The opening skit on Saturday Night Live made fun of the presidential election. Mainly it is about Obama feeling confident despite the fact that he should be in big trouble. His secret weapon is Mitt Romney who keeps getting himself into trouble. This actually is close to real life. There were great opportunities for Romney to gain ground this past week. The spat between Obama and Netanyahu, the crisis in the Middle East and the Chicago teachers strike are all gold mines that Romney should have exploited. Instead he makes a stupid statement about the crisis, and failed to attack more vigorously on the other two. Now he is caught on camera disparaging 47% of the population saying that they don't pay taxes and are dependent on government hand outs. Obviously this will be used by the Obama team to show that Romney is only for rich people and that he despises half of the population. Even if this does not hurt Romney directly, it will put him on the defense for a while and make it again difficult to attack Obama where he is most vulnerable, the economy.

Romney's attack on Obama as the violence unfold in Egypt and Libya is totally wrong. The statement put out by the U.S. embassy in Egypt was before the violence started. It was meant to defuse a dangerous situation. Romney claimed that the statement was made after the attack started and it showed U.S. weakness. The timeline put out by CNN showed that was not the case but Romney refused to back down. Regardless, it shows lack of understanding of the world. It is like a hostage situation. The police can say all they want about how powerful they are but that will not stop the violence or save the hostages. It is better to try to defuse the situation. This is not weakness but intelligence. Remember Bush apologized for the spy plane incident in China. Would it have done any good if the U.S. had threatened China? Would Romney have criticized Bush for being weak?

There will always be bad guys. How many ordinary people will follow the extremists will depend on how many openings we give them. A film making fun of Mohammad is just perfect for the bad guys. The film has been around for a couple of months but nobody paid attention until right before 9/11 when an Egypt extremist brought it up and it goes viral. Obviously this was an opportunity for them to cause trouble on 9/11. Just like the preacher who threatened to burn the koran awhile back, the makers of this film are just helping the enemy recruit more followers.

Just finished watching Obama's speech. It was great delivery as usual but short on substance. There was talk that he will be more specific after the Republican had nothing specific to say last week. This is a little disappointment for me and independent voters on the fence. I think both sides are afraid that anything specific will immediately be attacked by the other side. It is interesting to me that both sides gave a nod to Bowles-Simpson in their conventions but both sides had rejected it earlier. I think Obama should have promised to enact Bowles-Simpson which is very popular among independents. I think that is one thing specific about taxes, entitlements and deficits that would not become an instant target for the other side to shoot at.

The Democrats made a mess of their platform with God and Jerusalem. I thought that the Republican had the more vulnerable platform particularly with the extreme view on abortion. But leave it to the Democrats to not be able to copy the previous platform and cannot do a voice vote correctly.

I think Ann Romney and Michelle Obama fought to a draw. Biden, I thought was slightly better than Ryan. Also Castro is a rising star and his youthful and fit look trump Chris Christie. I know looks are unfair but Obama rode his keynote speech to eventual presidential nomination. Castro can well do the same in about 12 years. Obama beats Romney because of better deliverance but not in substance. So overall in head to head the Democrats win slightly in my opinion but if someone calls it a draw I will not argue.

Of course the Democrats had a trump card the Republicans did not have: Bill Clinton. Is there any more doubt that Clinton is the best American politician since Kennedy? He is one guy who can make deep political analysis enjoyable to listen to for nearly an hour. I don't think that the Democrats and Obama can possibly ask a better speech from Clinton or anyone else. If Obama gets reelected, he owes Bill a great deal. If Biden and Hillary run against each other in 2016, Obama may have to back Hillary because his debt to Bill.

So what is the result of these two weeks. As I said before, there are only 6-7% undecided and it would take a lot to move the needle. Certainly the Democrats did not lose ground in these two weeks. I think if the job report is bad tomorrow, then it is even. If the job report is better than expected tomorrow then the Democrats get 2 point bump, mostly due to Clinton's effort. This may not sound significant and may not even show up due to margin of error of polls but it would be a couple of points that Romney would have to make up with the debates. But even in this best scenario for the Democrats, it will still go down to the wire.

So the Republican convention is now over. I have not seen any new polls out yet, so it is hard to say what effect the convention had on the voters. Most of the time a convention gives its candidate a boost for a short period of time. I would expect that to be the case of here and then after the Democratic convention we will probably be at the same level again. This is going down to the wire for sure!

I think Ann Romney did her job the best among the speakers. She was supposed to make Mitt more likeable and I think she did that. Chris Christie fired away as expected but I don't think he did a good job for Romney. First of all he spent most of the first half of his speech talking about himself as if he is angling for 2016 already. After Ann had talked about love, Christie went on about wanting respect rather that love. This kind of cancel each other on Tuesday. Paul Ryan fired up the base and acted as the pit bull as expected. He had lots of inaccuracies as pointed out by neutral pundits such as Medicare cut backs and unemployment rate. So overall I think he was only B or B+ as best. Romney did all right but did not hit a home run as the Republicans claimed. He had nothing specific to say and I think he wasted time in the beginning introducing himself which others, especially Ann, had done for him already. He also started late and ran late thanks to Clint Eastwood.

Speaking of Eastwood, how did he aged so fast? This can't be the Dirty Harry we used to love! His effort of being a comedian was as successful as Jackie Chan would have trying to do romance. Was it not 6 months or so ago that Republicans were complaining that Eastwood was doing a commercial for Obama on the Super Bowl? Now we can see how paranoid they are given Eastwood is such a staunch conservative. On the other hand, if you are a conspiracy theorist, you may say that Eastwood did it on purpose to screw up Romney's big night. In that case, you would also have to say that the Romney campaign was not very good in not screening Eastwood to make sure he is not Dirty!

Now about minorities in the party. They did wheel out Rubio and Rice. I missed their speeches. I will assume they did well. But Rubio can only help with the Cuban vote which Romney already has. As I said before, he would not help with other Latinos, especially Mexicans who are different politically than Cubans. Before Rice spoke, a Republican analyst on CNN said that Rice proves to the country that the Republicans are not all white country club people. Well, Rice just got into Augusta, her expertise is Russian history, she played tennis and the piano, she was also a figure skater. I don't know if you can get any more white country club than her!

The convention is not just speeches. One of the most important thing that is done is voting for a party platform. This seems to be hidden out of sight. Nobody talked about it on tv. A reporter from the local paper (not LA Times) wrote about some of it. I don't have time to check if all of these are true but some are obviously true. Like against abortion without exception even in case of rape or save the life of the mother, same stand as Todd Akin. Some members have proudly call this the most conservative platform in history. It is so out of touch with majority of Americans that the Republican national chairman had to say that this is the party platform, not Romney's platform. This makes it important to ask: what parts of the platform is Romney against? Voters have the right to know? This should be asked by the Democrats next week. Also should be asked: Having said what he did not like about Obama's policies, what policies of Bush does Romney like or dislike?

Now it is the Democrats' turn. I am sure I will find things to criticize next week. On thing I can predict: that they will not send out an aging Hollywood star to speak without an approved script.