So "Jerry Springer" it's not, but MSNBC's coverage of the Democratic convention has often seemed a lot like one of Springer's old-time episodes of hair-pulling, shirt-ripping, expletive-dropping, diaper-wearing transvestites and the women who love them fun.

OK, that's an exaggeration. But the recent, widely publicized on-air disputes among MSNBC's anchors are grabbing headlines.

Let's start at the beginning. Huffington Post has compiled a handy round-by-round guide of the pundit bouts, the first of which occurred Monday when Keith Olbermann derisively told conservative Joe Scarborough to "get a shovel" after Scarborough claimed presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain was gaining in national polls.

Then came perhaps the biggest blowup of the entire week, a nearly 10-minute exchange Tuesday during which Scarborough and David Shuster yelled back and forth. Scarborough concluded the discussion by calling Shuster "Rip Van Shuster" and saying, "Shuster, I have no idea what you're talking about ... Have you been sleeping the past couple months? ... Do you never watch this show? ... You usually sleep through this show because you didn't show up three times in a row ... Somebody got into some bad acid at the protests and this conversation turned terribly wrong."

Not to be outdone, Chris Matthews then got into the act Tuesday. While House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer waited to be interviewed, first Matthews yelled to someone off-camera that he would "wrap in a second." Then, after Olbermann introduced Hoyer, Matthews went after his coanchor, saying, "You made that sound, Keith. I can do the same to you. That's what I thought and I said it."

Finally (at least for now), Wednesday night, after Republican pundit Mike Murphy opined that he believed Hillary Clinton would vote for John McCain, Olbermann said loudly, "Let's wrap him up, all right?"

Add to these incidents MSNBC's horrible decision to position its outdoor set in front of Denver's Union Station, so that both train whistles and screaming protesters frequently interrupt its broadcasts, and you have a television meltdown on your hands. And it comes at an awful time -- right in the middle of one of the network's most important spans of coverage for the entire year.

The Politico and the Wall Street Journal have documented the on-air grudge matches in articles over the past two days. The Politico quotes an anonymous "high-ranking MSNBC journalist" as saying, "The situation at our channel is about to blow up." And the Wall Street Journal quotes former MSNBC host and "CBS Evening News" coanchor Connie Chung, who said, "My reaction to that is: 'Grow up!' They have to just grow up."

Despite all the attention the spats have received in the media, however, MSNBC president Phil Griffin doesn't seem worried. "Look, I want honest, authentic people on our air. I don't want phonies. So if the price of that is every once in a while one of these bubbles up, I'm not concerned," he told the Wall Street Journal. And Griffin told the Politico that "this is our team. They've served us well. We love 'em, and we're going to be at the Republican convention, and it's going to be great. And I don't have any hesitation."

And what about MSNBC's ratings? While it has improved on the ratings front during the convention, it still trails CNN and Fox News overall for convention coverage.

Clips of all four of the interactions can be viewed below.

The polls have been looking pretty good for John McCain in recent weeks, but now there's word his support is softening among a key constituency: His in-laws.

Cindy McCain's half sister, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, told Us magazine she's voting for Obama. "I think his proposals to improve the country are more positive and I'm not a big war believer," Portalski said.

Portalski, 65, and Cindy McCain, 54, are not exactly chummy. Portalski told Us that Cindy is cool and standoffish. She was also sore that McCain was featured in an NPR story earlier this month as an "only child." Portalski and McCain share the same father, Jim Hensley, the founder of beer distributor Hensley and Co., which is the source of much of Cindy McCain's wealth. Interestingly, according to NPR, while Hensley provided financial support to Portalski and her children over the years, he willed his entire estate to Cindy. Portalski was left with $10,000.

For someone from the party of "family values," McCain's sure having trouble rounding up the votes of his relatives. Us also reports that Portalski's son, Nathan, plans to back Obama as well. Nathan had some harsh words for both McCains.

"I wouldn't vote for John McCain if he was a Democrat," he said. "I would not vote at all before I'd vote for him." He went on: "I question whether Cindy is someone I'd want to see in the White House as first lady."

DENVER -- Anyone seeking stealth inspiration and a bit of political passion, not to mention a dose of intellect that makes Barack Obama sound like Dan Quayle would have been very lucky, as Salon was, to stumble upon an appearance here by Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J.

Booker was speaking at an event held by Vote Hope, a PAC founded to help elect Barack Obama president that's now broadening to create an infrastructure that will help propel more minority candidates to elected office. Booker, a charismatic 39-year-old, was introduced by Vote Hope founder Steve Phillips as "the next Barack Obama," even as he was running -- literally -- into the banquet hall.

Once he caught his breath, Booker began a speech that served as an introduction to his unusual story: After playing football at Stanford and attending Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he arrived in drug- and crime-addled Newark as what he called "an arrogant Yale law student" who chose to live on what he called "a challenged block." After winning an upset victory to become a Newark city councilman, Booker was not the most popular guy on that block, or with Newark's long entrenched and corrupt city government, and told of having his car ticketed and his employees going unpaid.

Booker described his early political life, during which he'd promised his supporters hope and change that he wasn't sure how to deliver, in terms that must have resonated with convention guests here to nominate Obama for president. "I had these people who believed in me so much," Booker said. But as a 20-something kid, he said, he didn't know exactly how to fulfill their expectations. "Every time I'd come to a point where I'd begin to indulge in what I should not be indulging in -- cynicism or skepticism or doubt," he said, a host of elder colleagues "would smack me upside the head."

In a desperate bid to draw attention to the open-air drug trade on his corner, Booker staged a 10-day hunger strike, sleeping in a tent on his corner in a protest that made headlines and brought supporters to join him. "My very cynical friends said it was the only way I could get anyone to sleep with me," he joked.

Booker's self-introduction touched on many of the quirks that have made him a press darling and a rising star in East Coast (and now national) politics. "I have always loved manifestations of faith," he said, noting that he'd traveled to ashrams in India, and that he was "the only goy head of the L'Chaim Society at Oxford," which is true.

Like Obama, Booker is a rare politician: unwilling to dumb himself down, and in fact eager to let his brains hang out. And, as with Obama, politically and culturally sophisticated audiences -- like the crowd gathered for Vote Hope -- cannot get enough of him. His 20-minute address included references to Langston Hughes, Golda Meir and Martin Luther King Jr., and a remarkable recitation (he said he was paraphrasing, but it sounded right on) of most of the last two pages of James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," pages he called his favorite passage of literature, one that he said unlocked "the very secret and power of our country." It's the passage that goes, "One is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible."

Booker concluded with his own exhortation, saying that "the work of our ancestors is not done. We must now pay the price and make the sacrifices they made so that our children may dream again." Drawing on King's famous line that he had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, Booker said that it is up to us to "prove our ancestors right and make the most daring dreamers feel that they have underestimated our potential."

It is perhaps the greatest testament to the barriers that have begun to fall around us that Booker didn't sound like he was talking about a distant future but, rather, a very near one.

DENVER -- Outside of the Pepsi Center on Wednesday evening, I checked in with the sleep deprived, but still giddy Obama delegates after a week of free food, handshakes and history. You can see the video below.

If there's one thing George W. Bush has shown Americans time and again during his nearly eight years as president, it's that he's a man who's willing and able to learn from his mistakes. So it probably comes as no surprise that Fox News is reporting that within the White House there "are conversations under way" to decide whether President Bush will actually speak at the Republican convention on Monday as scheduled.

Forecasters expect tropical storm Gustav to develop into a hurricane by Monday, when it may reach New Orleans. Vice President Dick Cheney is also scheduled to speak at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., the same day.

As Fox's Bret Baier says in the video below, the "administration is obviously very sensitive to this."

DENVER -- "We think that McCain is at more of a high-water mark right now than we are," David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager said Wednesday, expressing his conviction that the presumptive Republican nominee is about to see his support among women and undecided voters erode.

But the notion that this is John McCain's high-water mark is not exactly confidence-inspiring, since Plouffe was speaking to reporters at an event hosted by Time magazine on the same afternoon that his boss was becoming the official presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. We're smack in the middle of what should be the Democrats' loudest, proudest and most aggressive gathering. And we're only days away from a Republican convention that, with Rudy Giuliani as its keynote speaker, is likely to look a lot more like a bloody hockey game (starring Obama as the puck) than the curling match that had taken place in Denver until the Clintons and Joe Biden goosed the proceedings.

Plouffe, who was joined by Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer, gave Time writers Jay Carney and Karen Tumulty first crack before he took questions from other journalists. Asked about possible second thoughts about Obama's plan to give his Thursday night speech in the monstrously large Invesco Field, Pfeiffer and Plouffe emphasized that it was a strategic move designed to increase their chances of winning Colorado. "We're thrilled with it," Plouffe said. "Colorado is a big battleground state and if it slips into the Obama column and out of the McCain column [McCain] will be in big trouble."

Plouffe also emphasized his confidence about close races in states, especially Western and Southern states, where, he said, the Obama campaign "has an ability to readjust the electorate" by bringing out African-Americans and young people who have not voted in past elections and who may not be reflected in current polling. "We don't want to just increase African-American turnout," said Plouffe, "but for it to be the highest it's ever been in history. We want not just increased turnout among voters under the age of 30, but for it to be the highest it's ever been."

Even in a state like Ohio, which has a less flexible electorate, Plouffe said that if McCain replicates George W. Bush's 2004 numbers, it might not be good enough, since he's counting on Obama bringing out "a lot more voters than John Kerry did." The difference, he said, is Obama's field operation. "One thing we never run into out there is McCain people on the ground," he said. McCain, Plouffe argued, "is obsessed with chasing news stories" and creating media cycles while Obama is still focused on the grass-roots campaign that won him the primary, and the conviction that the best way of convincing an undecided voter is to have a friend, family member or colleague tell the voter about Barack Obama. Of course, Plouffe did not address the possibility that if John McCain is controlling the news cycle, that friend, family member or colleague is probably telling the undecided voter that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Multiple outlets are reporting that John McCain has arrived at a final decision about the identity of his running mate, and that the person chosen will be notified at some point today. An official announcement will likely come on Friday.

As I mentioned earlier this week, some McCain aides were reportedly discussing the possibility of making the announcement tonight, the same night as Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic convention. It seems like that plan is dead, but that doesn't mean McCain's pick might not step on Obama's speech anyway. As you'll recall from this past weekend and the announcement of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate, once the logistics of the rollout get set in motion, there's more of a chance of leaks and other sorts of clues.

At the moment, prominently included among the names being floated as possible picks are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman may be the riskiest pick of the three because of the potential that choosing him would alienate social conservatives, so it's not too surprising to hear the reports that Karl Rove was working behind the scenes to shut down a McCain-Lieberman ticket. Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that Rove called Lieberman last week to ask him to tell McCain he's not interested in the job. That sounds remarkably like part of columnist Robert Novak's recent report about Lieberman, and obviously Rove and Novak have a long reporter-source relationship.

Update: McCain himself, in a radio interview this morning, said, "I haven't decided yet."

DENVER -- OK, the smirker in chief is not totally absent.

But besides the Bush Legacy Tour Bus, a traveling museum of George W.'s failed policies, the pickings are surprisingly thin.

Among all the Barack Obama T-shirts, hats, buttons, mugs, key rings and teddy bears for sale from vendors on every street corner, I found only a few anti-Bush souvenirs -- all buttons, all pretty ho-hum.

There's a dumb-looking Bush with the words "Good Riddance," McCain and "McSame," and Bush, Cheney and Rummy dressed as the Three Stooges. Snore.

Don't get me wrong. I am a sucker for a lot of the Obama-wear and will pack my bags with a selection of fabulous T-shirts and other memorabilia. And there's some great Hillary Clinton swag, too.

My question is this: Where is the boogeyman? The lack of Bush swag on the streets is a metaphor for the relative lack of Bush-bashing in the campaign. This is a president with the worst approval ratings since Atilla the Hun, so why aren't the Dems taking better advantage of it?

Hillary Clinton's line from Tuesday night, "It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart," was one of the best lines of the convention so far. Where's the T-shirt? I want to buy it.

DENVER -- If there were any questions remaining about why Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, Biden answered them tonight.

Most of all, what Biden showed when he spoke at the Pepsi Center was the particular combination of skills and experience that he brings to the ticket. As he said, he learned from his mother (the surprise star of the night) at a young age that when the bigger boys knocked him down, he needed to right back out and bloody their nose. He'll be asked to do plenty of that over the next few months, and he got an early start tonight by taking some sharp jabs at John McCain. And he also gave plenty of attention to foreign policy, loading his speech with the kind of details that Obama needs him to bring.

Having told you what I thought, though, once again, I want to know -- how do you think Biden did tonight?

DENVER -- Former President Bill Clinton, the last Democrat elected to the White House, took the stage tonight to call on his party to work to elect a Democrat this year.

Of course, that Democrat, Barack Obama, is the one who defeated Clinton's wife in this year's primaries. So there has been quite a bit of skepticism about just how vociferous Clinton would be in endorsing Obama tonight. Well, he answered that question pretty definitively in his speech, frequently and loudly endorsing Obama in front of a crowd that cheered him for minutes before finally letting him speak. And he made sure to take the fight to presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, and to address the talking points put out by Republicans after Hillary Clinton's speech Wednesday night.

For the past two nights, with the big speeches, I've asked you to weigh in and let us know what you thought. Third time's the charm, right? So what did you think?