"Every why hath a wherefore." - Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Kerry's day

8:50 pm Central
Kerry's lieutenant is talking - he's saying "band of brothers" a lot. Now he's introduced Max Cleland. I don't really know who he is, either, except that I've heard the name. (He's from Georgia - a senator, maybe?) Everybody is waving signs, although they don't seem to be all the same tonight. One section has signs that say "Max" and then there are a lot of Kerry-Edwards signs and some of those tall white ones that just say "Kerry" and there are a lot of American flags.

"Even before I knew John Kerry, he was my brother."

9:05 - Finally, Kerry. He's coming through the crowd, although he's got a pretty heavy phalanx of Secret Service around him. He looks happy. (If he's always wanted to be president, I guess he ought to be, shouldn't he?) Now the tall white Kerry signs are everywhere. They're playing Springsteen - "No Surrender", I think.

I don't type fast enough to transcribe large blocks of text, but I'll try to get some snippets, at least. Right now he's just saying "Thank you" over and over, because people won't stop yelling.
I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.

(we are) united in one purpose: to make America strong again and respected in the world.

I am home.

I'm not kidding - I was born in the west wing. (smiling)

I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin, and when I proudly told him what I'd done, he promptly grounded me.

(On the 60s) We believed we could change the world, and you know what? We did.

As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

...I will appoint an Attorney General who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.

...the unity to move America forward.

(On 9/11) It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.

Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities... proclaiming "Mission accomplished" certainly doesn't make it so.
He's talking about the military - adding troops, bringing others home, dealing with them honestly.
As president, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror.

We need to make American once again a beacon in the world...

The future doesn't belong to fear, it belongs to freedom.

Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and their ears, they should remember...that is not a challenge to patriotism, that is the heart and soul of patriotism.

That flag doesn't belong to any president, it doesn't belong to any party... it belongs to the American people.

...values spoken without actions taken are just slogans.

It's time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

America can do better, and tonight we say, help is on the way.
Now there are signs that say "Help is on the way."
Where is the conscience of our country? ...it's alive in the people that I've met in every single part of this land.

Your family's healthcare is just as important as any politician in Washington DC...

...maybe some only see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America: red, white and blue.

America is not us and them.

It is time to reach for the next dream, it is time to reach for the next horizon...
He really does have a huge chin, doesn't he?

Now, wild applause, U2's "Beautiful Day" and Edwards is on the podium with Kerry.

You can hear some guy yelling about balloons and confetti - "more balloons, no confetti yet" - somehow I don't think his audio is supposed to be on. I just switched to CBS (from CNN) and they don't have the balloon audio, their analysts are talking away, of course. They're saying that Kerry was more in attack mode than they expected.

"...as colorful as a Verdi opera" says Rather, talking about the scene inside Fleet Center. Hee.

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More on Obama, from The Note:
USA Today 's Richard Benedetto reports, "Obama's book had ranked 676th on the Barnes & Noble.com list on Tuesday afternoon [sic], but jumped to No. 59 by the next morning, boosted by preorders for a paperback edition with a new preface by Obama that is being rushed to bookstores by Aug. 10."

Really only tangentially related to the convention:
Deconstructing Coulter

(found via Francis)

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Five Things Wrong With The 9/11 Report

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Day 3

First of all, the Washington Post is running a "Best Political Blog" contest, which amuses me no end.

I'm not really watching the convention tonight because I didn't think the line-up sounded very interesting apart from Edwards. But he's just starting his speech and I'm planning on watching at least part of that.

Josh Marshall on the tone of the convention.

Barack-Obama-worship is the next big trend!
Reuters (via the NYTimes)
Washington Post
CNN
Josh Marshall (yeah, I know, again)
Atrios
Pandagon
And the conservative viewpoint.

And we're already getting a little Edwards-worship as well.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Convention Day 2

I actually watched some of the convention tonight. (Yesterday I watched the baseball game instead, and I've been sorry all day that I didn't see Clinton.) Tonight I saw Obama, Ron Reagan & Teresa Kerry. All of whom were pretty interesting. I can't say that I exactly understood what was so "magic" about Barak Obama, but he gave a good speech. And I like Teresa Kerry. A lot.

Josh Marshall is posting some good stuff from the convention.

Pandagon linked to a really good article from Washington Monthly about the role of faith and values in the campaign.

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And in life away from the convention, here's Ted Turner on the problem with big media.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Pre-convention blogging*

There's a toilet crisis at the DNC. (NYTimes - use your favorite fake registration to get in)

There are also a whole lot of bloggers* at the DNC. It'll be interesting to see if this "new" view of things actually yields anything new.

Jay Rosen of Pressthink has a historical perspective.

*Yeah, I know, I don't like that word either. I always say "weblog" rather than "blog" myself - but "weblogging" and "webloggers" sound just as silly, so I've given up on that one.

--------------------------------------------

Also,
How the Bush administration sought to obstruct and discredit the 9/11 investigation
(from americanprogress.org)

Friday, July 23, 2004

Anticipation

From The Note:

Notes to the media:

1. When packing for Boston, ask yourself "WWAMD?" ("What would Andrea Mitchell do?" — the woman has done conventions, summits, you name it, and she knows what she's doing.)

2. That big, ugly blob in government center actually is City Hall. Just accept it and move on.

Notes to the Kerry campaign:

1. If you are looking for your senior staff Sunday evening, we suggest checking Fenway Park.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Not as terrible as it could have been!

(title from a list of possible Bush slogans, courtesy of Josh Marshall.)

In this big, sweet country of ours, there's no such thing as perfect security
---President Bush, in a speech in Missouri. Today Bush is to sign "Project BioShield" legislation which stockpiles vaccines and other antidotes to biological and chemical weapons.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Linky goodness

(Once a Buffy fan, always a Buffy fan.)


Surprise! Bush & Kerry have very different visions of America

...and a related article on the role of values and morality in the campaign


How Kerry Can Win


Did you know that 22 million single women didn't vote in 2000? (I didn't.)
The battle for the single woman's vote (UPI)

In Iowa, Bush Says His Reelection Will Protect Against Terror (I'm definitely not commenting on that one - but then again, do I really need to?)

(Well, here's a refutation written by somebody else, anyway: The Arabian Candidate - aka "How Bush plays into the terrorists' hands")

And more from the Washington Post:
Democrats Outraising the GOP This Year (But Republicans Still Have Financial Lead)

The Kerry Campaign's Secret Weapon (just say "Halliburton")

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Celebrity censorship?

And in the "51st State" department, Webshots seems to think the US has annexed Prince Edward Island. Which might come as a shock to the rest of Canada.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

The War Room

I'm tired - I'm not even going to try to comment on this stuff.

Kitty Kelley has a tell-all book on the Bush family coming out in early fall. (You have to scroll down past the professional wrestler to get to it!)

David Neiwert on negativity in the Bush campaign

The New York Times on Bush's war room

Something different about Fahrenheit 9/11 (found at Electrolite - and I'm glad he's back to posting)

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Dangerous Religion

While at an appearance in Pennsylvania Amish country,
Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’
(from here, found through Political Wire - and quoted by practically everybody)

This has always been my #1 problem with Bush. I've never put much credence in people who think that god speaks to them or through them - I'm inclined to think that you hear what you want to hear in such situations. And furthermore, if you think you're getting divine guidance, you're not going to be very open to the idea that you could be wrong. I know people who think that Bush's faith isn't genuine, but as time has gone on, I've become more convinced that it is. Which to me is more scary than if he was faking it.

Sojourner magazine has more to say about Dangerous Religion.
The real theological problem in America today is no longer the Religious Right but the nationalist religion of the Bush administration—one that confuses the identity of the nation with the church, and God's purposes with the mission of American empire.


And in other Bush-related journalism, there's The real flip-flopper, by Ariana Huffington.



Thursday, July 15, 2004

Seventh-inning stretch

To continue the recent baseball theme, I figure that the All-Star break is sort of like the 7th-inning stretch: a breather that's a little more than halfway through the game. OK, so that's stretching things a little bit. Sue me. Anyhow, the Astros are 44-44 at the break, which is not exactly the end of the world. Of course, since we were supposed to win the World Series and everything, it's a little bit of a disappointment. Thus the whole new manager thing. I am skeptical, but god knows the boys needed a shakeup, so we'll see what happens.


I was going to try to think up another catchy metaphor for this, but it's too much trouble. Sarah Bunting has written the greatest rant about the low-carb craze. It says everything I would want to say if I were a person given to rants. (Which, you may have noticed by now, I am generally not.)
The entire country has a bizarre, conflicted relationship with food and weight that whips around the punish-lavish axis, aggravated by bad nutritional information, predatory marketing, McDonald's sponsorship of school lunch programs, the cult of celebrity, and the default collective belief that beauty is exactly skin-deep, but instead of dealing somehow with the societal issues that got us here, let's just cut out bread, because it's easier than thinking.

(Oh, and I found this via Utopia with Cheese. Where I am apparently becoming a regular.)

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Baseball & politics

(Not baseball and politics together, you understand... Of course, there is this, which isn't baseball but is certainly sports-related!)

Anyway, the Astros have fired their manager, was what I was actually getting at. I'm not at all sure that the Astros' woes were really his fault, but I had a feeling it was coming all the same. Although I thought they'd give him until the end of the month, for some reason. Like the trade deadline, I guess.


A couple of political pieces:

On the red & blue divide - from the Christian Science Monitor (with map)

Bush's affair with abstinence - a BBC article on the strings attached to the US's new $15 billion in AIDS funding.


And John Scalzi is putting the cards on the table.

On Bush:
If re-elected, will go down as the worst president in 100 years, if only because Warren Harding had the decency to die in his first term.
and on Kerry:
The fact that John Kerry is opposed to verifiably the worst president in eight decades and is still neck-in-neck in the polls at this point is absolutely shameful, and opens up the argument of who is more incompetent: An incompetent president or the man who loses an election to him.
While I think that he's a little hard on Kerry - plus it might be nice to wait until after they steal the election again to declare him the loser - if you read down in the comments Patrick Nielsen Hayden has a nice defense of Kerry down there.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

4th inning & beyond

I don't understand what this new M. Night Shamlayan (sp?) movie is supposed to be about, exactly. But I pretty much hated his last movie anyway, so I'm not going rushing out to see it.

Zambrano pitching. With 2 outs and a runner on 1st, Alex Rodriguez hits a triple just over Berkman's head in center. 7-1.

Sabathia pitching, now. Berkman flies out, but Kent gets a hit, and Beltran's pinch-hitting. They're talking about whether Beltran will be shopped around if the Astros keep playing this bad. They're talking about it as an almost-certain thing, actually. And Beltran gets a hit, too. And Renteria follows it up with a double to make it 7-2. Pujols comes damn near hitting one out to left, and two more runs score. 7-4, with Bonds up. But Bonds pops up again.

Now we get a little tribute to Clemens, which is kind of ironic considering that he didn't exactly light it up tonight. Selig is presenting him with the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award, which I've never heard of before, although they say it's the 8th time it's been presented.

A Fahrenheit 9/11 commercial - I read today that it's made $80 million. Amazing for a documentary.

All kinds of changes now that the 4th is over - a few years ago I tried to keep score on an All-Star game, and it's a bit difficult. Like a spring training game. Jeter got an infield hit, and I'm not even sure who's pitching. I heard them say that Beltran stayed in the game; I'd guess he took Berkman's place in center. The pitcher is a Marlin - Pavano? Beckett? Not quite sure. (It's Pavano.)

I'm zoning out. Javier Vasquez pitched the bottom of the inning, that's about all I took in of it.

(Blogger chose this time to go down, so I didn't post the rest of what I wrote. I don't really think you missed much.)

(To heck with the titles)

Bottom of the first. Renteria hits the first pitch weakly to third. (Incidentally, my one and only foul ball was hit by Renteria - off Danny Darwin, in 1996. Renteria was a rookie then, I think.) Pujols hits a double to deep right-center. Bonds next. Low and away. (I'm interested in whether they're really going to pitch to him.) And he does, and Bonds pops it up to medium center. Rolen with 2 strikes, takes a pitch that looked awfully close to me, but gets hit by the next pitch. So Sosa's up with 2 outs and 2 on. Sosa hits the first pitch for a hit, and breaks his bat. 6-1 AL.

Piazza gets 3 consecutive balls, and it looks like Clemens is done, not surprisingly. (They had somebody warming up before the top of the inning was over.) Piazza strikes out.

Catwoman ad. That movie doesn't look so great. We've already had some gratuitous I, Robot promos during the pre-game. I guess it's safe to guess that it's a Fox movie.

New pitcher is Kolb, the Brewers' closer. I think Randy Johnson was intended to be the 2nd pitcher, after Clemens' 2 innings, but I guess he'll do the 3rd as scheduled. Ichiro grounds out. Pudge gets a bloop hit. (Pudge likes Yanni? That's a weird little tidbit to throw in.) Guerrero pops up to center. And... I lost track for a minute and don't know where the 3rd out came in, but it did.

Mulder still pitching in the bottom of the 2nd. Berkman and Kent are both out. Barry Larkin pinch-hits. Loaiza is supposed to pitch the 3rd. Larkin is out.

Randy Johnson is now pitching for the NL. They're talking about whether he will be traded. My opinion is that he almost definitely will, although I have no idea to who(m). Giambi gets a 1-out hit.

Even signing Clemens doesn't hold a candle to the Randy Johnson trade, in great Astros' moments, as far as I'm concerned. That was so much fun. I went to almost every game he pitched in Houston that year - I think I missed one of them because I had a work function to go to, and I wasn't happy about it.

Ken Harvey of the Royals is the pinch-hitter (with the bases loaded and one out). He's one of the couple of AL guys that I've never really heard of. And... he's out. Ichiro up for the 3rd time. Johnson throws a slider for strike 2. (Apparently both of the homers Clemens gave up were sliders, too, incidentally.) But Ichiro grounds to 1st. Inning over.

Stevie (Loaiza) is pitching now. 2 outs already, and Bonds up. There, Stevie threw him a strike - one out of five pitches. Bonds walks. Base hit Rolen, but Sosa grounds out to end the inning.

Get your game on baby

Clemens and Piazza (in tandem, as the starting battery) is one of the big stories, of course. I'm going to be interested to see how big a deal Fox makes out of it. Before this year, I had never had much love for Clemens, really, even though he's a local guy and a fellow Longhorn. So when the Piazza thing happened, I just took it as further evidence that Clemens was a jerk. However, he's been kind of amazingly cool this year, and I'm not saying that just because he's an Astro now. (Although that certainly doesn't hurt.)

Let's see, is the roof still closed? Apparently so. If they do what they normally do during summer night games, they will open the roof sometime in the middle of the game, though.

And... the first batter Ichiro hits a double. Damn near a homer. Now Pudge Rodriguez. Jesus, he hits it to the same damn place, and it's a triple. 1-0 with nobody out and a runner at 3rd. Guerrero is out, though, on a weak grounder.

Next, Manny Ramirez. Shit. Crawford box home run. (That's the short porch in left.) 3-0. Maybe Clemens and Piazza aren't communicating so well. A-Rod with a full count. Strikeout. 2 outs.

I know a pitch-by-pitch commentary is going to make for very boring blogging, but oh well. I'm not really doing pitch-by-pitch anyway. Giambi is next - he has an intestinal parasite? Ewwww.

Now the announcers are talking about the Astros' "disappointing" season. (Meanwhile, it's another full count.) Error by Kent. Man oh man. This is about how the Astros' season has been going so far. Well, except Clemens has mostly been better than this.

The problem with the Astros is not really the pitching, it's the hitting. We have a great line-up in theory, but they've all gone ice-cold for the last two months. (Hit by Jeter.)

And... Soriano homers. 6-0. Clemens has kind of a stunned look on his face. The pitcher Mulder is hitting, and the inning is finally over. Yike.

You're an All-Star

I haven't had much to say about politics lately, so let's talk baseball. The All-Star game is going on up the road a piece (so to speak) in Houston, so I'm sure I'll find some stuff to say about it!

First of all, I didn't realize Jimy Williams was one of the coaches. He got some boos when he was introduced. He's not the most popular guy in greater Houston right now, although I don't think the Astros' woes are really his fault. That goes with the job, though, doesn't it?

Also, when they were announcing the reserves only Beltran was there for the Astros. Does that mean Berkman is starting? He took Griffey's place in the Home Run Derby, is he taking his place in the lineup too? If so, cool.

NL lineup:
Renteria
Pujols
Bonds
Rolen
Sosa
Piazza
Berkman (yay!)
Kent
Clemens

(Hey, how come all the Astros are at the end? I guess I shouldn't be complaining, considering they're a third of the starting line-up.)

I didn't write down the AL line-up in time, sorry. I'm sure it's available all over the place, anyway.

Hmmm, so that's Fantasia. (I don't watch American Idol, obviously.) I really prefer the national anthem done relatively straight, which nobody does these days, but that's just personal taste.

Muhammad Ali just boxed with the camera, heh. The actual ceremonial first-pitches are thrown by kids. (Berkman is one of the catchers.) And photo opportunities galore.

Next, the actual game...

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Responses

Who is John Edwards? A disingenuous, unaccomplished liberal and friend to personal injury trial lawyers.
--Republican National Committee response to Kerry's VP pick

You notice that "liberal" is still a bad word. (Why that continues to surprise me I'm not quite sure.) And the use of "disingenuous" there just cracks me up.


Ooh, this is good. E.J.Dionne in the WP (via Atrios) with a perfect rebuttal to the "Edwards is too inexperienced" nonsense:
When you hear Republicans disparage Sen. John Edwards's lack of experience, remember the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch, spoken to George W. Bush at a debate on Dec. 6, 1999.

"You've been a great governor," Hatch declared of his rival for the Republican presidential nomination. "My only problem with you, governor, is that you've only had four and going into your fifth year of governorship. . . . Frankly, I really believe that you need more experience before you become president of the United States. That's why I'm thinking of you as a vice presidential candidate."

Which is exactly what Edwards was chosen for yesterday.

Also, here's an interesting NYT editorial on Edwards' effect on the race. (found via pandagon.net)


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Oh yeah, and did you know there's a new War on Pornography?
The parties are unsure at this point what their effort will entail. But Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said that extraordinary steps must be taken to stop "an onslaught unlike any other in the history of the world."
(This one found via BoingBoing.net)

Friday, July 02, 2004

Foreign policy

Josh Marshall has a great article in The Atlantic about Kerry's probable foreign policy if he is elected. I haven't really done a lot of reading on this subject in a long time, although foreign policy was my particular interest back a million years ago when I was a government major. It's nice to see something that makes so much sense.
...the Taliban regime was not so much a state sponsoring and directing a terrorist organization (the Republican view) as a terrorist organization sponsoring, guiding, and even hijacking a state (the Democratic view). Overthrowing regimes like that is at best only the first step in denying safe haven to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Equally important is creating the institutional bases of stability and liberalization that will prevent another descent into lawlessness and terror — in a word, nation-building.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

The historical perspective

As this article notes, the 2000 election wasn't the first one where Florida's African-American voters were disenfranchised with decisive results to the election. Funny how that works.


And in current news, the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign is giving churches "suggestions" on how to mobilize the (Republican) vote. Because, you know, all religious people must be Republican.

Speaking of Republicans, I was looking at andrewsullivan.com today (not a place I would normally be, but I followed some links about Fahrenheit 9/11) and I found this:
THE LOOMING REPUBLICAN WAR: The current tussle in the Congress over the budget is just a precursor to what I think will be outright Republican civil war after this election. If Bush wins, it will cripple his ability to get anything done. If he loses, the recriminations will get vicious. The fiscal conservatives will be fighting the "deficits-don't-matter" crowd. The realists will be out to topple the neocons. The Santorum-Ashcroft axis will continue to wage war on any Republicans not interested in legislating either the Old Testament or the dictates of the Vatican. (The FMA battle now looks more and more like an attempt by Santorum to identify Republican social moderates so he can use primary hardliners to challenge them in the future.) The battle lines are deep and sharp - and the future of American conservatism is at stake. Bush has proven himself unable to unite a party that includes Tom DeLay as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain and Bill Frist. Whether the coming civil war is about who lost the election, or who will exploit the victory, it's going to be nasty and enduring. No single party can be both for individual liberty and for theologically-based social policy; both for fiscal balance and drunken-sailor spending; both for interventionism abroad and against moralism in foreign policy. The incoherence is just too deep, the tensions too strained. And with the war on terror itself a point of contention among conservatives, geo-politics will not be able to keep the coalition in one piece.
Interesting. And I thought only the Democrats had this kind of infighting.


Kerry said to be near decision on running mate (from the Boston Globe, so don't count on that link still working tomorrow.)