Shortly after Strickland's talk, Lilly Ledbetter, a women's activist, talked about inequality in pay between men and women doing similar jobs. Women earn just 77 cents for every dollar men make, she told the crowd. "Maybe 23 cents doesn't sound like a lot to someone with a Swiss bank account," she told the crowd to roars. But, she said, it means a lot to average women.
Democrats have long sought to gain advantage by highlighting Romney's wealth and his refusal to release more of his tax returns. Romney has said that he has been forthcoming about how he earned his money. Republicans went out of their way last week at their convention to highlight his charitable and humanitarian acts, including giving 10 percent each year to his church.
— Sally Buzbee
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CONVENTIONAL RECRUITING
Basketball recruiting comes in many forms — phone calls, letters, text messages, emails — but not usually from the podium of the Democratic National Convention.
Oregon State men's basketball coach Craig Robinson, the brother of first lady Michelle Obama, used a convention speech along with President Barack Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-ng, to put in a plug for the Beavers, who finished 21-15 last year.
Said Robinson: "Any seven-footers out there, gimme a call!"
— Ken Thomas — Twitter http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
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THAT 4 A.M. CALL
What a difference four years can make. During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, Hillary Clinton tried to raise doubts about Barack Obama's readiness to be president by wondering how he would handle an emergency call in the middle of the night. Could he handle that 4 a.m. call signaling a global crisis?
This time around, Obama is the incumbent president, a veteran of four years of crises in the Iraq and Afghan wars, drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen, and the decision to launch a Navy SEALs attack on terror leader Osama bin Laden.
So it was unsurprising — but certainly an interesting echo — when Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, suggested that this time around, voters should worry about Republican Mitt Romney's lack of experience on foreign affairs.
"Now, one thing I know with absolute certainty .... is that in the next four years, an unforeseen crisis, challenge or conflict is going to seize the country," said Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor. "Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?"
Times have changed, indeed.
— Sally Buzbee
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DOSE OF MIDWEST HUMOR
Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is channeling Midwestern populism and heaping on some humor as he lays out the Democrats' "case against Romney."
"If Mitt was Santa Claus, he'd fire the reindeer and outsource the elves," Strickland says in one of a series of sharp quips aimed at the Republican nominee for president.
Strickland argues that Americans shouldn't trust the former Massachusetts governor — a multimillionaire private equity firm founder — because Romney has held some of his investments in overseas accounts and refuses to release all of his tax returns.
"Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps," Strickland says.
He says any person who aspires to be president "should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America."
Polls indicate that many voters feel Romney does not understand their day-to-day financial problems.
— Sally Buzbee
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KAL PENN CUTS UP
Kal Penn, he of "Harold and Kumar" and "House" renown, brought down the latter at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night with a good-humored speech filled with far too many quips for us to transcribe in real time.
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