Audience reverent, then roaring as Obama speaks

As Barack Obama spoke on Thursday night to a packed football stadium in Denver, the audience of some 75,000 people alternated between reverent silence and a roaring approval that shook the stands.

The crowd, many of whom arrived up to six hours before the speech, gave the Democratic nominee for the U.S. presidency a 2-1/2 minute ovation as he took the stage to cap an evening of songs and speeches by politicians, celebrities and ordinary Americans.

Flanked by white columns, American flags and two huge television screens that projected his image to the packed stadium, Obama took 43 minutes to lay out his plan for an America under his leadership.

While the audience was almost completely silent during a video introduction of the first-term Illinois senator unknown to most Americans just a year ago, they came to life with chants of "Yes we can" and "Eight is enough" as Obama called for change after eight years of President George W. Bush's Republican presidency.

The speech - transcript. Hit Launch Video Player for the sights and sounds.

The AP(!) Obama transcended politics - note this plays into the GOP Obama as Messiah theme even while reporting on all the praises. Former Republican John Cole - All the news channels but FUX NEWS loved fantastic speech. David Brooks - bitter and sarcastic.

What else does the conservative AP write? Hoo-boy! Editor and Publisher catches them:

With rare exception, nearly all of the top commentators and reporters on the three cable news networks had hailed Obama's speech as something new and powerful, and filled with specifics, and predicted it would have a positive effect on his chances vs. John McCain. This hallelujah chorus included conservatives such as Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan and the longtime Republican David Gergen, as well as Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. Buchanan called it the best and most important political convention speech he had ever heard, going back 48 years.

So Olbermann was outraged that the AP's Babington had written, in his analysis of the speech, just off the wire, that Obama had tried nothing new and that his speech was lacking in specifics. He read the first few paragraphs on the air, lamented that it would be printed in hundred of newspapers on Friday, and concluded, "It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watched. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and web sites is a remarkable failure of that news organization.

"Charles Babington, find a new line of work."

Olberman even criticized the reporter on his time-keeping, noting that the article said the speech was 35 minutes long when it was, he said, actually 44 minutes long. A few minutes later, the AP copy showing up at news sites had been corrected to "44 minutes."

Even as Babington was hitting Obama for a lack of specifics, AP was transmitting a second piece by another reporter, Jim Drinkard, that offered a detailed look at seven specific policy proposals in the speech (and expressed doubts about all of them)

Obama backers have criticized the coverage of their candidate by the AP's Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Fournier, and other AP reporters, for several months. Fournier has denied any slant.

The populist Obama emerges from hiding.

Also, Al Gore, the man who should be president. He is being vindicated everyday about global climate change - Artic Ice on Track for Another All-Time Low.

How did Obama get this far? "No Drama" and learning from mistakes of other Democrats.