I know I'm late, but everyone else has said something about it, so I might as well. I'm just going to quote a few small bits from the speech and drop some comments.

I am grateful to finish this journey with one of the finest statesmen of our time, a man at ease with everyone from world leaders to the conductors on the Amtrak train he still takes home every night.

It's been what, less than a week? And already I'm tired of hearing about Biden taking the train. We get it already.

We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

I was about to bitch about this, because there's nothing unusual about us being at war and having less-than-stellar economic performance. It happens all the time. However, he did say it was "one of" the defining moments, so I'll give him a pass.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

In a nutshell, that's the basic bad idea of the Democrats: That government has to provide a solution to every problem. Lately, it's also the basic bad idea of the Republicans.

We are more compassionate than a government that...sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

He's talking about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, right? Because it wasn't just Bush's FEMA that let the people of New Orleans down.

Tonight--- tonight I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

In other words, to no one's surprise, Obama is running against George Bush.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives - on health care and education and the economy - Senator McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy has made "great progress" under this President. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief advisors - the man who wrote his economic plan - was talking about the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

Lots of McCain-slamming here. I'll get back to that later.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

Once again, we're hearing anti-corporate nonsense from Obama. Corporations exists only as legal entities, so they consume no real-world resources. If you let corporations keep more money, it all has to go to the people who own them, run them, loan them money, or work for them.

I'm unfamiliar with most of McCain's other proposals that are being slammed by Obama, but I'm willing to bet that McCain's privatization plan for Social Security is bad. Most privatization plans are ugly mixtures of government and private investment that provide very little benefit.

We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President

Some day I must find out where these job figures come from. Is that only jobs created, ignoring jobs lost? It seems too high for a net figure. And in any case, the unemployment numbers are probably more representative of our national welfare.

Unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

Good luck figuring out how to define that in a way that businesses can't work around.

The only way I can think of to stop companies from shipping jobs overseas is to make it hard for them to import their products back here. If Nike can't bring shoes into the country, they won't have any reason to build factories outside the country.

Of course, making it harder to import shoes also makes it harder for Americans to buy shoes and drives up the price of footwear. For a guy who doesn't want to help corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans, Obama sure seems willing to screw over consumers.

Also, if we start imposing import tariffs (or worse, quotas) so will our trading partners, which will hurt all American industries that are net exporters. Trade wars are never good for the economy.

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

On the other hand, I never would have thought I'd hear a Democrat talking about reducing capital gains taxes.

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Ten years? I say "no way." It took us almost ten years to go to the moon, and that was much easier than converting the power generation and transportation facilities of a nation of 300 million people to use alternative energy sources.

As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power.

I gotta give him props. The estimates of our natural gas reserves are huge. And when was the last time you heard a Democrat say nice things about nuclear power?

I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

There he goes again, helping out those corporations he hates so much. I guess giving corporations 150 billion dollars is an investment in the economy that creates new jobs, but giving those same companies billions of dollars in tax breaks is evil.

And doesn't he just like to frighten us with the outsourcing bogeyman?

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.

No, no, no. We don't compete in the global economy. Individual firms may have competitors in other nations, but countries as a whole don't compete in any meaningful sense of market competition.

I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Yes, blow a kiss to the teachers' unions. And is that a national service program he's talking about?

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

With a few exceptions, women already have the same opportunites, they just don't all want them. Much of the apparent pay differential can be explained by the fact that women don't really have exactly the same jobs as men.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush Administration, even after we learned that Iraq has a $79 billion surplus while we're wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

This is actually turning out rather well. The new Iraq security strategy seems to be working, so by the time Obama is in charge, everyone will probably want to withdraw our troops.

As Commander-in-Chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

That sounds like the Powell doctrine, which the Bush administration abandoned for the Iraq war.

For part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose. And that's what we have to restore.

This sort of rhetoric scares me. To the extent we have a true common purpose, we should work toward it, of course, but my family has purposes of our own, and I don't want us to abandon them for any politician's idea of what our "common purpose" should be. We'll be hearing more about this in next week's convention.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America's promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

One of these things is not like the others. Obama's line that he doesn't know "anyone who benefits when...an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers" is wrong on its face. He clearly knows who benefits, because he mentions them in the quoted sentence: When an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers, both the employer and the illegal workers benefit. So do consumers, who get cheaper products. Obama may want to formulate policy that ignores the welfare of those people, but it's a lie to pretend that no one will be hurt.

On the other hand, it's nice to see a mention of gay marriage in there, even if it's hidden.

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

Which is what Obama did to McCain when he was slamming him earlier in the speech.

You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.

This is a great line. "At defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. " Awesome. I love it.

Never gonna happen.