God bless TiVo.

I just hit "rewind" on my remote about three times to watch NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell be absolutely bombarded with red, white and blue balloons on the Republican convention floor in St. Paul, Minn., after John McCain gave his nomination acceptance speech. The best part was, she kept trying to talk amid the flying objects, but can't quite get much out. Viewers at home -and those convention-goers swarming her just to get in the camera shot - just watched her hopelessly bat them around her head as her face continued to disappear into a patriotic sea of color.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called it "the political equivalent of Chuck E. Cheese."

Tom Brokaw dubbed the comedic episode: "Andrea 'Boom-Boom' Mitchell and the Dance of the Republican Balloons." Yes, those darn "balloon wielding thugs" actually kept her from finishing her report.

NBC's Brian Wilson was incredulous at what could possibly stop the network's fearless chief foreign affairs correspondent. "I've been in Ramadi with that woman with automatic weapons going off - that didn't stop her, but it appears mylar has stopped Andrea Mitchell in her tracks."

Did John McCain learn nothing from that horrible green background from his June 3 victory speech?

The background spurred the creation of dozens of hilarious videos spoofing McCain, a treasure trove for dorks with huge DVD collections and a pirated copy of Sony Vegas.

It seems McCain, tonight, is mixing up the backgrounds, trying to work with amateur filmmakers, some of whom prefer green screen, some blue. I'm not sure what the difference is, although it's probably to do with whether you want to wear a blue or a green shirt.

Maybe McCain secretly gets a kick out of these video tributes. If so, here is my favorite, John. And to all you Second Lifers about to begin spoofing, I salute you!

Tommy Christopher co-hosts "Unusable Signal" on BlogTalkRadio, debuting Friday at 11pm. Click here for the Unusable Signal homepage.

The Associated Press:

That audience rivaled the one for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama last week. Nielsen Media Research estimated 37.2 million people watched Palin on either ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC. PBS estimated it had four million viewers for the speech.

Last week Obama had 38.4 million viewers on the commercial networks, topping 40 million with PBS and C-SPAN added in.

...

Viewers were far more interested in Palin than Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. Biden's speech to Democrats last week was seen by an estimated 24 million people.

I predict a fall off tonight. So far we have Lindsey Graham and Tom Ridge? Definitely the B Team. But the build-up around Sarah Palin was mostly created by intensive Democratic and media non-stop blathery (is that a word?).

So thanks to them, not only did Sarah Palin hit it out of the park, it was also seen by as many people as Barack Obama.

If you were watching the Sarah Palin speech on Wednesday evening, you could not help notice a very uncomfortable soon-to-be SIL Levi Johnston in the family reaction shots. "Doe in the headlights" doesn't even begin to describe it.

My heart really goes out to these kids - Bristol and Levi - but you really have to wonder what was going on in his head while sitting there being assessed by 37 million Americans.

Levi didn't ask for this attention and hopefully he and Bristol can keep their heads down and away from the cameras between now and November.

Of course, after the election, the whole Palin clan will return to Alaska to pick up their lives where they left off.

Amid all the talk of how Sarah Palin wowed (or not) Republicans with her convention address last night in accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, Sen. Joe Biden also made some quieter headlines.

The senator from Delaware said he and running mate Barack Obama - if elected to the White House in November - could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration. But now he says he didn't really mean he and Obama would necessarily do it.

"In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law," Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Fla., earlier this week, first reported by ABC News. "We will not have a president who doesn't understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president who thinks he's not part of any of the three branches of government."

Biden bashed the Bushies for wasting a chance to unite the nation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying the administration will be "judged harshly by history." Then, at the end of the ABC story, it's noted that Biden also said an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

While all eyes are trained on the Republican National Convention, I took some time to think about the US Senate race here in Minnesota between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and screenwriter, author and comedian Al Franken - formerly of Saturday Night and Air America.

I ran into (literally - large coffee stain on my white pants) Senator Coleman yesterday as his staff was rushing him to his pre-speech walk through here at the Xcel center. Coleman was nice enough to stand for a picture, despite apparently not really wanting to be here.. The day before I had passed a Franken for Senate office on the way here and thought I'd call for a reaction or a word or two to Coleman's speech.


I put in a call to Franken's spokeswoman Jess MacIntosh who said, "We thought we heard something was going on in town. Is it a big deal?" Franken is not in town this week. He's travelling in the northern part of the state campaigning and was unavailable for comment at the time of my call. That's probably for the best, the latest Rasmussen poll from last month shows the candidates in a dead heat at 45% each. Jess did point me to Al's reaction to Norm's speech which I've included below the video.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched another attack ad against John McCain. The :30 second spot is titled "More" and is airing in battleground states.

I caught up with fellow AOLer and The Young Turks radio host Cenk Uygur today on Radio Row here at the RNC. Since arriving Cenk has been busy interviewing notables such as New Mexico's Heather Wilson, California's Duncan Hunter, RedState founder Josh Trevino and Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr.

Cenk's trip here to the RNC and last week's DNC was totally listener supported and he's truly grateful to all the fans that made sure they were receiving his kind of political coverage directly from the source. Cenk has a live feed running on his website right now so you can see who's wandering up and down Radio Row - which is quite the hot spot here for notables. Just today, Katie Couric stopped by and said hello to Cenk and crew. Later on today the feed will be Cenk's show where he'll be interviewing (schedule still developing) former Speaker of the House Tom Delay and Conservative author and columnist Joel Mowbray.

You can see TYT's interviews from the RNC and DNC here.

The crooked lobbyist could have gotten 11 years behind bars but the judge looked kindly on Abramoff's role as a key witness in the FBI's influence-peddling probe.

With Abramoff's help, the Justice Department has won corruption convictions against a parade of lawmakers, Bush administration figures and Capitol Hill aides.

Abramoff admitted trading luxury golf junkets, expensive meals, skybox tickets and other gifts for political favors. The scandal shook Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Capitol Hill and contributed to the Republicans' loss of Congress in 2006.

His lawyers were hoping for a sentence of less than four years. Like a lot of crooks who end up facing the music, Abramoff shed his arrogance and hubris and appealed to the judge for leniency. Boo hoo.

He said even he is shocked to look back on what his career had become. But he said he was "not a bad man" and pleaded for leniency.

"It is hard to see the exact moment that I went over the line but, looking backwards, it is amazing for me to see how far I strayed and how I did not see it at the time," Abramoff wrote. "So much of what happens in Washington stretches the envelope, skirts the spirit of the rules, and lives in the loopholes. But even by those standards, I blundered farther than even those excesses would allow."

So that closes an ugly chapter in our government's history. But what next? It's nice that Abramoff, Bob Ney, J. Steven Griles and others are in jail, but the real question is whether this scandal will help alter a lobbying system that makes it so easy for this kind of corruption to thrive.

Sarah Palin should be treated like anybody else running for office, Barack Obama said today. And that means not treating her with kid gloves.

When questioned by reporters during a campaign stop in York, PA, Obama pushed back against criticisms that his campaign and the media are downplaying the political experience of John McCain's vice presidential running mate. The McCain campaign, some women's groups, as well as former staffers to Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, argue that much of the treatment of Palin is sexist, and that many questions and issued being raised would never surface if she were male.

"Listen - if they want to work the refs, they are free to do so and I think the public can make their judgments about this," Obama said today, shrugging off the sexist accusations.

The notion, he added, that any questions or doubts floated about the work Palin has done as a mayor and governor in Alaska is somehow not relevant to her ability to handle the vice presidency, "doesn't make too much sense to me."

"I think she's got a compelling story but I assume she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated – that means that the records are under scrutiny. I've been through this for 19 months – she's been through it what? Four days so far?"