These are words we need to hear.

I will so miss her voice. I hope she will stay where we can hear her.

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What I find most remarkable about this exchange: So few conversations begin with the request for help changing one’s own mind.

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Crowd chants : Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!…

Hillary Clinton: Thank you. Thank you all so much. It’s wonderful to be here. And before I speak, I want to let you know that this is a very special day. Before I talk, I’m going to bring out a guest you’re not expecting, who will make history. And how you greet him will help shape that history So, I ask you to greet this guest with open hearts and open minds, and embrace him for the courage and true patriotism he’s going to show you this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please warmly welcome … Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan enters to shocked applause. Shakes Clinton’s hand and goes to lectern

Paul Ryan: I bet you did not see that coming. Tell you the truth, neither did I.

Good morning. Madam Secretary,…

For the rest, click here

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1. Granted, this is just an instant poll with a margin of error of 99 on a scale of 1 to Wishful Thinking , but I’ll take it:

A CNN quick poll found 71 percent of those who watched [Hillary’s] speech had an extremely favorable view of her. Last week, CNN’s poll found 57 percent of those who watched Trump’s speech had an extremely favorable view of him.

2. On Night #2, the Dems had 25M viewers while on the comparable night the Reps had 19M. I was surprised by this, given that Trump is an eye-magnet train wreck.

3. HRC is maintaining a large lead in Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Trump.

4. This may be a teensy bit subjective, but this was by far the best convention in my lifetime. It’s changed what it means to be a Democrat, and retrieved what it means to be American.

If all you knew of America was what you saw during these four days, you would think it is a place that not just celebrates but proudly draws upon its deep diversity. And you would be forgiven if you concluded that its surest moral compass is held by people — and especially women — of color.

5. It’s not just that we had four days of astounding talks. Taken together, those days were a work of art in their balance and contrasts, their crescendos and their moments of silence. Remarkable, and remarkably moving.

So, now we can all lean back and let this thing just happen by itself get to work!

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No one can best me in my ElizabethWarrenLove, but if you want to know why Hillary picked Tim, watch this speech from their first event together:

It’s like mind-bleach for Donald Trump’s Harangue of Fear

Click here to make the big scary man go away.

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We can no longer think this is just a reality TV star who says whatever he has to to keep us amused.

Now we’ve seen American fascism naked.

Now we have no excuse for not stopping it.

Now it’s on us.

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On Reddit, user Amaranthine cites a tweet from Soniasaraiya that points to a signal that one of Melania’s speechwriters may be a mole working against the Trump campaign: Was Melania rickrolled?

Rickrolling is a prank in which misleading text links to a video of Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” For example, if I wrote “Here’s an incredible secret video of Hillary whispering to Bill that she lied about Benghazi,” and you click on the link, you’ve been rickrolled.” The video has been viewed over 224 million times, but no one knows how many times on purpose. (Interestingly, Rick Astley seems to have plagiarized the song from this awkward amateur version.)

Last night Melania said (transcript here):

He will never, ever, give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever, let you down.

Here is the opening of the chorus of Never Gonna Give You Up:

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down

This not such a unique, unexpected turn of phrase that it could only have been plagiarized. On the other hand: 224,238,266 views! This is the opposite of obscure.

So, if you were the speechwriter who not only put plagiarized text into Melania Trump’s introduce-yourself-to-America speech, but you took that text from Michelle Obama’s introduce-yourself-to-America speech eight years earlier, you might well want to flag that Melania’s speech rickrolled us and her: Melania’s words, uttered sincerely, turn out to “link” to an annoyingly lightweight pop song.

Just for fun, here’s an autotuned version of Melania singing her lyrics, created by redditor cbuntz:

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From Politico, here is the list of speakers for the Republican National Convention:

Monday: Make America Safe Again

Headliners: Melania Trump, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, and veterans activist Jason Beardsley.

Also speaking: Willie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty,” former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, actor Scott Baio, Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Sen. Tom Cotton, Sen. Jeff Sessions and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, among others.
Tuesday: Make America Work Again

Headliners: Donald Trump Jr., West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Dr. Ben Carson and actress-businesswoman Kimberlin Brown.

Also speaking: Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, among others.

Wednesday: Make America First Again

Headliners: Lynne Patton of the Eric Trump Foundation; Eric Trump; Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista; and Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Also speaking: Radio host Laura Ingraham, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Sen. Ted Cruz, among others.

Thursday: Make America One Again

Headliners: Business leaders Peter Thiel and Tom Barrack, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump.

Also speaking: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., among others.

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The Intercept reports on several news media who are selling special services at the national political conventions — meetings, cocktail parties, and more. The services are corrosive. Some are explicitly corrupt, “…they make explicit the inevitable failure of the distinction between “paid” and “earned” content.”making explicit the inevitable failure of the distinction between “paid” and “earned” content.

The less controversial services are corrosive because they let the media take money from the people they cover. Having spent a few decades as a marketing communications guy, I can promise you that in every business considering these offers, the conversation includes someone saying, “It doesn’t matter if no one comes to the cocktail party. It’d still improve our relationship with the publication.” Why? Because it’s a way to pay the journal money. That’s corrosive.

Larry Lessig points out that it’s not much different from news organizations tuning their coverage to their ratings. But such tuning at least caters to perceived piopular interest. These new services let an organization or candidate buy coverage despite a decided lack of public interest. It is worse than buying ads because the news media have traditionally had a “Chinese wall” between the advertising and editorial departments. This has been a fairly effective way of protecting editorial content from the direct influence of the marketing needs of the journal, even though the wall is sometimes breached, and Time Magazine has shamefully torn it down.

Once the media started letting companies pay for phony news coverage, they pretended to honor the breach by distinguishing “earned” and “paid” content. “Earned content” is coverage provided by media of events they think are newsworthy. “Paid content” is, well, paid content. Non-sleazebag companies and their PR reps expect media to mark paid content as paid for. Edelman, the world’s largest independent PR company, created ethical guidelines that not only say that the paid content must be well marked, but that Edelman will have its own Chinese wall between the processes by which earned content is pitched (“Yo, I have a client who’s invented a time travel machine. Wanna an interview? How’s yesterday for you?”) and the negotiations that result in the placement of paid content. (Disclosure: I had a tiny hand — Trump-sized — in drafting those guidelines.)

That’s better than nothing, but paid content still makes me queasy. Companies are willing to pay for content precisely because it looks like real coverage and thus tends to be taken more seriously than obvious ads. This erodes the phenomenological line between news and ads, which is bad for democracy and culture. Indeed, “the point of paid content is to erode the line. ”the point of paid content is to erode the line.

But letting candidates pay for interviews takes this to a whole new level. This is what The Intercept says:

Sponsors who pay $200,000 are promised convention interviews with The Hill’s editorial staff for “up to three named executives or organization representatives of your choice,” according to a brochure obtained by The Intercept. “These interviews are pieces of earned media,” the brochure says, “and will be hosted on a dedicated page on thehill.com and promoted across The Hill’s digital and social media channels.”

The Hill says the resulting interviews will be earned media. Suppose the interview is stupid, boring, self-serving and non-newsworthy? If it weren’t, the client wouldn’t be paying for it. But The Hill is promising it’s going to run anyway because the client paid them $200,000. That is the very definition of paid content. So, by calling it “earned content,” The Hill can only mean that the article will not be marked as paid content, even though that is precisely what it is.

This corrupts the already corrosive practice of accepting paid content. It is disgraceful.

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Watch Hillary wonk out with a nurse in New Jersey over solving one of the world’s most serious problems.https://t.co/0Ej6gaWzIf

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 29, 2016

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