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ership of Romney's speech -- and Obama's address to his Democratic convention next week -- will be surpassed only by the audience for their coming debates.
• The Republican convention's most rah-rah moments were unfolding as Hurricane Isaac, down to a tropical storm, inflicted floodwaters and misery in rural stretches of nearby Gulf states. The slowly unfolding calamity went unmentioned by most key speakers Wednesday night, although a few asked for Red Cross donations to the victims and offered prayers. The GOP had cut the convention's opening day in fear Isaac would strike Tampa, which was spared.
• Not that Obama set politicking aside, either, even as he tended to emergency management. Locked in an unpredictable race that shows no clear advantage for either man, Obama implored young people in a crowd of 7,500 in Charlottesville, Va., home to the University of Virginia, to register, vote and make sure their friends do as well. "I need you," he said. "America needs you to close the gap between what is and what might be."
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Laying out the first plans for his party's presidential ticket, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts Wednesday night when he attacked President Barack Obama's policies on Medi

care, the economic stimulus and the budget deficit.
• Sen. Rob Portman, a former U.S. trade representative, glossed over his own problems when critiquing Obama's trade dealings with China. A day earlier, the convention's keynote speaker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, bucked reality in promising that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney will lay out for the American people the painful budget cuts it will take to wrestle the government's debt and deficit woes under control.
• And former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum stretched the truth in taking Obama to task over his administration supposedly waiving work requirements in the nation's landmark welfare-to-work law.
• A closer look at some of the words spoken at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.:
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