The aquarium just announced it has added a white shark to its offerings. This is the fourth white shark the aquarium has displayed in one of the most successful attempts to study this oft-misunderstood animal. MBA is the only aquarium in the world to successfully house a young white shark for longer than 16 days. Previous specimens have been kept alive for several weeks.

You can bet I'll be heading over there soon to check it out.

Former President Bill Clinton, who will only be kept out of the history books' list of the top five American presidents of all time by his terrible personal behavior, gave as solid an endorsement of Barack Obama as anyone could have asked. He did not try to out-perform Hillary from last night (and that was a wise decision on his part) but he was powerful, he was the patriarch of his party, and he was convincing in his personal admiration for Obama.

Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden -- who, as Chris Matthews of MSNBC properly said, is the first regular guy from the neighborhood to run for national office in many decades -- was engaging, human, and warm when he needed to be and piercingly and convincingly critical of the Republicans and John McCain when he wanted to be.

Clinton's characterization of McCain as a man who is to be respected as a war hero and valued for his service to his country but who has embraced an "extremist philosophy" was particularly on-target. It's about time the Democrats called that particular spade a spade. The extremists are and have been in charge of the GOP.

Biden's new refrain -- "America doesn't need a good soldier, America needs a wise leader" -- will, I predict, become a powerful slogan of this campaign.

All in all, the build-up continued tonight but perhaps not as powerfully as might have been with different players. Biden, in particular, is not eloquent, but he is a fine speaker-from-the-heart and is probably easier for many American to identify with as a speaker than either of the Clintons or the Obamas.

This is going to be a heckuva election.

Not only did she challenge and instruct her supporters, she took the best shots at John McSame that we've heard from the main speakers at this gathering. She flat-out unified every Democrat who is not simply outside the pale of reason and suasion. And she did it with brilliant rhetoric, superb pacing, and a gut sense of what people want to hear.

Michelle Obama last night. Hillary Clinton tonight. The GOP doesn't have a single woman leader fit to carry the briefcase of either of those women.

So again I'm reduced to a single word of assessment.

Wow.

It's been a long, long time since I heard a speech that was as well-organized, articulate, and, as MSNBC's Keith Olbermann intoned, "pitch perfect" as that just delivered in Denver by Michelle Obama. At the risk of being a flat-out sycophant, I just couldn't find enough good words to describe it any more than I could find a single thing to criticize in it.

Traditionally, opening night of these political conventions is kind of flat, a gradual build-up to the main event. I'm not sure it can get any better. Everyone who speaks for the rest of this gathering -- including most especially Barack -- has a high bar to climb indeed.

Wow.

We would be so fortunate as a nation to have this woman as our First Lady and her husband as our President. They are America as it can and should be.

(Here's a link to a video of her talk.)

1. He needs to tell Americans his story in a way that allows them to identify with him, and to make clear that he understands their stories, their pain, and their aspirations for their families.
2. He needs to offer an indictment of the Republican Party and the Bush presidency, and to make clear that the economic insecurity of middle class families, the spiraling cost of gas and health care, and the indifference to future generations that has produced our current energy crisis is not an accident but is a direct result of a radical ideology that has proven dangerous, reckless, and now discredited.
3. He has to build a compelling case--a sustained and compelling emotional argument--for why John McCain should not be President.
4. [He needs to] address head-on the stories told by the other side that have eroded positive feelings toward him among a large swath of the electorate and that have kept so many people undecided in a race that should be all but over. In particular, he needs to address the stories that he is just an empty celebrity, that he is an elitist, and that he is not really American, patriotic, or "one of us."
5. [He must make] this election a referendum on the Bush-McCain years and whether we can afford any more of them.

The details are delicious and the thinking clear and focused.

(BTW and FWIW, I really don't enjoy the Left's continuing to take McCain to task for answering the question, "How much do you have to make to be rich," with a seemingly flip "$5 million". I saw that interview. He first said it was an impossible question -- which Bernstein agrees with, by the way -- and then tossed off the $5 million figure and immediately said he was joking and that he expected to be taken to task for it. Lighten up. The guy makes enough legitimate gaffes without picking on one that he didn't intend as serious.)

Anyway, the key pull quote in Bernstein's piece for me is:

I don't care how much money our president has (though the seven homes thing really does seem beyond the pale given today's housing climate). But I deeply want him or her to understand the economic plight of those with less, and the evidence regarding the policies allegedly designed to help. When their wealth operates like empathy-killing blinders, then that wealth is a problem...a big one.

McCain is simply incapable of identifying with the common man. As such, he ought not be allowed to become President of the nation, which has far more common men and women than those in the stratospheric reaches of mega-wealth.

His colloquial communication style has an Everyman appeal about it that I'd forgotten until I heard his speech today. That clearly has appeal to the masses who voted for W because he seemed more like them. One of the analysts I heard today said that the Democratic tickets in 2000 and 2004 had a "likability shortfall" which this ticket doesn't appear to have, particularly with Biden aboard. I mean, come on: a guy who commutes to D.C. on Amtrak most days and has never lived inside the Beltway? Pretty freaking radical. I wonder how many of his colleagues do that.

Clearly his chops in national security and foreign policy are sterling.

And I think the fact that he criticized Obama during the campaign and Obama picked him anyway shows a certain amount of confidence and fortitude on Obama's part. In addition, it strengthens the perception Obama offered that he didn't want to surround himself with Yes Men. As a couple of pundits have said, "Joe's nobody's No. 2."

This could turn out to be a more helpful choice than I first thought.

Biden's been getting the lion's share of the speculative attention. He's got great foreign policy chops and he's an outspoken guy so he'll do a good job of hounding Bush III (aka John McCain). Not that that's going to be a particularly hard job against a GOP ticket with a combined net worth upwards of $300 million and an unknown number of houses and mansions. Even some of the "Reagan Democrats" won't be able to choke that one down.

I think the choice is uninspired. I'm a little disappointed but not overly so. It's not that I don't think Biden won't be a good VP; he will. It's just that he's a symbol of politics as usual and Obama has campaigned hard against that entrenchment. I think selling a change-based campaign just got a little tougher.

On the other hand, I think Obama's right in one respect: Biden is the kind of guy who's not going to be a lap dog as VP. He'll challenge Obama's thinking and his naivete on the Beltway scene where Biden's been a fixture for decades.

All three quotations are either old or taken out of context or both.

It's too bad that politics always comes down to this. McCain promised to run a clean, issues-oriented campaign and hasn't done so from the beginning. So Obama's team feels compelled to get into the mud with him because time after time American voters prove that they believe mud-slinging ads and are influenced by them.

As I often say, we pretty much get the kind of leadership we as a people deserve. More's the pity.

It's part of my decision to explore more ways of broadening the reach of my message and influence online. I'm also getting ready to launch a series of podcasts. Brevity will be the hallmark of Twittering (because they force it) and my new podcast (because I'm enforcing it). I'll be interested to see if publishing short pieces creates a better draw than longer thought pieces.

So I went to the site and looked first (naturally enough) at the Presidential race. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain has filled out the questionnaire the site asks candidates to complete. This leads me to conclude that this site's not going to be a very useful site when it comes to gaining objective data about the candidates. That is disappointing.

I'm still looking for an objective source of information so if you know one, let me know.

The two I find most interesting are:

• No More Force-Outs. The rule used to be that if a receiver caught a pass while he was in the air and landed out of bounds because of the intervention of a defender forcing him out, the officials could award a completed pass at the point where the receiver went out of bounds. The official had to conclude the receiver would have landed in-bounds if not for the intervention of the defensive player. That rule is gone. You land in bounds or the pass is incomplete.
  
• No More Incidental Face Mask. A few years ago the NFL introduced the notion of an "incidental face mask" grab and slapped it with a five-yard penalty. That penalty is gone, along with a renewed emphasis on catching and penalizing deliberate face mask grabs that twist or pull the player's head and neck.
  

I'm not pleased by either of these changes but it's the first one that has me really wondering about the NFL's wisdom. In removing the force-out rule, the league said its intent was to give equal footing to both the receiver and the pass defender. But I belief this rule change gives the defense a huge advantage. And I'm a fan who prefers offensive to defensive football. Some of the more exciting acrobatic catches of recent seasons have been made at the sidelines where the receiver made a heroic attempt to snare a high toss and -- and this is the key point for me -- would have landed with both feet inbounds if the defender hadn't hit him in the midst of the catch. Those types of catches will now go for naught. Which in turn will result in fewer receivers being willing to risk themselves for such a reception knowing that it's likely to go down as an incompletion regardless of the receiver's effort.

I'd have been a bit mollified if the league had also passed a long-overdue rule requiring the receiver to come down with one foot inbounds rather than both. College ball has used that rule for decades and I can't see that it's diminished the quality or competitiveness of the game at all.

The incidental face mask rule is a bit troubling but not so much so as the force-out rule change. I can see the idea of not wanting to put the officials in a position to know the grabber's intent or mental state when making contact with the face mask. But overall, the danger to the player whose mask is grabbed should be sufficient to offset that concern.

It feels to me like the league's rules committee just feels like it has to tweak something every year to justify its existence.