| * Brains: Never before has the human brain received so much attention in a convention speech. Ben Carson is the best. Losers * Paul Ryan: For some very smart people, the Speaker delivered a meaty, substantive address about the Republican party he wants to lead. For me, the speech felt flat -- filled with attempts at reaching rhetorical heights that the Wisconsin Republican never came all that close to. It may have been the fact that Ryan was committed to delivering a speech that touched people far outside the convention hall filled with anti-establishment, Trump supporters. Ryan might have been playing chess while I watched checkers. But, for me for you, dawg, it didn't work. * Ben Carson: The convention crowd responded warmly to Carson. But the brain surgeon quickly went off script -- and not in a good way. He dropped a "Lucifer" reference! Then he did it again! There was a Thomas Jefferson name drop. Saul Alinsky came up! Time and again, Carson seemed to start a sentence and then, halfway through, head in an entirely different direction. The result was, too often, a word salad. * President Obama's call for reeling in nasty political rhetoric: Remember when the president, in the wake of targeted shooting of police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, implored both parties to take it down a notch at the party conventions? Yeah, not so much. For the second straight night, chants of "Lock her up!" rang through the convention hall. (The "her" in question is, in case you have lived on another planet for the last year, Hillary Clinton.) And we're only on night two! It's hard to see how the speakers of the next two nights do anything to turn down the heat on Clinton. * Shelley Moore Capito: The West Virginia Senator is a talented politician. But, she was an odd fit in the primetime lineup -- sandwiched between Donald Trump Jr. and Ben Carson, two stalwarts of the Trump movement. Capito is, um, not that; she was able to win in West Virginia by touting her moderate credentials and her ability to work across the aisle. The speech she gave was too long and felt sort of forced; "let's turn the tide," felt blah to the crowd. Also, how many gratuitous West Virginia references did she work in there? | 