A few years ago, there weren’t too many pundits who would have predicted that Arnold would be an opening act for Laura Bush at the Republican Convention (hopefully she won’t mind that at the time of her address the podium may still have the faint smell of ‘roids, body oil, elevator shoes and group sex). This is like Ron Jeremy opening for a Christian rock band.

So here is the Governor Arnold drinking game.

- Every time he says a line from a movie: drink
- Every time he makes a joke about his accent: drink
- Every time he says the word girly: drink
- Every time he using the suffix inator: drink
- Every time Arnold snorts coke off of the ass of a Hollywood starlet : drink
- Every time you allow yourself to really think about the fact that this guy is a governor and is speaking in primetime at a political convention: drink

Now this is just the game for the general public. For residents of California, the word drink should be replaced with the words move to Arizona, Nevada or Oregon.

And if you’re Gray Davis, you should probably start drinking now.

President Bush has his bearings back (after being understandably flustered by sitting in such close proximity to Matt Lauer’s hair) and is once again certain of victory in the war on terror.

“We meet today at a time of war for our country; a war we did not start, yet one that we will win.” (Technically this isn’t quite right. We sort of did start the war in Iraq, no? I mean there were all those bombs and stuff).

Has politics ever been more pathetic than it has in the last few weeks? Between the swift boat nonsense and the childish debate over “winning” the war on terror, we are reminded so clearly that a new and more serious era doesn’t necessarily mean a new and more serious political discussion.

So for the first time in a long time, President Bush made a reasonable and realistic comment on the ridiculously named war on terror. When asked about winning the war on terror, he explained:

“I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”

(He should have answered: “It will not be officially won as long as we can keep selling it to win elections!”)

So, of course, the Dems blasted away at Bush. But not for making the stupid assertions over the past few years. Instead they pretend, as John Edwards repeated throughout the day, that the notion that we can’t win the war on terror is “dead wrong.”

That strategy is dead wrong. No thinking person believes we can ever totally win a war on something like terrorism. Will there be a day when the last suicide bomber lays down his explosives-belt?

Of course not. Calling it a war on terror is stupid. The three years of tough talk and dumb claims have been stupid. And jumping in and saying we can “win” a war on terror just because W shifted his talking points is a waste of time and comes off as desperate counterpunching.

Don’t get me wrong. The White House reaction to all this has been even more pathetic as they’ve tried to nuance the President’s statement. White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett began his lengthy dissertation on what W really meant by explaining to Ted Koppel that, “The President was being interviewed on a moving bus.”

In that case, let’s put the Oval Office on wheels. Maybe he’ll make sense more often.

Rudy started out his speech in a grand and grandiose manner. He then drifted into the fear mongering, the spreading of distortions and the petty attacks that longtime New Yorkers have come to know and love.

John McCain lived up to his billing tonight, although during first third of his speech it almost sounded like McCain was building up to anouncement that he was backing fellow soldier John Kerry:

So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.

And much is expected of us.

We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.

Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture…liberty. Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.

Like all wars, this one will have its ups and downs. But we must fight. We must.

The sacrifices borne in our defense are not shared equally by all Americans.

But all Americans must share a resolve to see this war through to a just end.

We must not be complacent at moments of success, and we must not despair over setbacks.

We must learn from our mistakes, improve on our successes, and vanquish this unpardonable enemy.

If we do less, we will fail the one mission no American generation has ever failed…to provide to our children a stronger, better country than the one we were blessed to inherit.

Remember how we felt when the serenity of a bright September morning was destroyed by a savage atrocity so hostile to all human virtue we could scarcely imagine any human being capable of it.

We were united.

First, in sorrow and anger.

Then in recognition we were attacked not for a wrong we had done, but for who we are – a people united in a kinship of ideals, committed to the notion that the people are sovereign, not governments, not armies, not a pitiless, inhumane theocracy, not kings, mullahs or tyrants, but the people.

In that moment, we were not different races. We were not poor or rich. We were not Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. We were not two countries.

We were Americans.

All of us, despite the differences that enliven our politics, are united in the one big idea that freedom is our birthright and its defense is always our first responsibility.

All other responsibilities come second.

We must not lose sight of that as we debate who among us should bear the greatest responsibility for keeping us safe and free.

We must, whatever our disagreements, stick together in this great challenge of our time.

But of course the biggest line of the speech was McCain’s blast of Michael Moore: “And certainly not a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls.”

The line drew a long ovation. And guess what? McCain was right. And I’ve warned of this since day one. Moore hurts the Dems much more than he helps. And McCain’s number one goal of this speech was to securely tie the rantings of Michael Moore to the Democratic Party. Because of the failure of more Democrats to slam Moore from the beginning, that knot will be difficult to untie.

Dateline NBC has quite a scoop this week. Stone Phillips will have an exclusive on the bipolar disorder that until recently seriously hampered Jane Pauley (who’s launching a new talkshow this week). I wonder if she’ll admit that her disorder was the direct result of a former employer who insisted on hiring less experienced and dumber broadcasters to replace those who weren’t quite as hot?

We have seen this trend coming. News outfits morphed in TV magazine outfits which dumped the idea of foreign news and substantive issues for the much less expensive covering of meaningless nonsense, celebrities and stories within a block or two of their main offices.

But I didn’t think it would come to this. Now they’re covering their own.

What’s on next week’s Dateline?

Bill from editing is selling his minivan and here’s how you can help…