<p>As of today, Donald Trump is officially and formally the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Indiana Governor Mike Pence is officially the Republican Candidate for Vice President.</p>
<p>For the second day, despite grave expectations, no substantial violence occurred from protesters outside the event. While it could be that the more sinister plans are waiting ;for Thursday, it appears the Cleveland police are effectively in control.</p>
<p>While the pace of the convention is not quite as intense as an episode of &#8220;The Apprentice&#8221; some of the speeches were quite good.</p>
<p>Chris Christie gave a rousing speech playing the game of &#8220;guilty or not guilty&#8221; with the crowd about Hillary Clinton. My favorite remark from Christie &#8211; Hillary will bring &#8220;all the failures of the Obama years but with less charm and more lies.&#8221;</p>
<p>Tiffany Trump provided some insight into Donald Trump as a father. She is not the most experienced speaker having just graduated from college a couple of months ago. But she was quite bold, well rehearsed and the overall effect was charming. ;</p>
<p>Donald Trump, Jr. perhaps gave the best speech of the evening. It occurs to me he will make a good politician if he wants to be. He seemed a bit nervous at the start but brought the fire and produced some great memes. For example:</p>
<p>&#8211; Our schools are like &#8220;Russian department stores, run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; &#8220;Dodd Frank is consumer protection for big business&#8221; (after describing the 22000 pages of regulations it generated).</p>
<p>Ben Carson was humorous and on point. He spoke, in part, about Hillary&#8217;s attraction to Saul Alinsky and his work <em>Rules for Radicals</em>. Alinsky was a propagandist and supporter of radical and anti-establishment causes. Hillary was a fan and wrote her senior thesis about Alinsky.</p>
<p>Probaly the most awkard moment was the last speaker of the night arrived, Sajid Tarar from American Muslims for Trump. The audience seemed a bit taken aback at first and he received almost no applause at the start. He led a prayer with the crowd praying for better leadership and then gave a speech that acknowledged Crhistianity (as radical Islamists never seem to do).  ;He managed to endear himself to some extent with the audience and got rousing applause upon completion.</p>
<p><strong>Author&#8217;s note:</strong> Much has been made in the media about &#8220;plagiarism&#8221; by Melania Trump because her speech has some common phrasing with Michelle Obama&#8217;s speech in 2008.</p>
<p>In my opinion this was complete hogwash.</p>
<p>I looked at the phraseology used by both Trump and Michelle Obama. It seemed to me this was a common way to express this sentiment (kind of like the phrase &#8220;in harm&#8217;s way&#8221; which was from some poem somewhere and now everyone uses it).</p>
<p>Melania&#8217;s and Michelle&#8217;s speech writers each used this common phraseology, it was original in neither case. Plus it was a very small part of a very nice and effective speech from Melania Trump.</p>
<p>But the liberal press, hungry for any story (since I guess the level of violence outsite was not yet to their liking&#8230;), latched onto a liberal accusation and ran with it.</p>