I couldn’t help myself. I had to fisk Mark Warner’s horrid speech:

I’ll skip over the pappy opening and focus on some specifics.

Yes, the race for the future is on, and it won’t be won if only some Americans are in the running. It won’t be won with yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s divisions. And it won’t be won with a President who is stuck in the past.

Good. Then I’m glad you’ll be abandoning a President whose key idea — windfall profits tax — is a throwback to the Carter Era.

Blah blah blah. Humble background. Etc., etc. Why do politicians always have to tell us their life story?

There’s only one country in the world where I could have received that education, where I could have been given not just one chance, or two, but three, and where I could have succeeded. And that’s this country, the United States of America. At our best, it’s not your lineage or last name that matters. It’s not where you come from that counts – it’s where you want to go.

Unless that name is Kennedy or Clinton or something.

How many kids have the grades to go to college, but not the money?

Few, actually. Because financial aid has grown faster than college tuition. And it’s partially due to open-ended government subsidies that college is so expensive.

How many families thought their home would always be their safest investment?

The ones who made sure they got 30-year fixed mortgages on a home they could afford.

Two wars

both of which your party supported.

an energy policy that says let’s borrow money from China to buy oil from countries that don’t like us.

Good to know you’re going to slash spending so we won’t have to borrow money anymore.

Think about it: After September 11, if there was a call from the President to get us off foreign oil, to stop funding the very terrorists who had just attacked us, every American would have said, “How can I do my part?” This administration failed to believe in what we can achieve as a nation, when all of us work together.

I’ll ignore the bullshit here and call him on the facts. Bush has said this and your party has opposed domestic drilling.

John McCain promises more of the same. A plan that would explode the deficit that will be passed on to our kids.

Is there any deficit reduction plan for the Democrats? Any plan to abide by the PAYGO rules, for once? Any plans to roll back the massive earmarks your party has put into the budget? The Democrats have had the House for two years and have done nothing to rein in spending (the House being where spending starts).

Look at energy. If we actually got ourselves off foreign oil, we can make our country safer. We’ll start to solve global warming. And with the right policies, within 24 months, we’ll be building 100 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid vehicles right here – with American technology and with American workers.

How, precisely, is this going to happen? Is Barack Obama going to invent a hybrid car? Is he going to build the infrastructure with his own bare hands? 100 mpg hybrids don’t just magically appears on our roads because the Democrats say so.

Look at health care. If we bring down costs and cover everyone, not only will America be healthier, we’ll be more competitive in the global economy. Just think about this: In six months, we will have an administration that actually believes in science! And then we can again lead the world in live-saving and life-changing cures.

Yes. Once we rip all the money from the drug companies, they’ll do ground-breaking research out of the goodness of their hearts.

Look at education. If we recruit an army of new teachers and actually give our schools the resources to meet our highest standard

$10 grand per kid not being enough.

I know we’re at the Democratic Convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn’t matter if it has an “R” or “D” next to it. Because this election isn’t about liberal versus conservative. It’s not about left versus right. It’s about the future versus the past.

Which is why you’ve spent the last eight years getting hysterical over any and all Republican proposals.

And we can do it. When I became Governor, this is what Virginia faced: a massive budget shortfall; an economy that wasn’t moving; gridlock in the capital. Sound familiar?

Not really. I was living in Virginia at the time.

We delivered broadband to the most remote areas of our state, because if you can send a job to Bangalore, India, you sure as heck can send one to Danville, VA and Flint, MI, and Scranton, PA, and Peoria, IL. In a global economy, you should have to leave your home town to find a world-class job.

As long as you’re willing to work on Bangalore wages. Or pay Scranton prices.

Let me tell you about a place called Lebanon-Lebanon, Virginia. Lebanon is in the coalfields of southwest Virginia, and everyone in that whole town could fit right here on the convention floor. Lebanon is like many small towns in America, it has seen the industries that sustained it downsized, outsourced, or shut down.

Now, some folks look at towns like Lebanon and say, “Tough luck. In the global economy, you’ve lost.” But we believed that we shouldn’t, and couldn’t, give up on our small towns and expect the rest of the state to prosper. And that’s what brought me, towards the end of my term, to the high school gym in Lebanon. To announce that we were going to bring over 300 high-tech jobs. Jobs that paid twice the county average.

It took over $2 million in taxpayer funds to put that job there. So another $2 trillion and we’ll all have great jobs!