meaninglessly vague the Shrum formulation is if it can be comfortably adopted by the Republican candidate?”

PAJAMAS TV will be streaming live at 7, at PJTV.com.

Meanwhile, my interview with Bob Corker from yesterday is up.

UPDATE: Jack Lail calls it “potentially disruptive as hell to cable channels and broadcast TV.”

A JOHN MCCAIN PHOTO-OP with Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s fiance and the father of her baby. The McCain campaign doesn’t seem to be running from this; it almost seems as if they’re playing it up in the belief that the over-the-top reaction from the left is helping them.

UPDATE: “Juno” Director Says: Don’t Judge the Palins.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ferraro then, Palin now.

RANDY NEAL CONTRASTS DNC vs. RNC treatment of bloggers. I have to say, I heard a lot of complaints from bloggers at the RNC — and, in general, people felt that the DNC did a better job of making the trains run on time than the RNC, which was somewhat disorganized.

UPDATE: Blogger Alex Charyna emails from the Convention: “I’m sitting against a wall in section 202 because there is nowhere to plug into and see where I was ‘assigned’… (basically above the MSNBC booth). I could ‘understand’ about wi-fi… but power… power, man. Disappointed, I am.”

MORE ON SARAH PALIN, from Katie Granju.

UPDATE: “Creepiness.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

STRATEGYPAGE: “Hamas has an image problem, and it’s getting worse. It’s gotten so bad that the 30 year old son (Mosab Yousef) of one of the Hamas founders (Hassan Yousef) has not only renounced Hamas, but has become a Christian. Mosab is fed up with the terrorism/”destroy Israel” approach the Arab world has embraced over the last sixty years. Mosad notes, as have many other Arabs, that this has not worked. The conversion angle is something Moslems are trying to keep quiet. Mosab Yousef’s father pleaded with his son to keep quiet about the conversion (which took place 18 months ago). The elder Yousef knows that this is not an isolated incident.”

That’s interesting, though I imagine it’s hard to get reliable numbers.

I COMPLAIN ABOUT AIR TROUBLE, but this time Northwest got me to Minneapolis/St. Paul early, and got me home on time. I did reroute my return flight — which originally went through Memphis — to another via Detroit because I feared that Gustav remnants Don’t know if that made any difference or not.

DOES EXTRA MENTAL EFFORT burn more calories? Yes, but don’t give up on the ab-blaster just yet.

NOT IN THE MAIL, but handed to me by Scott Ott of Scrappleface: The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ — with a chapter by Scott Ott, of Scrappleface, and a foreword by Hugh Hewitt. Having looked through it, I’d say it’s a good introduction whether you’re into the Christian angle or not.

MORE INTELLIGENT EMERGENCY EVACUATIONS, via software: “There’s some good news as hurricane season is getting under way: an MIT graduate student has developed a computer model that helps evacuation managers make better decisions, and possibly save lives in the process. During a hurricane, a poorly executed plan can make evacuation nearly impossible. But the software, created by graduate student Michael Metzger as part of his research for his Ph.D., allows the possible effects of specific decisions to be individually analyzed.”

TED SORENSEN on Joe Biden. Ouch.

GALLUP: More Clintonites backing Obama. That’s based on last week’s convention, though. It’ll be interesting to see next week’s polls.

ADVICE ON powering your home in a disaster. Plus, retrofitting hybrid bus fleets to provide emergency power.

HEH: “I’m the freaking Governor of Alaska. I didn’t get there by just eating mooseburgers and popping out kids.”

NO, I HAVEN’T TRIED OUT GOOGLE’S NEW “CHROME” BROWSER YET: I’ve been busy. But here’s a report. And here’s a hands-on review.