Okay, people, let’s do this.

I’m at my post and ready to watch the second night of the RNC so others might be spared.

As a precaution, I’ve strapped on this WWII Royal Air Force flying helmet and goggles.

1/

I will be accompanied by as many as five Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPAs.

I’m about 30 minutes into the first one just to build a base.

I’m a little fatigued after last night’s events. Kim Guilfoyle haunted the shadows of my dreams. I slept little.

This may be a bumpy ride.

2/

Tonight’s lineup includes Trump’s third wife, second least favorite son and often forgotten daughter.

Melania, Eric and Tiffany.

Also on the docket: one woman who just posted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory; and another who thinks wives should let their men vote for them.

2/

And I’ve already messed up the numbering of tweets.

See what last night did to me? It was two hours of head trauma.

There will be no more numbering.

We’re 22 minutes away from kickoff and the RNC’s well-oiled machine is already off the rails.

The aforementioned anti-Semite was apparently just yanked from tonight’s lineup (per CNN).

Artist’s rendering of the RNC so far:

I’m legit dreading this.

These truly are a pummeling.

They take the firm flesh of your healthy brain and pound away at it like a Wiener schnitzel.

They’re designed to take cheap cuts of brain and tenderize them through brute hammering.

They concuss.

As a side note, apparently Melania:

1) Didn’t use a speechwriter

2) Didn’t run her speech by the Trump Campaign

3) Relied only on notorious dumdum, Stephanie Grisham, for help writing her speech

Umm... that’s going to be... something.

Trainwreck risk-level: thermonuclear

Under ten minutes to go.

I feel like Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

Oh, sweet wheat field, see me home again to my family.

Keep me in your thoughts.

I just refreshed my beer, pulled on an astronaut diaper, and did some deep breathing.

I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

And so we begin.

Night 2 of the RNC - Festival of Damnation - opens with a video.

It’s like a July 4th Budweiser commercial directed by Ayn Rand and with an Aaron Copeland score.

It’s ultra-jingo. Cloying faux-patriotism.

Not bad as schlock goes but went nowhere.

And now we have a prayer offered by someone from the International Church of Las Vegas...

...which I assume is located either right next to the smoking lounge at McCarron Airport or a block down from the Nugget in Old Vegas.

Pastor echoes Guilfoyle’s shouts-shout-shouted words:

“I decree and declare, the best is yet to come.”

So, basically, this was the godly bookend to Guilfoyle prying open the gates of hell.

Now we move on to the first Apprentice-like Reality TV Presidenting of the night.

Video of a thrice-convicted felon who found God, repented and is poised to now be pardoned by Trump as a campaign stunt during the RNC.

This is exponential pandering. It will work on Evangelicals.

Video cuts to Trump now reading off the prompter like a 4th grader reading a social studies report about the continents.

Monotone. Dry as a bone.

I’m bored. This is boring.

This whole segment is thematically confusing.

On the one hand, it will play well to Evangelicals who will love the redeemed sinner narrative.

On the other, Johnny Law and Order writing pardons for triple-felons doesn’t jibe with his usual racist anti-crime blather.

Trump makes a show of granting a full pardon to a former bank robber turned inmate counselor.

This would actually be a good thing if it had been done by someone who wasn’t a soulless septic tank of fraud and need.

CNN kicks it to the studio to get Van Jones’ thoughts on this...

To which, I say: fuck every little bit of that.

Fuck Van Jones and his “That’s the moment he became president” bullshit.

And we’re over to MSNBC.

And now Rand Paul, resplendent in a neatly cropped perm reminiscent of my late grandmother, Helen, is up at the podium.

I’m only half-listening.

Rand Paul’s neighbor is a hero.

Rand Paul’s remarks were brief. Thankfully.

“Joe Biden is a hawk. Blah blah blah.”

That’s a tough sell when the alternative is the same Crazypants McGee who threatened North Korea with nuclear war because Kim Jong Un was mean to him.

And now we have an eight generation lobster fisherman from an island off Maine with a population of 370.

No joke, Larry Lobsterman said Obama-Biden closed off waters to fishing... and even though they don’t actually fish there... it was still upsetting.

I kid you not.

And now we’ve moved on to a woman who alleges her dairy farm was saved by Mango Magoo.

Phrase I never thought I’d hear:

“We have a new state of the art milking center that allows cows to milk themselves three times a day.”

I have nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?

Now we’re watching a prepped film on how Trump has cut regulations, saved jobs, blah blah blah.

It was actually effective (despite its wholesale dishonesty)...

But then they abruptly cut to the Bolivian marching powder hound aficionado, Larry Kudlow.

Stole their own thunder.

Kudlow rattles off a dizzying laundry list of overpromises. I won’t bore you. Nonsense.

Now up: a small biz owner claiming an Obama-Biden recession occurred six years ago hurting his business.

I think they found this guy on Craigslist.

Now up, Billy Graham’s granddaughter.

I viscerally detest with the full fabric of my soul when Christians allege they are somehow being persecuted by not being able to bulldoze their faith into secular institutions.

So, I’m going to go get my middle-beer.

I’m down to two.

No, let me just go on here:

If your faith is by far the dominant religion in your town, state, region and country, you ain’t being persecuted.

If the sole limit on your faith is that you cannot practice it in shared secular spaces, you ain’t being persecuted.

Shut the fuck up.

Oh Jesu Cristo... these people are trying to kill me.

Now up: an anti-choice activist named Abby Johnson.

Johnson thinks her husband should be able to vote “for her household”.

She also posted a video saying cops would be right to racially profile her adopted biracial son.

I want to smash my TV screen.

She is lying in the most outrageous, vulgar ways possible.

Alleging she watched on ultrasound as a fetus tried to “fight off” an abortion.

My lord, this woman is evil. Vile. She should be thrown in the ocean.

When this is over, my first act later tonight will be to make donations to Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

This asshole is using the Trojan horse of outrageous lies about reproductive choice to further an agenda that is purely religious and pro-patriarchy.

And now we have the dude made infamous for his smug-ass look as he stared down a Native American leader in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Guys, tonight is horrible.

Why don’t I ever learn?

Why haven’t I invested in a bandolier of airplane bottles?

Horrible planning.

Anyway, if you have any interest in contributing to refreshing my inventory tomorrow, I’ll weep at your kindness.

Tonight is wounding my soul. https://ko-fi.com/hoarsewhisperer 

Now up:

The Mt. Everest of irony.

Pam Bondi, the cheesy sleazeball former Attorney General from Florida who took a blatant payoff to not prosecute Trump University, railing about Hunter Biden.

We are going to need a bigger volcano to throw these people into.

On a scale of 1 to 10, tonight is an eleventy million on the horrible scale.

It’s full-scale propaganda.

It is the most vulgar brainwashing pap predicated on plucking at Americans’ ignorance.

It is like watching the death of a nation condensed down to an hour documentary.

Now up: the forgotten daughter, Tiffany Trump.

She is the Amanda Bynes of Ivankas.

Tiffany appears to have been binge-listening to Ivanka’s public speaking books-on-tape:

The Vapid, Affected, Porn-Whisper: How to Max Out Your Speech Creepiness

It’s so weird. It’s this hyper-affected, over-enunciation.

It’s like My Fair Lady if Eliza Doolittle had been Henry Higgins’ phone-sex operator.

I need a Silkwood shower.

Now up, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.

I’m not even going to bother.

She’s terrible and Iowa is whiter than a Kenny Chesney concert.

We’ve now moved on to a video with ultra-creepazoid, Mike Pence.

It is a mortal lock that Mike Pence would wear Trump’s flesh as a skincoat if given the chance.

He would dance around singing “Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors” adorned only in Trump’s mottled dermis. Guaranteed.

This Pence video is interminable.

The entire night has been scored with a slightly-too-loud background soundtrack.

It sounds like what you’d get in a movie about a newborn pony named Freedom.

And now we have a police officer talking about how he came upon a pregnant heroin addict and adopted her eventual child.

He then goes on to describe the child as he and his wife’s daughter”; describes the mother as “three years in recovery”; and calls her “a friend”.

That’s a White Savior Deluxe.

Mom is clean. Doesn’t have her child back.

But you saved her child.

This night is an express train into the subtle bigotry of rural white supremacy.

I am not pacing myself well.

I’m down to a mere 2 soldiers. Two beers. And we still have Eric Trump and Einstein Visa left.

I am not a quitter. I don’t quit.

But I am filled with rage at having committed to this.

I wish I still smoked. At least I’d have a cig to look fwd to.

Trump now appears accompanied by a band playing Hail to the Chief.

Trump is presiding over a naturalization ceremony.

So, the anti-immigrant President is making some immigrants citizens.

I have done acid. My trips made more sense than this.

The great and terrible Fuckopotamus is now reading prepared remarks.

Butchering the names of the five new citizens cherry-picked to be used as campaign props.

Like the earlier pardon, this is thematically all over the place.

Johnny Xenophobe playing Statue of Liberty.

As an aside, I sat outside for two hours today next to a bush beloved by pollinators and just watched bees and butterflies.

These are so poisonous, so toxic, so cancerous, they truly take a detoxing.

They are a ruination. A slow leeching of a nation’s very soul.

They truly affect brain function.

They - by design - trigger anxiety and fear. They flood the system with cortisol.

They throw open the hormonal gates on all of the biochemicals associated with stress.

They’re weaponized psychological warfare.

And in as awkward a segue as you’ll see from me, oh, hey, here’s the talking potato: Eric Trump.

He is so boring.

And now he’s begging his dad to love him by telling him how much he loves him.

Jesus, that was sad.

I think we’re close to done here.

I think we only have Melania left.

Please, let that be so.

My occipital lobe is crying; my temporal lobe is bleeding; and my parietal and frontal lobes are moving to Canada.

My brain is in full mutiny.

Oh, god. I forgot we still have Mike Pompeo.

I don’t think I can do this tomorrow night.

I say that but then I will reload my convention juice and talk myself into it. I am not bright in my foolish public service.

And here’s Mike Pompeo.

I loathe this vacuous shitbird.

If it were possible to set fire to a person with your mind, Pompeo would be a cinder.

He is every bit as greasy, soulless and dishonest as Pence. He just eats heavier and thinks more highly of himself.

Okay, that was a nothing.

And here comes what will likely be a brutal bludgeoning of language and meaning: Melania’s speech from the Rose Garden.

I pre-hate this.

Melania being intro’ed by a propaganda film.

This is so embarrassing.

She is without a doubt, the most vapid, incurious, and insubstantial First Lady’s of my lifetime.

She is as thoughtful as a carrot. But not as deep.

Melania reading off the prompter.

She is every bit as captivating as an animatronic car show spokesmodel introducing the new Chrysler Le Baron.

Melania offers condolences to families how have lost someone to COVID-19.

She is the first person to even feign empathy to people hurt by the loss of loved ones to coronavirus in four hours of programming.

Melania moving on to marking the anniversary of women’s suffrage.

This speech is starting to feel like a subtle subtweet.

Loaded with veiled digs at Trump while posturing as a speech in support of him.

I reserve the right to revise this but so far, this is a speech of someone acting primarily on their own behalf.

Hard to describe but it has a detachment. It’s about Melania.

It’s the kind of speech a person might make if they were soon to be single and on their own.

I could be wrong but this feels like the speech of someone facing the nearing end of a role they don’t like and don’t want to play.

She’s throwing in some faint praise.

But that wasn’t the weight.

It’s notable for its lack of over-the-top propaganda like every other speaker.

Melania now pivoting to talking about “racial unrest.”

Calls for unity, reflection.

It’s ham-handed and simplistic.

But nonetheless, it is also the only even passing attempt at pulling people together of this entire RNC so far.

Other than the few tepid platitudes about Trump, this speech, in terms of content, would have for far better at the DNC than in the RNC I’ve watched for two days.

It’s a sore thumb. Diametrically opposed. A glaring outlier.

Ironically, it is shining a light on how cynical, divisive and baiting every other bit of this RNC has been.

Melania is going to get praise for this speech - and it will be deserved - but that is going to quickly lead to a contrast against the vileness of what came before.

Melania squandering the solid effort thus far by foisting nonsense about Trump’s work ethic and care for all Americans.

And then she closes.

Okay, I’m going to bring this to a tidy close.

That was a good speech. Granted, expectations were diminished.

It served her well. It elevated her likability. It did nothing for Trump.

In fact, the media will home in on how vastly different it was than any other RNC speech.

And right on cue, Tapper pretty much says just what I said.

Melania humanized herself... and in so doing, made all the rest of it seem so coldly inhuman.

That’s some A-Grade shade.

Anyway, thanks for riding along.

For those who contributed to my beer run tomorrow, thank you.

This was a long damn night.

It will take a full day’s detox to prep for a do-over tmrw.

Thank you...