Where the Sidewalk Begins ...

Here We Go Again

Let's see. My grandma informed me that Obama attended a terrorist-training school as a child. My father informed me that Obama refuses to acknowledge the US flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance. And so on. I'm floored that my grandma heard about the madrassa school. I wonder if she gets Fox News. I know she doesn't get the Internet.

Anyway, I had a hard time arguing on the spot with these folks. So today I found the falsehoods debunked on FactCheck.org and Snopes.com. And I sent Mom and Dad an email (in the hopes that Mom will pass on the info to Grandma):

Several of you have mentioned to me several things about the upcoming election. I just wanted to clarify. Those things have been debunked as false, which is good. You can read the actual truths on Snopes.com and on FactCheck.org, both independent non-profit groups who do nothing but debunk all sorts of internet-related falsehoods. 

Truly, I don’t care who you vote for as long as a) you vote and b) you vote based on facts and not falsehoods. 

The untruths I’m particularly concerned about right now regard Barack Obama. Based on my research and these sites, Obama is not a racist, he DOES say the pledge of allegiance, does respect the US flag, is a Christian (was sworn in with his own Bible), and did NOT attend a terrorist-training elementary school in Indonesia (I got that crazy one from my grandmother, so could someone please tell her its false…). 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp 

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_obama.html 

BangladeshBecause all is fair, it’s worth mentioning that McCain also does NOT have a black child out of wedlock. Instead, he has a dark-skinned daughter because he took it upon himself to adopt an orphan child in Bangladesh, which is a good thing. That's mentioned in one of the above links as well.

So, before believing what might be questionable in the always-slanderous election season, refer to Snopes.com or FactCheck.org. I’d hate to see any of the candidates get “swift boated” this year by untruths. If we all double-checked what we heard, then we can catch each party in their lies.

Cheers,

Shel

 PS

The reason I support Obama is that his health-care plan is realistic and not universal. After my experiences with George this past summer, health care is my number 1 issue.

Didn't I have to do this with Dad in the last election? He was convinced Kerry hung out with Jane Fonda in her anti-war days or something. Sigh.

Looking towards the future

We had a meeting with Kevin's mom and a lawyer the other day about Medicaid planning for Kevin's parents. What I learned about the system upset me.
To put it in simple terms, in order to get Medicaid, you must be at the poverty line or close to it.
If Ed & Angie are married and Angie needs Medicaid, all of their money, regardless of where it came from or who's name it is in, must be gone. The couple needs to be at $0 before Medicaid helps out.

So here's the thing. Upper class folks can pay for long-term care. Those at the poverty line get Medicaid to help them out (provided they meet all the financial qualifications). What do the rest of us do?

It seriously pisses me off. The middle class is most of America. A large number of that middle class is in their 50s and early 60s right now, the Baby Boomers. What the hell is the medical system going to do in 10 years when these baby boomers start suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's, diabetes complications, and just old age? Hell, either the system will change, collapse, or we'll have a lot of ill-cared-for elderly folks.

Guess how much a standard nursing home costs? Around $200+/per day.  At 365 days, that's more than $70K/year. Have you got that sitting around to cover your nursing home one day?  According to Consumer Reports, there's a good chance that by 2021 (not that far away), costs will have risen to $480/day!

It's sad. It's frustrating. And it's very frightening.

At this rate, we'll elect another Republican

Sometimes I feel like the Democrats are really just the political version of the Keystone Cops.

I just read that Hillary has a double-digit lead over Obama for the Democratic nomination. That's wrong people. Is no one looking at the big picture?

I like Hillary a lot. I really do. But the nation as a whole (remember all those Republicans out there) doesn't like Hillary. She's too polarizing. Some don't like the woman; some don't like her husband, but she is not popular outside of the Democratic party. What I feel like Dems are forgetting is that you have to win the majority of the nation, not just your party. Obama (and well, I like Bill Richardson) has the potential to do that. Hillary does not. When we're trying to find the right candidate to represent the party, it needs to be someone who can also win the support of the nation.

Blessed be

According to an article on CNN, the Veterans Association has finally settled with several Wiccan groups and churches (I'm betting the Wiccan Anti-Defamation League - WADL is in there). Wiccan soldiers may now have the Wiccan pentacle on their VA headstone, and it can be used in private cemetaries and even in Arlington.

"This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation's veterans," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the Wiccans in the lawsuit.

I'm not so sure about that. I wonder if the Bush administration is even aware of this ruling.

I haven't been a practicing Wiccan in several years, and in fact, I've tended back towards Catholicism a little recently. But I love and understand the Wiccan religion. Thanks in large part to Hollywood, Wicca is often misunderstood.

A pentacle points up, not down, and each of the five points represents an element: earth, water, air, fire, and spirit. Wiccans are peacful, with the Wiccan Rede stating: "An it harm none, do what ye will."  I was always partial to the rule of three, which I saw proved true often enough for it to have an impact. Basically the rule of three states that everything you do, good or bad, comes back to you three times. In other words, karma will reward you or bite you in the ass three times over based on your actions, so its in your best interest to be good to the earth and its inhabitants.

So even though I've pretty much left behind Wicca, I haven't abandoned all its tenets and teachings. I think its high time the VA recognized Wicca. I'm glad those who truly practiced Wicca and died for our country can now rest under a sign they believe is peaceful, and that their families will feel that same peace.

VaTech

As I was driving to rehearsal last night, the full weight of the VaTech shootings really hit me. I have so many friends who work on college campuses. Steven and my sisters are all at college. It wasn't so long ago I worked at Miami University. This could have happened anywhere, to any of us.

It just hits really close to home.

Of all the victims, perhaps the story that affects me most is that of Professor Liviu Librescu, a 76-yr old professor of engineering and a HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR. The poor man survives Hitler, only to be shot down by a rampaging 23-yr old college student. Professor Librescu blocked the door to his classroom from the gunman with his body, giving his students time to escape out the windows.

My deepest sympathies to all at Virginia Tech, and their families.

Don't forget to vote

I'm in Disney (yay Disney!) at a conference, but I wanted to remind everyone to vote today. Don't forget! Whether local or national, it's an important election.
And in case you're curious, I voted absentee last Thursday. :-)

Mock Disaster

Kevin & I signed up for the mock terrorist attack drill at Great American Ballpark on Saturday morning. It actually sounds rather scary. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

• Wear old clothes you are willing to get shaving cream on. We will be extremely respectful of your clothes/possessions; however, if tears, stains, or other damage to your clothing accidentally occurs as a part of the rescue process, consider this a warning of such an inconvenience.
• Underneath your outer layer of clothes wear a pair of shorts/tank top/t-shirt/swimsuit that can get wet. **You will not be given an opportunity to change into your shorts/tank top/swimsuit. You must wear it to the ball park**
• Wear shoes that can get wet (i.e. flip flops, cheap sandals, cheap sneakers, etc.)
• Bring a large towel to dry off with.
• Bring your photo ID.
• Bring a second set of clothes with you (something warm) to change into after you are done with the decontamination process.

Interesting, eh? That's next Saturday at 7:30 am. We get free lunch, free parking, free 2007 Reds tickets, and so on. We're doing it because we're just really curious. Cameras are not allowed, but unless I have to sign an NDA, I"ll be blogging about it without a doubt.

Step right up!

Volunteers Wanted!
The Cincinnati Reds are asking for volunteers for a simulated terrorist attack on September 30 from 7 am - 10 am. The exercise is being conducted by the tri-state area Departments of Homeland Security and will simulate a full-scale terrorist attack at Great American Ballpark. Volunteers will "play" fans who will be successfully evacuated from the park after the simulated attack.
For your time, you receive a voucher for 2 free tickets to a game during the 2007 season. These may only work for the cheap seats, I don't know. Volunteers will also receive Reds promotional items.
I've read in the paper about the millions of dollars Cincinnati has spent on things like armored vehicles, but I've yet to read about a single thing that will protect me during a terrorist attack. So I'm sort of intrigued.
I'm seriously contemplating this. I would have to get Kevin out of bed at an unholy hour on a Saturday, but it's not exactly the type of thing that requires me to take a shower or curl my hair. We also have a fancy dinner party to attend that night and this would be fantastic dinner party conversation.
Hmmm ....

Remember

I wasn't going to post about 9/11 because I wasn't sure what to say. In truth, I sort of avoided the whole day so I really wouldn't have to think about it. Last night though, I caught a glimpse of Manhattan lit up, with the WTC light beams towering above and through the skyline. It made me gasp. Even just on the TV screen, it was impressive and moving. Moreso, I suppose, if you saw it in person.
My friend Chuck recently moved to NYC, so I'll just direct you to his lovely posting about those two ghostly rays of light as seen from his Brooklyn rooftop.

Ken Lucas, Where are You?

I've been trying to stay away from politics until the next Presidential election. Why? Because I get too involved, emotionally, and I get crushed. I'm just now getting over Kerry's loss and we're already at mid-term elections. I was so involved emotionally during the last Presidential campaign. I'm not ready to care like that again so I've been staying out of the fray.

However, things locally are bugging me, niggling at my brain. Ken Lucas (D) is running for Congress again in my area. He was the Democratic congressman around here forever. Lucas retired in 2004 and was replaced by Geoff Davis (R).  Remember when I wrote my Congressman back in April and got that vague, nonsense reply back in June? That was Geoff Davis. He even added me to his email list just because I emailed him my initial letter. How nice. I added him to my spam blocker.

Ken Lucas is supposedly so shocked about how Davis is handling things that Lucas has come out of retirement. When I first heard this, I was incredibly excited. I now realize that Lucas no longer understands how to run a successful campaign.  In the past, he easily creamed his competition (including Davis) just because he was the incumbent and had big name recognition around here. He hardly had to  spend a campaign dollar. Now he actually has to run a race. For folks who aren't familiar with the situation, well, they'll be surprised to see his name on the ballot. No ads, no mailings, not even signs on the street. His office, right down the street from my house, is so hidden, you wouldn't even know it was there - the man doesn't even have signs for himself! He either doesn't know how to run a campaign anymore or he's just too tired.

On the other hand, I'm getting crap in the mail from Republicans on a daily basis, slandering Lucas's record. Nick Clooney thought he'd get that seat on name recognition and he got destroyed. I don't understand why Lucas isn't learning from Clooney's mistakes. Davis has money and Davis lost to Lucas a lot in the past. Davis wants this bad. Does Lucas?

Flooded House in PA

  Originally uploaded by writegirl.

More pictures from some of the devastation in Pennsylvania this week. As I was talking to David he was pulling over and taking photos constantly, absolutely amazed. This water was apparently once a "creek" and the house seems to have sacrificed its roof to the flood waters.
As Chuck commented on the last entry, it's hard to imagine that all this is happening in Pennsylvania.
(I doubt Dave will have a chance to send me more photos, as he's heading out of town with his family, but if I get more, I'll post them to Flickr.)

Update: Dave sent me some more photos so I just created a Photoset on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: pennsylvania, pennsylvania flooding, flooding

Pennsylvania Flooding

  Originally uploaded by writegirl.

My friend David lives in the portion of Pennsylvania under water today. This morning he evacuated his wife, two little ones, and his computers and is in the midst of trying to find his house in all the water. He sent this to me from his cell phone to show me the amount of water rushing around the road in front of his house, on which he was walking. The roads are shut down so he's pretty much hiking home to check on the sump pump.
I always find it interesting how beautiful photos result from nature's chaos.

Technorati Tags: pennsylvania, pennsylvania flooding, flooding

I Wrote My Congressman

Back at the end of April I wrote my congressman, Geoff Davis, about my worries regarding Network Neutrality. Yes - I actually wrote my congressman. And hey, he wrote back.
Today I received the email that you can read after the jump.
I'm no fan of Geoff Davis and I find it irritating that he turned my "Ms." into a "Mrs." based on my two last names. I wrote him before there was even a vote. He (or his assistants) got back to me a month after the vote. I honestly haven't figured out exactly what his point is in this correspondence.
Take it as you will. 

Technorati Tags: network neutrality, save the internet

A cause for which I'm passionate

On the off chance you have been hiding under a rock recently, 2006 Derby winner Barbaro was seriously injured in the running of the Preakness last Saturday. I'm a horse racing fan and, since January, had been keeping tabs on various horses. My pick for the Derby was Barbaro (and I ended up winning some money at a party!), as well as Lawyer Ron and Sweetnorthernsaint. I did good with Barbaro and truthfully, I thought he had a great shot at the Triple Crown.

Not surprisingly, I've managed to get myself all worked up over Barbaro's injury, which resulted in a lot of tears on Saturday night for racing fans all over, not just me. Horses need 4 legs on which to stand. A horse simply cannot survive on three feet, which is why having 3 fractures in his hind ankle is a life-threatening injury.

Now, Barbaro is getting the best care. His owners will invest a fortune in his treatment and recovery because they stand to make millions once they put him out to stud. However, if this was another horse - not a Derby winner and not a colt, but a gelding - the horse would have been euthanized at the track. Barbaro is lucky. I'll be checking the news reports everyday until he is healed. I'm a big fan of this horse.

He's not out of the woods yet. I know the news reports tell how great he is doing, and there is no doubt that being a strong, young, 3 yr old is working in his favor. However, in about 4 weeks, they'll find out just how much pressure he has been putting on his other feet. If he ends up with laminitis in his other hind foot because of favoring, he may have to be euthanized. (Laminitis in a horse is like tearing off one of our fingernails - except hoof sized.)

Very few retired race horses, jumpers, or steeplechasers get to go to cushy farms to flirt with the mares. Many of them are sold to slaughterhouses - in TEXAS and ILLINOIS - and then sent to other countries for HUMAN CONSUMPTION. This horrifies me. In fact, not too long ago, a Kentucky Derby winner who failed to produce any viable offspring was sent to slaughter. There are numerous rescue services out there, but not enough, and not with enough money. (There are two in the Contributions section of my sidebar.) Those who aren't sold to slaughterhouses are often neglected, malnourished, and maltreated.

In 2005, more than 91,000 horses were slaughtered in this country in three slaughterhouses, all of whom are owned by foreigners. No one is quite sure how many of those were thoroughbreds, but the best guess is that about 9,000 former race horses were killed in this country last year for human consumption.

A bill to stop horse slaughter in our country is stalled in Congress. Blame the senators who are strongly influenced by lobbyist groups with twisted reasoning.

But the will of the people too often doesn't matter in Congress. For varied reasons, cattlemen's groups, the American Quarter Horse Association and, shamefully, the American Association of Equine Practitioners are pro-slaughter. These groups have gotten to a couple of powerful lawmakers who have continually found ways to keep slaughter alive.

One of my dreams is to eventually adopt a rescued race horse. I have always wanted a horse and I can't think of a better way to help. I also want others to be aware that the life of your average race horse - the one who races at River Downs in Cincinnati, not Churchill Downs in Kentucky - isn't all roses and green pastures. Think about what happens to the animal when they can't race anymore. Not every horse gets the care of Barbaro.

Technorati Tags: Barbaro, Kentucky Derby, Horses, slaughterhouse 

NY Times, Colbert, and YouTube?

We all know that I was blown away by Stephen Colbert's ability (his cojones) to lampoon the President a few chairs over from where he was standing. Wow. Go Stephen! Some of that stuff really needed to be said, to those people, and he delivered it flawlessly, to a cold house. I really liked the line about glaciers not being around for the grandchildren.
I was also sort of irritated that the mainstream press pretty much ignored the whole speech. Today the NY Times finally decided to report on the speech - or rather, on reaction to the speech, mostly in the Blogosphere. (That's us!) I didn't think the article was really a shining example of journalism. The best thing, however, is that in order to show video of the event, the NY Times didn't go to C-Span or another substantial journalistic organization. The NY Times links to the YOU TUBE video of the clip. To me, that's an amazing endorsement of You Tube.

Technorati Tags: You Tube, New York Times, Stephen Colbert

Let's just kill off innovation while we're at it

I hate it when our Congress (and our UN) is being so stupid I have to briefly return to being a political blog.

I'm almost too pissed off, too aghast, to blog about this. Almost. But I think its something you need to know about. It's not like the mainstream media is reporting on this. In fact, CNN's front page just had a link to an article on Paris Hilton's latest breakup. Of course, the adventures of Paris are so much more important than our ability to innovate, watch what we want when we want in the manner we choose, and access the sites we like best on the web.

At stake is not only net neutrality, as I mentioned before, but the possibility of a broadcast flag. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) introduced a clause on the net neutrality bill that adds a broadcast flag. What does this mean?

Stephen Colbert in Washington

Another political post - sort of. Stephen Colbert spoke at the annual White House Correspondents dinner, an event that usually has a lot of humour associated with it.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. His "character" just grates on my nerves after a while. But it was so perfect for this dinner. He gave a very funny, yet scathing speech. Apparently the Bushes were not very happy.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
 
He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

A group of fans have set up a Thank You site for Colbert, which also lists a few articles and the videos of the speech.

Technorati Tag: Stephen Colbert

What you might lose if you're not looking

I posted this once and I crashed and lost everything. Let's try again. My point that no one saw is that I only post politcally anymore when its something too stupid to be believed (common in our current climate) or something that evokes my passion. I researched this before I posted. It's real. It's something we all need to be passionate about.

The GOP and the telecommunications companies are trying to take away our Internet. I swear I'm not over-reacting and making things up. This isn't reactionary - it's true.

WTF? "Manimal?"

Alright - so I've only read excerpts and reviews of the State of the Union address. I can't get through the whole thing in depth. And I know I said I wouldn't blog on it. However, I have to say that this sort of stands out:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids;

WTF? Human animal Hybrids? Where did he get this? Is it him, or are his speech writers just insane? And to think, I spent a good part of my childhood wanting to be a presidential speechwriter. Argh! I have to point out [the original] Wonkette's take on this statement, as she was live-blogging the speech:

9:57 PM “Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research – human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids” OMG HUMAN-ANIMAL HYBRIDS! BUSH SAYS NO TO WEREWOLVES. HEAR THAT CONGRESS? The man is taking a stand. To repeat: Hybrid cars: Good. Hybrid human-animals: Bad.

Weepy Politics

There's nothing that gets me more than a dog story. I found this via Wonkette today (although the story is old news apparently). Rex was a bomb-sniffing German Shepherd (my favorite) in Iraq. He & his human partner, Jamie, were caught in an explosion. He suffered a slightly burnt nose, but she was seriously injured. Her last thoughts before slipping into a coma were of the dog.
Rex was brought to her in the hospital and his presence helped her heal. She sought to adopt Rex, I assume as she was discharged from the military (not sure on that) and was told that because he still had several good years left in him, she could not. There was an outpouring of support - which I missed or I would have poured out as well - and Congress actually passed a law allowing the adoption of military animals in extraordinary circumstances, such as this. Rex now lives with Jamie, her husband, and their other pets.
I don't tell it as well as this page or this page. They made me cry.
Interestingly, Rex and Jamie were supposed to be in the First Lady's box at the State of the Union last night. I don't know if they were, though. After all, where would the dog sit?
For once, I applaud Congress. Our military animals work hard and deserve good homes. They also help our people heal and can continue to do that once adopted.

State of the Union

I went for a while where it was all politics all the time. That tapered off in the last year because George Bush makes my head hurt. A lot. And sometimes his policies or ideas make me cry. A lot.
Anyway, I won't be watching the State of the Union address tonite, primarily because I can neither watch nor listen to him talk without lots of shuddering and wincing. Aside from what he is saying, his delivery - both visually and audibly - are generally cringe-worthy. I will most likely read the speech, or whatever the New York Times prints - tomorrow. I will probably not blog on it because it will all just upset me as I pray for 2008 and hope the Democrats can manage to get their act together beyond Hilary.
So that's all I have to say about politics for now. Woudn't want to cry, you know.

Hey Indiana - WTF?

Unbelievable.

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do
become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."
According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother throu gh assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation,
and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given
to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent "who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure" without court approval, "commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor." The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit "unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction."

So, if you want to have a baby in Indiana and you're having some trouble, move far far away from the state before they analyze everything about you and tear apart your privacy during what is already an emotional time.
I cannot believe this proposed law. They are effectively making it impossible for a gay woman or man to have a child, they are penalizing women who have reproductive issues, and they are penalizing single women who are incredibly competent and want to have a child. Two parents are only better if both parents are loving and contributing, but they didn't mention that in their new law.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

UPDATE: State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”
Okay - I"m just scared that it even came that close to being considered. Egads! What is this world coming to? What is it that will differentiate us from, oh, the Taliban if we start legislating what women can do with their bodies? Oh I know. They would kill her for unauthorized reproduction. We'd just fine her and throw her in jail.

My ALternate World

Somewhere there is an alternate timeline (I remember learning about these in Philosophy class in college) where Al Gore was elected President and not Bush back in 2000. I would rather live there.
Al Gore gave a speech this morning on the decline of the media, and therefore the decline of democracy. Read it here.
(Thanks John!)

FSM Flotsam

More Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, this time from Jason. I couldn't have said it better myself: easier just to link.

Armageddon

Did you wonder why the administration was so slow to respond to Katrina? Because it was scripted! I pulled this quote from a Boing Boing post.

What everyone fails to understand about the Bush Administration response to Katrina is the underlying reasoning. My wife (who is an Evangelical Christian) explained to me that this is the beginning of the 'End Times'. Katrina is just one of the portents. Bush et al are just marking time until Rapture. God smote the modern Sodom as a sign of his might (on this Dr. Dobson and Bin Laden agree). This event in just another sign of the Second Coming. By controlling the press, freedom of movement, etc. Bush is help people to get ready for the Rapture. None of the problems are the fault of Bush, they are controlled by God. So do not blame Bush, it is not his fault, God made him do it.

This disturbs me so deeply that I can't accurately articulate my feelings.

Oh, and Bush has now declared a National Day of Prayer for Katrina Victims (Sept 16). I have no problem sending my good wishes and hope for a better tomorrow into the ether, hopefully to benefit those in need, but can he do that? Can he create a National Day of Prayer? What, oh what, ever happened to the separation of church and state?

The Media Does Its Job

Most of the time I'm irritated with the national news media for one reason or another. Right now though, I'm pretty darn proud of them, esp the folks at CNN. The reporters have actually reported and they're working hard to expose the truth of the situation in the Hurricane-affected areas. I mentioned this the other night, in my rant, after watching Scarborough Country. Joe Scarborough had become the voice of the people, because someone had to do it.

Here's some of the what the reporters are doing:

Anderson Cooper ripping into Senator Mary Landrieu. Transcript, Video Truly, it makes you want to cheer for Anderson Cooper. She pulls such vague, political answers and he doesn't let her.

SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D), LOUISIANA: <snip> Let me just say a few things. Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts.
Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard -- maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.
COOPER: Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.
And when they hear politicians slap -- you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.
Do you get the anger that is out here?

It continues from there. Then there is Soledad O'Brien, normally a mild-mannered anchor who I tend to think of as a fluff reporter.

We're still good people

On the heels of that little liberal rant, I felt I should post some positive things. Here's the thing - I'm having trouble finding positive news stories about Hurricane Katrina. I know that rescue workers are out there tirelessly saving people, aid workers are working to find food and shelter for thousands. Those people are heros. No one is really writing about any miraculous things that are happening though. I'm sure they're out there, but lost in the negative press. Sad - sometimes it's life's littlest miracles that can get us through the day.
Some things that show the positive side of human nature:

Political Fallout

Allow me a break from worrying about people, animals, and history for a moment to have a small rant:

Do you think there will be lasting political fallout from this? Americans have short memories when it comes to President Bush. I doubt the Gulf Coast States will forget, and you know, that might actually swing things in the Democrats favor - if they leverage the disaster correctly and tactfully. I have no doubt that those states will still be rebuilding when 2007-8 roll around.

There should be political fallout. There deserves to be political fallout, from the Mayor on up to the President. The federal gov't was clearly not ready to take care of an urban disaster such as this. Apparently, all the Homeland Security we've paid for and heard about only exists to take care of a one-time, localized event, such as 9/11. I"m glad that we're ready to take care of events like that. But did we forget to prepare for Mother Nature? This is not localized. This is a national disaster - it encompasses more than one state. Entire towns have been completely wiped out - removed from the map. FEMA has been virtually nonexistent, according to all reports. FEMA is a part of the Dep't of Homeland Security. They had no trouble at all responding to Jeb Bush's Florida 4 times last year. Why is it so difficult to respond to Mississippi and Louisiana?

I was watching a bit of Scarborough Country on MSNBC tonite (just flipping by and caught it). He was in Biloxi. He and his wife came to Biloxi and were so shocked at the conditions that they went and gathered supplies and came back to distribute food and water. Residents told him, on camera, that the Scarboroughs were the first aide workers they had seen since the hurricane. These people have nothing left - no homes, no food, no water, no cars to leave. Everything was destroyed. FEMA has not been to Biloxi. The residents asked questions along the lines of "Why can we send help to Iraq but we can't help our own people. We're supposed to be the most powerful country on Earth." Good point, and good question. Scarborough was shocked, appalled, and angry - kudos to him. (Interestingly, they don't mention his reaction on their web site.)

Today, far too long after the hurricane hit, the Bush Administration decided to send in troops. New Orleans never should have descended into anarchy and chaos. Rape, murder, looting, starvation ... it never should have been allowed to happen. The hurricane was projected to hit New Orleans. Why weren't federal disaster teams prepared to respond? Prepared to rush in keep the city in order?  Prepared to rush in and rescue people with helicopters? Instead, helicopters had to be asked for. Today, doctors from two hospitals in NOLA called the Associated Press out of desperation. They were out of supplies, they had no power, no water, and were trying to keep looters at bay. There was constant promised help from the National Guard, but none ever came. They needed to get their patients to safety. Out of desperation, they issued a cry for help to the Associated Press. Also today, the Mayor of New Orleans, at the Convention Center where there were 7 dead bodies and riotous citizens with guns, issued a plea for help to CNN (also picked up by the BBC and others).  He issued a "desperate SOS" to the world.

So tell me, why are these people turning to the media for help? Why isn't their own gov't - our gov't - there to help them? Isn't that part of the President's job description? To give us comfort and to lead the troops.

Ideally, the troops that have finally been ordered to New Orleans will help restore order out of the chaos. And the $10B aid package will help in providing relief. But could so much of this have been prevented if it had been promptly responded to like Florida?

Oh, and don't get me started on how that levee might never have collapsed and flooded New Orleans if the funding for its completion hadn't been diverted to Iraq.

And now, I'm going to go watch something non-news related for a while.

Gassy

I drove by the local BP station an hour or so ago. Gas prices, for regular, are at $3.09/gallon. They are also that high at the local Speedways.  As a comparison, the Speedways in Chicago range from $3.41 to $3.45 per gallon.

Tell me: how much of this is resulting from Hurricane Katrina and how much of this is the gas stations/companies taking advantage of the situation? 

A Streetcar Named Desire

I lied ... I can't stop reading about it. This time I blame John, who posted a moving quote from a NY Times article.
The article touches on the magic of New Orleans - the fact that New Orleans isn't just a cookie-cutter city. It is old, unique, and timeless.

But there is also a sense that, like the river, there remains something immutable in New Orleans. As the jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis once said: "You know, I don't think New Orleans is ever going to change, because I don't think in the scheme of things, it's supposed to change." (via NY Times)

I know New Orleans can rebuild. I don't think you can lose that much magic and history - even to a helluva hurricane. I think it's in the ground and it's in the river, and it's definitely in the people who make up the quilt that is New Orleans.

NOLA Submerged

Almost every article in today's Wall Street Journal had to do with the impact of Hurricane Katrina. I can't read any more of it. I can't read any more of the articles online either. Neither can I watch it on TV. It upsets me to the point of tears. I have torn feelings - of pain and sympathy for those who are trapped and those who have lost everything. But I'm also angry at many of those who were trapped - why didn't they go to a shelter? Take a bus out of town? Why did they stay in their neighborhoods to drown or starve or grow ill from the chemicals and stench in the unclean waters? Even though they are now evacuating the shelters, those in the shelters are being taken places where they are safe. Why didn't everyone go to a shelter, even if they couldn't leave town? The loss of life makes me so angry. A part of me is sad that those who did evacuate completely didn't always take their pets. Mostly though, I'm appalled, and awestruck, at the destruction of property and human life. I'm deeply moved - and greatly saddened. It's a bitter reminder that this is not our world - there are things far more powerful than us humans. The world belongs to Mother Nature - she's just letting us live here.

UPDATE: I now have word that our friends in the New Orleans area are all okay. Everyone evacuated - one to Cincinnati and another couple and their families to Memphis. The couple we met during Hurricane Ivan, who were to be married on 9/10, are safe in Memphis and have indefinitely postponed their wedding. They both had houses in Slidell. From what they have heard, their homes are both flooded and may be under a couple of trees. The most important thing, of course, is that everyone is okay.

Much on the crying today. I keep seeing headline after headline, with news of the tragedy and devastation. When I actually click on a link, I cry. You think I'd stop clicking. I feel helpless to help those in need.

Ways you can help are at the Network for Good.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Well, not really. Just a bunch of tidbits. And forgive any crazy typos - I am getting used to a new, ergonomic, split keyboard.

• Judy Garland used four separate pairs of ruby slippers filming one of my all-time favorite movies. One pair has been stolen from a Children's Museum in Grand Rapids, MN. :-(
• Steve Jobs & Apple have something up their sleeve. My guess is that it's an iPod/cell phone hybrid. I bet it will hold more like 5 GB than 20 GB. If that does indeed happen, I won't have to have one.Really! I'm still determined to replace my little Palm Pilot and my cell phone with a Blackberry once my Sprint contract is ended in the early spring. (If I'm lucky, by then Sprint will carry Blackberries. We really like Sprint's service.) The combination of a pda/phone just works better for me than iPod/phone. Whatever they announce on 9/7, you know the design will be impressive.
• A new technology is in the works that, by scanning brain waves, detects Alzheimer's Disease at its earliest stages. This is an amazing technology that could make a huge difference in Alzheimer's research, by showing how Alzheimer's develops and getting treatment to patients sooner.
• A NY Times article talks about the fact that more and more men who watch their wives giving birth are unable to ever feel attracted to their wives again. Forgive me for feeling angry and offended, but really ... considering the pain of birth (from what I hear), the low self-esteem many women deal with in the last months of pregnancy and after the birth, and everything else that comes with pregnancy and birth, and men who watch it can't sleep with their wives? Perhaps even more irritating is that the author, a psychiatrist treating these men, suggests that it's the woman's fault for even inviting the husband into the delivery room in the first place. Argh! (Slate has a nice piece regarding the article and women's reaction to it.)
• The upcoming MS Windows platform, Vista, due to be released near the end of 2006, will have DRM built into it. If it really works like that, there is a high probability that I will take any new PC I get and install an older version of Windows on it. To be honest, so many people are still adjusting to Windows XP that I don't personally think it's time for a new version of Windows. Of course, a stable, virus-free version would be nice, but not at the expense of my audio and video files. (via Boing Boing)

Pastafarianism

I tend to get all riled up about Creationism (or Intelligent Design) displacing Evolution. Because of that, I don't mention it as often as I come across it. It really is a hot button for me. So, back in June, there was a post on Boing-Boing that caught my attention. A physics major had written an open letter to the Kansas City School District. The school district is revising its science curriculum to include the "alternate theory of intelligent design."

Bobby Henderson, who wrote the letter, proposed that the school district also teach students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. After all, ID suggests that a greater supernatural being created the world. Henderson postulated that students would be let into thinking that the supernatural being was the Christian God and that, in all fairness, the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should also be taught.
I know it's ridiculous, but really, so is the notion of ID. ID is based on faith and evolution is based on science. I agree with Henderson that if they insist on teaching ID, they should do it in the context of a religion class, not in the science classroom. There is a distinct difference between faith and science, no matter how blurry the Bush administration makes the lines.
Pastafarianism is growing daily - an Internet underground movement that makes a definite point with some fun thrown in as well. Boing Boing now has numerous posts on the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so much so that I finally broke down and posted as well. If you actually view my site instead of just getting the feed, you may have noticed the button that popped up to the right a few days ago - FSM. Clicking the button takes you to the letter submitted to the Kansas City School Board, letters from the school board (from supporters of the science without ID curriculum), and other notions.
I've mentioned before that I have nightmares of secretly teaching my kids, and my friends' kids, evolution while they run off to both private and public schools to learn only Creationism and ID. It could happen.
There is now a million dollar reward out there to anyone who can prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not the son of Jesus. This is in direct response to a $250,000 challenge by a creationist to anyone who can successfully prove - to him - that evolution is fact.
Look at that - I remained calm throughout the whole post. Perhaps the Flying Spaghetti Monster is watching over me.

Wall Street Journal

With all the traveling we've done this summer, we've picked up a few Wall Street Journals in airports, hotel rooms, etc. This brought a startling discovery (for me, at least): I like the Wall Street Journal. I really enjoy the Marketplace section, and on Fridays, I love the Weekend section. This section is expanding and will now have a Saturday offering as well.
Well, the other day I received an offer to get the WSJ at an insanely low price for 26 weeks. So we took it. This is my first experience with a daily paper. Periodically, we sign on to get the local Cincinnati Enquirer on Sundays, but purely for the ads and coupons. The Cincinnati Enquirer is a biased, conservative paper. I hate it. It's amazing the stories they overlook and equally amazing that they put some of the articles above the fold that really shouldn't be there. Anyway, the first WSJ came today and I read it. Hopefully I can keep this up. It's so hard to read papers when the Internet is just right there. The paper, however, gives me headlines and articles I wouldn't normally see.
BTW, the WSJ is how I learned about Google Talk (my previous post).

London

London
Things like this make my problems seem so petty. My heart is with the Londoners as they struggle to regain their sense of security and fight the sense of loss and intrusion.

If I picture myself on one of those tube lines, I get panicky.  I think I would not have been one of those who had the absolute Calm I've read so much about. Can you imagine having to walk down a tube tunnel, not know what had happened?
Or the double-decker bus that exploded in Tavistock Square. Double-deckers were my favorite thing in London.

And the impact on the city alone - London depends utterly on public transportation. People are now checking into hotels or buying maps and attempting a very long walk home.

I have several friends in London and I hope like anything that they are all alright.

P2P :-(

Today the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster.  Here's a link to an article - it's a BBC article because I prefer their news, but I'm referring to our very own Supreme Court.
This is potentially huge. From a distance, it looks like nothing more than another Napster case. But if you look closer, it could change everything.
Rip. Mix. Burn. 
That's Apple's advertising campaign. I've seen it referenced in several articles today and I've seen it slathered over billboards and walls all over San Francisco. Looks like they need a new campaign.  Why? Because rip, mix, burn implies that we are going to take music from CDs and burn them to another CD, which we would then give to a friend and that is illegal.  Yep. 
Also, this ruling basically states that software companies are responsible for what the users ultimately do with their software. Think about this - what if Ford were responsible for every driver who ever got into an accident in a Ford vehicle.  That analogy is incredibly extreme but in the end, how do you control your users?
This will change the face of technology marketing as well.  Rip. Mix. Burn. is a marketing campaign. It could be construed as inducing you to go do illegal things with your music. Marketing will change drastically. No one will mention download speed anymore, and no one will mention ripping.
Cory Doctorow wrote a great little piece in Popular Science online today regarding the Supreme Court ruling. I recommend giving it a read. He rightly points out that the biggest problem with this ruling is that it will stifle American innovation.
Oh, the Supreme Court also opted to rule that some displays of the 10 Commandments on gov't property are okay and some aren't - that it's subject to interpretation.  Thanks for that clarification.
They had a busy day, those justices, and then they left to take a three-month break.

Political Ramblings

Why can't the Democrats get their act together? I ask this because I heard an article on NPR the other day. The article discussed Barrack Obama, that wonderkid Senator from Illinois that I do so love, as well as Hilary and Joe Biden.  Here's the thing - Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are fighting over Obama as their VP candidate.  What? Already? Can't we come up with better candidates than Hillary and Joe?  (Scary,as the Republicans will probably offer up Dr. Scary Bill Frist.)
Hillary, I love you.  I do. I'm impressed by you and consider you a role model. BUT YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE PRESIDENT! 
Hillary is too controversial a figure to be President. Too many people hate her - including women. People who don't hate Hillary hate Bill Clinton (my dad included) and don't want Bill back in the White House, even as First Husband (what the hell term would they use, anyway?). She would lose on the basis of who she is, not what she believes in.
Joe Biden flip-flops, to use an over-used term from the last election, every bit as much as Kerry did. And if that strategy worked once for the Republicans, well, methinks it would work again. I like Joe Biden, but I get really angry at him. He has a way of saying one thing and then caving to pressure. He hasn't quite got that "standing up for himself and his beliefs" thing down pat yet.
Out of the batch, Obama is the only one I really like and believe in. Two things stand in his way - he's young - really really young (although Kennedy did it) and he is black.  This country, and I'm ashamed to admit it, is a large portion redneck and I don't know if any of them will consent to vote for a black man, even if he's the best person for the job.

No booty shakin'

I saw this on the Daily Show a few days ago and looked it up for myself.  Texas, a state that is horribly behind in education yet sets educational standards at the same time, is trying to pass a law banning sexy cheerleading moves.  They never strictly define what "sexy" is though. 
This is ridiculous.
But it hits close to home.
Last year in Parker's, which is at an Ohio high school, I had one of my more energetic girls with great stage presence shimmy as she was carried off stage. She is on the busty side and the parents made me cut the move. She waved and blew kisses instead. I was shocked.  A shoulder shimmy was taboo? This year, some of our girls were telling us that they aren't allowed to shimmy to certain songs the band plays during football games. Parents said they looked like strippers.  The song they shimmied to is Birdland, I think, and I was shimmying to that in the football stands 15 years ago.  What the hell has happened to parents and teachers that even a simple shimmy implies stripping and sex? I am absolutely aghast.
My biggest fear is that this Texas bill will pass, and the idea will spread.  I guarantee that if Texas passes that bill, Ohio will jump on the bandwagon so fast that it's ridiculous. The drill teams, the cheerleaders, the dance teams - they'll all suddenly be unbelievably limited in what they can do. The cheerleading and dance camps will really have their work cut out for them, trying to choreograph dance routines that don't use hips or butts or shimmies. Parker's has had a girls kickline in the opening number for 60 years now.  I wonder if they'll make the girls cover their legs.  Kate and I are already shying away from blues lindy hop for next year because we're afraid it's just too sexy.

Evolution

When Kevin & I get around to having a kid, we'll get together with our academia-oriented friends, of which we have many, and teach all of our kids about evolution. I figure it will have to be that way. If not, our kids will never learn it - most likely not in Catholic school and quite possibly not in public school. Nineteen states are currently considering adding intelligent design to the mix - not quite overturning evolution, but not supporting the idea either.  And the fight to slowly eradicate Darwin's "theory" of evolution is being led by the Discovery Institute.

The idea was to sow doubt about Darwin and buy time for the 40-plus scientists affiliated with the institute to perfect the theory, Meyer said. Also, by deferring a debate about whether God was the intelligent designer, the strategy avoids the defeats suffered by creationists who tried to oust evolution from the classroom and ran afoul of the Constitution.
"Our goal is to not remove evolution. Good lord, it's incredible how much this is misunderstood," said William Harris, a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City medical school. "

Keep reading this quote and the rest of the argument.

Save our horses ... Please

I hate George Bush. I don't say that lightly. I truly hate him though. He has no respect for the earth on which we live and for the creatures with which we're blessed to share our home.
This article made me cry. Of course, I'm predisposed to the tears by my absolute love of horses.
I don't know what I can do to stop the destruction - yes, the destruction - of the wild mustang. How can they do this? When I lived out East,
John took me to Assateague Island, where we "adopted" a wild pony. I believe that sponsorship was only for a year, and I really should renew it.  Anyway, those wild ponies, protected by the national park, were gorgeous - wild, free, shaggy, and wonderful. Why can't we protect the mustang in the same way? Why can't we create a mustang preserve(s) in Nevada?
I wish I could adopt a mustang. Adopting one for $125 isn't the issue. It's the space. You can't put a wild mustang in a stable. They need the space to run. And even if I could manage to stable one, the room & board for the horse is currently out of my price range. Horses have long lives. I've always said that once I can afford it, I'll adopt a retired race horse. Race horses face much the same fate as these wild mustangs (slaughterhouses), and adoption is also low-cost. But again ... room and board. (I figure a horse is the perfect animal for me and my animal-allergic husband.)
I do believe I'll write a letter to Ky congressman Ed Whitfield (mentioned in the article) as well as my own Ky rep, Geoff Davis (whom I detest, but maybe the Kentuckian in him will win out).

UPDATE: Actually, I'm a foster parent for life of the horse. I pulled out my information (yes, John, I'm still toting around the photo of the horse) and T5Q is mine for life.  Apparently horses may have multiple foster parents though (which makes sense). I just looked up "my" pony and discovered that his name is Sean Patrick and that he's much bigger now than he was in 1997. I suspect I'll be "adopting" an additional horse as well. Doesn't solve the mustang problem though.

Social Security Deficit?

I just got this in an email from factcheck.org:

Does Social Security Really Face an $11 Trillion Deficit?
Bush and Cheney say yes. But actuaries say the figure is "likely to mislead" the public on the system's true financial state.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney have told audiences that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if nothing is done to fix the current system. But they fail to mention that this is over the course of the “infinite future." Over the next 75 years -- still practically a lifetime -- the shortfall is projected to be $3.7 trillion.
The "infinite" projection is one that the American Academy of Actuaries says is likely to mislead the public into thinking the system "is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated," and therefore should not be used to explain the long-term outlook.

Click here to read the entire article.  And now we know, 3.7 is not 11.  That's many trillions of a difference.

Brainwashed by SpongeBob

The NY Times has an article today on Conservative religious groups going after Spongebob (a, um, soft target).

Quotes:
SpongeBob needed no introduction. In addition to his popularity among children, who watch his cartoon show, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."
Now, Dr. Dobson said, SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video," in which he appeared alongside children's television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

The truth of the matter:
The video's creator, Nile Rodgers, who wrote the disco hit "We Are Family," said Mr. Dobson's objection stemmed from a misunderstanding. Mr. Rodgers said he founded the We Are Family Foundation after the Sept. 11 attacks to create a music video to teach children about multiculturalism. The video has appeared on television networks, and nothing in it or its accompanying materials refers to sexual identity. The pledge, borrowed from the Southern Poverty Law Center, is not mentioned on the video and is available only on the group's Web site.

And the kicker, the final quote in the article, from Dr. Dobson's group:
"We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," he said. "It is a classic bait and switch."

New York Times: Conservatives Pick Soft Target

Condi Nomination, 16-2

I'm thrilled that John Kerry spoke his mind the last couple of days, and that he voted against the nomination of Condeleeza Rice.  Barbara Boxer, the other dissenting vote, has always had her head on straight (in my liberal-view opinion) and she is the only one who consistently votes her beliefs and doesn't cave.  I love her for that.  It's a shame the nation as a whole isn't ready for a liberal, woman president.
I'm terribly disappointed in Joe Biden. I've always liked him, but with both Gonzalez and Rice, he has caved.  I expected more from you, Joe!
Here are some quotes from the Senate's 10 hours of interviews with Condi:

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who lost the presidential election to President Bush, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) were the two members of the 18-person committee who voted against Rice's nomination. But other Democrats joined them in criticizing what they characterized as evasive answers and an unwillingness in nearly 10 hours of testimony Tuesday to concede any fault in administration decision making during Bush's first term, when Rice served as national security adviser.

More, including Condi admitting they maybe could have been wrong (you take what you can get), after the jump.

Why animals are smarter than we are

Three different articles on animals and the tsunami - two of the three articles prove how sensitive animals are to the currents of the earth and Mother Nature. Perhaps we should pay closer attention to our animal friends.

This first article talks about how few, if any, wildlife has been found dead or injured. The animals knew and got the heck out of there, heading for higher ground.

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."
(Wired News/Reuters)

Next we have what is for me a worrisome story about two rare, trapped dolphins who were washed in on the giant wave and dropped into a lake, where they are now stuck. Rescuers are trying to get to the dolphins and return them to sea, but they are reticent, probably unused to people, and one may be injured.

The exhausted dolphins, one of which appeared to be injured, were dumped in a 600-by-900-foot lake left by the wall of water that struck Thailand's Andaman Sea coastline on Dec. 26.
(Yahoo News/Reuters)

And finally, a remarkable story about elephants who not only anticipated the tsunami but helped save tourists and then headed for higher ground. The added emphasis is my own.

The elephants soon calmed down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be comforted despite their mahouts' attempts at reassurance. "The elephants didn't believe the mahouts. They just kept running for the hill," said Wit Aniwat, 24, who takes the money from tourists and helps them on to the back of elephants from a sturdy wooden platform.
Those with tourists aboard headed for the jungle-clad hill behind the resort beach where at least 3,800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed. The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.
"Then we saw the big wave coming and we started running," Wit said.
Around a dozen tourists were also running toward the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, one of a line of hotels strung along the 10 km (6-mile) beach especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans.
"The mahouts managed to turn the elephants to lift the tourists onto their backs," Kulada said.
She used her hands to describe how the huge beasts used their trunks to pluck the foreigners from the ground and deposit them on their backs.
The elephants charged up the hill through the jungle, then stopped. The tsunami drove up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inshore from the gently sloping beach which had been so safe for children it made Khao Lak an ideal place for a family holiday. But it stopped short of where the elephants stood.
(Yahoo/Reuters)

I'm so embarassed...

The Museum of Creation will reside just steps from my home. That's right. It found a home here in the Land of the Right, in Northern Ky. I'm so embarassed. Really. There will be giant, outdoor dinosaurs apparently. This museum "teaches" us that dinosaurs co-existed with humans 6,000 years ago. Riiiiiight. The museum, and its giant dinosaurs, will be visible from I-275. The itty-bitty silver lining is that the museum is off the Petersburg exit, past the Cinti Int'l Airport from the main interchange of I-71/75 and 275. In fact, I tend to think of Petersburg as an exit everyone forgot. However, anyone heading to the airport from the West side of Cincinnati (74 to 275) or heading to and from the riverboats in Indiana will definitely get an eyeful. The majority of folks heading to and from the airport will not.
For my own sanity, I've tried to ignore news of the Answers in Genesis Museum of Creation (and apparently theme park). I was operating on the idea that if I ignored it, it might just be a figment and go away. No such luck. The London Telegraph published an article on Cincinnati's newest museum today. Yep, the international press. The only thing that makes me feel better is that the Telegraph incorrectly spelled "Cincinnati." (Everyone wants to add two "t"s.) But the spelling error is little consolation once you read the article and learn what exhibits the museum has planned.  (The museum blames Columbine on the teaching of evolution, for instance.)
To top things off, Pharyngula, a nationally read science blog, picked up on the article today as well.
Oh goodness, I'm so embarassed to live here sometimes. This is definitely one of those times.

What's Really Important?

More on the Tsunami. I've been incredibly emotionally affected by this disaster.  Perhaps what we went through with Ivan, though incomparable, has provided me with a little more perspective on Mother Nature's awesome power.

I'm re-publishing a post from another blog. What is not mentioned in the post I'm about to reproduce is 9/11. I suppose the difference between 9/11 and the tsunami is that 9/11 was intentional murder, whereas the tsunami could be viewed as Mother Nature re-acquiring what belongs to Her. On 9/11, we lost 2,752 people, roughly 500 of which were foreign nationals.  Now that's ghastly and awful and close to home, and I don't want to take away from the meaning of those deaths. However, I'm worried that as a nation, we're losing sight of the fact that the Tsunami took out close to 100,000 over 114,000 people, with an ever-increasing death toll. An uncountable number of those people, at the moment, being foreign nationals - hundreds of those being American.  This may seem far away, and it affects many Muslims and people of a different color or race. Who cares? It affects people - human beings!

We are the country that stands to benefit in a million ways from helping these countries in their time of need. Why isn't our gov't stepping up more? What's worse, why did it take pressure for our President to even make a small speech, let alone up the dollar amount? Did you know they are spending more than 40 million dollars on the Inauguration festivities?  Yep, that's right.  The food and the balls and the whatnot are getting more money than the disaster relief. I'm of the opinion that for any president, Republican or Democrat, that's just a bit too much excess.  Especially in the face of this global tragedy. How about less to the festivities and donate that money to disaster relief?

This is a post from Pharyngula that I'm re-publishing here in its entirety. DarkSyde wrote it, and it reinforces my point, with a little science thrown in for good measure.

Deep under the now scenic, placid blue seas of southeast Asia, a geological horror is forming of gargantuan proportions. One which will leave its novel signature for eons in the rocky column. A new layer of strata has been laid down, but this deposit is uniquely macabre. It’s a hominid bone-bed. Mixed in with the newly forming sandstones, limestones, shales, and chalk, are the remains of a civilization. Homes, trees, crops, cars, factories. And the unthinkable human toll: 100,000 dead men, women, and children. The last thoughts they had must have been rife with stark raving terror. At least tonight they lay peacefully, no longer wide eyed in fear, the final echo of their lives flickering through their oxygen deprived psyche. At least that part is over, for them; back in the earth from which we all, ultimately, arise and then return.

(Continue reading this post after the jump.)

Tsunami

Disaster
I keep thinking of these people and how wretched and awful this is.  The death toll neared 77,000 today as bodies continued to float ashore.  I am aghast at the horrible tragedy.
I watched a video yesterday, and saw a wall of water rise up taller than the palm trees on the beach. I had that same terrified feeling, just watching the video, that I had when we were trapped during Hurricane Ivan. Yet the destruction and death from this combined natural disaster outstrips even that which was wrought by Ivan.
You can watch videos of the tsunami here, although they are at times both frightening and heartwrenching.
(You can learn more about tsunamis, earthquakes, relief efforts and this disaster in particular from the always fabulous Wikipedia.)

How You Can Help (and you really should)
You can contribute to the relief effort at these sites.  You can donate as little as $5 if you want.  Even that $5.00 makes a difference:
American Red Cross Disaster Relief (via Amazon.com) This method, using your Amazon account information, is the quickest and easiest way to donate. There's a great post over at Instapundit on the sheer amount of donations Amazon is gathering for this specifc cause. Makes me feel a little better about the human race in general and the U.S. in particular.
Also:
Oxfam International SE Asia Relief Fund
Mercy Corps, and the Tsunami Relief Blog has information as well.
The Network for Good has a page listing organizations accepting disaster relief donations, including a personal favorite of mine (and quite important as disease will spread like wildfire in the affected regions), Doctors without Borders.
Music for Relief (an effort spearheaded by Linkin Park and the Red Cross)

Education Secretary Nomination

First off, I don't have time to investigate further, but would someone please look into the history of Margaret Spelling?  She has been nominated for Education Secretary.  I'm curious as to how she might feel on issues such as prayer in school (and school textbooks) and creationism v evolution, etc, etc. In other words, how much of the conservative right agenda will be crossing into our kids' education over the next 4 years?  Here's a quick notation from Wonkette to get you started.

I'm working, working, working.  This is good, because it means I have clients.  It is bad because we're behind, I have more clients than time, and I still have to make baked goods for Thanksgiving.  My entire weekend is about to be donated to work.  I guess baking will begin Tuesday night. Wednesday I have one day off from the huge, mismanaged project and hopefully I can do some work on the smaller, happy project. (Although not happy if I don't get some work done on it.)  Think of my large project as a time vampire.  It requires all my time in order to survive and my time isn't enough.  It must suck all the time of all the team members and still, it requires more.  I've never seen such a chaotic sort of project.  We'll get it done - just not maybe on time. This may even require me to turn down a third project that is up in the air.  This was supposed to 3 weeks (which would end tomorrow).  Instead, I'm betting its closer to 6 weeks.

So back to work I go.

I miss Madeleine Albright

I always did like Madeleine a whole lot. First female secretary of state. Successful career woman and mom. Worked towards peace & disarmament of North Korea (the Bush administration wasted all that work though). Now, we most likely will have Condeleeza Rice as Secretary of State and Steven Hadley as National Security Advisor. 

As pathetic as Colin Powell has been in the last two years, I'll miss him too.  Just because he was a moderate and the rest of the world liked him.  They don't like Condi.

Oh, and Hadley?  He's a lawyer.  I'm so glad he's in charge of our national security. 

I have a big fear that France and Russia and some of Europe will band together to declare WWIII on us. It'll be us and maybe Britain against the world. France does not like the Bush administration. We elected him. France no longer likes us (this is a shame - I rather like France.)

Is there any possible way that these appointments, as well as that of Gonzales, won't be confirmed?

So not happy.

Rice to be nominated as Secretary of State (via ABC News)

Backing Bush Has Won You Nothing - Chirac (via The London Times)

Don't Go It Alone

As reported by the BBC, Tony Blair gave an important policy speech in London today. In it, he tells Europe not to ridicule the US leadership and tell the US to consider mulitlateralism.  It's a good speech and, I think, a slight warning to the Bush administration that they need to straighten up and fly right - play nice with other countries - or the US may lose their ally in Britain. Maybe its just me, but I would imagine Britain is heading in that direction. Tony Blair won't be around forever you know.

Mr Blair will continue: "Democracy is the meeting point for Europe and America.

"I am not - repeat not - advocating a series of military solutions to achieve it, but I am saying that patiently but plainly Europe and America should be working together to bring the democratic, human and political rights we take for granted to the world denied them.

"When Kofi Annan reports back to the UN in some weeks time on UN reform, one reform we should insist on is a greater role of leadership for the UN on the responsibility of states to protect not injure their own citizens.

"None of this will work, however, unless America too reaches out. Multilateralism that works should be its aim. I have no sympathy for unilateralism for its own sake."

BC Pills and the Pharmacist's Feelings

This upsets me.  This upsets me in such a powerful way that I can't even explain it.  How dare a pharmacist impose their personal feelings upon the medication a woman (or anyone) has been prescribed!!!

For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.

I was shocked," says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. "Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician." 

Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.

Oh man.  It hits close to home too.  Check out this paragraph:

"I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human life," says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for Life International. Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati suburb of Delhi Township.

Okay.  This pisses me off royally.  I can tell you that the reasons a girl may be on BC may vary.  It may not be because she is trying to spontaneously abort with the morning after pill, it may not be because she is avoiding preganancy.  Maybe she has painful endometriosis and the pill helps regulate and decrease the pain.  Maybe she has a hormonal imbalance and the pill adds just the right amount of progesterin or estrogen to her system.  Maybe its any number of things.  Regardless, the pharmacist has no right to assume to know the reasons behind the prescription and pass judgement or to pass judgement at all. Period.

Read the article.

No more Ashcroft!

This is a good thing.  Ashcroft, the Attorney General who is past scary as far as conservative ideology is concerned, has a resigned.  Of course, now we wait to see who Bush will appoint to the post: someone more moderate, someone equally as scary, or someone scarier.
I'm hoping that Ashcroft was so controversial that Bush will lean towards someone more moderate.  Of course, that still means really conservative, just not as frightening conservative as John Ashcroft (but not as moderate as, say, John McCain.)

Ashcroft, Evans resign (via Reuters)

A Crusading we will go

Do you ever get the feeling that a good part of our nation is still fighting the Crusades?  (Interesting notion since I don't believe that our nation was around during the Crusades.)

Just a thought - albeit a disturbing one.

And so it continues ...

This sort of piggybacks on my earlier post about textbooks in Texas. Now we have creationism vs evolution in Georgia (who are we kidding - its an issue across the deep south).  Let me just put this little phrase in front of you, then you can read the whole article I found (via the Boston Globe):

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Textbook Disclaimer on Evolution in GA Court

By Kristen Wyatt, Associated Press  |  November 9, 2004

ATLANTA -- A trial opened yesterday over whether a warning sticker in suburban Atlanta biology textbooks that says evolution is "a theory, not a fact" violates the separation of church and state by promoting religion.

The case is one of several battles that have been waged in recent years in the Bible Belt over what role evolution should play in science books. Cobb County schools put the disclaimers in biology textbooks two years ago after more than 2,000 parents complained that the books presented evolution as fact without mentioning rival ideas about the origin of life, namely creationism.

A group of parents and the American Civil Liberties Union then filed a lawsuit over the stickers. "It's like saying everything that follows this sticker isn't true," said Jeffrey Selman, a parent who filed the lawsuit.

It has occurred to me

It has occurred to me countless times that choosing Cheney as VP is a brilliant strategy.  Bush lets Cheney do the "hard work" (we all know Cheney is pulling Bush's strings anyway) and Bush gets to vacation a lot.  Bush also doesn't have to worry about being shot.  Even the craziest fools among us are not crazy enough to let Cheney move into the Presidency and have full power.  Egads!  Cheney is Bush's bullet-proof vest.

And so it begins ...

When I worked for an educational publishing house, I remember Texas being the golden standard of educational standards.  If your books could meet the textbook requirements set by Texas, you could meet them anywhere.  Not only that, but other states often followed the Texan lead and updated their own standards to reflect those of Texas.  So you can see how this one change, in this one state, can affect the learning of kids all over the nation.
There's some crazy stuff after the jump that we should be thankful didn't get added.  Apparently the publishers didn't get rid of all those "asexual stealth phrases."  Yep.  Read the whole article from the NY Times, reprinted here for your enjoyment.

Health Textbooks in Texas to Change Wording about Marriage

Austin, TX  Nov 5

The Texas Board of Education approved new health textbooks for the state's high schools and middle schools on Friday after the publishers agreed to change wordings in the texts to depict marriage strictly as the union of a man and a woman.

The decision involves two of the biggest textbook publishers and is another example of Texas' exerting its market influence as the nation's second-largest buyer of textbooks. Officials say the decision could affect hundreds of thousands of books in Texas alone.

On Thursday, a board member said that proposed new books ran counter to a Texas law banning the recognition of gay civil unions because the texts used terms like "married partners" instead of "husband and wife."

Elizabeth Edwards, Breast Cancer

Yep - she was apparently diagnosed a week ago.  But she put the campaign first and finished that up before having the biopsy on Wednesday, after the concession speeches.  The cancer was confirmed. I really like Elizabeth Edwards - she's very much a "normal" kind of woman, and I'm very saddened to hear this.  Send some strong and recovery-oriented thoughts her way.

Read the article here.

Brace for Impact

Here's a post from one of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore, after he had a day or two to reflect on the election. Like most of us who voted for Kerry, he had a rather reactionary post the day after the election, but now I think we're all coming to accept our fate (which is not to say we like it or are not going to work for change):

Let me tell you a story that came to mind today, while I was thinking about the election, and reading the depressed, anxious, disappointed, e-mails from many of you guys. See if this doesn’t make you feel, as it did me, a little bit better. My Uncle Johnny was a mechanical genius. He could completely disassemble an automobile down to the smallest part and put it back together and it would work. In fact, he did that once, a black Lincoln, during his vacation. Socially he was a little rough, a Georgia boy with an eighth grade education and a bit of a mean streak, but he could make anything mechanical sing. A tall, skinny Southerner with a cigarette dangling perpetually from his lip while he worked, one eye squinting and watering under the smoke, the irritated look on his face something between a scowl and the evil eye, a shock of blue-black hair falling in his other eye – Uncle Johnny frightened some people, but machines smiled when he passed. Machines loved him.

Early on, shortly after he married my Aunt Geneva, my mother’s sister, Uncle Johnny took his family North to work on the giant steel freighters that prowl the Great Lakes, hauling steel from Ohio and Pennsylvania up to Detroit, where it is pounded into Fords. Before long he was made chief engineer on one of the ships, spending the bulk of his time below among the giant pistons of the diesel generators that ran the giant electric motors that turned the screws that pushed hundreds of thousands of tons of steel across the water. Uncle Johnny, lived most of his life in the company of his gargantuan machines (and a couple of machinists's mates he liked to yell at.) I don’t remember seeing Uncle Johnny smile, but I’ll bet he did when he was down there in his engine room.

(Continue reading the story after the jump.  I promise there' s a great point if you just keep going.)

Exactly.

This Op-Ed from today's NY Times spells out my feelings exactly. It's not a Bush-bashing or anti-Republican piece at all. I'm re-publishing the whole thing here so that you can read it.

Two Nations Under God
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Well, as Grandma used to say, at least I still have my health. ...

I often begin writing columns by interviewing myself. I did that yesterday, asking myself this: Why didn't I feel totally depressed after George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, or even when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore? Why did I wake up feeling deeply troubled yesterday?

Answer: whatever differences I felt with the elder Bush were over what was the right policy. There was much he ultimately did that I ended up admiring. And when George W. Bush was elected four years ago on a platform of compassionate conservatism, after running from the middle, I assumed the same would be true with him. (Wrong.) But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

(Continue reading after the jump. It's worth it! )

Ex-Pat?

UPDATED (see end of post)

So the ex-pat question has been brought up quite a bit today. It's definitely crossed my mind many times over the last 4 years, and I'm sure I'll bring it up a lot more. The thing is, I'm serious. I'd leave this country in a heartbeat right now. But my husband won't (at least right now) and that is obviously a pretty motivating reason to stick around.
I'm not the only one with these thoughts though. CNN published this today:

Canadian officials made clear on Wednesday that any U.S. citizens so fed up with Bush that they want to make a fresh start up north would have to stand in line like any other would-be immigrants -- a wait that can take up to a year.

Read the whole article.

Updated:
So Harper's has published a guide to becoming an ex-patriate. Apparently you can't just renouce your citizenship and leave. It's harder than that - and even more difficult to find a country to take you. (Although I bet I could land a work visa in Britain.) The article is slightly tongue-in-cheek and an entertaining read.
Check it out.

Excerpts

Here is an excerpt from a post over at Kos, which expresses how I should be feeling:

Still, Tuesday was only one round in the struggle. It’s only the end if we let it be. I am not speaking solely of challenging the votes in Ohio or elsewhere – indeed, I think even successful challenges are unlikely to change the ultimate outcome, which is not to say I don’t think the Democrats should make the attempt. And I’m not just talking about evaluating in depth what went wrong, then building on what was started in the Dean campaign to reinvigorate the grassroots of the Democratic Party, although I also think we must do that. I’m talking about the broader political realm, the realm outside of electoral politics that has always pushed America to live up to its best ideals and overcome its most grotesque contradictions.
Not a few people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist authoritarianism emerging out of the country’s current leadership. I think that’s not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of behaving as if “what’s the use?”
It’s tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our country’s history, abolitionists, suffragists, union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians, feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another, but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks.
After a decent interval of licking our wounds and pondering what might have been and where we went wrong, we need to spit out our despair and return – united - to battling those who have for the moment outmaneuvered us. Otherwise, we might just as well lie down in the street and let them flatten us with their schemes.

And finally, before I take a shower and run off to a meeting, here is an excerpt from a post from the Pharyngula blog, which expresses how I really feel:

We are monsters. An unjustified, futile war…doesn’t matter. Abu Ghraib…doesn’t matter. Tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians…don’t matter. Prisoners tortured and held without trial at Guantanamo Bay…doesn’t matter. Throwing away two centuries worth of the world’s respect for our enlightened principles…doesn’t matter. A president who laughs at executions and mocks the sacrifices of our soldiers…doesn’t matter. The Democratic candidated dared to say that our reputation in the community of nations mattered, and the arrogant bully won.
I fear for the future. The Republican party has established a solid base in America’s strengths: fear, ignorance, and swagger. The Democrats failed to win by opposing those ugly values; will they, too, resort to pandering to them in the next election? Will the lesson they learn be that progressive ideals must be sacrificed to make political gains?
I worry about my kids, and the children of those folks in Red State America who think safety lies in blithely handing a blank check to ideologues. How much of their blood will have to be spilled in self-destructive wars? How great a burden of debt will they have to bear, in order to guarantee that today’s wealthy are sufficiently comfortable? When the Supreme Court is loaded with mullahs of the religious right, what liberties will be lost to them?
I’ve watched this administration with increasing disgust and disbelief these past four years. No matter how this election is resolved, the most dreadful realization it has brought to me is that my country hasn’t hit bottom yet.
I was wrong to think better of America. And there will be worse to come.

Okay, that was a little severe, I guess. But really, how far off is it from the predictions I made below?

World view

The best summary of the election (thus far) that I've read is this BBC article. Its not surprising.

It has occurred to me that if we've actually elected Bush this time (instead of him stealing the election like last time), that the rest of the world will hate us. Up until this point, the rest of the world has hated our administration, but not us. They believed that we didn't want Bush in the White House. But now, they'll actually despise us too. That should work out well. We can be this country over in the corner - the one that used to be a Superpower but then isolated itself so much that even Britain deserted it. (Just another prediction on my part.)

I'm going to go throw myself into work now. Ive got 10 days before all the Republicans in Ohio's elected positions (like Ken Blackwell) manage to count all the provisional and absentee ballots. I hope they've got impartial observers sitting around. I hate Blackwell, but would hate for him to be the next Katharine Harris (that's the chick from Florida 2000 I think).

Drained and Defeated

I know I should be rallying. Finding a grass-roots organization and fighting for moderates to come back into politics somehow. But really, I don't have the energy.
I know - Ohio and the others haven't been counted yet, but I don't have a good feeling. Not based on what happened to the Senate - we were decimated. I suppose I need to accept that not only is the Presidency in hock to the religious right, the rest of the country is apparently okay with that.
I predict that in four years time it will be illegal to be openly gay (don't ask, don't tell applied to life), it will be illegal for women to get abortions and we will return to the day of coat hangers and botched procedures (after all, the Supreme Court is up for grabs this year). I predict that copyright laws applied to movies and music will get more and more stringent and it will be illegal for me to show my iPod in public. I predict that the Patriot Act will become worse, not better - that our rights will be trampled upon. We don't need rights if we want to be safe, correct? Just give us a military state. I predict that the draft will return. We're out of men. We've shipped them all off to Iraq and Afghanistan and who knows where else. Who protects us at home when the National Guard is in Iraq? Oh yeah, the men & women who are still here, but aren't in the Guard. Let's draft them. I predict that many more will die, because we continually fight wars without proper intelligence. I had a nightmare that the United Nations was going to move to Britain and that we would no longer be a member. We're going to move so far to the right folks, and this time we did it to ourselves. If this works out for Bush, it will be the first time he was truly elected and we did it to ourselves. Obviously the majority of the nation is fine with all of the things I predicted above, as those are not that far-fetched.
When I told Kevin I wanted to move to Canada, Scotland or Britain, he didn't believe me. But I do want to move. I'm embarrassed to be an American. I at least want to move to Illinois, a blue state in the midst of the red, or San Francisco, that bastion of liberality. But I imagine I'm stuck here in the land of the Conserative, which isn't necessarily the land of the free, for a while longer.

What Happens in a Supreme Court tie?

It's entirely possible that this election, like Bush v Gore in 2000, will end up in the Supreme Court. The trouble with that (actually, I think there is much trouble with that, but the main trouble) is that Rehnquist is out being treated with chemotherapy and whatnot for thyroid cancer. The solution? Using transcripts and written briefings, he'll issue his vote from home. Yep - while rare, SC justices can really work from home.
This will help alleviate the possibility of the 4-4 split. Now, if he is too sick to work from home and we get a 4-4 split, then the SC issues a Pro Curiem decision and the decision of the lower court stands.

You can read all about it at Slate.

Today

Other than freaking out over my current clients, I have had a fairly productive day. I voted this morning at 7 am. It took 30 minutes to get through the voting line. This was my first Presidential vote in Kentucky, but I knew I'd never had an experience similar in Ohio in the past. I've read that the turnout is incredibly high everywhere. I'm reading that everyone is predicting Kerry. I, on the other hand, am still holding my breath. I refuse to get excited until its a true win. But wouldn't a landslide be great?
The sad thing is that the state of the union had to degenerate to such a degree in order to get such awesome voter turnout.

From 10 until noon, I joined the legions of folks at Clooney for Congress, calling No Ky residents, reminding them to vote, and offering rides to the polls. I talked to a lot of nice people (and a few not so nice ones) and left a ton of messages. The folks who had voted all mentioned that they had to stand in line - even at 6 am in Covington!

Tonite is the Clooney victory party (cross your fingers) and, well, work. I'll be working until the party and after the party I'm sure.

If you haven't yet, go Vote. Polls are open until 6 in Ky and I believe 7:30 in Ohio. If you're in No. Ky and need a ride to the polls, call 859-431-5304 and they'll help you out for free.

Happy Election Day!

No matter where you are (but esp if you're in a swing state), don't forget to vote today! It's important and your vote could make a difference. If you're not in a swing state, remember, you may have a chance to change the composition of the House and/or the Senate. Exercise that right. If you're in Kentucky, there are a couple of things you need to know: - Polls are open from 6 am to 6 pm. - You can download your ballot for review at the Ky Secretary of State web site. - Bars and liquor stores are not open until 6 pm on Election Day, in compliance with Ky state law. (I just learned this today.)

Here's some good general advice for Election Day (via Michael Moore):

The new law says if this is your first time voting you must bring ID with you that matches the address at which you are registered.
If for some reason they can’t find your name on the voting rolls, you have the right to ask for a provisional ballot, which you can fill out and then sort things out later.
If you have any problems at the polling place, please call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The people there can tell you how to find the precinct where you should be voting, get you legal help if you are denied the right to vote, or answer any other questions you may have.
If you need any help figuring out the ballot, don’t be afraid to ask. If you screw up your ballot, you can ask for another one. In fact, the law allows you to screw up your ballot two times before you finally have to submit your final ballot! If your polling place has a stub or a receipt from your ballot, make sure they give you one.

Feeling Jittery

I'm feeling rather jittery. I shouldn't be, but I am. The election has me nervous. But here's the thing that really has sent me over the edge. I was reading Talking Points Memo and saw this post. And it upset me. The post, in case you don't want to visit TPR, is about a flyer distributed in Florida. The headline reads: "First Day of School: Eighth Grade South Florida Middle School, 2007"

Under that is a class of school children wearing gas masks and beneath that is the following fake AP story...

(AP) Florida Red Zone -- August 14th, 2007 -- President Kerry warned parents and children in South Florida that mandatory radiation and chemical gear would be required to be worn "for the forseeable future" since the Suitcase Dirty Bomb terrorist attack on South Florida in the spring. The first day of school was chaotic, as teachers and school officials attempted to bring some ...

The flyer was distributed by the obviously right-wing Florida Leadership Council, "an established 527 organization comprised of experienced Florida conservative political operatives." Here's the thing - that flyer is a fear tactic, plain and simple. But on me, it worked. It shook me to my core. The real catch - I can picture that first sentence substituting President Bush for President Kerry. It doesn't matter. This scenario could happen to us with either man. It's not the President that scares me in this scenario. It's the scenario itself.

With that out of the way, I have to work, which is something I haven't done much of in the last couple months. Really need to get back into the swing of things.

Local News / Tons of Bias

Last night (yep, Halloween), President Bush spoke to roughly 35000 supporters at a rally at the Great American Ballpark (home of the Reds) here in Cincinnati. The 3 local network affiliates covered it live, which irritated the hell out of me. It was in primetime - 8 pm. You couldn't miss it.
Now, John Edwards is apparently here today, although no one seems to know when and where. Channel 9 at least has said they will cover the Edwards speech in its entirety in order to be fair. The thing is, Edwards will most likely be speaking around 3:30 or 4. I wouldn't complain if he was speaking at 5 or 6 - prime dinnertime TV news watching. But Bush got a primetime slot and I wish Edwards would be afforded the same. I hate the local news and have always said they are biased. Last night, I watched the first 20 minutes of the 11 pm broadcast in order to prove myself wrong. I failed. Channel 9 gave a little over 4 minutes to the Republicans and Bush's speech. They gave exactly 2 minutes to the Democrats and none to Kerry, who happened to be speaking in Dayton again yesterday.

Movie Villain of the Year!

George Bush was voted Movie Villain of the Year! You know Michael Moore got a kick out of that. Here's the Yahoo! News/Reuters article from Oct 27:

Film Fans Make Bush 'Movie Villain of the Year'

Wed Oct 27, 1:03 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) may see himself as defender of democracy and compassionate conservatism but British film fans have voted him "Movie Villain of the Year."

The American "Axis of Evil" fighter is wooing voters with security pledges ahead of the presidential election next week, but it was Bush's role in Michael Moore's anti-war film "Fahrenheit 9/11" that won him the villainous title.

In a poll for Total Film magazine, the U.S. leader fought off competition from such well-known baddies as atomic scientist Doctor Octopus from "Spider-Man 2" and fellow Texan Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

"The overwhelming response of our readers voting Bush top villain just goes to show how frightening people found him in Fahrenheit 9/11," Total Film's editor Matt Mueller told Reuters.

"He was absolutely terrifying in that film. The infamous scene where he's informed about the Twin Towers attack while visiting a school, and sits there absolutely paralyzed, is enough to strike fear into anyone's heart," he said.

(via Kara)

The Economist Endorses Kerry

Yeah, I know they're British, but their readership is 45% American, so they're chiming in. Its not exactly a ringing endorsement, but here's some of what they have to say:

In the end, the choice relies on a judgment about who will be better suited to meet the challenges America is likely to face during the next four years. Those challenges must include the probability of another big terrorist attack, in America or western Europe. They must include the need for a period of discipline in economic policy and for compromise on social policy, lest the nation become weak or divided in the face of danger. Above all, though, they include the need to make a success of the rebuilding of Iraq, as the key part of a broader effort to stabilise, modernise and, yes, democratise the Middle East.

Many readers, feeling that Mr Bush has the right vision in foreign policy even if he has made many mistakes, will conclude that the safest option is to leave him in office to finish the job he has started. If Mr Bush is re-elected, and uses a new team and a new approach to achieve that goal, and shakes off his fealty to an extreme minority, the religious right, then The Economist will wish him well. But our confidence in him has been shattered. We agree that his broad vision is the right one but we doubt whether Mr Bush is able to change or has sufficient credibility to succeed, especially in the Islamic world. Iraq's fledgling democracy, if it gets the chance to be born at all, will need support from its neighbours—or at least non-interference—if it is to survive. So will other efforts in the Middle East, particularly concerning Israel and Iran.

John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq is identical to Mr Bush's, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years, this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America's moral and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.

The Economist: The Incompetent vs the Incoherent

Vote Pairing

I had to read a lot about this before I finally decided that its a good idea and I signed up. The organization VotePair.org takes people who have signed up in swing states who want to vote for Nader, Badnarik, or Cobb, and matches them up with a Kerry voter in a safe state (such as Kentucky or Texas). Votepair provides contact info to both members of the pair. The pair then email and discuss strategy - ie, they agree to trade votes. If I was paired up, I would agree to vote for Nader in Ky (which helps Nader's party get federal funding) and my pair would vote for Kerry in, say, Ohio.
This apparently made a big difference in 2000, enabling Al Gore to at least win the popular vote. I first read about this yesterday in Slate.

Though Gore and Nader kept their distance, the vote-pairing idea rocketed through the Internet, with nearly a dozen Web sites going up. In days, there were an extraordinary 2.3 million visits to the sites. Jeff Cardille's flourishing NaderTrader.org experienced 650,000 hits alone. In an election where Florida was decided by 537 votes (for Bush) and New Mexico by 366 (for Gore), the 36,000 voters who actually paired up online—and the tens of thousands of others who participated off-line with friends and family—played a serious role in the election. Their instinct proved to be dead-on: In the popular vote, Gore and Nader together captured more than 3 million votes more than Bush did in 2000. The problem obviously was not the number of progressive and moderate voters but their location.

This is legal. There is nothing being bought or sold, just traded. VotePair.org has a team of lawyers working with them to guarantee this. Here is what the first article, back in 2000, had to say:

There is a way for Gore voters trapped in Republican states to liberate Nader supporters in the tossup states to vote for Gore without actually abandoning their support for Nader and a strong Green Party in the future. The key is a variation on a voting device used in the Senate called "pairing," whereby senators on opposite sides of issues match up their votes if they are going to be away from Washington. (This arrangement is so formal that when the Congressional Record reports the ayes and nays on a vote, it reflects the pairs by name.)

The current problem is that there aren't enough 3rd Party Voters in Swing States signing up for this. There are, of course, 10,000 Democrats signed up from Safe States, where we all feel just a little useless.
My biggest question when I first read about this was "how do I know if the other person will uphold their end of the bargain?" Here's what VotePair.org has to say about that:

People join the vote pairing movement because they believe in its goals and want to advance them. But we can no more guarantee that our participants will keep their word than the Republican Party can guarantee that John McCain will actually vote for George W. Bush in November or the Democratic Party can guarantee that Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich will vote for John Kerry. (The Green Party couldn't even get Nader to register Green in 2000 and he was their candidate!) A public statement of support is one thing, and the ballot box is another. There is a secret ballot in America and we honor that. But having said this, we believe all participants have a moral obligation (as opposed to a legal one) to keep their word or, if they change their minds, to notify their paired partner so they can re-register. In terms of organized efforts to subvert our work, votepair.org incorporates strong checks against deception since we put participants in direct touch with each other. We will also have a range of security measures in place to screen out and block fraudulent registrations. Just as we will not be intimidated by Republican officials who consider political compromise and coalitions a form of criminal vote-buying, we will not be intimidated by Republican dirty tricksters who try to wreck our alliance.
If you think your pair partner is an imposter, there's a simple solution: don't do it. You can simply say "no, thank you" and start over again by sending an email to help@votepair.org. We will reset your account so you can be repaired with another voter.

If you're interested in voting for a 3rd party candidate, and especially if you're in a swing state, consider signing up for VotePair.org. Your candidate may not be able to win the election, but you may be able to prevent George Bush from being re-elected.

Women, Oprah, and George W. Bush

I read somewhere that people care who Oprah is voting for. They want to know who she will endorse. I don't really care, not being an Oprah fan, but if so many people do care ... well, I want to know who she is leading them towards.
I did some googling and I think its Kerry. She hasn't come right out and said it, I don't think, but she hosted a GOTV episode that focused on women's rights. She made it plain that if you don't vote, you'll lose many of your rights as a woman. Now, assuming Oprah's viewers are smart enough to catch on, they'll realize that several of the Supreme Court positions - including that of Chief Justice - will be up for grabs before 2008. Women will realize that Bush, if re-elected, will stack the Court with neoconservative justices who will overturn part or all of Roe vs Wade. The right to choose what to do to your body will be taken away. The Court will decide what you can do to your own body. From there, where does it go? Do we eventually all end up legislated into becoming June Cleaver (or Laura Bush)? You tell me.
Here's a fantastic article on Oprah and women's rights from the ultra-liberal San Francisco Gate. Because I think it's such a powerful article, I'm posting the entire thing. You just have to click on the jump to read most of it. It takes up space.

So there she was, the nation's most powerful and popular public female, kicking butt on a recent installment of her insanely beloved TV show with the help of celeb guests (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, P. Diddy, Christina Aguilera) and galvanizing stunned women across the nation to participate in this election, or else.

There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry.

This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body -- or someone else, someone who hasn't touched a vagina for 30 years and who thinks sex is only tolerable in the dark, fully clothed and with a respectable prostitute, will choose for you.

Sound like a cliché? Same ol' quasi-feminist rally message? Not exactly. Not this time. Just imagine this:

Imagine Bush filches another election in November. Nations mourn, black clouds gather, children cry, colons spasm, the remaining shreds of the American experiment wither and die.

And within a very short time, as many as 30 U.S. states have recriminalized abortion and made repressing women and hating sex fun again, as young American females everywhere who thought their right to choose was pretty much incontrovertible and indisputable and unfailing and who therefore didn't bother to vote in '00 or '04 suddenly go, oh holy freaking hell.

Continue reading after the jump. Go ahead and click - it's a great article.

The Elephant in the Room

No, I'm not going to make a long post about the 380 tons of explosives the Bush administration managed to lose in Iraq. (That's what they get for guarding the oil and not the explosives.) Why am I not going to rant on that? Everyone else is reporting on it. You can't tell me you haven't heard about it by this point.
Instead, I think that this is the real elephant in the room. Let's see, in this one article we have this:
In the deadliest ambush of the insurgency, guerrillas dressed as policemen killed about 50 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers in remote eastern Iraq as the unarmed soldiers were heading home on leave Saturday evening, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
Then this:
In Baghdad, a State Department security officer, Edward J. Seitz, was killed Sunday morning by a mortar or rocket attack at Camp Victory, the American base next to Baghdad International Airport that serves as the military's operations center, said Bob Callahan, a spokesman for the American Embassy. Mr. Seitz, a 16-year veteran of the State Department who was posted at the base, is the first American diplomatic employee known to have been killed in the war.
Also, there's this:
Elsewhere, Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric who has led two uprisings against the occupation, said he fully supported the leaders of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, which could face invasion within weeks by the United States Marines.
We can't forget this:
Later, an American fighter jet attacked a suspected insurgent post in Falluja, the latest in a series of almost daily airstrikes by the Marines. Witnesses said six people had been killed, The Associated Press reported.
And of course, this:
The executions of the Iraqi soldiers on Saturday evening - and what may also have been three civilian drivers in their convoy - raised disturbing questions about the training process and the recruits: Why were the guardsmen allowed to travel unarmed and without protection, given the frequent attacks on the Iraqi security forces? Why did men trained as soldiers not put up a fight, especially when there were so many of them? How did the insurgents get police uniforms and information on the travel plans of the soldiers?
Iraqi and American officials said they had no immediate answers.
The war is certainly not over. People are dying - civilians, Iraqis, Americans ... it's not right. We need to get out of Iraq. At this point, things are only going to get worse before they get better, especially with our elections - and their elections - coming up. "There will be no casualties," Bush said. Whatever.

Ohio is now an Official Mess

Thanks to a 6th Circuit Court ruling, Ohio will be chaos come November 2. According to the Covington blog, this is a move specifically intended to throw Ohio to the Republicans. The Cincinnati blog gets a bit more specific, noting the relevant text of the Help America Vote Act. The ruling by the 6th Circuit Court, to my understanding, violates the Help America Vote Act.

Crushed by the local paper

The Cincinnati Enquirer led me on and then promptly destroyed me this morning. In the process, I also believe that I have lost any chance of converting my dad to a vote for Kerry, Clooney, and Mongiardo. Not that our votes for Kerry mean anything in this red state, but votes for Clooney and Mongiardo would.
Today the Enquirer ran a comparison in the front section (I can't find it online) of the two candidates. It summarized and compared, line by line, Bush & Kerry's plans for everything from Iraq to education to Social Security. The comparison actually made Bush look pretty bad, pointing out past campaign "promises" that were broken and how the President did not actively seek to sign a new ban on Assault weapons. The comparison made Kerry look pretty awesome. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, they've come to their senses and endorsed Kerry.
Nope. My hopes were crushed. The editorial section, which was quite small, carried a huge photo of Bush with the endorsement. And the endorsement pissed me off. This is the only paragraph in which they admit that Bush may not be perfect:

We wish the president were willing to acknowledge the mistakes that were made, and to hold accountable those in his administration who made them. But other nations and past administrations all believed Saddam had the weapons and was willing to use them.
The task now is to capitalize on the gains that have been made, restore frayed alliances and stand prepared for the next attack.

So, the editors don't quite agree with the Iraq war, it seems, but endorse the President anyway. Why, you ask, did the Enquirer choose to endorse Bush? Not because of things he has done, but because its safer than changing horsemen mid-stream, or as I've taken to saying, mid-apocalypse. Here is one the supporting paragraphs:

The next four years will require a president who has the fortitude not to waver in the face of terror. George W. Bush and John Kerry are both strong and patriotic men, but we believe the times call for America to be consistent. For that reason we support Bush.

With the Enquirer endorsement of Bush, tangled reasoning aside, I have probably lost any chance of Dad voting for Kerry. I wasn't able to sway him soon enough. That VietNam thing - the Jane Fonda thing - it all has been working against me. That, and the fact that Dad tends to believe random ultra-conservative emails ... Anyway, the Enquirer also took it upon themselves to endorse Bunning today instead of Mongiardo, as the major Kentucky papers did.

Campaign tactics aside, Bunning has a proven record of strong leadership and service. His straightforward, sometimes gruff style can be off-putting, but at age 72 Bunning appears mentally sharp and physically fit, belying some media reports that have questioned his cognitive ability.

With that, I effectively lost Dad's vote for Mongiardo. I hold out hope that he'll vote for Clooney, simply because, as anchor of the Channel 12 nightly news when I was growing up, Clooney was sort of at our dinner table every night. (I'm rather peeved with Clooney, but that's another story. He'll get my vote anyway.) I hope that the same name recognition that causes Dad to vote for Bunning will cause him to cast a vote in Clooney's favor as well.
Here's the real kicker for me. My 18-yr old sisters will be voting for the first time this year. They will vote the way their home leans, I bet. I never did, but I am much more opinionated (and always have been) than my sisters. I have always, always been liberal, even when I tried not to be. So by losing Dad's votes, I have lost the votes that belong to my two sisters and most likely my step-mom. It's incredibly frustrating.

Jon Stewart is Everywhere

He's the topic of an article in today's Washington Post. He's also on 60 Minutes tomorrow night. Personally, I think he's everywhere because he's promoting his book. The brilliant folks at Comedy Central knew that the best time to release the book would be right before the election because EVERYONE would want to see and hear Jon Stewart then. Anyway, it's a good article. (I'd also like to point out that while Jon Stewart is everywhere, Ana Marie Cox, AKA Wonkette, is right behind him. She hasn't even released a book.)

You know, they say that my demographic gets its news from the Daily Show. That's not true. We all get the news from the usual suspects in the normal media. We know the news. We go to Jon Stewart to see how the news can be made funny, and to know we're not alone in our anger. We wouldn't get the jokes on the Daily Show if we weren't familiar with the source of the joke.

Wolfpacks for Truth

Goodness, wolves and hamsters. It's a shame that animals can't vote, because I think Kerry could wrap up the furry demographic. This is in reference to the new "scary" Bush ad:

They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial! When the camera crew showed up, we wondered why they were all driving Hummers. Our agent assured us it was a Greenpeace commercial and they paid TWICE our hourly steak rate. Little did we know we were being tricked into this vicious campaign attack ad.

Wolfpacks for Truth.org

Dad and the Ky Senate Race

I brought this up with my dad the other day. Now, either he has stopped believing every random email he receives, or he's stopped mentioning them to me. However, he has turned to the local news media (which I find sadly lacking and slightly partisan) for his information. Hmmm.

So yesterday, this article was in the Ky Post. This article was in the Enquirer, apparently on the front page. Bunning claims he's fine and that Mongiardo is just mudslinging with all this "Bunning is ill" stuff. Maybe. But it was the media who initially brought it up - not Mongiardo. He just took advantage of the opportunity. My dad was quick to point out to me that according to the Enquirer article, Bunning says he is fine and that he told the Mongiardo team "6 months ago" that he wouldn't participate in this past week's debate. Actually Dad, the article says "September," not "6 months ago," but I get your point.

Bunning has realized that the race isn't his to win anymore. So he's taking a tour of the state over the next couple weeks, with his wife, to get his face out there. I noticed in the Post article that he fell back on his name recognition with this statement: "When I was a pitcher, I didn't quit after seven innings," he said. "I was in there to pitch nine -- I finish what I start."

To wrap this up, I want to point out another lovely conversation piece between me and my dad:
Me: Dad, Bunning accused Mongiardo of looking like the sons of Saddam Hussein just because he's dark.
Dad: Well, he does, doesn't he? I think so.
Me: Dad, can I remind you that you also have a tan and dark hair? Do you look like a son of Saddam Hussein?
Dad: No, but that's different.
Needless to say, Bunning is a baseball star. Dad is voting for Bunning. This is the kind of attitude we're dealing with in this state. Dad is just an average guy - rather representive of a lot of the folks in Ky actually. He's a machinist, not an executive, has worked at the same place for over 30 years, has 4 daughters (two of which will be heading to college next fall), he doesn't have a large income, etc, etc.

Tongue in Cheek

This tongue-in-cheek little site makes me laugh. We ran into a few of the "billionaires" at the Kerry rally. They were handing out Bush Administration job applications - written in Chinese!
Billionaires for Bush

Kerry Team in Cincinnati

It figures. I stand in line in the cold to see him and now he's coming to Cincy AND he'll be inside. Oh well! I just received this info from a friend, so I assume its accurate. Actually, I don't know if its him or just his team. I kinda thought he was in PA with Clinton. Anyway, here you go:

Kerry-Edwards campaign in Cincinnati Sunday, October 24 5 PM Clarion Hotel I-71 at Pfeiffer (Exit 15 on I71)

Cam Kerry, Alan Dershowitz, Senator Charles Schumer,Jay Footlik (Sr. Advisor to Kerry on Israel and Mideast affairs, Susan Turnbull (Dep Chr of DNC)

To discuss how a future Kerry administration would act with regard to issues of concern to the US, Israel, their allies, and enemies.

PLEASE get the word out! PLEASE COME!

http://www.kerrycincinnati.com/

Ky Senate Race

In an unusual move, the two largest Kentucky newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader have both endorsed challenger Dr. Daniel Mongiardo (D) over incumbent Sen. Jim Bunning (R) on account of the incumbent's bizarre behavior. It is increasingly obvious that the voters of Kentucky don't want to get themselves into a situation in which people talk about Mitch McConnell as the senior senator from Kentucky and Jim Bunning as the senile senator from Kentucky. As the Courier-Journal so aptly put it: "Sen. Bunning could readily put to rest any concern that a health problem may be the cause of his odd behavior and absences. All he has to do is hold public forums and press conferences, speak on the issues and answer all questions." If he continues to hide from the people of Kentucky, he will continue being hammered. The most recent poll shows Bunning and Mongiardo tied, down from Bunning's 10% lead only a few months ago.

(Via Electoral Vote Predictor)

Also, from the Enquirer:

It was easy to call the winner in Tuesday night's U.S. Senate debate.
Democrat Dr. Daniel Mongiardo appeared alone on the 30-minute program produced by KET public television and shown across the state.
Northern Kentucky Republican Jim Bunning, the first-term incumbent, skipped the debate. He's made only one joint appearance with Mongiardo, a state senator from Hazard in eastern Kentucky.
During that first debate, sponsored by a Lexington television station, Mongiardo was in Kentucky while Bunning appeared via satellite from Republican national headquarters in Washington.
Bunning's absence Tuesday provided plenty of campaign fodder for Mongiardo, who took questions from two reporters.
The Bunning campaign did not say Tuesday why the senator did not attend.

I'm voting for Mongiardo. Bunning, at this point, really kind of frightens me. You just don't compare your challenger to one of Saddam's sons just because he has dark hair. I hope Bunning isn't sick, and if he is, I hope he gets help. But I don't want him as my Senator.

We Saw Kerry Last Night

It was a busy night for the greater Cincinnati area. Peter Jennings was in town to broadcast the news from here. Why? Well, Dick Cheney's last stop on his 3-city Ohio tour was Price Hill Chili in Cincinnati, where he had a town hall meeting and tied up traffic. It was an invitation only event, per usual. And you had to sign a loyalty pledge. Kerry was an hour north in Dayton. You did not need a ticket, although it was recommended and they were easy to come by. You didn't have to sign anything.
Getting In
We waited in line for almost 90 minutes - a very long line that wrapped around the new baseball stadium where Kerry was to speak. (Beautiful stadium by the way. We'd never seen it.)
We went, and braved some rather cold, damp weather because, well, how often do you get to hear a Presidential candidate speak? It was pretty neat, to be a minuscule part of history in that way.
As we waited in line, we basically had to walk through what Kevin called "abortion alley." The hard-core Pro-Lifers were there, shouting at people about killing babies. There was an overdramatic guy - maybe in college - blowing on a conch shell every 60 seconds (how often an abortion occurs, I suspect). He was barefoot and didn't talk. There was also a lady accusing Kerry, quite wildly, of genocide. Genocide of black people. Apparently if Kerry is elected, he'll wipe out all the African-Americans, or something. Huh. There was a truck driving around as well. "Vote the Bible, " it said. Kevin commented that he hadn't realized someone called Bible was running.
Also walking around were Flipper, Flopper, Flapper, and Sunshine. Now, I know they're part of the GOP, but they were quite entertaining. Forgive me, but the web site, Flipper Cam, is rather entertaining too. It seems to have forgotten that its against John Kerry and is instead a bunch of guys in dolphin suits getting their pictures taken all over the country. Hell, I took a picture of Flipper.
People in line were very friendly. The lady in front of us was there by herself, a union worker I heard her tell someone. She was there because she wanted an alternative to Bush so she wanted to know more about Kerry.
There was a lot of security. A lot of Secret Service guys in black trench coats with ear pieces and at least five metal detectors. We got stopped right before we went through the metal detector - they'd already checked out our electronics and keys. The SS guys all got a message through their earpiece and ran off. We think that's when they were escorting Kerry to the locker room. At that point, it was 6:45 and they had wanted to have everyone in by 7 pm. (Gates opened at 5). From what we can tell, they turned off the metal detectors and let everyone in without the holdup. However, everyone, at that point, had to sit in the "unsecured area." This meant that many many people were let into a specific section of the ballpark (second level) and not allowed to leave. Kevin, who had needed to use the restroom since we got in line, was escorted by a SS agent to the restroom but they still wouldn't let him use it. Eventually, they had enough SS and cops everywhere that you could leave the unsecured area to use the restroom, but it took a while. The seating arrangement worked out great for us . We had excellent seats. We were in the second level of the ballpark, first row, on the end, directly in front of the pitcher's mound. The photos I took don't do our seats justice. I saw things better than my camera portrays.
Listening to Kerry
Kerry was introduced by Senator/Astronaut John Glenn and his wife, Annie. John Glenn told bad Bush jokes and assigned us reading - Kerry's speech to NYU on terrorism. Then out came Kerry. He ran out to the pitcher's mound to great yelling and applause. He was wearing a blue shirt and what I'm pretty sure is a leather LL Bean barn jacket. Eventually he made it to the podium where he took the microphone and ignored the podium. He seems to need to walk around. During his entrance I actually got all weepy.
Now, I knew I'd vote for Kerry, but I never knew if I liked him. Last night, I was pretty sure I actually like him as a person. I was tickled that he did an opening monologue, sort of like late night comics. Some of it was directed at Bush, some of it at the sheer amount of traveling he'd been doing. There was a lot of reminding us about the election being 14 days away. After the opening monologue, he segued into the "Help is on the Way" thing. I have that on video if you want to see it. From there he hit on everything. It really was a closing argument. Some things that stick in my mind, mainly because they made me laugh, include "we need a president who can do more than one thing at a time." His reasoning being that you can't just be a Commander-In Chief and go to war. You still have to be CEO of a nation. He also said this to much cheering, "I kept hearing the president say in that debate, 'it's hard work, it's hard work, it's hard work. Well, Mr. President, I'm very happy to relieve you of that hard work."
He only talked for 30 minutes. But it was substantive. He wandered off a a small tangent once, but got himself back on track. The end of the speech brought confetti and Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run."
We enjoyed it and it was definitely worth it. And its nice to know the guy you're voting for is actually likable. It was a neat experience and I'm glad we did it.
Photos are here.
Video is here.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

And so the nursery rhyme goes. I was trying to ignore the whole GOP "he shouldn't have mentioned Mary's name in the debate" thing. But it's getting old, and it's finally pissing me off. The woman is a lesbian. In fact, she's a lesbian in a public position as operations manager of her father's campaign. Her choice is not a secret - she appears at campaign events with her life partner. IT IS NOT A SECRET! Not only that, it is one of those strange, hypocritical things that I can't understand about the GOP. Why are there so many gay Republicans? I don't get it. It's the GOP that is pushing the Defense of Marriage Act.
(As a side note, more and more states, including Ohio and Ky, have put an issue on the ballot in November to make same-sex marriages illegal. I figure the way things are going, just being gay will be illegal in a decade. It's ridiculous and people are just scared of what they don't understand.)
Anyway, Mary is open and public. Once you are a public figure, you're PUBLIC. That means if Kerry wants to invoke your name in a debate, he can. Plus, and people seem to forget this, Mary Cheney is a 35-year old successful career woman. She's not a little girl, or even a teenager. She's a full-grown adult.

There is a great essay in the Washington Post that sort of puts it all out there. Here's a snippet:

Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian. (Do you have to keep saying lesbian?) This is all she may ever be, at least in the history books. Before she became a public enigma, she used to earn a nice living as a corporate liaison for Coors Brewing Co., going into gay bars (sometimes with Mr. International Leather 1999, who would wear his chaps and straps, according to the Advocate) to convince everyone that Coors had changed. For a long time, gay people were implored by activists to boycott Coors, based on its funding of anti-gay causes. Mary got in there, talked about Coors's new domestic-partner benefits for employees. Mary said, here, try a Coors. She was good at that, and the boycott wafted away, and you didn't see as much Bud Light in gay bars.

The Post also uses this incredible quote from Salon.com:

"How incredibly sad for Mary Cheney, the lesbian in question. And not for the reasons that her parents and the pundits have been screaming about," journalist Dave Cullen wrote on Salon.com, deftly describing his own offense at the latest chapter in the quiet saga of Mary. "It is not an insult to call a proudly public lesbian a lesbian. It's an insult to gasp when someone calls her a lesbian. . . . You're embarrassed for us. And it's infuriating."

What Everybody Doesn't Know About Mary: The Washington Post, 10/19/04

Newspaper Endorsements

A list of the newspapers that endorsed Kerry can be found here. The page also shows a couple of lines from each endorsement, many of which are very compelling. Take this one from the Lexington Herald-Leader (being in Ky and completely surrounded by Republicans, I'm impressed that Lexington is endorsing Kerry):

October 17, 2004 - Voters who examine Kerry's life, his long record of public service and his practical solutions for strengthening this country will be reassured. He has a lot more going for him than just not being Bush.

Or this, from Bush's hometown newspaper in Crawford, TX (you know, where he constantly vacations), the Lone Star Iconoclast:

September 28, 2004 - Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen. That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country. The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

When Headlines Turn Bad ...

We all need to think positive now, people - myself included.
This from Campaign Desk:

USA Today splashed the following five-column banner headline across its front page today, in type so big you'd have thought we'd landed on Mars, or at least gotten another look at Janet Jackson's breast:

Poll: Bush leads by 8 points

Wow! Eight points! That sure does seem like a lot. There's one problem, though -- and it comes in the fourth paragraph of USA Today's own piece: "Even [Bush's] lead among likely voters is on the cusp of the survey's margin of error."

In other words, "Now that we think about it, don't take our headline or lede too seriously; neither one means much." As the piece notes, there was indeed a swing in Bush's direction from the previous CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll -- but considering the whole "cusp of the survey's margin of error" thing, clearly not enough to warrant such prominent play in the paper.

Consider the headline CNN put on its story about the selfsame poll: "Presidential Race Still Tight." It seems that when the two media organizations looked at the same poll (their own), USA Today decided to trumpet a blowout, while CNN determined, accurately, that things weren't that simple.

This is an expectations game, after all -- as The Note put it this morning, "If more people (regardless of whom they support) don't start telling pollsters that they believe Kerry WILL win, he probably can't." There's no doubt that it's the job of candidates Bush and Kerry each to try to create an aura of inevitability around their candidacy. But it's not USA Today's job to help them -- not unless its polling actually gives it a reason to.

NY Times Endorses John Kerry

The NY Times today officially endorsed John Kerry. It's not that this is a surprise, but its still good, and influential (at least as far as New Yorkers go). Of course, a good portion of America will be oblivious to the endorsement.

Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president.

Here is a list of 20 other newspapers that endorsed Kerry just today. What I find interesting about the list is that there are two Ohio newspapers included - Akron and Dayton. That's good news for Kerry. Of course, even if people notice the editorials (I doubt my parents even open that section of the paper), just because a newspaper endorses a candidate doesn't mean the candidate gets the vote. Somewhere I read an article about this. Basically, our senses are so visually assailed by TV and the web that a newspaper endorsement doesn't carry the oomph it once did. I'll have to hunt down that article

UPDATE: Found it! It was the Pew Research study that declared people get tons of news from the Daily Show. You can read it here, but this is the paragraph I was thinking about:

Political endorsements ­ whether made by politicians, celebrities or advocacy organizations ­ continue to have little impact on most Americans. Moreover, among the small number swayed by such endorsements, the effect is mostly mixed. On balance, endorsements by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Vice President Al Gore would have a somewhat negative impact, although most people say they would not be affected either way. An endorsement by a person's priest or minister is a net positive, but 80% say such an endorsement would not matter (up from 70% in 2000). Newspaper endorsements are also less influential than four years ago, and dissuade as many Americans as they persuade.

DNC Notes

From a Ky Democrat email:

The DNC now has a "Sinclair Action Center" online. Any of you who want to help stop Sinclair from running the anti-Kerry video on their stations should visit this site to find out how to call and email your local Sinclair television station and more.

http://www.democrats.org/sinclair/

***************************************************************
CSPAN-2 will air the debate between Dr. Dan Mongiardo and Jim Bunning TONIGHT, October 15, at 9:00 p.m. EDT. (Shel's note: This is important because most of Ky isn't going to see the debate unless they tune into C-SPAN.)

Bunning makes the Washington Post

So, yesterday and today, the Washington Post - big, national newspaper - had an article about how Jim Bunning in Ky is losing his mind.
Our state has gone national. I haven't heard a lot about this here in conservative No. Ky, but I hope the news spreads fast.
Check it out here, and here.

Jobs & Education

I'm just getting around to reading the transcript of the debate (I'm so behind right now, I know). This exchange jumped out at me:

Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college.
We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.
You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.
I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.
And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.
No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive.
Got four more years, I've got more to do to continue to raise standards, to continue to reward teachers and school districts that are working, to emphasize math and science in the classrooms, to continue to expand Pell Grants to make sure that people have an opportunity to start their career with a college diploma.
And so the person you talked to, I say, here's some help, here's some trade adjustment assistance money for you to go a community college in your neighborhood, a community college which is providing the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century. And that's what I would say to that person.

Again, I realize my "outrage" on this matter is a bit after the fact. But I'm still floored. In essence, Bush is saying that if your job is outsourced to India, then you just need to take some money and go to community college. Community college will fix everything? Is he not aware that college graduates are having a harder time finding jobs now as well? Here's a quote from a 2002 USA Today Magazine article:

FACING a slowly reviving economy and competition from unemployed workers, nearly one-third of this spring's 1,200,000 college graduates could remain jobless six months after receiving their diplomas--a delay that may affect their earnings for years to come. Based on national projections, as many as 360,000 of them could still be looking for work as 2003 approaches. According to a long-term study, unemployment early in a career can be felt over a period of years because it delays the experience and training that typically lead to higher salaries.
The competition will be fierce for first-time job-seekers this year. Not only are there fewer openings, but the pool of candidates is bigger. In addition to their classmates, graduates will be competing with jobless people formerly in the workforce for one to three years, some of whom may be more inclined in this uncertain economy to accept entry-level pay.
Firms surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) plan to hire 20% fewer college graduates in 2001-02 than in the previous year, which could prolong postgraduation joblessness for 240,000 of the spring graduates. In addition, 10% of college graduates--120,000 this year--typically remain unemployed and are not enrolled in graduate school six months after graduation, according to informal surveys by NACE.

And does Bush even realize that "outsourcing" is not just hitting the blue collar workers of America, but the white collar ones as well? What about the programmers whose jobs are being sent to India because it's cheaper? These programmers already have a college education. In many cases, they have multiple degrees. How is community college going to help these folks?

I've been out of work during our President's term, as has my husband. We were both laid off by IT firms at different points. It took a long time and reliance on unemployment for either one of us to find work again, and we're highly educated, intelligent people. How could Bush have helped us? His "plan" of education to fight joblessness is crap. Sorry, but that's the truth. It just really pissed me off.

Lying in Wait

Now that the debates are over, I'm waiting for the October Surprise. Democrats almost all agree that Karl Rove has something up his sleeve. I've decided he's waited until after the debates. Now, Kerry will not have a national forum with which to defend himself when the October surprise and Karl Rove's famous dirty tricks come into play.

Let's see - there's already been the "small time" stuff, like Sinclair Broadcasting and voter registration shredding in Nevada. Now, I suppose, it's time to pull out the big guns. Frankly, I'm a little scared. I doubt Rove and BC04 expected the race to be this close at this point.

From CNN.com:

Bush is no stranger to October surprises; his family has been on the receiving end.
The revelation of Bush's drunken-driving arrest as a young man came right before the 2000 election.
The Friday before the 1992 election, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who served in the Reagan and first Bush administration, was indicted in the Democratic-inspired investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. That posed yet another worry for the elder Bush's re-election bid, which failed.
Usually speculated-upon October surprises fail to materialize. There was talk that the Carter administration would produce a deal in 1980 to free the U.S. hostages in Iran. In 1968 and again in 1972 came speculation that a deal to end the war in Vietnam might be at hand.
Yet the Suez Canal crisis in the fall of 1956 contributed to Dwight Eisenhower's re-election landslide, historians suggest.
As Election Day draws nearer, Bush's options for election-influencing actions are dwindling.
With three tax cuts under his belt, there is not enough time for a new stimulus if the economy takes a sudden turn for the worse, perhaps reflected in a bad jobs report on October 8 -- the last unemployment report before the election -- or in a stock market swoon.
Bush could release more crude oil from the national reserve to combat rising fuel prices. But he accused President Clinton of doing just that to help Democrat Al Gore right before the 2000 election. And Bush already has used some of those reserves to help refiners offset hurricane losses -- with little impact on rising fuel prices.
One "Hail Mary" pass could be for Vice President Dick Cheney to leave the ticket -- perhaps to be replaced by a popular moderate such as former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Republican strategists scoff at such talk. But if Bush starts to fall behind, he and his advisers might want to try harder to reach out to moderates who dislike Cheney intensely. Cheney, who has had four heart attacks, could cite health concerns.
"The notion is that the October surprise is a Halloween trick for politicians. But the strongest possibility this time is something happening that nobody controls," said Princeton political science professor Fred Greenstein.

Remind me to grocery shop this AM

Kroger workers vote to strike

Kroger Co. workers in the Cincinnati area have rejected the company's latest contract offer and voted to authorize a strike.
John Marrone, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1099, told the Associated Press that the strike was authorized by 97 percent of the 5,000 workers who voted. The union represents about 8,500 cashiers, baggers and clerks at 70 Kroger stores in southwest Ohio, southeast Indiana and Northern Kentucky.
The workers could strike when their contract expires Friday at 10 p.m. To prepare for the strike, Kroger has been advertising in stores and local newspapers for temporary workers.
According to the AP report, a federal mediator has asked the union and Kroger to resume talks today. A Kroger spokesman said the company is committed to the negotiations process.
Kroger has said that any agreement will require cuts to its escalating health care expenses. The company on average pays $7.24 an hour to cover health care for each of its local top-rated, full-time clerks, or $8,000 a year. That's on top of an average hourly wage of $13.88.
Kroger faced similar difficulties securing a contract with workers in southern California earlier this year. That struggle resulted in a four-and-a-half month strike that contributed to a $50 million decline in second-quarter earnings.
Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR) is one of the nation's largest supermarket operators with more than 2,500 stores in 32 states.
From the Cincy Business Courier

Update: Strike pushed back and players are again in talks. We'll see.

More from Slate ...

I just really enjoy Slate. And while I'm behind today (flu and involved in a book), I did take the time to read this article. The author feels last night was a "Grand Slam" for Kerry. Having not watched the whole debate, I couldn't say, but it's good to read this interpretation of events.
Here's a paragraph I particularly enjoy:

After the last debate, I chided Kerry for expressing his abortion position poorly. Not this time. "It's between a woman, God, and her doctor," he said. "I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade. The president has never said whether or not he would do that. But we know from the people he's tried to appoint to the court [that] he wants to." Kerry went on: "I'm not going to appoint a judge to the [Supreme] Court who's going to undo a constitutional right, whether it's the First Amendment or the Fifth Amendment or some other right. ... The right of choice is a constitutional right."

Go Kerry!

Thank goodness, the last debate

I'm so glad these debates are over.
No one could stick to the facts last night. I'm sure factcheck.org will be all over it soon enough. I feel sorry for those guys during the debates. Kerry & Bush are constantly spouting so-called facts and numbers and the factcheck.org guys are probably overloaded by the time the debate is finished. Check it out later today though. I have a sneaking suspicion that Bush outright Lied a few times, whereas Kerry just exaggerated a few times. That seems to be the trend thus far. But hey - if lying gets the American people to vote for you, well, why complain? I just wish all the electorate were smart enough - or had enough time - to check the facts for themselves. But they don't. (I'm feeling very "Bush will win, dammit, and I'm not happy about it" today. More of that psyching myself out for the inevitable. Plus, I'm still flu-ish.)
I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, so I will. In the immediate post-debate analysis last night, Peter Jennings slipped and called Kerry "President Kerry." We rewound the tivo and double-checked. How funny! Would that be a Freudian slip?
Some body language comments - Bush just looks bad in a debate. Tonite, instead of scowling as in the first debate, he smirked. I told Kevin, "I hate it when he smirks. Only Bruce Willis can smirk effectively." It's true. Bruce Willis looks appropriate smirking. Bush looks kind of scary. Also, he made bad jokes and made what I suppose is a chuckling sound. "he he he he he" I said to Kevin, "Bush shouldn't laugh. He sounds evil and creepy." It was a very forced sounding laugh.
Here's a gimme from the President to the Democrats. More outright lying. From the debate:

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.
Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."
We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?
BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

From real life - a press conference, 3/13/02, not that long after 9/11:

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.

Despite all, I think the debate was a draw. I didn't watch the whole thing. I didn't feel well and the debate would have upset me. (Instead I watched our tivo'd episode of "Lost," which also upsets me but I get over it really fast.) I watched enough to know that the President's advisors have driven some points home to him about acting presidential. They forgot to mention how to tell the truth. I wish his nose would grow or something.

As usual, Wonkette's version of the debate is much funnier, and in ways more accurate, than the actual transcript.

Cleaning up the mess

From today's Chatterbox at Slate:

How To Watch Tonight's Debate: A cure for issues guilt.
By Timothy Noah Posted Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004, at 8:10 AM PT

You're feeling guilty. Tonight's the last presidential debate, and it's all about domestic policy, and you still haven't mastered the details of John Kerry's health care plan or President Bush's Social Security privatization plan. Well, I have a little secret for you. It doesn't matter!

Why doesn't it matter? Because by presiding over a sagging economy, slashing taxes for the rich, writing a blank check to drug companies in the new Medicare-drug bill, waging an expensive war in Iraq, and accelerating spending, President Bush has taken the balanced budget left him by President Clinton and turned it into a $422 billion deficit. Not bad for a conservative! His timing couldn't be worse, because, as noted in an Oct. 7 report by the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan deficit-hawk group, the first batch of retiring Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) will start collecting Social Security before the next presidential term ends. As noted in today's New York Times, Kerry's proposals would add $1.27 trillion to the deficit between now and 2014 (including $177 billion for his health-care plan). That might sound irresponsible if President Bush's proposals didn't total somewhere between $2 trillion and $4 trillion during the same period. (The Concord Coalition says the total is $1.33 trillion but quickly points out that this doesn't include Bush's Social Security privatization, which would cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.)

Tonight, whenever either candidate mentions a domestic-policy proposal, ask yourself the following question: "Will this cost the government a lot of money?" If the answer is "yes," feel free to tune out discussion of the proposal's substance.

Instead of trying to master the details of complicated new proposed initiatives, focus on the following question: Which of these guys will do a better job cleaning up the horrible fiscal mess left behind by President Bush's first term? Because, when you get down to it, that's the only honest job description for the domestic-policy part of this gig. One way to answer that question is to compare Bush's $2 trillion to $3 trillion in new costs to Kerry's $1.27 trillion. Another is to see if you can identify which candidate even recognizes that there's a mess to clean up. Come to think of it, that isn't a bad method for sizing up the foreign-policy debate part of this job, either.

Electoral Votes

This is a super-cool web site that uses the latest polls (although who knows how accurate those are) to predict the number of electoral votes for each candidate. Everything is then further divided into graphs and other pretty USA-Today style imagery (yet useful). I'm curious as to how accurate this site will end up being come election day.

Ky Senate Race Gets, um, Odd

I got this today from the Ky Democratic party. It's from Salon.com, but parts of it were also posted on today's Daily Kos. (Kos also has the latest update on the story.)
Here's the letter:

The following article appears today online at www.salon.com. Salon.com began in 1995 and, according to their web site, has been called "intriguing and intelligent" (Washington Post), "truly compelling" (Time) and "smart and provocative" (Forbes). Salon.com proclaims itself to be a source of “unfiltered, unflinching and unembedded news reporting.” Read the article online at www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/12/bunning_kentucky/index_np.html. The full text of the article is below.

Weirdness in Kentucky

The increasingly strange behavior of Republican Sen. Jim Bunning has led to speculation that he is suffering from some kind of dementia -- and tightened a race he once had in his pocket.

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

By Mary Jacoby

Oct. 12, 2004 | It's no secret in Kentucky that Sen. Jim Bunning, a Republican who was expected to coast to reelection on Nov. 2, has been acting strange. Over the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary Club and stuck to brief, heavily scripted remarks at campaign events, delivered in a halting monotone. The former major league baseball star now travels the Bluegrass State with a special police escort, at taxpayer expense. His explanation? Al-Qaida may be out to get him.

More substantively, the incumbent would agree to only one debate with his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo. And the rules Bunning negotiated were bizarrely rigid: The encounter could not be live; the taping has to occur in the afternoon, not the evening; no audience could be present in the studio; and, under threat of legal action, Mongiardo could not use any sound clips or video of Bunning's debate performance in campaign advertisements.

This apparent fear of the spontaneous has spurred rumors in Kentucky that Bunning, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, is suffering from some sort of dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's. Bunning has declined to release his medical records. But until now, there was nothing hard to suggest that the one-term Republican senator was anything but a crotchety, occasionally confused, or arrogant old man.

On Monday, however, Bunning -- who turns 73 this month -- abruptly retreated behind yet another barrier, in an action so inexplicable that it appears likely to bring the rumors about his health, now referred to obliquely in Kentucky news reports, into open discussion. It may also mark a turning point in a race that, against all expectations, has been tightening recently.

Read the rest of the article after the jump.

Debate Round #2

I'd say it was a draw. However, I commented during the debate that it seemed like Kerry was more offensive and Bush was, again, more defensive. But Kerry didn't put him on the defensive. Instead of proving why he should be and continue to be our President, Bush's debate style is more that he jumps to defend what he's done. I'd rather know what he's going to do. Maybe that's the difference between the two. Bush reacted to every question as if it was a personal attack and he had to defend himself. Maybe being a lawyer helps Kerry in that way - he's able to step back from the question a little more and not take it too personally.

Anyway, I'd call it a draw. I don't think anyone actually won this one. They each won parts of it.

Here's a good review in the NY Times. And per usual, wonkette has an awesome play-by-play that is effin' hilarious.

And don't forget to see Factcheck.org today. Here's a sample:

Both candidates played loose with the facts at the second Presidential Debate in St. Louis Oct. 8. Bush claimed Kerry's health-care plan would lead to rationing and "ruin the quality of health care in America," a claim unsupported by neutral experts. Kerry claimed the Bush administration had forced the Army Chief of Staff to retire for pushing to send more troops to Iraq, but in fact he retired on schedule.

We offer a sampler of the dubious and sometimes false statements made by each of the candidates.

Bush got a laugh when he scoffed at Kerry's contention that he had received $84 from "a timber company." Said Bush, "I own a timber company? That's news to me."

In fact, according to his 2003 financial disclosure form, Bush does own part interest in "LSTF, LLC", a limited-liability company organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales."

So Bush was wrong to suggest that he doesn't have ownership of a timber company. And Kerry was correct in saying that Bush's definition of "small business" is so broad that Bush himself would have qualified as a "small business" in 2001 by virtue of the $84 in business income.

Truths

Honestly, it just reinforces what I've been saying. I'm posting the whole article from Slate.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Bush's Iraq Statistics The security forces are inadequate, the coalition is a joke, and reconstruction has barely begun. By Fred Kaplan Posted Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004, at 3:28 PM PT

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lately been touting three sets of statistics to justify their claims of great progress in Iraq. First, they say, we've trained 100,000 Iraqi security forces. Second, 31 other countries are contributing troops as part of the vast international coalition. Third, Iraqi reconstruction is moving along on schedule, thanks to the $18.4 billion in U.S. economic aid.

Yet the U.S. State Department's most recent Iraq Weekly Status Report, dated Oct. 6, reveals that all three of those claims are either false or so misleading that they might as well be.

More after the jump.

Tell me no more lies ...

Sigh. This campaign is making me tired. So I'm not going to post too much. I am going to send you off to read a couple of articles though.

First off, yesterday, the Bush campaign "snookered" the cable news networks. The networks were told that Bush was going to make a major policy announcement and that it should be televised. Turned out, he used his TV time for one of his campaign trail stump speeches. This time, he said lots of things about Kerry - basically, Bush said everything he should have said in last week's debate. The thing that pisses me off is that he used national TV to do it. Thank god the non-cable networks didn't do it. Regardless, doesn't that break some sort of campaign law? Can he really be allowed to do that?

What pissed me off even more is that the major newspapers never mentioned how the Bush campaign pulled their fast one. Never mentioned it!!! If Kerry did it, you can believe they'd mention it. Argh! I have no patience with the media anymore.

Here are some articles on the snookering:
You Call That a Major Policy Address? - Slate
Talking Points Memo

I'm pissed that the President and VP can't seem to see their own hands in front of their face. Maybe they need glasses. The Duelfer report does NOT justify the war. It doesn't!! Face facts! Get over it! Realize that you cannot continue to make up reasons why we went to war AFTER THE FACT!

Finally, despite having introduced half the nation to FactCheck.org (indirectly, I admit), the Bush campaign will not stop with the lies! They are twisting the truth, pulling things out of context, and in some cases, outright lying. They are walking a very thin grey line and I'm quite tired of it. I want each candidate to tell me the truth - no charm, no fake-outs , just the truth! Even the NY Times has realized that Bush is dangerously close to lying in most of his speeches.
In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limits on the Facts: NY Times BTW, the primary speech they are referring to is the one Bush made while snookering the cable news networks. (Isn't "snookering" a fantastic word? I got it from last night's Daily Show.)

There are a million other little things, politcally speaking, that are pissing me off right now. But instead of dwelling, I'm going to go bake pumpkin-shaped chocolate chip cookies.

VP Debate, Facts and Not-Exactly-Facts

Last night Cheney sent the American public to FactCheck.Com, when he meant one of my favorite sites: factcheck.org. This was not wise on so many levels. First off, he got the domain name wrong and by the end of the debates, factcheck.com was pointing to GeorgeSoros.com, a liberal and anti-Bush site. That's an oops for Cheney. But Factcheck.org, which is independent, was busy debunking everything Edwards and Cheney said during the debate. From what I've read, Cheney, umm, MISSTATED more often than Edwards. Factcheck.org is awesome, because its equal-opportunity debunking by an independent organization.

Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong. He overstated matters when he said Edwards voted "for the war" and "to commit the troops, to send them to war." He exaggerated the number of times Kerry has voted to raise taxes, and puffed up the number of small business owners who would see a tax increase under Kerry's proposals.
Edwards falsely claimed the administration "lobbied the Congress" to cut the combat pay of troops in Iraq, something the White House never supported, and he used misleading numbers about jobs.

VP Debate

I can't judge this one. I fell asleep on the couch a little before 9 pm, woke up at 9:50 and flipped over to the debate. I recall hearing the exchange about gay marriage and wondering why neither candidate could really take a stand on that. For the next 10-15 minutes, I tried to watch, while basically holding my eyes open with toothpicks. At 10:15 I stumbled off to bed with the impression that Cheney was a great big grizzly bear. Bears are both mean and graceful, you know. I was also left feeling that Edwards was pretty and young (yet he's not that young!). Anyway, if you'd have asked me then, I'd have said Cheney won the debate. However, from what I've read this morning in the Washington Post and NY Times, it was a draw. They each had their really strong moments. And while Cheney probably helped remove those images of Bush as a petulant child from last week's debate, Edwards still reinforced Kerry's strength. I got an email from KE04 today stating that Edwards won. I'm sure BC04 sent out the "Cheney won" email this morning as well. I'll stick with the draw. You can read the transcript of the debate, if you're really bored. Or you can read Wonkette's transcript of the debate, which is hilarious. I prefer Wonkette myself.

Good News: One Soldier's View of Iraq

A friend of mine is in Iraq and sends weekly updates on what he is doing, etc. He's given me permission to post this latest missive. I wanted to post this because it shows our soldiers making a difference. Whereas I don't agree with the war, I support the soldiers. I also believe that since we're there and have changed all the Iraqis lives (for better or worse is yet to be decided), we might as well make a positive impact while we're there. This isn't a story about people getting blown up by car bombs. This is how we can actually positively affect the lives of others - and of goats. So here's is my friend's letter. I think he's fairly high up in the military food chain, but can't quite remember his rank.

Hey All,

I've gotten a number of questions on different topics, so I thought I'd wrap them all up into a single response.

So what do they have you doing?
My detachment is working with the reconstruction teams, local officials, and host nation military leadership to build confidence in the local government, improve the security situation, educate people on what democracy is, and de-mining.
I know that sounds like a public relations blurb, but my days are spent working exactly these issues.

Are you staying out of trouble?
More or less. The part of the country I am in is relatively safe. When we leave the installation, we do that in heavily armed convoys, that do not make us an attractive target. Our dealings in our area are mostly with people who have a vested interest in our success, so they look out for us as well.

Any juicy stories you can share?
We were looking for a village that isn't on the map, to do a water quality and basic resources asessment. We were trying to find the right goat path when the lead HMMWV went over a hillcrest. My truck was the second, and the crest of the hill shelved quickly. The lead vehicle slid down the hill (these trucks weigh 5 tons apiece and the only dime they're going to stop is a couple of hundred feet wide). My driver couldn't stop our truck either, so we slid down too. The gunner is raising hell, yelling and screaming, as we go down this hill at a 45 degree angle. While we're doing that the lead truck plows through this guy's goat herd, killing several of his goats.
He comes down out of his shelter, yelling and screaming, and takes his goat-beater and starts whacking on the front of the lead HUMMWV. The blood from the goat has spattered on the windshield, so the driver hits the wipers to try to clean that off, and just winds up smearing the blood and dust across the windscreen, totally blocking the view. The two vehicles on top stopped safely and set up security while the Major we were working with slides down to sort out the mess.
My interpreter keeps up a running commentary as the goat herder is whaling away on the front of the other truck, calling on God to smite us all, wither our genitals, give us difficult wives and all girl children, and generally carrying on. I start laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, as we get out to calm this guy down.
To make a long story short, once he realizes we are going to pay for his goats, he calms down. We settle under his shelter and start negotiating. Meanwhile the drivers go through the painful process of getting the trucks out of the ravine.
A goat here goes for about $20 US. So after some dickering, we agree to pay $60 US (in greenbacks, thank you) for the two we killed, but we get to keep the goats. We wind up throwing the carcasses of the goats across the hood of two of the HUMMWVs. We leave, and he's all smiles... even going so far as to invite us to come back and run over more goats if we want to.
The Major decided we'd had enough adventure for one day. We gave up on the village and rolled back to the hardball.
Why did we overpay?
His goodwill was cheap at the price. When he gets back to his village, he'll keep quiet about the greenbacks warming his pocket. He won't tell his pisos how he was cruelly cheated and given less than he deserved. Driving a hard bargain would have saved us a couple of bucks, but might have offended his honor. Here you redeem offended honor by revenge.
What did we do with the goats?
We took them to one of the IP (Iraqi Police) stations we're friendly with, who cooked them up for us, with a whole mess of saffron rice, beans, and exellent sweet tea. Local families came in as well, so we fed about 50 people with those goats, and had an opportunity to talk to the men about democratic freedoms.

What are the living conditions like?
I share a converted cargo container (called a CHU) with one other guy. It's about 7' x 12', air conditioned, with two beds, a desk, TV, and fridge. We have a CD player that also plays video CDs. We have a wide selection of movies here, but the format is a low quality video CD, usually pirated copies of US movies and as a grainy as a 70's porn flick.
As an aside, just saw Cat Woman... heard a crunching noise on the track, and about half-way through the movie two heads appear and move to the right... this was shot in a theatre by someone with a digital video camera, and the crunching noise was probably someone eating popcorn. Sky Captain was on sale here before it was released in the states.
The food is pretty good and plentiful. So far, havent lost any weight yet, and am about to get serious about that part.
I have daily web access in 30 minute bites, unless there is no one waiting in line, then you can stay on longer.

What's the worst thing about being in Iraq?
Everyday is literally the same. It truly is groundhog day here. The lack of variety in the daily routine. The only real break in the same thing different day is the trips off the base here. We often take people from other sections with us,mostly to pull security... we have people clamoring to go with us, because even standing in the hot sun with a machine gun is a break in their routine.
We have an exemption to the policy that lets us take meals with the locals in an official capacity. Our security was thrilled to get to eat local food. Of course, the first time or two, this is followed by gastric distress... so maybe they weren't so thrilled later.

What's the best thing?
Once in a while you can really help someone. We're working on a bunch of projects, everything from rural water purification to big employment projects to put money in people's pockets, and infrastructure initiatives. Ignoring the politics, our legacy here, for some of these villages, will be an improvement in peoples lives that will last long after we all leave.

What is the attitude of the troops about the occupation?
Hmmm... depends on who you ask. For many, it's to survive and get home. Most people here live and work on the Forward Operating Base (or FOB) everyday, which here is mathmatically safer than being stateside, so there is no particular sense of danger. Probably half the troops here have never been outside the wire. Many of the FOBbits (FOB dwellers) are bored to tears and just want to go home.
The unit we're supporting is XXXX National Guard, which is getting to the end of its rotation...so the horses are starting to smell the barn. We're away from the bulk of the fighting, so I can't really tell you what it is like elsewhere.
Most of the folks I work with have been around a while, long enough to want this deployment to be more than killing time until we can go home. So, there is a committment to making as much progress, doing as much reconstruction, as quickly as we can.

What's the hardest part of the job?
The bureaucracy. Everyone wants to make certain that money is spent wisely and well, and that every penny is accounted for... laudable goals, but it slows the funding to a trickle. We're trying to impose double-entry bookkeeping, and strict cost accounting to a culture where "expenses" crop up on a regular basis, and contract law is malleable. However, failing to strictly account for every penny of the US taxpayers money is wrong, too.

This one has gone really long. My apologies, and until next week, I remain...

At Camp XXXX, Iraq

XXXX

Who's Flip-Flopping Now?

As further evidence that this administration has pushed Rumsfeld over the edge, he has changed his position.
First he said this:

Mr Rumsfeld was asked by a New York audience about connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," he said.

Then, on what I assume from the article is the same day, came this:

In the past, Mr Rumsfeld has spoken of credible information about a link, while Vice-President Dick Cheney regularly goes further and talks of Saddam Hussein having provided safe harbour and sanctuary for al-Qaeda.
Several hours after his appearance, Mr Rumsfeld issued a statement saying his comments had been "regrettably misunderstood" and that he had acknowledged there were ties between Osama Bin Laden and Iraq based upon CIA intelligence.

The truth is actually slowly leaking out. The adminstration can no longer separate their truths from their lies. Every time a truth accidentally slips out, the administration rushes to cover it up with a new statement. Sigh. How many times to I have say it: I just want the gov't to tell us the truth! I feel like Fox Mulder for god's sake. "The truth is out there."

Oops! Fox News admits to their blunder

Fox News, hassled by Josh Marshall and with their mistake picked up by all the major liberal blogs (that's not me by the way - the major part at least), has posted a retraction.

Earlier Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice.

Fatigue? Really, bad judgement would have been perfectly acceptable in the apology, but fatigue? Goodness, it must be "hard work" being a Fox News reporter, sort of like being the President.

International Reaction

Things get so bogged down here, and distorted by the familiar media, that its interesting to see what the rest of the world thinks. I always read the BBC (I love the BBC actually) and they have their own opinions, as well as a link to what the rest of the world thinks.

It was ironic to hear Mr Kerry arguing for a bilateral approach with Mr Bush going for multilateralism. It would be wrong to conclude from this debate that Mr Bush is the hawk and Mr Kerry the dove. Senator Kerry went out his way to signal several times that he was no pacifist. He played up his experience in Vietnam and invoked the memories of President Kennedy and even President Reagan, both of whom had interventionist foreign policies. He did not dissent from the doctrine of pre-emption. In the present state of the world, no candidate for the US presidency can show anything that can be considered weakness. The argument therefore is about the application of US influence and power. And on this, the candidates do differ. - BBC

Bush surprised me in one regard: he paid attention to detail, committed no gaffes, he mentioned everyone's name correctly. He even remembered the name of the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, which I doubt many people will remember. - Commentator Nuno Rogeiro on Portuguese SIC Noticias 24-hour news channel

John Kerry emerged from today's debate as the winner. Not only as regards the contents of the debate, when he demonstrated deep knowledge - surprisingly, he fared better also as regards the style. While Bush gave the impression of being tired and at times irritated, Kerry was calm and relaxed and showed the Americans that he also has a presidential style. - Radio Slovakia

Kerry said one new thing after all. He said that we should sit down with the Islamic world and discuss matters. It is very important, and it is precisely this that we could not hear from Bush - the recognition that the USA or the West is facing not a couple of mad terrorists but a proportion of the world. - Hungarian TV

BBC News: Iraq Dominates the Great Debate
Int'l quotes regarding the debate

More on Debate Body Language

I will continue to believe that how they appeared has carried more weight in this debate than what they said. Hell, I noticed it before anything else last night, and I continued to notice it as the evening progressed.

Slate has something to say about it too:

If it's generally agreed that Kerry won the spoken part of the debate last night, there's no question that he triumphed in the unspoken one. In the split-screen coverage, Kerry could be seen nodding thoughtfully and scribbling notes as he awaited his turn to speak (a gag on The Daily Show imagined a sneak peek at his notebook: "I am so crushing him"). Meanwhile, a nervous Bush at times appeared to be blinking out a message in Morse code: "Mission Accomplished?" "No New Taxes?" "Mayday?" The president fidgeted and grimaced, occasionally giving the audience a deadpan glance as if to ask, Can you believe this guy? For once, Kerry's relative lack of expressiveness worked in his favor; awaiting his turn to speak, he looked tall, calm, and Rushmore-like. When Bush stuttered that "You cannot lead if you send mexed miss... mixed messages," Kerry's impassive face said more about the unintentional irony than an Al Gore sigh ever could. Luckily for the Kerry campaign, the president's visible discomfort at the podium was sending a few mexed missages of its own.

So now I wonder if Bush's campaign (Karl Rove) will work with him on standing up straight and not showing emotion to each criticism. They better, or the next debate - on domestic policy, which is a Kerry strong point - will be even more damaging to Bush than this one.

Just tell me the truth for once ...

Usually I just sort of ignore Fox News, as they are really partisan. And though I'm partisan, I'm just a person. Fox News is a part of the media. You know, the media that is supposedly non-partisan and unbiased. Of course, this year, we've learned that the media overall has some issues with that, and some lessons to learn.
But I think Fox crossed the line. When they post a "news" story that has unverifiable quotes, quotes that are most likely lies and blatantly made up, then they've crossed the line from journalists to fake news. And fake news is the province of the Daily Show - on COMEDY Central.

I found this via Josh Marshall. Here is the small article currently on Fox's front page:
UPDATE: Fox News has taken down the story now. Hmmm .... wonder why? Guess those really were false quotes. From the original article:

The Metrosexual and the Cowboy

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

With the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.
Aides say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on women and abortion rights.

"It's about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do manicures," Kerry said.

Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

"I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

A "metrosexual" is defined as an urbane male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle.

Argh! We all know he didn't say those things. Like Josh Marshall, I googled the quotes and could find nothing. NOTHING!

Why can't the media just give us fair and honest reporting? You know, FAIR AND BALANCED?????

Can't somebody do something? Why is this whole campaign about who can make up the worst stuff? CBS, Fox, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn ... none of them are innocent and they've all made up stuff. This latest bit from Fox just pisses me off though. There are people out there - the folks who read Drudge and believe Fox News is just a news station like CNN or MSNBC - who will believe this stuff. I know. My mom reads Drudge and believes him. (why oh why?) She may even watch Fox news for all I know - and believe them.

Body Language

In my previous post, I mentioned how fascinated I was by the telling body language of the two candidates in last night's debate. Apparently others noticed it too - here's a great article from the NY Times. Since I'm pretty interested in this article and it doesn't make me all angry and rant-y, I'll post the whole article here. (Because the NY Times makes you register and all.)

UPDATE: Also, the DNC has had a little fun with the whole body language thing. And as humourous as it is, it also illustates the point that the President didn't come off very well visually. Check out the video "Faces of Frustration" at http://www.democrats.org/.

Candidates Most Telling When They Aren't Talking By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

When President Bush leaned over his lectern and talked directly into the camera, he had the same firm, squared-off look he brings to a presidential address from the Oval Office.

When the networks (flouting the debate rules) cut to Mr. Bush while Senator John Kerry was speaking, the president had the hunched shoulders and the peevish, defensive look of an incumbent under heavy attack.

And it was body language as much as rhetoric and one-liners that distinguished the two candidates in last night's debate. The networks were right to disregard the campaigns' ban on cutaways and reaction shots. Instead, all the networks, including Fox News, lavished viewers with split screens and shots of the candidates from almost every angle, including shots from behind the president's tensely knotted back.

Television homes in on feelings hidden beneath rehearsed words and reveals instinctive responses and glimmers of personality.

The cameras demonstrated that Mr. Bush cannot hear criticism without frowning, blinking and squirming (he even sighed once). They showed that Mr. Kerry can control his anger and stay cool but that he cannot suppress his inner overeager A student, flashing a bleach-white smile and nodding hungrily at each question.

Mr. Kerry's confident, calm manner may have paid off. CBS was one of several news organizations that conducted instant focus group surveys during the debate. A few minutes after the candidates finished their closing statements, CBS News said 51 percent of the 200 uncommitted sample voters thought that Mr. Kerry had a clear plan for Iraq. Only 38 percent thought the president did.

Even Fox News analysts thought Mr. Kerry did well. Mort Kondracke of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, said Mr. Kerry looked like a "commander in chief" and Ceci Connolly of The Washington Post said she thought the polls would tighten a bit after the debate.

This article is continued after the jump. Go ahead and click it - you know you want to.

Before I read the news today ...

Before I read the NY Times and Washington Post, before I check out Wonkette and other political blogs, I wanted to give my impression of last night's debate. I really should have done this last night.

I wasn't overly blown away by the debate. Nothing earth-shattering really happened. I was intrigued that the media did not adhere to the published rules and chose to show a split-screen. The split screen itself made me laugh - a lot. Whenever it was shown, Bush was zoomed in and raised up, to make him look the same height as Kerry. Kerry was also sort of moved down a lot - visibly. I understand Fox News was responsible for the video feed though, so that explains it. Anyway, the camera guys did their best, with the split screen, to make Bush look the same height as giant Kerry. The man really is tall!

The other thing I noticed was body language. If I was asked to choose the next President of the United States with my TV on mute, so I could only see these two as opposed to hearing them, I'd choose Kerry. The man simply oozed confidence last night. He stood up straight and tall the whole time; he smiled and half-smiled in reaction to things Bush would say; he used his hands minimally to explain his points. Bush, on the other hand, did not look like a Commander in Chief. I don't know if he was leaning on the podium, slumping his shoulders, or both, but he looked like a hunched over little man with little confidence. At least, next to ramrod straight Kerry. His advisors either need to tell him to stand up straight or not to lean forward on the podium like that. His body language didn't exude confidence, which is sad - he is President.

Kerry said some good things. If people were paying attention, they heard him succinctly defend that flip-flopping charge. Yes, he voted to give Bush the authority to go to war so that Bush could use that to threaten Saddam. Kerry (& Congress) expected Bush to go to the UN and work longer with the UN. He (& Congress) did not expect Bush to just jump into war. So it wasn't a flip-flop. While Kerry did occasionally wander from his point, he performed much better than I expected. I thought his initial 2-minute answers needed some help, but that his 30-second rebuttals were succinct and fairly awesome.

Bush did okay, but he has a tendency to repeat himself and sort of talk in circles. He also vapor locked a couple of times - I call it the "My Pet Goat Syndrome." You know, where he just takes a couple of seconds and stares blankly at the camera. I assume that's his "I'm thinking" face, but he ought to look more thoughtful when he does it. Instead, it's this scary blank expression that makes you wonder if anything is going on in there.

Shortly after Bush was declared victor in the 2000 election, Kevin & I traveled to England. On the front page of the Sun (I think it was the Sun) were several pictures of George Bush with the aforementioned blank expression. Those photos were directly next to that of a chimpanzee and, well, Curious George. I'll never forget it and now, every time I see W with his "thinking face" on, I unintentionally compare him to Curious George. The resemblance is remarkable. Silly London paper for putting that in my head.

Alright - off to read the pundit reactions.

Oh yeah - I thought Kerry won last night. I hope it helped. Man he looked confident. I'd trust him. Right now at least.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention my biggest presidential pet peeve. This applies whether he's a winner, a loser, or anything else. He consistently does this. You know he's aware of it. People make fun of it. People must have told him by now. Yet, it continues.
Mr. President, I have to remind you, the correct pronunciation sounds like this: NEW-KLEE-ER. It is not NEWK-YOU-LER. That is incorrect. You are the leader of a powerful nation. Please learn how to pronounce such an important word. It's used in phrases like nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. You are causing English and Speech teachers, and grammar-philes like myself, to cringe and wince every time we hear you speak. You don't want that do you?

Stem Cell Debate Hits Senate

Today, a Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee hearing called by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) began to debate the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research. From the article, it sounds as if the committee called the meeting to browbeat the scientist, Dr. George Daley, associate professor of pediatrics and biological chemistry at the Harvard School of Medicine and Children's Hospital, but that's just from the perspective of the article.

Brownback pressed further, asking him to envision his two children and determine at which point in their development it would be OK for scientists to perform research on them.
"I can't hug an embryo," Daley said. "I think (scientists) are comfortable with using the earliest microscopic ball of cells."
Researchers extract stem cells from a very young embryo, when it is a day or two old, in the phase at which it's called a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a ball of about 100 cells. The inside of the blastocyst contains stem cells, which, if implanted into a womb, form all the different cells in the human body. But at the blastocyst stage, they have yet to become any type of cell, a state that scientists call "undifferentiated." Researchers want to take the cells at this stage and direct them to become the types of cells that could cure disease, like retinal cells or insulin-producing cells.
...Adult stem cell research is indeed promising, Daley said, but that doesn't mean embryonic stem cell research should be abandoned. Adult stem cells don't have the potential to become as many types of cells as embryonic stem cells do, he said.
Brownback said that while adult stem cell treatments have already treated disease, embryonic stem cells have not yet cured anything.
That's not surprising, Daley said, because researchers have been studying adult stem cells for 50 years, while the first paper on embryonic stem cells was published six years ago. Plus, he said, embryonic stem cell research has been restricted by Bush's policy.

Go scientist guy! You tell him!

Read the article here.

Iraq: Not so sunny after all

From the Washington Post:

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.
...People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

Oh that's just great. Very encouraging. But why isn't our President telling us this? Better question - why doesn't the local media report this stuff (you know, the truth)? Instead, I've got to dig through the Washington Post to find this stuff, yet, I swear it doesn't just affect Washington.

...Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as "dead-enders," still offers a positive portrayal of prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in public. "The path towards liberty is not smooth there; it never has been," he said before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And my personal view is that a fair assessment requires some patience and some perspective."

Of course, he gets Osama and Saddam mixed up and is okay with only some of Iraq voting in a not-so-perfect election. Let's not listen to Rumsfeld anymore.

... National security officials acknowledge that the upcoming presidential election also seems to have distorted the public debate on Iraq.
"Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more intense than expected, especially the intensity of nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people," said Steven Metz, chairman of the regional strategy and planning department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added, "I don't think the political discourse that we're in the middle of accurately reflects anything. There's a supercharged debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side."

Amazingly enough, the Iraqi people love their country. What? We didn't expect nationalism and love of country? You're kidding, right?

Do I sound angry? Because I am. I'm angry that despite reports from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), assessments released from before the war, and new reports out of the CIA, the administration still won't admit it made an all-out mistake. That Iraq is a mess - a piece of history that will be looked back upon as fondly as VietNam. It's okay to make mistakes - even large, awful messy ones - but admit it. Admit you were wrong! And what about the local news? I've yet to see something on a local news network about any of this. This city is skewed so conservative that the local news outlets don't want to report on anything the President may have messed up, as this city doesn't want to hear it. I do though. I want the truth. I want local news without bias in their stories. And I want the administration to just admit that it was all wrong. That the intelligence was wrong, that we should have waited for the UN, etc, etc, etc.

I just know there will be an October surprise and I dread it.

Make a Difference - Your Time is Running Out

The deadline to register to vote is this Saturday, October 2. That's right - you have to be registered one month before election day in order to vote in the November 2 election.
So if you're not registered, get yourself out there! I don't care if you vote for Bush or Kerry (a vote for Nader doesn't help anyone though). But participate in the process because you can and because, as we learned in Florida in 2000, your vote really does matter!
The following sites provide voter registration forms for your state:

Rock the Vote
Federal Election Commission
Declare Yourself
League of Women Voters
America Coming Together for Victory
Citizen Change (Vote or Die)

The Daily Show Viewers are Smart

Seriously, you can't throw a rock without hitting something related to the Daily Show anymore. The Daily Show now has a book of it own, as does correspondent Mo Rocca, and the media is fascinated with the idea that young folks (key demographic such as myself, and probably you) prefer the Daily Show to traditional news media. Why? Objectivity. The Daily Show skewers everyone equally, although I would swear that the cast is liberal. Why are they liberal? Probably because they sit in a room every day coming up with jokes about our current political situation and they probably wonder, why is it so easy to come up with these? Why is the world in this condition?
Anyway, The Daily Show is everywhere. There was an online chat with the producer, Ben Karlin, sponsored by the Washington Post. Here's a snippet:

Question: The show seems, at its heart, very positive and upbeat, even though it is a satire. Does the writing staff (or any of the staff) find it difficult to 'find the humor' in politics, especially when it is so rife with controversy as of late? The writing never seems to get bogged down in 'gosh, this is so depressing' mode. How is this done?
Ben Karlin: Thanks. Very glad to hear you say this, though I will tell you we start most mornings dark and sad. Then we treat the day as one giant cathartic push to find the funny and absurd. Except of course for days when we have footage of Madonna on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Then we start the day laughing.
Question: I am occasional viewer of The Daily Show, but find it to be one of the best shows on TV. Why do YOU think the show resonates so well as a source of political news?
Ben Karlin: Many people in this country have strong bull***t detectors. For some reason, most major media outlets have turned theirs off out of fear of being labeled partisan.

Time.com did 10 Questions with Jon Stewart.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLITICIANS AND POLITICS THAT MAKES THEM SO ENDLESSLY MOCKABLE? I think it's power. It's power plus visibility. Plus unreality. They always say politics is show business for ugly people. But I think a much more appropriate saying would be that Washington is Hollywood that actually matters. These are people who, for all their apparent insanity, control nearly every aspect of our lives.

And probably the article I like best: No Joke: Daily Show Viewers Follow Presidential Race.

Viewers of late-night comedy programs, especially The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the cable channel Comedy Central, are more likely to know the issue positions and backgrounds of presidential candidates than people who do not watch late-night comedy, the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey shows.
...The Annenberg survey found that people who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American or than Leno or Letterman viewers. “However, these factors do not explain the difference in levels of campaign knowledge between people who watch The Daily Show and people who do not,” Young pointed out. “In fact, Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers -- even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.”

This article also analyzes the number of jokes told by Leno, Letterman, and Stewart, as well as at whom the jokes were pointing. Turns out, the comedians told about an equal number of Kerry and Bush jokes over the summer, although most of the Bush jokes were directed at his occasional tendency to appear an idiot. It's a good article though. Go read it.

Update: I just came across this article from the Associated Press. When Stewart appeared on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor recently, O'Reilly repeatedly called The Daily Show audience "stoned slackers." Apparently Comedy Central didn't find that very funny. The article makes it clear that "viewers of Jon Stewart’s show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch “The O’Reilly Factor,” according to Nielsen Media Research." Take that O'Reilly. Actually, the funny stuff will happen when O'Reilly shows up on The Daily Show on October 7. Set your Tivos. That interview could be fun!

So you want to see President Bush?

He was here in Cincinnati yesterday. They expected over 40,000 people, according to the local news on Sunday night. Turns out over 50000 showed up. I wonder how many had tickets and where the folks with tickets got to sit.
From the NY Times:

President Bush's campaign aides say they have hit on a novel way to recruit volunteers for his get-out-the-vote army. Anyone wanting to attend one of Mr. Bush's campaign rallies, anywhere in the country, has to get a ticket first. And anyone wanting a ticket, or a coveted spot up front, can improve his chances by putting in a few hours at a phone bank, canvassing Republican homes or putting up lawn signs.
... The tactic points up a stark difference between the presidential campaigns: while Senator John Kerry is using his rallies and forums to try to reach undecided voters and to close the deal with standoffish Democrats, Mr. Bush is packing his audiences with supporters who must identify themselves as such in questionnaires and whipping them into brigades ready to blitz crucial districts to get every last voter to the polls.
Kerry aides scoff at the invitation-only audiences and what they say is the shanghai-ing of volunteers. "We don't require oaths of allegiance, and we don't take people captive," said Tom Shea, director of the Kerry campaign in Florida, after turning out close to 10,000 people for a rally in Orlando last Tuesday where, he said, 700 people signed up to help.
...The invitation-only policy - and its application by what Bush campaign officials call overzealous organizers at the local level - has given rise to repeated instances across the country where rallygoers were asked to sign affidavits of support to get tickets.

So let me get this straight. If you're a swing voter, undecided, or a Democrat who wants to quietly hear what the other side has to say, you can't get in. You have to sign an affidavit supporting the President. This first came up in the summer at a fundraiser in New Mexico, I think, but it apparently is continuing. I don't like that. I want the opportunity to hear the President of my country speak, whether I agree with him or not.

Catching Up with Politics

Lots of stuff. Washington Post open within my browser tabs, but I haven't gotten around to reading/posting about them. Let's see if I can't catch up.

10 Toughest Things to Do During an Election Year: This article from the USA Today is pretty interesting. Just go read it. I find it interesting that the #1 thing is handling an "October Surprise." I mentioned the October Surprise here. Also, I think that if they do "find" Osama, that it will fit perfectly with that article in the New Republic back in June, and the capture of several Al Queda operatives several hours before Kerry's speech at the DNC. This administration is capable of capturing bin Laden and holding him, quietly, until the time is right to announce his capture. What I hope it that, even if bin Laden is captured, the country realizes that he will simply become a martyr, further inspiring the massive Al Queda organization to their mission. Capturing bin Laden will not end the war on terror, even if Bush does declare Mission Accomplished (again) come October. (See also this post, near the end.) The October Surprise won't necessarily be bin Laden (although I'd put money on it) but could be anything from heightened terror alerts to visiting the troops in Iraq for more than an hour on a holiday.

Rumsfeld Has Snapped: Well, okay. I think he's finally snapped. He never says anything that makes sense anymore. A week or so ago, he was getting Osama confused with Saddam. Now, he says that an election doesn't have to be perfect. I suppose he was excited about the mess in Florida in 2000.

"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said, hours after the leaders of the United States and Iraq met in Washington.
"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," he said.

Um ... no. First off, if everyone didn't get to vote, civil unrest would grow even more rapidly. A portion of the country, at the very least, would declare the election invalid because not everyone was given the opportunity to vote. I can hear the Bush administration's response to that: "Well they did have the opportunity. They needed to travel through dangerous places across the entire country, but they could have voted." So after Rumsfeld's gaffe, the administration sends out their favorite whipping boy, Colin Powell and his team, to fix things.

The second-ranking official at the State Department said today, in an apparent contradiction of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that the elections scheduled for Iraq in January must be "open to all citizens."
"We're going to have an election that is free and open," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said at a House committee hearing, "and that has to be open to all citizens."

I feel so sorry for Colin Powell. He had to "fix" Rumsfeld's statements on the Sunday talk shows as well. The poor guy seems as if he just gave up. He once could have been so respected and so powerful. Now HIS moral values have been compromised and well, I think he's just given up.

Court-Martial for Pfc. Lynndie England: Well, yeah. You can't argue with those photographs. Lynndie England has become the poster child for abusive soldiers. The photos were in the media so much that the girl's image is seared into my head. Maybe I don't understand the military at all (I accept that), but I think that following orders can be an excuse as much as anything else. After a certain point, you have to say, "hey - in my mind this is morally wrong and I can't compromise my own ethics like this. Find someone else." And maybe you pay for that in a huge way. But you've stood up for what you believe in and you haven't compromised your own moral values.

Here's something you won't see on your local news: It's a sad thing and just shows how casualties from this war are mounting in unexpected ways:

A virulent form of hepatitis that is especially lethal for pregnant women has broken out in two of Iraq's most troubled districts, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said in interviews here this week, and they warned that a collapse of water and sewage systems in the continuing violence in the country is probably at the root of the outbreak. The disease, called hepatitis E, is caused by a virus that is often spread by sewage-contaminated drinking water. The officials said they had equipment to test only a limited number of people showing symptoms, suggesting that only a fraction of the actual cases have been firmly diagnosed. In Sadr City, a Baghdad slum that for months has been convulsed by gun battles between a local militia and American troops, the officials said as many as 155 cases had turned up.

Managing Expectations: I don't have a specific link here, as there are too many, but have you noticed how both campaigns are managing expectations for the debates. The first debate is Thursday and if you listen to the spin, both sides are planning on losing. George Bush is going to lose, according to his own people, because Kerry was captain of the debate team in college and whomped on challengers in previous races in Massachusetts. Kerry is going to lose, according to his own people, because George Bush has never lost a debate (although Gore and his supporters - myself included - might challenge that notion) and because Bush can turn on that Southern charm with dropping his "g"s and other things that make him just like Every Guy. Both campaigns are setting the expectation bar really really low. Is that really necessary? I also read somewhere that perception of the debates is different if you read about them or watch them. Apparently if you watched the debates in 2000, which I did, Gore won hands down. I'd agree with that. If you read about them the next day, you assumed Bush won. Hmmm ... it's that objectivity thing in the media again.

"Poolitical" Round-up

From the Oh God, Not Again Department: I already have a hard enough time getting Dad to drop the whole Jane Fonda-John Kerry angle. Now this. The stupid, stupid Swift Boat Vets for Truth. Don't they realize they are an object of mocking and derision? From the Washington Post.

The veterans organization that sparked controversy last month when it questioned John F. Kerry's military service in Vietnam plans to launch a new commercial today that equates Kerry with Vietnam War protester Jane Fonda and accuses the Democratic presidential nominee of secretly meeting with "enemy leaders" during the conflict.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth said it will spend $1.3 million to air its advertisement in five battleground states and on national cable television networks over the next week. The ad, titled "Friends," makes no assertion of any direct link between Kerry and Fonda, but it suggests that their contacts with North Vietnamese leaders during the war were equally dishonorable.

From the Go Our Own Way No Matter What the Cost Dep't: Also in the Post, we learn about Bush's speech to the UN the other day, and the real reaction to it from the assembled nations with whom it would behoove us to make friends. (emphasis mine)

President Bush's speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday was the verbal equivalent of a "greatest hits" album, repackaging and summarizing the key foreign-policy themes the president has embraced in the past four years. He faced a tough audience -- many of the world leaders listening are quietly rooting for the victory of his opponent in the upcoming election -- but without apology or retreat, the president cast the war on terrorism as a defining moment that will usher in democracy across the globe.
...Indeed, Bush's speech struck such a different tone than the speeches of other leaders Tuesday that as the day wore on the gulf between the Bush administration and the rest of the world appeared as wide as ever.

However, in the New York Times, we read of Kofi Annan's speech. I believe this speech was about 30 minutes before Bush's speech. I think, even in this one little quote, Kofi Annan's message is clear. I tend to agree with the guy. He's in charge of the UN for a reason, you know.

"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it," he told the audience of delegates in the General Assembly hall, which included President Bush and Ayad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister.

And finally, in the It's a Horse Race Department, we find that Poolitics.com is taking bets on which of the following events will happen in October:

+ Osama bin Laden will be captured or killed
+ Weapons of Mass Destruction will be found in Iraq
+ Dick Cheney will be replaced on the Republican ticket
+ The national terror threat level will be raised to red
+ President Bush will visit US troops in Iraq
+ Crude oil futures will drop below $30.00 per barrel
+ 20,000 or more US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq

Tells you something about the faith we all have in the current administration. Place your bets!

Priceless

Jon Stewart on Congress:
"If the president is the head of the American body politic, Congress is its gastrointestinal tract. Its vast and convoluted inner workings may be mysterious and unpleasant, but in the end they excrete a great deal of material whose successful passage is crucial to our nation’s survival. This is Congress’s duty."
(via Wonkette)

Overarticulate: Kerry, Debates, and Talk Shows

I watched Kerry on Letterman and Kerry on Regis & Kelly. I watched Kerry on The Daily Show a month ago. Kerry needs to learn how to talk.
First off, the talk show circuit is a good idea. Especially Regis & Kelly. That exposed him to the stay-at-home demographic. The people who may not be as emotionally involved in this campaign because they're busy chasing kids around, keeping the house clean, driving their kids to various practices, and cooking dinner. Politics is not their number one priority. And Kerry did really well. Regis & Kelly asked primarily stupid questions (Kelly: Who would play you in a movie? How about Harrison Ford? Kerry: uh, sure. Haven't really thought about that. Regis: Oh Harrison Ford! He likes that one, Kelly!"), but it worked. It worked because it humanized Kerry. Kelly told a story about her 7-yr old meeting Kerry and that helped make him seem like a normal, albeit really tall, guy. Kerry got to smile a lot. The guy has a really nice smile and he doesn't use it often enough. Smiling seems to be left to John Edwards (who has a megawatt smile, of course). At the end of the interview, Regis finally asked, "How are you going to get us out of Iraq?" Letterman had asked this question the night before and Kerry had meandered his way to an answer. But on Regis and Kelly, he laid it out. Succinctly. Foreign gov'ts have a vested interest in helping to fight terror and I'm going to get them to help us foot the bill and get out of Iraq. Or something to that effect. My point, right now, is not the answer but the delivery. He actually answered the question in a straightforward manner. Oh why oh why couldn't he have done that on Letterman and can he continue to do that for the debates?
When Jon Stewart interviewed Kerry, he lobbed softballs, so we didn't get to see Kerry's conversational style. (I think softballs were the only way Kerry would agree to come on the Daily Show, but that's just a guess.) Letterman asked much harder questions of Kerry than Stewart. Letterman asked the questions real people are thinking. Kerry answered the questions, but you could miss the sound bytes - you missed the key points because of an overwhelming amount of content. Someone must have said something to him, based on his improved performance on Regis & Kelly come morning.
I understand Kerry's need for verbosity. I suffer from the same disease. Sometimes, you believe in something so much and there's so much to describe - so much you want to say - that there just aren't enough words to do it. What I often don't realize, and apparently neither does Kerry - is that sometimes the simplest sentence says it best.
I'm not the only one who has noticed these traits in Kerry. There have been a series of articles in the New York Times lately touching on the same subject. The various articles make interesting comparisons between Bush and Kerry. Inarticulate versus overarticulate. One of the things that plagued Gore in 2000 was that he came off as too smart. While Bush certainly doesn't have that problem (the other day he said terrorists do things at "the whim of a hat"???!!!), Kerry, with his love of language, does face that same challenge.
Here's an example of his sentence wandering ways (from the NY Times):

On Thursday, Mr. Kerry's campaign released advance excerpts of a speech the senator was to deliver at a National Guard conference in Las Vegas. The language, part of a new effort to focus Mr. Kerry's message, was a clear, sharp attack on Mr. Bush.
"You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence while living in a fantasy world of spin, and who will give the American people the truth about the challenge our brave men and women face on the front lines,'' the text said.
Mr. Kerry, who likes to globe-trot from his prepared remarks, said this: "I believe you deserve a president who isn't going to gild that truth, or gild our national security with politics, who is not going to ignore his own intelligence, who isn't going to live in a different world of spin, who will give the American people the truth, not a fantasy world of spin, but a world where we challenge our brave men and women to be able to meet the test of our time.''

According to the Wall Street Journal, his campaign has taken note. They're working with him to make things short, sweet, and to the point:

Kerry aides hope that, by the time the presidential debates begin next week, their candidate will have honed a crisper delivery style ready for prime time. In speeches these days, he uses a TelePrompTer more frequently. And yesterday, in a hard-hitting Iraq speech delivered in New York, Mr. Kerry stuck largely to the prepared text displayed on those prompters beside his lectern. "Let me put it plainly," he said at one point, as if addressing his linguistic weaknesses as well as his political ones, then followed with two short declarative sentences: "The president's policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security. It has weakened it."

See? Much better. But he needs to keep it up. Debates are tough. Bush will get up there, make jokes, and come off as friendly Farmer Joe. Kerry needs to come off as someone who is equally as approachable. Someone who can make his point in as few sentences as possible. He does realize there is a timer on answers, I hope. (Actually, I also hope that every answer doesn't reference his war service, because that's gotten old too.)

Change This!

John sent me this link. Change This! is this great site, chock full of "manifestos." I hate that word. Makes me think of Karl Marx and a Poli Sci class I took in college. But it is, I suppose, appropriate. Just as Marx's manifesto helped change the world, the creators of this site want to put forth the latest in new ideas that might also change the world. For example, they "publish" Cory Doctorow's DRM speech, which I referenced here before. They also offer Donna Brazile's 10 Laws of Grassroots Campaigning, among others.
You can send in your own manifesto. Their Editorial Board will review it. They may not agree with it, but if they feel it will change the world, they publish it. You can send in a proposal for a manifesto. They'll post your proposal. Internet surfers will vote. If enough people vote in favor of hearing your ideas, go write your manifesto. Their staffers troll blogs, looking for unsuspecting writers of manifestos. In fact, the folks at Change This see blogs as (I love this quote), "blogging is the populist response to the media hegemony: a sea of independent voices."
It's an interesting concept. I wish I could write a manifesto. I'm not grounded enough. I can write technically, and I can write creatively. I cannot sit down and write an opinionated piece of non-fiction that is longer than a typical blog entry. I wander from the facts like Kerry from a sentence.
So go read Change This! and help change the world.

Old news but still eye-rolling fun ...

This happened while we were in Jamaica I guess, and I read it on Jason's blog. However, since I keep thinking about the absolute stupidity of the statement, I figure if I publish it here I might be able to get past it.

Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."
San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. is an Internet auction site where anyone can sell just about anything, including clothing, cell phones, jewelry, memorabilia, trinkets and automobiles.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.
"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement.

Yep, you can roll your eyes now. I love Edwards' comeback. And I am absolutely amazed at how out of touch Cheney is. Not surprised about it, but amazed that he'd reveal it. Worse - he said it here in Cincinnati and most likely got tons of applause. You can roll your eyes at that too.

Wonkette: Economy Saved By eBay
Cheney: Economic Stats Miss eBay (AP Wire)

Kerry on Letterman - Initial Impressions

I'll have to think a little more about Kerry's appearance on Letterman tonite, but I wanted to put down my initial reactions before they slip away.
I thought Kerry probably reached more Americans tonite than on his whole campaign thus far. And Dave, bless his heart, asked some real questions to which real Americans want answers. Kerry, though, tends to answer the question and then keep right on going. He talks too much and you sort of lose his answer unless you know what you're listening for. I heard that he wants other countries to help us pay for Iraq, but you had to sort of lift that from his answer; he didn't straight out say it because he got caught up in the whole idea and kept talking. This could be a problem in a debate. He needs to just give straight answers.
I did see a man who has confidence that he can win. He also has a lot of conviction. He truly believes in what he says and that he can do what is right and fix this country. I admire that in him.
He also needs to borrow from Jon Stewart when explaining the whole war vote flip-flop thing. Kerry doesn't explain himself well. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, explains Kerry's Senate vote as follows: the Senate (& Kerry) voted to give Bush a big stick (walk softly but carry a big stick) as leverage but never expected Bush to go around whacking people on the head with the stick. It's what Kerry tried to say last night, but much more succinct.
But my initial impressions are that going on Letterman was a good move. People watching will know that Kerry is capable of laughing at himself (good joke about Teresa in the Top 10 list) and that he has the conviction and belief to do what is right for the country.
I'm still really scared about the election though.

Update:
Article from the AP (with the Top 10 List by Kerry included, if you're curious)
It looks like Wonkette had similar first impressions to mine, albeit slightly more jaded.
I'm Tivo'ing Regis & Kelly today - only because of Kerry's guest appearance. After that, I'll probably discuss his talk show appearances in more depth. I'm betting even Regis & Kelly will ask harder questions than Jon Stewart did a month ago. But more on that later.

1972 & George W. Bush

In today's New York Times, there is an article detailing Bush's "lost year" - apparently it's not too lost.

He signed on as an official in the losing campaign of a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, and even there he left few impressions other than as an amiable bachelor with a good tennis game and a famous father.

Portrait of George Bush in '72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time

California to Vote on Stem Cell Research Fund

It's so nice to know there are liberal states out there. 
From today's NY Times:

The federal government spent $25 million last year on studies involving human embryonic stem cells. But California, in an act of political and scientific rebellion against limits on stem cell research imposed by the Bush White House, may be on the verge of spending $300 million a year in each of the next 10 years on such research.
...The initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot, known as Proposition 71, would authorize the state to issue $3 billion in bonds to pay for a range of stem cell research. This promising but ethically controversial field of biomedical research is now severely limited by the Bush administration's policy restricting public money for research on embryonic stem cells.
...But the California initiative would create by far the largest state-run scientific research effort in the country and make California a global center of stem cell research, on par with Singapore, Israel, South Korea and the United Kingdom, which have moved aggressively in the field since the late 1990's.

It's got enough support that it looks like it will pass.  This is fantastic news for everyone who has a loved one afflicted with Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and so on and so forth.
Go California go!

The state of the campaigns

While I was off funning, sunning, and hurricane-ing, the election campaigns seem to have taken a turn. Now, when I read headlines, everything starts with "Kerry accuses ...", "Bush accuses ...", "Democrats accuse ..." "Republicans blame ...". Suddenly, with what - 7 weeks to go?, the campaign is getting dirty. I don't like it. Bush and Rove always played dirty, and it was frustrating, but I was proud of Kerry for rising above it. I agree that Kerry should have fought back more. But when Kerry fought back, he still tried to keep it positive. Up until now, the Kerry campaign has tried very hard to keep to the high road, and I applaud them for that. I'm saddened that it wasn't enough. I"m saddened that the Bush campaign plays so dirty, that the Kerry campaign is finally being forced to roll around in the muck as well. I knew it had to happen eventually.

I'm feeling pretty disheartened actually. I will still vote for Kerry, will try to get others to vote for Kerry, and wander around in my Hamsters for Kerry t-shirt. But I'm really not confident that Kerry will win. I heard an interesting article on NPR yesterday where they commented on that same feeling. They said it was interesting that Democrats have actually lost confidence in their candidate but are maintaining support and loyalty all the same. Apparently that's unusual. That's me. Glad I'm not the only one feeling it. I have a theory that if I prepare myself for the worst now, I won't be quite as devastated come November 3.

It's going to be a long 7 weeks.

(Listen to the NPR article here.)

Um yeah ... HAMSTERS FOR KERRY

John Kerry officially has the Hamster Vote - if they could vote. This has got to be the funniest political site I've seen in a while. Make sure you explore the whole site, including a hilarious game. There's a forum, with participants including Sparky the Hamster and Deep Cheeks. There's also a great blog, maintained by Scruffy the Hamster. Really, the whole site is tongue in cheek and I don't care if you're voting for Bush or Kerry or Nader. You'll laugh. And I've been hesitant about wearing political t-shirts (I live in Conservatown) but I just may purchase gave in and purchased a Hamsters for Kerry t-shirt. Check it out! Hamsters For Kerry: Keeping the Wheels Spinning for Democracy!

In case we forgot reality ...

In case the Swift Boat nonsense has obscured some of the real issues, it might be an important reminder to acknowledge that, as of this week, the number of Americans killed in Iraq during 2004 now exceeds the number killed in 2003.

Perhaps more notable, the 488 brave American souls killed thus far this year died in just 239 days , whereas the 482 killed last year died during 287 days in 2003. What does that mean? It means that in less time, 2004 has been bloodier (and perhaps more senseless) than 2003. 

So let's put the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aside and concentrate on the fact that real people are dying for some cause of W's - at a ratio of roughly 2 people per day.  Is it worth it?

Iraq Coalition Casualties
The Gadflyer: Fly trap

How Linguistics Can Help Win the Election

This combines two of my favorite subjects - language and politics.
George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, believes that the language of public debate should be "reframed." Lakoff is a popular guy, running his own think tank specializing in language and teaching at Berkeley. His books were required reading for anyone involved in the Howard Dean campaign. He's popular. And he's got a good point.
Conservatives have apparently invested a whole lotta money since the late 70's, investigating the art and nuance of language through various institutes and think tanks. Conservatives are masters at presenting a unified message and understanding how to "frame" that message correctly. Liberals (progressives) still need help. We tend to stumble over language and its framing. So, what is framing?

Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.
If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" — something that most people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by reporters and very often, by the campaign people themselves.

Read more about Lakoff and his work with framing in the following articles:
Framing the Issues: 10/27/2003 (UC Berkely News)
Linguistics professor George Lakoff dissects the "war on terror" and other conservative catchphrases: 08/26/04 (UC Berkeley News)
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff (book)

Lakoff also has an upcoming small book to be available on Amazon around September 8: Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame Your Debate. Call it a liberal's guide to language. I can't wait to get it.

(Do you think I could pick up a Master's degree in this stuff? I find it incredibly fascinating.)

Thanks to Boing Boing for the initial link.

Results: Kerry on the Daily Show

Well, I was pleased and disappointed with Kerry's appearance on the Daily Show last night. I was please with how relaxed Kerry seemed - he really does have a nice smile and a nice laugh. I figure that was a bit of his "dad" side coming out. Good stuff. I loved when we got the profile shot of Kerry and Stewart (see photo). That was priceless. I was disappointed that Kerry was still wearing a suit. Of course, in 2000, I liked McCain's flannel shirts, so there you go. I was also disappointed that Jon didn't hit John with a little harder questions. Come on - even when candidates go on Letterman (remember those days?), Dave would hit them with harder questions than Kerry received last night. Anticipating this response, Stewart's opening monologue reminded us that the Daily Show is a comedy show. And, while always great, Stewart is best when he's angry and he's not angry at John Kerry.

Photo from USA Today, Paul Hawthorne, Getty Images

I noticed that Kerry kept mentioning how he watched the Daily Show. I know he did that on purpose so that people like me would think, "Cool! He actually watches this show!" It worked on me at least.
Also, there's a good line here that I don't think was planned. Great that Kerry can think on his feet ... (emphasis in the transcript is mine)

JON STEWART: Very smart. Now if-- if someone wants to come to your rally, what kind of loyalty oath do they have to sign?
JOHN KERRY: (LAUGHTER) I saw you-- I actually saw you talking about this. None.
JON STEWART: You know what? I--
JOHN KERRY: Zero.
JON STEWART: --I have to say this.
JOHN KERRY: Zip.
JON STEWART: As you run for President--
JOHN KERRY: But you do have to get into their thing.
JON STEWART: That's what I was gonna suggest is that they try and--
JOHN KERRY: They-- they-- they have you sign something. And they vet everybody who comes in.
JON STEWART: Right.
JOHN KERRY: We're open to the public. We wanna talk to America. We wanna know. (APPLAUSE)

(Transcript courtesy of Wonkette)
So, overall, not a ground-breaking or hard-hitting interview (I know; it's a comedy show), but still a good introduction to John Kerry for any independents who are Daily Show watchers.
Somewhere, Ted Koppel, Tim Russert, and other political talk show hosts are shooting darts at a photo of Jon Stewart on a dartboard. But I love that Kerry recognizes the insanity of the media and went to the Daily Show instead.
Update (1): Here's a good little synopsis from the USA Today. (Photo courtesy of same article.)
Update (2): Complete video of John Kerry Interview, posted by Waxy.org. Requires Quicktime.

My quick overview of the NY Times ...

Does this paragraph contradict itself or what? From the NY Times today:

For Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign over the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib would be a mistake, the four-member panel headed by James M. Schlesinger asserted Tuesday. But in tracing responsibility for what went wrong at Abu Ghraib, it drew a line that extended to the defense secretary's office

Personally, I'm all for the resigning. You write the policies and procedures, you issue them, you confuse people and change things all around and you approve of all it happening? That's right; you're then responsible.
----
Last night on the Daily Show, Kerry said he was disappointed in all this Swift Boat Vets controversy because he believed that most of the American people would prefer a more intelligent discussion of what is currently important to the country. I couldn't agree more. However, today there is more in the controversy that the media won't let die. This is also from today's NY Times:

The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer said Tuesday that he had given legal advice to the group of veterans attacking Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and antiwar activism in a book, television commercials and countless appearances on cable news programs.
The lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said that the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called him last month to ask for his help and that he agreed. Mr. Ginsberg said that he had yet to work out payment details with the group and that he might consider doing the work pro bono.

I don't know. That sort of seems like a giant conflict of interest to me. But what do I know?
----
And from yesterday's NY Times, an editorial:

There is the fog of war and then there is the fog of cable.
Over the last few weeks, 24-hour news networks have done little to find out what John Kerry did in Vietnam, but they have provided a different kind of public service: their examination of his war record in Vietnam illustrates once again just how perfunctory and confusing cable news coverage can be. Facts, half-truths and passionately tendentious opinions get tumbled together on screen like laundry in an industrial dryer - without the softeners of fact-checking or reflection.

Personally, the NYT can criticize the cable channels all they want. I believe that all the media is at fault for this, not just the annoying cable news networks.

Negativity ...

Here I go quoting everyone again, but this stuff is good. It looks like a lot of folks (not just me) are sick and tired of the Swift Vote Vets for "Truth" controversy, which, by the way, accomplished exactly what it set out to do.
Here's Campaign Desk with a good assessment of the whole situation:

Raum reports that "while politicians decry negative advertising and personal attacks, the bottom line is that such tactics often work." Yeah, they work particularly well on the press, in the sense that the attackers are guaranteed hours of "free media" -- the endless discussion and dissection by the press corps that campaign pros know that their mud-slinging will generate.

For example, Raum observes, "the allegations that Kerry lied about his Vietnam war service -- claims made in a book by one of the group's leaders and in interviews as well as in ads -- have dominated the presidential race for more than a week."

Gee, why do you suppose it is that these allegations "dominated" the election discourse at the expense of issues of current import?

We're waiting for the day that the campaign press confesses to its own role in the attack ads' success -- and waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Read the entire Campaign Desk post here.

And, thankfully, the LA Times has finally stepped forward and said, "Hey everybody! The Swift Boat ads are false! Yep, that's right. False!" (Thanks, John, for the link.)

Here's an excerpt from that article (emphasis is mine):

Whether the Bush campaign is tied to the Swift boat campaign in the technical, legal sense that triggers the wrath of the campaign-spending reform law is not a very interesting question. The ridiculously named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is being funded by conservative groups that interlock with Bush's world in various ways, just as MoveOn.org, which is running nasty ads about Bush's avoidance of service in Vietnam, is part of Kerry's general milieu.

More important, either man could shut down the groups working on his behalf if he wanted to. Kerry has denounced the MoveOn ads, with what degree of sincerity we can't know. Bush on Monday — finally — called for all ads by independent groups on both sides to be halted. He also said Kerry had "served admirably" in Vietnam. But he declined an invitation to condemn the Swift boat effort.

In both cases, the candidates are the reason the groups are in business. There is an important difference, though, between the side campaign being run for Kerry and the one for Bush. The pro-Kerry campaign is nasty and personal. The pro-Bush campaign is nasty, personal and false.

No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam. His main accuser has been exposed as having said the opposite at the time, 35 years ago. Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation. His accusers have no evidence except their own dubious word.

Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least, there is no good evidence that they are true. George Bush, if he were a man of principle, would say the same thing.

Read the entire editorial here.

Don't miss tonite's "The Daily Show"!

Well, don't miss tonite's The Daily Show. Jon Stewart will have, as his guest, Senator John Kerry. I actually thought it was a joke at first, but no - it's for real!
It's on Comedy Central tonite (Tuesday) at 11 pm EST and tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1 am, 10 am , and 7 pm.

Jon is moving up in the world - Bill Clinton, Tom Cruise, and now a presidential candidate. Go Jon Stewart! What I love most is that no matter how popular he gets, he still retains his "average citizen" anger at the issues that matter, and he makes them funny. I love that suddenly the mainstream media is paying attention to the guy that the rest of us have been watching for years, and they're listening to what he says.
I think it's a pretty smart (and brave) move on Kerry's part to go on the Daily Show. He'll be on display to a key demographic, although that same demographic is mostly converted. This is similar to Clinton playing the Saxophone on Arsenio Hall and talking about boxers vs briefs on MTV in the 92 elections (that was '92, right?). Let's all cross our fingers that Kerry comes off relaxed and with some tonal differences in his voice and not stiff and dull.

KE04 Blog Entry
Comedy Central: The Daily Show (site was not updated last I checked)

Blasted Past

Overall, I'm fairly sick of hearing about Kerry's military record and Bush's lack thereof. I know I should care, but I'm much more concerned with hearing how either of these guys can change the future of this country - not the past. That said, Josh Marshall makes some excellent points in his 8/24 post. I usually don't like to re-post other blogger's ideas, but this is an exception. Here is just an excerpt:

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.
Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we're talking about. It's whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you're be fired at. It's whether you're immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what's right when it's not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

As I've been saying here for the last couple days, the issue isn't that Bush ducked service in Vietnam. It's that he tries to smear other people's meritorious service without taking responsibility for what he's doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him. Again, that image of McCain calling him on his shameless antics and his look of fear, his look of feeling trapped.

The key for the Kerry campaign to make is that the president's moral cowardice is why we're now bogged down in Iraq. It's a key reason why almost a thousand Americans have died there. President Bush has set the tone for this administration and his moral cowardice permeates it.

Consider only the most obvious examples.

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

Read the whole post (8/24/04: 12:44 AM). It makes some great points. If you're a Kerry supporter, it also makes you hope KE04 has a dep't that just reads blogs and takes ideas to heart.

Why Politics Upsets Me ...

I'm an informed citizen. I can spout KE04 Policies and Platforms. I'm probably over-informed, to tell you the truth. I read conservative and, more often, liberal blogs where educated, informed discussion takes place. I read the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker (which we actually subscribe to in hard copy), and tons of other publications. I listen to NPR, even when they exasperate me. I know that educated, in-depth conversation about the issues is taking place.

What I don't really read much is the Cincinnati Enquirer or Cincinnati Post. The articles in the Sunday paper, which is the only local paper-edition I attempt to read, are heavily skewed conservative and I don't appreciate not seeing the opposite viewpoint as well. However, I know that tons of people in the Cincinnati area don't ever glance at the Washington Post or New York Times. They aren't internet-savvy enough, or simply don't have the time, to search out the educated debates. These folks - good folks all, I'm sure - depend on the local TV news and local papers to get their information. This should be enough. This should provide unbiased information. However, the TV media especially (and I'm not just talking about local, but national news as well), tends to create issues that aren't there, tends to create mountains out of molehills, and tends to focus on the ridiculous instead of the meaningful. In the process, we lose sight of the real issues affecting our country.

Folks who are getting their news solely from the local outlets, print and televised both, are missing parts of the larger picture. I guarantee that if they haven't tread into the blogosphere or surfed out to the NYT or even KE04's site, most of the local population doesn't even know that KE have published their "Plan for AMerica" online, with details of their policies. The local news never mentioned it, from what my searches turned up. That's just one example. These same folks are getting emails from other folks they trust (I've touched on this before) - political emails that are full of lies and slander, but they don't know that. These folks don't have the time, or perhaps the know-how, to look up the truth. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth know that. One TV ad can make a huge difference to a local-news-centric, time-crunched community. Why not believe the ad? They're veterans for truth, after all?

What frustrates me most, and why politics is upsetting me more and more lately, is that I know the correct news is out there. I know the issues are being debated. But since the majority of folks in my area are probably unaware of this (I guarantee my neighbors aren't out surfing the blogosphere for political opinion), the majority of people will vote with what they know. And around here at least, what you know and what you hear a helluva lot of, is Bush.

How on earth can we get people involved? How can we get people to be interactive, to debate the issues amongst themselves, create stimulating discussion?

If you want to vote for Bush because you're making an informed, educated decision, then more power to you. I don't agree with your decision but I respect your right to make it based on the information you sought to find. If you vote for Bush because you haven't made an effort to find out what both Bush and Kerry truly stand for, then I'm upset. And that's what I'm afraid of here in Cincinnati.

Terror Alert Timeline: Good or bad?

This is an interesting timeline - showing that whenever something bad happened to the Bush Administration (say, an independent investigation or something) they issued a terror alert. hey - maybe it's a big coincidence and they aren't using the terror alerts for politics at all. Even I want to believe that. But the facts sort of point the other direction. If you go to the site, you'll see that each of these is backed up by a source. The timeline begins in January of 2002 and continues through today.

Sample:

March 15, 2004 -- Military families organize together to oppose the war.

March 16, 2004 -- Dems call for probe on Medicare cost cover-up.

March 17, 2004 -- Condoleeza opts of 9/11 Commission hearings. She repeats her refusal several times during the week, and later on appears on "60 Minutes" to explain her position.

March 18, 2004 - News report that a "high target" Al Qaeda leader has been "sorrouded" in the border with Pakistan. Cnn suggests it may be Bin Laden or al-Zawahri. Source Reports of fierce fighting continue. After the fighting ends, it is reported that it wasn't any "high value" target in the battle after all.

March 21, 2004 The State Department issues a terror alert.

My worry? That this sort of thing will get turned around on Kerry somehow. Every presidency is going to always have a slew of bad publicity. This is just the first administration with a color scheme/terror alerts. I don't want to defend the president, but I think that there have been other bad things that have happened (I hope) where a terror alert wasn't issued. But maybe not. Maybe it is all a distraction technique on the part of the president. Let's say I'm suspicious, but I'm not convinced.

Terror Alert Timeline

Urban Legends & Politics

So I woke up this morning to yet another email forward from my dad. This one tears apart Teresa Heinz Kerry (even goes so far as to criticize her for not liking to be called "Mrs. Kerry") and then tells you what special interest groups - namely terrorists - her money goes to help. I tried to tell him that any email that says "Don't delete this - pass it on to your friends" is probably a fake, but it won't matter.

My dad is probably going to receive these from his friends evey day. He sends them to me and, because of my personality, I'm going to research the email until I separate the fact from the "urban legend." But a lot of people won't do that. The 50 people who recieved the forward before Dad, and the ones who sent on the email - they aren't researching the facts. So these emails are circulating, and people are believing them. In the same way that people fall for email scams (Bill Gates will pay you $1000!), people will believe any bad thing you tell them about a politician, esp via email. There's a great article from Wired that researches this phenomenon in reference to the "Bill Gates" email. The article makes the point that if you're sent the information from a friend, you're more likely to believe it. Doesn't the same theory apply to these political urban legends?

This is one of those anti-Kerry (and for that matter, anti-Bush and just plain anti-fact) things that I haven't the slightest idea how to counter. I know there is no way to stop these emails from circulating the internet - they are a part of the internet - but isn't there a way to educate people on how to recognize urban legend when they see it?

I guess my point is that based on these fictions, people are going to make decisions that affect how they vote. In my opinion, these emails are worse than many campaign ads. Campaign ads don't necessarily lie - they just spin the facts in a whole new direction (like Michael Moore does, or Bill O'Reilly). Any fact can be made to look good or bad when taken out of context. That kind of thing I can counter. But these emails are like the game of telephone. They get more distorted as they travel around the Internet. I'm just frustrated because those folks who are adept at email but may not be overly computer savvy (many of our parents perhaps) are just the sort of folk who are the perfect prey for believing these emails, esp when they come from friends. I don't want people to vote based on what they learned in an email, for heaven's sake. Voting is too important, no matter who you vote for.

I'm open to suggestions on this

So I'm trying my best to convince my Dad NOT to vote for Bush. However, he's got issues with Kerry. Many of the issues date back to "Hanoi" Jane. I'm more of the let bygones be bygones kind of person - more concerned with what Kerry is going to do (and what Bush is in the midst of doing) than what either of them did in their impetuous youths.
However, I need to overcome this argument. On top of that, Dad sent me a "flaming forward" he received, that lists every time Kerry has voted against a military proposal of any sort in Congress. Now, any suggestions as to how I go about refuting any and all of these charges? After all, even if Kerry did cast those votes, there may have been legit reasons/explanations. But I don't have the time to research each and every vote listed on the stupid email. I'm really open to suggestions here.

UPDATE: I just discovered Factcheck.org, sponsored by the Annenburg Foundation. I love this site. It's equal opportunity de-bunking, you could say. It's not very nice to Kerry, but it's not very nice to Bush either. Cool. Oh, and I was, for the most part, able to de-bunk Dad's email here.

UPDATE: Still not entirely sure what to do about the Hanoi Jane thing though. Dad served during VietNam and will never admit the war was a mistake. I"ve lost that argument plenty over the last 20 years.

Crying Wolf ...

Okay - everyone is reporting on this today. I've read it in Wonkette, in Fair & Balanced Ranting, Pandagon, etc, etc. And everyone makes an incredibly valid point (also made on the Daily Show last night): If they keep telling us about possible terrorist attacks (particularly attacks with outdated information), we're eventually going to stop believing them. One day, the current administration might actually have a valid source of information, but by that point, people won't even hear what they have to say. You can only cry wolf so many times.

"Real" News:
New York Times: Reports that Led to Terror Alert were years old
Reuters: Ridge Defends 3-Yr Old Terror Alert
Blog References:
Wonkette: Ridge: Be Afraid ... Sort of
Pandagon: For Best Results, Let Terror Threats Age Before Responding
Fair & Balanced Ranting: The President who cried wolf

The Democrats' Blueprint: Our Plan for America

Taking a cue from Clinton, Kerry/Edwards have published their plans for America in book form: Our Plan for America. It's available in PDF format from johnkerry.com or by clicking here. It's around 250 pages long. I'm interested to read it, but I'm not all that gung-ho to print it. Wonder if local campaign headquarters (do we have those in Cincinnati?) has copies? Anyway, learn about your choices. Go skim through it at least.

From today's press release:

Continuing their cross-country tour Monday, John Kerry and John Edwards unveiled their vision of a stronger America, titled “Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World.” The 252-page book, complete with speech excerpts and photos from the trail, offers a comprehensive look at the optimistic Kerry-Edwards plan to build a stronger, more secure America and the values and experiences at the heart of it.
Kerry and Edwards unveiled the book during separate events Monday with firefighters and first responders. The conversations emphasized Kerry and Edwards’ commitment to building a stronger, more secure America. Their comprehensive plans to win the war on terrorism and protect our homeland are addressed in the first chapter of “Our Plan for America.” Just last week, the Kerry-Edwards team was endorsed by 12 retired generals and admirals in an unprecedented display of support from the military establishment.

Update: Okay, I printed it. Sort of. It's actually closer to 263 pages. If you're just interested in his "blueprint" for change, you only need to print through page 129-ish. If you also want excerpts from Kerry and Edwards speeches over the last year, as well as a slew of ink-eating photos, you can print through to the end. Since I want to go read this as I tan, I decided to hold off on the speeches, etc. Oh, and the desktop publisher had some page numbering issues around 120. As far as I can tell, there is either no page 119 or no page 120. Don't let it fool you when printing double-sided.

Free Politics via iTunes

I think this is rather neat:

Apple has thus far posted speeches made by Democratic luminaries during the first two nights of the convention, including former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites), former President Jimmy Carter, one-time Presidential candidate and former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (news - web sites), Illinois State Senator Barack Obama and others. The content has been culled from coverage produced by political news cable service C-SPAN and has been presented by Audible.com, creators of Audiobooks.

It's a good way to get the speeches out to the public. I'm assuming they'll do the same for the RNC.  Go iTunes! Apparently, last week they posted the content of the 9/11 report, also downloadable for free.  It's a good use of a commercial program as a public service.

Yahoo! News: Free DNC Speeches via iTunes

Out of my bubble

Via Fair & Balanced Ranting, we find this op-ed in today's Washington Post: The Introducer, which discusses the impact of Max Cleland and the Karl Rove-inspired politics that put him out of the Senate. Because I've spent the last several years getting my life together - planning a wedding, starting a business, et al - I stopped paying attention to the larger political landscape. I knew of the broad, general things that were going on and knew they upset me. But that's as far as I went into it. Now that I'm re-involving myself in this whole thing, I'm finding out what I missed while pleasantly cooped up in my own little bubble. I didn't know about Max Cleland. I saw him introduce Kerry, was quite moved by his speech and all, and then Kevin told me about Cleland's Senate campaign and what happened. This op-ed piece gives a wonderful, albeit biased, run-down of what happened and the differences made by Cleland and Kerry through their speeches Thursday night.

At least they're honest about it, I guess ...

Check out this quote from today's NY Times:

Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision.

Yep - the whole article covers how the GOP plans to center their whole convention not on the achievements of the current administration, but on the faults of the challenger.

I see this election - any election - sort of like a job interview. And when you interview for a job and send out your resume, you should be achievement focused. "I created this and helped make that to happen and we saved this much money because of my efforts." If something negative arises, you put on spin - "Yes, I have faults, but here is how my faults have made me a better person." You do not spend a job interview stating how lousy the other interviewees are. You simply don't. It's bad form and you generally don't get the job.

I worry that the American people will listen to the rhetoric give Bush the job. I only hope that the media, which I've had about enough of, is smart enough to counter the mudslinging with fact. Who knows? Maybe the networks will even be bright enough to call it mudslinging when they see it. Wishful thinking, I know.

Regardless, thus far, Kerry has run a fairly positive campaign, comparatively speaking. You know that high road he talked about? Sounds like he'll be traveling that alone.

As a note, now that the DNC convention is over, I wanted to point out that I've become incredibly emotional and involved in this election - more than I ever dreamed. Little things, like checking the NY Times and Washington Post, etc, on a daily basis, which I only used to do occasionally. It's an interesting change. Perhaps its the blog - having the ability to share my fears, concerns, and partisan ideas with an audience instead of just my husband. Whatever it is ... it's a good change, and I think I like it.

NY Times: Bush Planning August Attack Against Kerry (reg. required - use Bugmenot)

Stem Cell Research - Online Petitions

I've always wondered if these things help at all, but I can't see where it could hurt.

Massachusetts General (ed. note: a pioneer in Alzheimer's Research) Petition in Support of Broad Public Funding for Fetal and Embryonic Stem Cell Research:

We are registered members of the Massachusetts General Hospital Neurological Web Forum (MGH), as well as other concerned citizens. The MGH forum functions as an online support mechanism for those who suffer, or have loved ones who suffer, from a variety of neurological and related illnesses and conditions. Among us are men, women, and children who have such maladies as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Spinal cord injuries, Cerebral Palsy, and over 150 other disabling and often fatal conditions.

Pete Deutsch for Senate (D-Fl): Allow Congress to Support Stem Cell Research

This week U.S. Representative Peter Deutsch (D) of Florida introduced a bill in Congress that would lift the ban on federal funding for stem cell research. The bill would enable researchers to use stem cell lines left over from the in vitro fertilization process (with the consent of the donor).

The NARAL Petition to Support Federal Funding of Stem Cell Research:

Here's what's happening: In August 2001, President Bush banned federal funding for research on all new embryonic stem-cell lines. Scientists report that very few of the existing stem-cell lines are useful for research or even available to scientists. As a result, Bush's policy has shackled development of new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and diabetes. After the recent death of former President Ronald Reagan, 58 senators - representing both political parties and all points along the ideological spectrum – asked President Bush to rethink his policy and expand federal funding for stem-cell research. But President Bush still stubbornly refuses to change his policy.

Convention Reflections: Day 4: From my Heart

I'm not even going to try to make this a short post. And by the end, I'm going to be emotional and blunt.
Well, I think the Democratic convention was, overall, a success. It succeeded in energizing the delegates and the small few who actually watched it on a non-network station. I can't say I was overly thrilled with network coverage - NBC in particular. In fact, I thought the media, in general, acted like a bunch of fools. Confirming my feelings last night, the Daily Show spent a good portion of their show mocking the stupidity of the media. Harshly. It was, in my opinion, more harsh than usual. Something must have happened that pissed off the cast of the Daily Show, maybe. Still abolutely hilarious, mind you. My Tivo told me that Ted Koppel was supposed to be the guest - and yet there was no guest. Wonder what happened there? I would love to have seen Lewis Black's interpretation of the whole DNC - I know he was there. Ooo -- maybe we'll get some Lewis Black this evening. As a note, one of my favorite bloggers will be on the Daily Show tonite. He fully admits he may be made to look foolish, but that is simply what The Daily Show does. As long as you go into with good humor, you can have a grand ol' time.
Moving on, I wasn't home for a good part of the evening. So, since I seem to be turning into a political geek, I Tivo'd the convention from 7 - 11 pm, followed by the Daily Show. I just got through watching it. Maybe I'm suffering speech burnout - too much C-SPAN in a 4 day period. I just couldn't get through many of the speeches. They'd start out good and then meander, or just bore me. I even had to Tivo through a good portion of Madeleine Albright's speech and that's amazing, because I think she is absolutely amazing. Nancy Pelosi made some great points (ie, in order to put any of Kerry's plans into action, it would help to have a Democratic congress), but public speaking is not her strong point. (Ironic since she is Minority Speaker of the House.) Clark gave a fantastic speech. I still feel like Michael Moore killed Clark's campaign and I'm still peeved at Moore for it. Can you imagine a Kerry/Clark ticket? Hell, that might even win over my dad, and I'm pretty sure it would win over my mom.
Speaking of war, I'm tired - very tired - of hearing Kerry's code word: Vietnam. I suppose it's all he's got, since he came from a very similar upbringing to George Bush, as excellently pointed out on last night's Daily Show. But I'm tired of it! I want more specifics on policy now. I suppose I need to do as he suggested, and I really enjoyed this line:

I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com.

More on how this convention affected me, what I'm terribly frightened of, and Kerry's speech after the jump.

If this happened, could we still win?

Giuliani as Vice President? Here's the thing - I like Rudy Giuliani. And as far as conservatives go, he's fairly liberal. I believe that he is pro-choice, among other things. And since 9/11, he's a bit of an icon. He handled 9/11 so brilliantly. Granted, the GOP would be dumb to not play up Rudy at their NYC-based convention. He's definitely got the emotional ties to the electorate, myself included. But can they switch out Cheney for Giuliani? If they do, we have a real fight on our hands to get Kerry/Edwards in the White House. The only hope is that Giuliani's very presence would irritate Bush's ultra-conservative base. On the other hand, Cheney is scary. And if Bush is, heaven forbid, re-elected, I'd much rather that Cheney not be a part of the ticket. Really, he scares me a lot.
Let's just cross our fingers that this is just rumour.
World Net News Daily: Giuliani to replace Cheney?
LA NBC Ch 4: Cheney Dismisses Rumors He'll Drop From Ticket

Convention Reflections: Day 3

Well, I can't say I was blown away by the 3rd day of the convention. Day 1 we had the Gore/Clinton camps effectively "passing the torch" to the new party leaders - or it seemed that way to me. Day 2 we had Teresa, Obama, Ilana, Ron Reagan. Day 3, we had John Edwards. Yep - pretty much it. And I have to forewarn you - I've broken this post up thanks to the Continuation feature in Typepad, but it's still long. I had a lot more commentary than I realized. Hopefully you find it worth reading through to the end.
First I'm going to backtrack a little and mention that I was impressed with Ron Reagan's speech on Day 2. With his penchant to say harsh things about our current administration, I was worried. Instead, he gave a great speech on exactly how embryonic stem cell research can help. My father-in-law suffers from a rare, genetic form of Alzheimer's that hits at an early age. That's right - genetic. (You can think through those genetic implications on your own.) My mother acqured Juvenile diabetes at the age of 50, and is fairly severe as far as diabetes cases go. I have many reasons to support stem cell research, and I was pleased with Reagan's delivery. He emphasized that it should be a non-partisan issue and that "it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many. " I wholeheartedly agree. This issue is a big one for me - bigger than a woman's right to choose, which has had me fired up in the past.
Back to Day 3. Well, Kevin and I were watching last night (I've dragged him into my obsessive DNC viewing practices) and we bounced a little between MSNBC, CNN, NBC, and ultimately, C-SPAN. I was surprised at how much better the sound and picture quality were on C-Span than on NBC. I was also irritated with Tom Brokaw - as Edwards was announced, Brokaw commented on what a rich lawyer Edwards is. After the speech, Brokaw brought in two "sons of the south" to comment, including *shudder* Zell Miller. Honestly, couldn't they bring in a Democrat and a Republican who could honestly debate?
It has been commented on extensively by convention bloggers, but I would agree. The media seems almost disappointed that the party seems to be united and on-message this year. There are no podium arguments over platform. Well, yeah. Right now, the goal is to defeat George Bush. We'll worry about differences in policy later. I don't necessarily think that is the best way to approach this overall, and it will probably bite us later, especially if we win- but at the moment, it is the best way to get things accomplished. So the media is bored, looking for a fight, commenting on all the Bush-Bashing and Fundraising. Well, I'll give them the fund-raising, but I think they'll find that at the RNC too, yes? But the Bush Bashing? I think, given the anger the party surged with a year ago - the Dean months - that the anger has really been held in check. There has been reference to the current administration as the bad guys - those who have steered us in the wrong direction. But very little out and out Bush bashing. They've maintained dignity and class (mostly) and it's appreciated. It forces the Republican spin machine to make things up, unfortunately, but that's just how the political cookie crumbled. I only hope that during the RNC, the networks give the Democrats the same voice and leanings they're currently giving the Republicans.
As for Edwards speech, well, he's good. He's no Obama, but I believe Obama had a lot more riding on his speech than Edwards. For Obama, it was a make-or-break moment to introduce himself to his party and his nation - it was, ostensibly, the biggest moment of his political career thus far and he carried it off beautifully. For Edwards, a wonderful, involved speaker - the ultimate defense lawyer - he had to be effective without taking the spotlight away from Kerry. Tough, considering how charismatic even a frog-voiced Edwards is in comparison to monotone-speaker Kerry. Apparently Edwards delivered a new version of his primary speech, but it was a good choice.
To see more on the speech, the DNC videos, Elizabeth Edwards, and John Kerry, continue reading after the jump.

Because some things should be read by all ...

When I mentioned in a previous post that I was impressed to all hell by Barack Obama, it was kind of buried in the bottom of a post. However, I've re-read his speech a few times today and I am posting it for everyone to read - it's the kind of thing that everyone should read, I think.
The full text is after the jump - be inspired.

Update: Some reviews on Obama's speech:
Rich Lowry, from the conservative National Review (he even liked it)
New York Times (Reg. required - use Bugmenot)
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Tribune
(Reg required - use Bugmenot)

Convention Reflections: The First 2 Days

The journalists flocked to listen to Jon Stewart at a breakfast this morning, only to be skewered. (Honestly, they should have expected it.) Tom Brokaw enlisted Jon Stewart as a commentator to help analyze Clinton's speech last night. Gov. Bill Richardson - the guy in charge of the whole DNC shebang - was just interviewed on tonite's Boston-based Daily Show. I was listening to him and realized - about the point that Jon Stewart pointed it out - that Gov Richardson was there to solicit the votes of 18-32 year voters. We are the coveted demographic - and most of us would rather read blogs and watch The Daily Show than deal with conventional news. Why did Tom Brokaw have Jon Stewart on? Because Jon draws in the coveted demographic. All in all, this makes Jon Stewart an "It" boy - everyone will want to talk to him to get to us. Poor Jon. You know he has to find the whole thing annoying yet hilarious all at once. I bet DNC luminaries are lining up to be interviewed on the Daily Show this week.
In other news, bloggers at the convention are experiencing a little of the same thing. Joshua Micah Marshall was able to secure a sit-down interview with Tom Daschle and a quickie interview (1 question) with Michael Moore. PR reps for various Democratic candidates are posting comments to blogs, such as Pandagon, in an effort for their candidates to be heard on the blogosphere. Everyone wants our demographic.
Just a few other quick notes - I watched the DNC tonite (pretty much had C-SPAN on all day, I admit) and was unimpressed by Teresa Heinz Kerry's delivery. I liked her speech - not all that thrilled about her oratorical skills. I was impressed by Ilana Wexler, a 13 yr old girl who started Kids for Kerry. The kid has a political future. Maybe 20 years from now, she'll be making a speech as a House candidate.
Kudos should be given to the DNC for their web site. Of course, they have their own "irreverent" (yeah, right) blogger, but they also have live, streaming video of the convention and within a couple hours of the 11 pm convention close, they have all the day's speeches available in Quicktime and Windows format, as well as full text of the speeches. I'm impressed.
Finally, I was blown away by Barack Obama. You all know I'm a Clinton junkie. I thought Clinton's speech was one of his best ever, and I've seen some fantastic commentary on it. Obama's speech was right up there with Clinton's. Obama is only 42 yrs old. As I watched him, and listened to him make valid, important points, I didn't feel like I was listening to a keynote speaker who has yet to officially win his Senate seat. I felt, if only for a moment, that I was listening to the first black man who will be POTUS. He is an amazing public speaker and a brililant man. They say he is the future of the party. I sure as hell hope so.

The Daily Show
Comedy Central: Indecision 2004
Barack Obama: Blog, Keynote text, video
Everybody's Speeches from Tuesday
Clinton's Speech from Monday
Hillary, Carter, Gore Speeches from Monday

I've officially gone over the edge

Yep, I'm watching C-SPAN at noon on a weekday, or rather, it's on in the background while I work. Last night I was wrapped up in technical issues and didn't watch the convention. So today I have on C-SPAN, hoping for replays of last night's speeches. Right now, they're replaying Jimmy Carter, the president who became worthy of being President 20 years after he left office. But now - he's effin' awesome. And he seems to have some really cutting commentary, without actually saying Bush's name. I'm just going to randomly type what I hear as he speaks. Hopefully I'll get the quotes right.
"goodwill has been squandered by ... mistakes and miscalculations."
"our current policies are shaped by the super-rich and their armies of lobbyists"
"... violence has swept the Holy Land (Israel), fed by increasingly anti-American sentiments. This must change."
"radical departure from the basic American principles and values espoused by John Kerry."
"We cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic."
"We cannot be true to ourselves, if we mistreat others."
"And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mis-lead."
"You cannot be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the next, depending on the latest political poll." (Ouch!)
"At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul."
An overall theme that Kerry showed up and fought for our country in Vietnam, that we are divided and Democrats can unite the country, that we have squandered our reputation in the world ... I think the point is that John Kerry is normal, and that we need a return to normalcy. According to Carter, John Kerry is common sense. All that, packed into less than 15 minutes.
Why is it that so many of these men only reach their full potential after they leave office? I understand Gore's speech was also incredible.
Woo hoo! Now it's time for the Clintons -- I love them.

Thank you, John Kerry

I'm glad he's actually said this. Anyone who has Alzheimer's in their family understands the importance of stem cell research.

Praised by two former space fliers who have served with him in the Senate, John Kerry said Monday that America needs a president who "believes in science" and supports stem-cell medical research.
The Bush administration has limited federal funding of research on stem cells that results in the destruction of a living human embryo. But Kerry said he'd promote stem-cell science that could aid people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and diabetes. "We need to push the curve of discovery," he told 400 Floridians at a NASA visitor center near the space shuttle launch pads.

USA Today

"Your Network is Silly"

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show hosted a breakfast for the "real media" at the DNC. If anyone at the breakfast actually watched the Daily Show, they'd have been prepared for the reality of the breakfast. The article is from the USA Today, but I'm posting it in full.

'Daily Show' host shoots at media Stewart, host of The Daily Show on cable's Comedy Central, invited reporters for coffee Monday at the start of the Democratic convention. It was billed as an early morning yuk-fest, but it wasn't all that funny. At least not for the reporters, who were the subject of his monologue. In a poll this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 21% of viewers ages 18 to 29 named The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live as places where they get news about the presidential campaign. Does it bother Stewart that so many potential voters are relying on a joke show for information? "I'm concerned about the incredible number of people who say they get the news from you guys," Stewart shot back. Sensitive scribes scowled. The tightly wrapped comic's harangue included a blast at the media's "absolute acceptance of being stage-managed" and an attack on Washington as a city of "absolute self-delusion and arrogance." When Howard Kurtz, who covers the news media for The Washington Post and CNN, protested, Stewart stopped him with, "Your network is silly." Stewart blames boring coverage for low voter turnout. "We have wrung every ounce of inspiration out of the process because we are parsing strategy," he said. He wouldn't say how often he votes or whether he's registered with a party. In the end, Stewart apologized for his own vehemence. He said that's the way he and his staff begin the mornings when they are writing their show. "We spend our day trying to take the anger down and trying to turn up the volume of the humor." — By Kathy Kiely

"I love SG-1 so much that the FBI arrested me"

Ever wonder what kinds of terror threats the FBI is wasting their time, energy and [our] money on? Well, here you go. This is a local story that has recieved, as far as I know, little to no local press, which is a shame. Some poor guy here in Cincinnati runs a Stargate fan site. Through links on his site, he sent over $100,000 worth of business to Amazon.com, as people clicked to buy Stargate DVDs and merchandise. (Update: I didn't realize, but Adam is probably an Amazon "associate," which means he gets checks from Amazon for a percentage of the clickthroughs that result in sales.) The Stargate people are aware of his site and actually called it "cool." It's a fan site and we all know what fan sites are like. It's primarily a message board community. There are no illegal downloads, warez, eps, or anything available on the site.
Update: And the truth comes out: From the US Attorney Office Press Release:
Adam Clark McGaughey, 35, of Cincinnati, Ohio, operated a website based on Stargate SG-1. As early as 2001, McGaughey provided visitors to his website the opportunity to download copies of Stargate SG-1 episodes. After receiving letters from the Motion Picture Association of America requesting that he stop streaming the episodes, McGaughey moved his website overseas and continued to stream episodes over the Internet until April 2003. McGaughey profited from his website through advertising and sales links on the website itself.

However, there was still abuse of the Patriot Act by the FBI.
The FBI, using (abusing?) the Patriot Act took and destroyed his and his fiancee's computers and erased all the files. Up until this point, he's recieved pro bono legal counsel in the area, but the charges were filed in LA. He can neither afford a California lawyer nor afford to go to Cali to face the changes. A SG1Archive.com Legal Defense Fund has been set up to help him. You can also buy t-shirts from CafePress.com, from which the proceeds go to help Adam.
This is sad on so many levels. SG-1 is the sort of tv show that relies heavily on the fans to continue. It's a genre-based show, like Buffy, Angel, Star Trek ... and it benefits from fan communities on the Internet. Discouraging fan sites, whether the show does it or the gov't, is bad karma for the show. Wouldn't it be ideal if the show's creators and stars spoke up in defense of Adam and his site?

More information, as well as links, are available after the jump.

The Al Queda Candidate

I've mentioned this before and it looks like I'm not the only one who feels this way. Al Queda wants Bush to win because, in their words, "it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
Today, an op-ed piece in The New York Times proposes much the same thing, using the plot of the Manchurian Candidate as a comparison. "The Arabian Candidate" makes some valid points, pointing out that Bush has unwittingly (of course) played into the hands of Al Queda, and even the administration is beginning to agree, stating that "al-Qaeda has morphed into a loose and expanding association of regional terror cells linked less by chains of command and communication than by a common vision of jihad against the U.S. ... Many European leaders believe the Iraq war has fueled rather than doused the fires of jihad."

NY Times Op-Ed Article: The Arabian Candidate
Time Online: Why the Al Queda Threat is Growing
Aaron Swartz: The Weblog: Who Would Bin Laden Vote For?

Hillary for President in 2008?

I'm a big Hillary fan, and I'm all for a woman in the White House, but I don't think we're ready yet. If Kerry loses (heaven forbid) and the Dems need a candidate, a woman is not the way to go. It just wouldn't fly in our society yet - isn't that sad? The Brits and everyone else can have a woman as PM, but I'm betting we couldn't have a woman for President. I could see it possibly working out if a woman was the VP candidate though. However, I don't know if Hillary is the person for the job. People either love her or hate her - and a lot of people hate her. :( And there are certainly skeletons in her closet. I love the idea of Bill back in the White House - as first husband or the like, but I really think that would work against her too. All that being said, I'd vote for her in a heartbeat.
Anyway, here's the article, which surprises me a lot.

Dems Seen Favoring Sen. Clinton in 2008

"Brother, Can You Spare a Job?" Film Short

This little piece of work should be required viewing ...

Via Boing Boing, we find this animated short originally created for the Bush in 30 Seconds contest sponsored by MoveOn.org. The original 30 second spot is there, but I recommend also watching the 7 minute animated short. It's filmed in the style of old Disney and Warner Bros cartoons of the Depression era. It's actually hard to remember that the film is referencing today - not the 1930's - because of the similarities it draws. This little 7-minute short moved me to tears (okay, I'm a real sap, but still ...) and is a fairly poignant statement on the state of today's economy and healthcare. Plus, it's impressive animation. I know it's anti-Bush, but I think the real message it puts out there is that by voting, everyone can change things and make a difference.

Brother, Can You Spare a Job? (requires Quicktime for viewing)

That's My Martha ...

I'm a huge Martha Stewart fan and I've got to tell you, I hope she wins on appeal. I'm sure she did it - but really, I just can't handle the idea of Martha in prison. It's just wrong.

From the Washington Times:

"Just before she was sentenced, Stewart -- who, during her trial, spoke only to declare her innocence -- rose from her seat and, her voice breaking almost to the point of sobs, told the judge that she feared her life would be "completely destroyed."
Then, in an extraordinary change of demeanor, Stewart walked down the courthouse steps, approached a microphone and denounced the scandal as full of "such venom and such gore -- I mean it's just terrible."
Smiling and showing her well-honed comfort with TV cameras, she even suggested that fans could "continue to show your support" by subscribing to her magazines and buying her line of homemaking products.
And she vowed: "I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid."

(Washington Times requires login - use BugMeNot)

Same-sex Marriage Amendment Fails in Senate

Well I would hope it would fail. My apologies for the rant that follows this, but my ire gets all stoked when I think about how they talk about amending the Constitution for something like this - the Constitution! I think of that as this sacred document - no one needs to go touching it. Especially for an issue that, and I firmly believe this, is only an issue so that the Republicans can use it to their advantage in the campaign. Got to keep the Conservative Right happy.
Marriage should be equal-opportunity. They keep bringing it back to the issue of family. That's a ridiculous argument. I personally think that a child raised in a gay home will grow up with a lot of love (because acquiring the child was no doubt an arduous process) and will end up open-minded, accepting of diversity, and well-educated (check out the demographic). If they're going to attack the family dynamic, what's next - you have to be married to have a kid? Single parenting not allowed? Perhaps if you have kids, you are therefore banned from divorce. I realize I'm carrying it too far, but if they're using family as their argument. I suppose they can't use "homosexulaity is evil! The bible says so!" since it's the separation of church and state and all. (I do not think the Bible actually says that, btw.)
Sigh. Since when did politics have to affect someone's lifestyle choice? I wonder, if Bush is re-elected, if eventually you will be required to be a Christian.
Okay, the motion failed today. This is, again, a campaign ploy. And I've read countless articles on how they intend to keep trying to push this motion through. Please drop it. Please?
Link to CNN Article Annotated quotes from the article after the jump.

Elizabeth Edwards

- I'm quite taken with Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John Edwards. She's a strong, successful career woman with a family. I'm also always in search of successful women who had children later in life. She's 55 and her two youngest kids are 6 and 4. She's also 4 years older than her husband. I really like Elizabeth Edwards.
Link

- In other political news, I'm just going to sit here and quietly steam about the Wednesday vote on the marriage amendment. Who thought it would ever get this far? Interestingly, there is a group that is moving to out every gay Aide, Staffer, or Congressman before Wednesday, to prove a point. If that happens, many constituents may feel betrayed - one way or another.

Because that'll make a difference...

So, do you think they'll suspend elections if they think Bush is losing? Link

Tell me, do they think that if we announce elections have been moved to, say, Dec 2, that the terrorists won't readjust their plans as well? After all, if we can postpone, so can they. Is it wrong to feel that this is just showing fear and capitulating? Personally (and I know folks will disagree with this), I'd rather have the elections, barring another event like Sept 11, and show the terrorists that we're not scared.
Unfortunately, I also believe that we're more likely to have a terrorist attack if it looks like Kerry is in the lead in the days leading up to the election. Bush isn't an effective leader, and Al Queda et al know that. They won't want an effective leader in our White House. If it looks like Bush is winning, they have no need to attack.

Bill Clinton Book Signing = Mass Chaos

I failed. I did not get my copy of the overpriced My Life memoir signed by Bill Clinton. Here's what happened.
The signing was to begin at 2:30 pm (PST). We had to check our purses/bags, etc. No cell phones, cameras, iPods, or anything were allowed. Only one book signed per person and no personal conversations or chatting with the author. Everyone had been assigned a number ahead of time - I was number 2150. I know, it seems like a huge number, but they had sold over 4000 copies - each with a number. All 4000+ people were there. And we all arrived between noon and 1 pm. It started out okay. We were put in groups of 500ish. Each group would be shown into the building when their group number was called. Sort of like it works when you board Southwest Airlines - or even Delta with their new "zones." This was a very reasonable way of doing things. Of course, we were all lined up outside in the hot California sun. Well, everyone around me said it was hot. I was enjoying the 70 degree weather. Round about 4 pm, word came forth that he was still signing the first 100 books. While we may have been told no chatting, apparently someone forgot to tell Bill Clinton. I would venture to guess that chatting just comes naturally to someone who loves people, and the public eye, so much. He can't help himself. Indeed, as the few who had books signed drifted out to the masses in lines, it was confirmed that he was chatting up a storm. Especially if you had a kid with you. Then he would also chat with the kid or play with the baby! These are some of the reasons I love Bill Clinton, but today I found it frustrating.

Forget the Effin' Decency Act ... Those Pottymouth Republicans ;-)

This article in the Washington Post - the Post! - made me laugh. First off, because it's the Post printing exactly what was said, which wasn't exactly appropriate language. Second, the whole article is tongue-in-cheek. It's subtle, but it's there. Is even the Post getting a bit tired of our Administration?
Basically, Cheney told Leahy exactly what Leahy could go do with himself. (Lovely, just lovely.) The Post printed it - go read it there. Here's some other quotes from the article - but not the juicy one. I'm too entertained by folks reading it in the Post. Do you think it's just the online edition or they'll actually print it?

Leahy's spokesman, David Carle, yesterday confirmed the brief but fierce exchange. "The vice president seemed to be taking personally the criticism that Senator Leahy and others have leveled against Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq," Carle said.
As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.
Cheney's office did not deny that the phrase was uttered. His spokesman, Kevin S. Kellems, would say only that this language is not typical of the vice presidential vocabulary. ...
...Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes.

Bwa-ha-ha! The article goes into detail of other printed instances of Bush - and Kerry - employing the "F word". It's awful, it's immature, Cheney is apparently losing it, and I still find it all terribly amusing.
Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity (washingtonpost.com)
FWIW, unlike the Post, the Washington Times went out of its way to avoid the actual quote, saying "According to the aide, Mr. Cheney then responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility." I actually think the Times is funnier. An anatomical sexual impossibility? How long did it take them to think that one up?

Ego Much?

Schwarzenegger doesn't have an ego at all, does he?

Mr. Schwarzenegger, in an interview in the Bedouin-style smoking tent he has set up in the courtyard of the State Capitol here — smoking is banned in state buildings — made it clear that he expected a prominent role at the Republican National Convention in New York in late August.
"Whether I'm speaking, I'll leave that up to them," said Mr. Schwarzenegger, a global celebrity who has emerged as perhaps the most intriguing new Republican face of the political season. "If they're smart, they'll have me obviously in prime time."

Obviously.
New York Times

My Michael Moore Worries

This Washington Times article, despite its conservative bent, expressed all the fears I have about Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 that opens nationwide today. I'm a supporter of Moore's politics, as I've said in the past, and while I'm guilty of rooting him on, I also don't always agree with his methods. With this movie, I worry that no one will take him - or it - seriously. Moore is so easily set off, so easily egged on to a rant of some sort, that it's easy to eventually ignore him.  He's always upset about something. He's also very liberal, and often his rants are about Bush. Many times, his rants are overexaggerated and sometimes even wrong.
A Washington Post article says, "The American people can tell the difference between fact and fiction," says [Bush] campaign spokesman Terry Holt. "This election is about serious issues, and I don't think most American voters consider Michael Moore a serious analyst of American politics." So now he's made a movie that has been "hailed" as controversial. I worry that the movie is incredibly leftist - that it in no way depicts an opposing viewpoint in a serious manner. In his role as filmmaker, Moore has arranged the facts to his liking - something he admitted to doing as he spoke to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night. He has arranged the facts, edited and pasted to his liking, and produced a movie. I haven't seen the movie yet, although I probably will; however, I feel like he has the obligation to seriously show us both sides of the story. I want to hear the opposing viewpoint without snarkiness interjected.  Bowl me over with the liberal, but please interject the conservative for balance, and for credibility of the entire film.
Because most of Hollywood is liberal, he won the Palm d'Or.  Give him the award to make a statement. And it did.  But now, as he runs the talk show circuit and the movie has early premieres in Washington, LA, New York, etc, we're heading into Michael Moore overkill.  Last week he ranted that several theatre chains opted to not pick up the movie.  This week he rants that the Republicans are trying to get his ads off the air, as they violate FEC regs.  There is always something with him.  I wish he would just shut up and let the movie speak for itself.  We might all take the film more seriously that way.
Some quotes from the Washington Post:
"I can't think of any precedent for it in a presidential campaign," says Frances Lee, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University. "As a marketing phenomenon it seems to echo 'The Passion [of the Christ]': intense enthusiasm, organized groups buying tickets with proselytizing zeal, the sense that one is getting something that corporate America wanted to stifle."
And
"I did not set out to make a political film," Moore has said in several TV interviews. "The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics."
And
"If a reporter asks President Bush about the movie, he plans to respond jokingly, one of [Bush's] strategists said. "To take it on would give it too much credibility," the strategist said. "He's not going to get into a debate himself with this little filmmaker guy."
In reference to an interview with Mark Kennedy, Republican Congressman from Minnesota:
The movie shows Kennedy looking trapped and afraid. But in reality, he explained to Moore that he has a nephew serving in Afghanistan and he would like to help in the recruiting effort, particularly for those congressmen who supported the war.
Washington Post: Fahrenheit 9/11 is Red-Hot Ticket
Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' / The Washington Times INSIDER

The Baking of the President

Apparently every election year, Family Circle magazine hosts a recipe contest, wherein cookie recipes are submitted by the wife of each candidate. (Can't wait for the year when the candidate is a woman.) Readers vote on the best recipe. This is apparently a fool-proof method of judging who is going to win the actual election, and has yet to be wrong. So tell me, based on previous year's winners - all some version of chocolate chips and fat - why did Teresa Heinz Kerry submit Pumpkin Spice cookies? Socialites obviously don't bake.
The Baking of the President (washingtonpost.com)

The Battleground State Where I Live, Sort of

Bush was in Cincinnati today. Here's an article in the ultra-conservative Cincinnati Enquirer: Shake hands, leave check. Yes, that's the name of the article. Sounds like the conservative folks at our local rag were a little piqued at the price tag for admittance into tonite's event.
I haven't seen hide nor hair of Kerry, either in Cincy or Kentucky (everyone ignores Kentucky). I know Kerry is out there, spending money I donated, but apparently not on trying to convince my conservative neighbors to vote for him.
As for Clinton, well, I placed the order at Book Passage and now have a book and a line number with my name on it. Quite excited. Interestingly, I was told there will be

no personalizations
no cameras allowed
no cell phones allowed
no large bags

I'd bet money he's staying at the Westin St. Francis, so I may pop in there that morning. I'd love to get a shot of him. Heck, I lived in the DC area when he was in the White House but I never got remotely close to seeing him. Of course, that was during Monica Lewinsky, so I was recieving the whole shebang courtesy of local media AND national media. Nothing like a double dose of media overkill. Tell me why all that was such a big deal and the stuff we're doing now - such as going to war on false pretenses - doesn't merit an investigation, let alone an impeachment? Oh, I forgot, the Republicans control Congress.

Today in the World ... Technology

Orin Hatch introduces copyright infringement act. Don't know if this is politics, technology, or a whole area unto itself, but it really upsets me. Can we say "impede innovation"? (See also C|Net, Slashdot, EFF.) See the DRM article earlier today to understand why this stuff is just bad.

A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate would, if passed, dramatically reshape copyright law by prohibiting file-trading networks and some consumer electronics devices on the grounds that they could be used for unlawful purposes. (C|Net News)

E-Rate Dollars for Schools Abused (CNN): This just frustrates me to no end.

An investigative team found in February that about 74,000 wireless computer cards purchased for schools were sitting unwrapped on a loading dock in a warehouse. The cards were purchased in 1999 for about $24 million, including supposed installation charges.

Surfing while Surfing (BBC via Slashdot): This surfboard is just so cool, dude!

Today in the World ... Politics

Kerry gives Gephardt a job interview (NY Times)- Would this really help assure a non-Bush presidency? Would it improve things if it happened? Just not liking the idea of Gephardt, but at this point, as long as its not Bush. I believe Michael Moore called choosing between Kerry and Bush as "choosing between the evil of two lessers."
Bush/Cheney insist on unproven relationship between Iraq and Al Queda. (NY Times) Hey, I always believe what the intelligence and every other fact proves otherwise. :rolls eyes: I particularly enjoy this quote that I'm seeing everywhere.

Mr. Bush, responding to a reporter's question about the report after a White House cabinet meeting yesterday morning, said: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

He's right about one thing - there is a link between Iraq and Saddam.
Bush Gets Out the Baptist Vote: Get this quote from Dr. Jack Graham, departing Baptist denomination president (didn't even know they had presidents):

What is more, he said, he believed the Bible called on Christians to support godly politicians.

I have mentioned the separation of church and state, right?

Marriage Amendment to go to Vote

I can't believe this is even going to vote. I can only hope it gets tabled until after the November election, or that it gets killed all together. And I agree with this quote:

Ms. Jacques said the entire push for the amendment is political — "everything about it, from the national effort to change the United States Constitution and mobilize a radical right base for President Bush's election, to the state initiatives, which are all tied to the November election and getting the president's extreme conservative base out."

This is nothing more than amending the Constitution to reflect conservative, religious opinion. Isn't the separation of church and state in the Constitution as well? Argh!
Senate sets mid-July vote on marriage - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - June 17, 2004

Vatican downsizes the Inquisition

IHT: Vatican downsizes the Inquisition Umm ... not even sure which way to take this ...

(via Boing Boing)

And the Reagans Say ... W is NOT Reagan

This from Ron Reagan Jr in 2003:

The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now," Mr. Reagan said then. "Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the 80's. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's - these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."

This from the same man at his father's funeral, in front of millions of TV viewers:

...his son Ron Reagan delivered a eulogy that castigated politicians who use religion "to gain political advantage," a comment that was being interpreted in Washington as a not-so-subtle slap at Mr. Bush.

The Reagans are upset about Bush's stance on stem-cell research and his use of a moral imperative to prohibit the research. I don't blame them. I'm a huge advocate of stem-cell research, as I have one young family member affected by Alzheimer's and another affected by diabetes. Stem-cell research could make all the difference for both of them and others in my family.
I appreciate the Reagans trying to distance themselves from the Bush family. I'm tired of hearing Reagan used as a political mantle by both candidates. I am not a Reagan fan, really, but I don't think anyone has the right to use his likeness, possible thoughts, and biography to help carry on a political campaign.
New York Times: Reaganite by Association? His Family Won't Allow It
Washington Post: Bush Firm on Stem Cell Policy

Boing Boing: Librarians' struggle with Open Access Publishing

Boing Boing: Librarians' struggle with Open Access publishing
Why is this cool? Because Jason Griffey, the guy who wrote the paper Cory is talking about, is a good friend of Kevin's (mine too by default) and this is super awesome for him! Plus, the paper itself touches on things I get all worked up about (in agreement) myself and, as Cory mentions, actually cites Wikipedia. Also, more often than not, I find myself agreeing - or at least mildly fascinated by - the things that Cory brings up on Boing Boing. I, as usual, came to this late. It was posted on Boing Boing on April 7, shortly before I became addicted to that particular blog. You can catch Grif's blog over on my list of friends to the right - just click Grif.

Borrriiinngg ...

(I know, I know. I go for days without posting and then I'm all over the place. I'm just catching up is all. Sometimes I'm too lazy to blog and sometimes I'm just all energetic.)
Anyway, when did the Democrats get so dang boring? Via Wonkette, this is from US News & World Report:

Is it Gephardt?
Labor leaders believe union friend Rep. Dick Gephardt has the inside track to be Sen. John Kerry 's vice president. We hear that AFL-CIO execs say it's a done deal.

Gee, Kerry/Gephart. Now there's a ticket to inspire excitement.

So would Clinton really steal the limelight?

I can't blame Kerry and Clinton's respective "people" for being worried that Clinton might upstage Kerry. I will always be a Clinton supporter, and I've always loved how charismatic he is. I would not apply the word "charimatic" to Kerry. I might vote for him, but that's because my choices are limited. (Keeping fingers crossed for Edwards as VP here ...) Anyway, I'll buy Clinton's book, just like I bought Hilary's. Have I mentioned how cool I find Hilary Clinton? For the hell of it, I invited a bunch of celebrities to my wedding since I had some extra invites. I received an autographed photo from Jimmy Buffet and a personal letter from Hilary Clinton.
Anyway, here's the New York Times article about Clinton stealing the spotlight - or trying not to.

This bothers me on so many levels ...

The article is about the pillow talk between Donald Rumsfeld and his wife. Poor woman. But it also gives direct Rumsfeld quotes, and as an English major, these bother me. Check out the article.

Take this for instance:

"He is under pressure, but where he is, we don't know. If we knew, we would go find him. [But] until he's caught, he's not caught."

Or worse, in reference to discovering Saddam:

The only way we ever found him is finally somebody put enough pressure on enough people to find out that somebody had an idea where somebody might know somebody who might know somebody who would know where he might have been," he said, according to the American Forces Press Service.

I don't know who is worse sometimes - our bumbling president or his boss, Rumsfeld. Both of them tend to massacre the English language ("nukuler" anyone?).

Shel

Article by way of Wonkette

Patriot Act?

I found this article by way of Neil Gaiman's blog. Go on, read the article! I suppose the actions can be justified by keeping our friends close, but our enemies closer, at least - to this administration. But how does this help? Won't mistreatment of journalists - the folks from whom we get our news - only lead to more negative press about the US to the world in general? And despite what the Bush administration believes, we actually do need the rest of the world. From imports to exports to help in times of crisis ... we cannot isolate ourselves from the world. But by creating negative vibes with foreign press, esp the press of our "friends" in the world, we are making it harder for foreign gov'ts to cooperate with us. Their constituents will read about the asinine things we put their journalists through and believe we are thugs... I could go on. This just upsets me.

My tax dollars funding Bush Campaign? What?

USATODAY.com - Bush enjoys travel advantage on taxpayer-financed Air Force One Really, I can't criticize Bush too much on this, which drives me nuts. He uses AF1 to fly somewhere, calls it "official" business, and then does something official while at his campaign stop. Is there a difference between this and my business needing an iPod (extra hard drive + PDA) and a new digital camera?

Disturbing Trends

Bush Keeps Saddam Gun at White House

Spoils of war I guess (or a ridiculous new toy for our chosen leader).

More Mel Gibson and the church here.

NY Times asks for forgiveness

The New York Times > International > Middle East > From the Editors: The Times and Iraq
Well lookee there - the media is admitting that they were wrong to try an convince us that there were WMD and that they didn't look at their sources hard enough. Now, if we could just get that same apology from, oh I don't know, that guy who leads our country and used WMDs as justification for the continued killing of our troops?

Murder on the Internet

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bizarre tale of boy who used internet to plot his own murder
Well thank goodness -- I thought Americans had cornered the market on craziness, but it looks like the Brits are fast trying to catch up.

Sex & Politics

So maybe I shouldn't be following the Washingtonienne scandal, but really, it's absolutely hilarious how one little blog about not-very-important-people has so grabbed the attention of the major media outlets in NYC and Washington. Check out Wonkette's blog for all the info about the no-longer-in-existence Washingtonienne blog.

baltimoresun.com - The retreat from our core values

From today's Baltimoresun.com - The retreat from our core values

I thought this was a striking op-ed piece and am opting to show it here in full. You may also use the preceding link to view the article on the Sun's site.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president ... right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

ATLANTA - We've become a bit confused.

As Americans, we're supposed to have a deep respect for dissent, to value honest and open government, to believe in truth and justice. Those are among the core values that distinguish us from much of the rest of the world, where tyranny has free rein.

But the precariousness of the U.S. occupation of Iraq - indeed, a clear record of failures brought on by the Bush administration's wrong-headed assumptions - has prompted some prominent Americans to trample the very values we claim to export. Among the more disappointing examples is U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, a nominal Democrat from Georgia who has spent the last several months ranting hysterically against any American who dares question any aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq.

He, like others of his ilk, is busy rewriting the definition of patriot, limiting it to those who would march in lockstep to the dictates of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Even John McCain, a former POW, would not qualify as a patriot by that narrow and perverse standard. The Arizona senator, after all, has criticized the administration for its poor postwar planning.

I have given up on Mr. Miller. He spends the winter of his life ruining a legacy of progressive leadership that he built in earlier years. As a former Marine and, more tellingly, a former professor of Western civilization at tiny Young Harris College in the north Georgia mountains, he knows better than most the enormous gift of the Bill of Rights, which has produced a strong nation - the only remaining superpower - that thrives on protest, dissent, openness, diversity. If he wishes to deny that now, well, so much for his role as elder statesman.

But Mr. Miller is not the only American in full retreat from the nation's core values. So are any number of others, officials and average citizens alike, who have denounced the press, war critics and any other institution or individual who dares present a view that does not reflect the fairy tale version of events that Mr. Bush and his minions, until quite recently, peddled to the public.

Last week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an essay from a journalism instructor who, incredibly, complained that the news media should have refrained from using photos of torture in Iraq. Does she prefer a country where wrongdoing is hidden, covered up and allowed to fester?

How can we expect Iraqis to adopt a democracy like ours and live by its principles when so many of us seem unwilling to live by those same values?

It may be that democracy, U.S.-style, is a tough creed to live by. Unlike authoritarian rule, where dictators tell you what to do and how to think, Jeffersonian democracy, with its emphasis on individual liberty, requires each citizen to think for himself.

And Jeffersonian democracy endorses a free press, which frequently portrays a nation not quite as perfect as its founding myths suggest. That means that thinking citizens will often be confronted with the premise that their beloved country is sometimes unjust, sometimes greedy, sometimes brutal.

The virtue of this creed ought to be clear by now: The United States has not only survived, but it has also thrived. The clash of opposing ideas, the open criticism of government, and, yes, a free press that exposes official wrongdoing - all those things have produced a nation that is a military, economic and cultural superpower.

It's unlikely that the United States can impose a Western-style democracy in Iraq. But we ought to be able to keep faith with those democratic values ourselves.

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column appears Mondays in The Sun.