Pictures, Getcher Pictures!

Hi there. If you're looking for pictures of Mary Beth Cahill, I've got some for you right here. Your wish is my command.

The Only John Kerry Ad You'll Ever Need

Right here.

As You Can See...

...I do exist, just less frequently. I'm sorry -- I'm just really busy at the moment. I'm going to try to catch up some this evening, though that's not a promise, just an aspiration. Things to look forward to: Fiskfest Vol 2, a series of funny quotes from an ex-defensive tackle turned country songwriter turned my professor, posts yet to be composed. But not until at least 8:30 tonight, as I have class solid till 7.

Oh Dear

This is bad. I don't have time for in depth analysis, but my general opinion is that rogue states ruled by batguano crazy dictators with Walken-hair posessing nuclear ICBMs is a very bad thing. Now would be a great time for China to step up to the plate and squash this like a bug.

Oh, and by the way, here's to you, Mr. Carter. Thanks.

First the Women, now the Children...

...bail from the Good Ship Kerry

Two things, briefly, in regards to this article about how, amazingly, the Youth Vote isn't trending towards Kerry. In fact, Bush has pulled ahead in polling among the Young, who apparently have turned out alright after all. Here's the paragraph that got me:

Democrats had been hoping for a big boost from younger voters with music stars like Wyclef Jean, Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks, Dave Matthews and Pearl Jam lining up for Kerry.

This strikes me as, oh, insane on the behalf of the Democrats for to reasons.

1) I know very few people my age who would actively seek out the music of Bruce Springsteen and I know even fewer who would admit to listening to the Dixie Chicks (and my friends are the type of people who openly listen to things that the rest of the world considers to be very very lame) and if I recall correctly, Pearl Jam was big when I was in 6th grade.

2) Most of us younger voters have spent our entire lives having it either conciously or unconciously drilled into us that rock stars were by and large not role models and not to be emulated. Just because So-and-so did crack and such-and-such hired hookers and whats-his-name drove his motorcycle off a cliff did not make it a good idea for us, etc. By now, we're used to appriciating them for their art and acknowledging that they make many poor choices. Thanks to that conditioning, we're better able to resist their attempts to Pied Piper us off into the sea of Kerry.

3) (BONUS!) Once again, how dumb do they think we are? Just like the women wanting more than a pretty face, the young want more than some great tunes -- we want some actual policies and/or positions. Maybe even ones we agree with. Please do not think that we are shallow, because we aren't, and misunderestimating shallowness can lead to severe paralysis...

Stating the Obvious

So, yeah, massive blog redesign. Two main reasons: 1) someone or other (I'm sorry, I forget these things, feel free to take credit in the comments section) mentioned that they had stumbled on a my blog and they expected a blog called "The Resplendent Mango" to be a bit more, well, resplendent and mango colored. This may not be it, but it's a step in that direction. 2), I was getting sick of going to other blogger pages that had the same template and having that parallel universe blog feeling ("It looks like my blog and it feels like my blog, but it's not!") which is sort of like the feeling of getting off the elevator at the wrong floor in your dorm and walking down a hallway that looks exactly like yours except the door decorations are all wrong and it's just so weird. So here we are. You may like it. You may hate it. But it's different now, and I like it. I still have to make a few minor modifications (like getting rid of the gray roundy corners) but there's only so much I can do in an evening. And yes, I know the Google Ad-sense (a pox unto them) window now clashes; this is because something's wrong with their site this evening and thus I cannot log on and get the new code to get properly colored boxes and they won't let you change the parameters yourself. So here I am with flagrantly mismatched ad boxes. If they're not fixed by tomorrow, I may take them down until I can get them right.

So there you have it -- The Resplendent Mango 2.0 -- double the resplendence, double the mango.

In response to a lyric that referred to a gnome under the bed:

"It was sudden, for a gnome..."
"Regarding the gnome..."
"I was just, still, on the gnome..."
"The more fun you had, the more guh-nomish the monster would be..."
"Let the sleeping gnome lie..."

These may not be as funny here as they were in lab, but being in closely spaced chairs in a highly refrigerated room for three and a half hours at a time can make things strangely hysterical.

My Schedule

A week or so ago, one of my friends asked me a perfectly reasonable question for which I had no reasonable answer. The question: "So how many classes are you taking?" The answer: "Um...I'm not completely sure..."

Our schedule varies widely week to week with seminars and workshops and master classes and labs and all kinds of other stuff, but let me give you an idea what our week looks like.

Monday:
1:30-3:30 American Musical Theatre History
4-7 Songwriting Master Class (this timeslot varies)

Tuesday:
9-10 Rehearsal for Lab
10-1:30 Lab
2:45-4:30 Playwriting Tutorial
4:45-7 Craft Seminar

Wednesday:
10-12 Symposium
12-1 Optional Lunch Forum
2:30-4:30 Musical Theatre Structures
4:45-7 Lyric Tutorial

Thursday:
9-10 Rehearsal for Lab
10-1:30 Lab
2:45-5 Music Tutorial

Friday:
1-4 Film Scoring Class (optional)

Saturday
1:30-3:30 Film Viewing of Musicals

But, as I said, this varies widely week to week. Things wind up at different times, in different places, with different professors, etc. We're assumed not to have other lives, so it works out decently. We have a different collaborative project each week that we present at lab, and then lots of other exciting things for the tutorials, master classes, etc. This may explain the sparseness of blogging...

Security Moms and other Fantastic Creatures

Noam Schiber has a cute little piece that poses the question Do Security Moms Exist? and says:

If you've been following the presidential campaign these last few weeks, you've probably heard a thing or two about security moms--the erstwhile soccer moms who became obsessed with terrorism after September 11, and, in the process, began tilting Republican. The typical "security mom" story--variations of which have appeared in The Washington Post (twice), The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer in recent weeks, as well as on CNN, ABC, and NPR--cites the hair-raising effect of the recent Russian school massacre. It mentions Laura Bush's frequent pitches to women on security matters, and notes how the Republican Convention was awash in security talk. Often the stories are larded with a testimonial by a real-live security mom, invariably a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, anti-death penalty former Gore supporter who's convinced only George W. Bush can keep her children safe. All of them conclude that security moms could cost John Kerry the election.

Oh, and the stories usually have one other thing in common: They're based on almost no empirical evidence.

As with most urban myths, the idea that terror-related anxiety would drive women into the Republican column is eminently plausible: You'd expect the maternal instinct to make women more concerned about security in the high-risk, post-September 11 environment.

He eventually comes to the conclusion that maybe they do exist because they seem to show up in polls occasionally and the campaigns seem to think they exist, etc, but maybe not. So what do you folks think? Now, I don't personally have kids so I'm not in a position to rebut him, but if you do and consider yourself to be a security mom, perhaps you should drop Noam a line. Be empirical.

The Watcher's Council Speaks

This week's Council results are in. Athena, blogging from Jordan, is our Council winner with a post entitled The Barrier to Defeating Terrorism.

The non-council winner is The Fall of the Media Empire by Cavalier's Guardian Watchblog.

The full results are here.

Thinking Women of the World, Unite!

Can I just say how much pundits writing about the "women's vote" piss me off? Like, for example, in this article.

Last December, Dean was derided by the political establishment on both sides of the aisle when he said that the capture of Saddam Hussein "has not made America safer." At the time, Kerry said Dean's statement "is still more proof that all the advisers in the world can't give Howard Dean the military and foreign policy experience, leadership skills, or diplomatic temperament necessary to lead this country through dangerous times." On Monday at NYU, Kerry put himself firmly in Dean territory when he said of Hussein's removal from power and subsequent capture, "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

That Dean-like statement from Kerry should not scare Kerry's advisers. It is honest, accurate, and preferable to more convoluted Kerry campaign rhetoric.

It also holds appeal for women. The pollsters and pundits say women will vote for the candidate who makes them feel most secure. Some polls show that female support is shifting to Bush. Kerry needs to change that dynamic -- and quickly. By voting to authorize war, Kerry essentially turned the car keys over to a president who recklessly drove America to the wrong war in the wrong country at the wrong time. Taking back the car keys should make many women feel more, not less, secure. Putting Kerry in the driver's seat makes sense, as long as he stops driving around Iraq in circles.

When you make a wrong turn in traffic, life, or war, you don't keep on going. You stop, acknowledge that you were wrong, and do what it takes to get back on track. As women know, a man who admits that is rare indeed, and worth electing to the presidency.

Emphasis mine. What this guy's basically saying is that women care about emotion, not substance. As long as Kerry gives us the feeling of him being in the driver's seat (which should automatically make sense, apparently) we women won't mind where we're going. Honestly, "Taking back the car keys should make many women feel more, not less, secure." That's about as insulting a sentance as is politically correct to write. Maybe women don't just like Bush because he's resolute and brave and steadfast and looks great in a flight suit -- some of us actually support him because we agree with him. As you can see by the ever-expanding ranks of the Eowyn Voters League, there are a fair number of women who vastly prefer the idea of seeing the enemy met on the battlefield than making a last stand at home.

Some of the other semi-insulting women voters lines include:

Women will flock to Edwards because he is supposedly attractive.

Women will vote en masse for Democrats because all women are pro-choice.

Women are unlikely to support a war because they are nurturing.
Etc. I mean, yes, women are more emotional than men a lot of the time, but we're capable of rational thought too. Give us a little credit, please.

My Evening

This evening's diversion: gay bar hopping in the Village. Sorta. We (me and three gay guys -- all the straight men bailed this evening, as did the other girl) stayed at the first one we went to, Phoenix, for quite a while, and it was a fairly nice place, laid-back, not too loud, etc. We then decided to move on down the way and never did find an appropriate next location -- we tried several other gay bars but they all had covers and we weren't interested in that. We then, for reasons that were not entirely clear to me, went in search of a lesbian bar at Houston and A, but it seemed not to exist. No real loss there, although I was looking very nice this evening and didn't have anyone to appriciate me at the gay bars. Since it fortunately didn't exist, we then wandered up the Bowrey in search of a place called Slide (Rob had picked up a guide to the gay bars in the Village somewhere) which we found, and that was great and all except a) it had a cover and b) tonight it was a gay underwear bar. And no, there will never be an occasion in which you will get me down to my underwear in a room full of gay men in tighty-whities. There I put my foot down and there I stood my ground. And then I came home. It was a fun evening though. The boys I went out with are very fun, sweet guys and they make sure to pay attention to me when we're out. Next time, hopefully we'll try to bring along a straight guy or too for my benefit....

On the Contrary...

From today's NYPost:

Earlier this week, Kerry made a much-ballyhooed speech offering four generalizations about how he would fix Iraq. But there was no detail, not a single nut or a lonely bolt. And the current administration is already doing most of what Kerry suggested.

Actually, whenever I think of Kerry alone on stage giving a speech, a "single nut" is pretty much what comes to mind.

Yaawwnnn....

Sweet goodness 7AM comes early. And can I just mention how exceptionally not excited about taking the 6 at 7:45? There is oppression and then there is the 6 train at rush hour. Note: Be a diva. Diva don't sing before 9AM.

The Master

This is not right. I rank in the top 10 sites when you search for "great names for rock bands" (#1 if you search using it as one string) and Dave Barry's not up there at all (okay, he is when you do the single string, but I still rank higher). I do have my share of great names for rock bands, but if you really want the master himself, it's Dave.

Sex Ed is Working!

...Sorta.

From CNN.com:

An 11-year-old boy was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting a 76-year-old neighborhood woman in her home as three of his friends stood watch.

The woman said the 11-year-old put on a condom and tried to rape her, followed by a second boy.

So this kid put on a condom to rape an elderly woman who he stood zero chance of impregnating and from whom he had a near-zero chance of catching an STD. Maybe he didn't want to leave DNA evidence, but I'm not convinced most 6th graders have an adequate understanding of what DNA is, let alone the importance of not leaving it places. Presumably, he was at some point in sex-ed (I mean, health class) he was taught that you should never have sex without a condom and taught how to use one. Apparently they neglected to teach him not to friggin' rape people. That would seem worth a mention...

Discoveries of the Day

Exciting Finale Discovery:

A feature called "implode music" which allows you to condense music from multiple staves onto one staff. Handy, with a fabulous name.

Exciting Shopping Discovery:

Strawberry. Cheap, cute, and abundant.

Exciting Culinary Discovery:

Pad Si Eew

Exciting Cultural Discovery:

The New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape library, which has videos of most major (and many minor) theatrical performances in the last 35 years, plus workshops, interviews, TV shows about theatrical performances, etc, and it's free to use!

Bummer Scheduling Discovery:

I'm singing two pieces tomorrow morning in lab and consequently have to be at school at 8:30 to rehearse. Thank God the first piece I'm singing is LOW. Tuesday I was singing Fs at 9AM. Amazingly, they sounded pretty good. But still, 8:30 is too early for Fs.

Quashing of Dissent

Sorry to alarm ya'll if you just saw the pre-fisked version and thought I'd forgotten to wear my tinfoil hat today. Here's a nicely fiskable email from Howard Dean:

Dear Katie,

Dear Howie... Actually, you van't be Howie. That's my dog's name and he's cute and you aren't and he seems sane, for a beagle. So I guess we'll have to stick with Howard. Or Doc, maybe? Except Doc was one of the better dwarves. Maybe Dean-o. That will do.

Dear Dean-o,
Prepare for a fisking you'll never forget.

Jerry Falwell has a lot to say.

So does Mary Beth Cahill. So does John Kerry, considering how many positions he manages to hold relative to the number of issues upon which it is possible to hold positions. So does Bill Clinton, judging by the size of his autobiography. So do you, it would seem. Having a lot to say is not automatically a bad thing. It certainly has its moments of annoyingness, but I know I personally haven't been subjected to the ravings of Falwell in quite a while, except for just now when you sent them to me. Just don't listen.

Falwell is the fundamentalist who opened the Republican National Convention in 2000 (the GOP kept him under lock-and-key this time around). He asserts that the AIDS crisis is "God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

And we all know that fundamentalists are Evil, or something. Now, please understand that I in no way shape or form agree with Falwell on pretty much any issue related to homosexuality. However, I have a problem with blanket intolerance towards Fundamentalists. I don't always like what they believe, but as long as they're not actively advocating going around stringing up the queers, I think they have a right to say it. And then I have the right to say why I think they're wrong. As they say, the solution to free speech is more free speech.

Now he has started a law school. The purpose: to train fundamentalists to ignore laws they don't support and reinterpret others to enforce their radical agenda. The "school" is only the latest move in a monumental power play by the extreme right wing.

Oh NO! Good grief, a law school with a political agenda? Lawyers with political agendas? In the United States of America? Say it ain't so.

They have taken over the Republican Party - and have set their sights on every branch of our government.

Given that Falwell was kept "under lock and key" at the most recent convention while people like McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger and Laura Bush were given primetime speaking engagements, the Falwell takeover seems to be rather unimpressive at best.

In the coming weeks, Democracy for America wants to distribute $250,000 to candidates who will stop them. Supporting these candidates now builds the infrastructure we will need to compete with the radical right.

If I understand the logic of this email correctly, you're going to distribute money to candidates who will stop Christians from starting a law school. Or maybe to candidates who will stop Christian lawyers? And ya'll are the tolerant, pro-civil-liberties, pro-free-speech folks? As far as I can tell, if I want to start a law school dedicated to the study of fly fishing law, that's just fine. Now, if I want my graduates to be real lawyers, my school a) has to get accredited and b) my students have to pass the bar exam, which will include questions about those nefarious laws that don't apply to fly fishing. If I do manage to meet these things then I'm not doing any wrong and if I don't manage to do these things, I'm not doing any harm, and in any case, it doesn't seem to be the government's place to stop me.

But we need your help to make that investment in the future of our cause:

I'd make a contribution to the ACLU first -- at least they purport to support civil liberties.

The press didn't say much about the new law school. But a timid, shallow media is not the only problem. People who support common sense and fairness do not have the same infrastructure as the radical right. For decades they have spent billions of dollars funding, training and amplifying their movement.

Once again, why is it a problem if Christians want to teach law to other Christians from a Christian perspective. It's not like they're gonna go out and make their own little Christian varient of sharia'a. If the wacky fundamentalists go around ignoring laws that they don't like, well, that's why we have judges -- to slap them down and make them deal with the laws we have. And while we're talking about sharia'a and creepy little religious schools, what do you have to say, Dean-o, about the madrasses in the Middle East where children are trained to be suicide bombers and have their ears snipped off for not chanting loud enough?

::crickets::

Maybe you should throw some cash towards stopping that cute little practice, buddy.

That's why we are supporting judicial candidates like Anita Kelly in Alabama. She will use her office to enforce the law and address real problems. She has spent her career fighting to enforce laws that guarantee access to education, labor rights, and other liberties that people like Falwell would roll back.

Support the candidates who believe what you do, fine. Try to shut down the private schools of the people with whom you disagree and you, my friend, are well on your way to becoming an oppressor. Once again, the Bar doesn't have to admit them and whoever it is that accredits law schools doesn't have to accredit them (although if they meet the standards, whatever those are, they shouldn't not accredit them on ideological grounds) but people can learn whatever they want to learn and teach what they want to teach. Period.

Democracy for America is the organization dedicated to stopping them. DFA is the only organization who will not be afraid to stand up and fight back now and build the infrastructure to compete with them for decades to come. Please contribute whatever you can today:

And we're the Digital Brownshirts. I sigh in your general direction.

In the days after September 11th Falwell said that America deserved to be attacked for, "throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools." He implicated supporters of civil liberties and women's rights, among others, saying: "I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

He said something bad. He's free to say that. He's free to be wrong. He's free to teach other people things that are wrong. He's even allowed to teach other people things about the law that are wrong. The Bar is free to flunk them. I feel like I'm repeating myself here.

Like the rest of his and George Bush's agenda, the purpose of Falwell's law school is to roll back the progress of the last hundred years. The people of this country have spent a century unraveling hate and prejudice from out legal system. Falwell wants to bring all that back.

Then defeat them in court. Hold their arguments up to the standard of the Law and the Constitution and whatever and show them to be lacking. Nothing more exciting than winning an argument. Beat them with your ideas. But don't you dare shut them down.

I am committed to stopping him. The dozens of candidates DFA has endorsed for every level of office are committed to stopping him and his allies. There are just over 40 days left to make an impact on this election. Make your commitment to today:

Can I commit you to the secure mental facility of my choice? I'd make that commitment.

With your contribution, we can make this substantial investment in the future of our movement for socially progressive, fiscally responsible, common sense change.

As I said, I'm all for socially progressive policy. I'm just not in favor of you trying to shut down an intellectual community with which you do not agree.

Thank you.

Nothing to thank me for here, buckaroo.

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Democracy for America

Katie Mango,
The Resplendent Mango

On Fascist, Totalitarian States

Tonight I stopped in a rather nice grocery store in Gramercy on 3rd on my way up to the subway. One of the employees, a nice woman, was taking surveys about the store, entering people in a raffle for a $100 gift certificate, and handing out nice cookies. I wasn't in any particular hurry, so I filled one out. I gave her back my survey and she made some comment to me about how useful the surveys were and how "they were good for the store and they were good for the customers because they give you a voice and in Bush's America, you aren't likely to get that." I think I said something to the effect of, "Huh" and sidled away quickly with my cookie.

Let me point out a few simple things about fascist, totalitarian states.

In fascist, totalitarian states, dissent is repressed and punished by the government. As far as I can tell, this is largely not the case here. By and large, the only way you're going to be punished for stating unpopular views is that other citizens aren't going to like you, and contrary to popular belief, there is not a constitutional right to popularity.

In fascist, totalitarian states, dissent is discovered by a network of secret police and informers. Think Gestapo. In Nazi Germany, shopkeepers did not idly trash-talk Der Fuhrer to passing customers because one of those customers could have a direct line to the guy who could send you to Treblinka. Same for Iraqis, etc. This lady apparently wasn't that afraid or she would have worried that perhaps I know ways to get ahold of John Ashcroft and have him deprive her of civil liberties [You DO know ways to get ahold of John Ashcroft...-ed. Well, kinda. I know who to call to call his family. It would definitely take at least an hour to report this lady as a rebel from GOP mind control and I need to go to bed.]

In fascist, totalitarian states, things like blogs and correspondances and letters and such are monitored, censored, and sometimes prohibited. If you want a voice, you got one. Just click on the "Blogger" button and within 10 minutes, you've got a free, 75%-reliable voice that can reach millions of people.

Bush's America is not a fascist, totalitarian state. In other late breaking news, Manhattan is an island.

Once Again...

...this is bad. I think I'm going to stay around the apartment on Nov. 2 and avoid the subways and major buildings.

Testing

Blogger's being weird again. My latest post can only be seen in the archive for some odd reason. So go there and look for it, I guess. It was funny.

Comic Relief

Back in the old days, before I started writing about politics, I used to blog funny things that I heard, and last night I was rereading my archives and decided I need more of that. Some of these you may have had to be there for. Oh well. Here goes:

Mel on the AABA song:
It's like this:

I love you.
I LOVE YOU!
I hate you.
But I love you.

Or the Carousel version:

I love you.
I LOVE YOU!
You beat me.
But I love you.

Or the Gypsy version:

I love you.
I LOVE YOU!
I love me more.
But I love you.

Larry, in American Musical Theatre History, On Cats:

"What is Cats? It's a revue with people with tails, jumping around."
"It's not exactly high drama. It's not 'Is Laurey going to pick Curly or Jud?' Oh my God, is Mungo Jerry gonna get declawed or not?!?"

Nifty Things Said by Dead People

"The perfect musical is the one in which the orchestrations sound like the costumes look." -Hammerstein, or possibly Rodgers

"Style is knowing which play you're in." -- Someone wise

Funny Remark by a Classmate, On the Shower Sequence in My Fair Lady
"My more well-adjusted classmates were going on about Psycho and I was still stuck on My Fair Lady

Hysterical Opera Term of the Day

"Park and Bark" -- when an opera singer plants his or herself in the middle of the stage and hollers out an aria

That's all for today. More later, I assume.

FiskFest -- Vol. 1

This is the first weekly installment of FiskFest, a carnival devoted to cool logic served up line-by-line with a heaping scoop of sarcasm and/or scorn.

First off, on the CBS Rathergate scandal, we have a beautiful little fisking of the Sept 15 CBS statement administered by Ernest Miller.

Next, Professor Bainbridge takes his fisking stick to Ben Wasserstein's L.A.Times piece on bloggers. A light, dry fisking, slightly tannic.

Superstar at Cavalry Charge gives us a classic fisking of Mark Shields' pep talk for John Kerry. This one's magnificent.

I had a couple new fiskings this week, mostly of my email. Mary Beth Cahill here, John Kerry here, more John Kerry here. More Mary Beth Cahill here. And I've got a Howard Dean up my sleeve...

Finally, this week Abigail fisked for the first time! And it's pretty good. Go take a look.

UPDATE: Blogger's being really screwy and only posting my new posts to the archive, not to the front page. You can get to my latest here.

The Council

The Watcher's Council has chosen its winners for the week. They are:

Council
NPR and Media Matters Can't Tell Time from Patterico's Pontifications

Non-Council
Are the CBS National Guard Documents Fake? from INDC Journal

Full results are here.

If you have a great post sitting around not getting recognized for its obvious brilliance and you'd like to submit it for the Council's consideration, you can find instructions for how to do so here. This way you get a little link-love and a guaranteed 13 readers for your post. And maybe glory. Good times.

Another One Bites the Dust

In another salvo for the hearts and minds of Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald invites Kitty Kelly over for a Kool-Aid tasting session.

Nice.

(Not for the squeamish...)

A Lesson in Correctness and Propriety

INAPPROPRIATE

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us. -- Dick Cheney

APPROPRIATE

John Kerry's campaign has warned Australians that the Howard Government's support for the US in Iraq has made them a bigger target for international terrorists.

Diana Kerry, younger sister of the Democrat presidential candidate, told The Weekend Australian that the Bali bombing and the recent attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta clearly showed the danger to Australians had increased.

"Australia has kept faith with the US and we are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels," she said, referring to the invasion of Iraq.

Incidentally, what on earth is Kerry doing sending surrogates to Australia. John, you gotta win first before you get to have foreign relations. Logan Act, anyone?

UPDATE: Cap'n Ed elaborates:

So much for "building alliances"! Kerry has now acted to undermine a critical relationship in the war on terror just to score some electoral points. A failure on John Howard's part to be re-elected would certainly give Kerry ammunition to attack George Bush on his standing overseas. However, with Howard running ahead of the pack in Australia, Kerry sent his little sister to attempt to influence the Australian election -- which, if reversed, would have Americans screaming bloody murder.

[...]

Does John Kerry care more about grabbing power than he does about the United States? It certainly appears that way. Who gave the order for Diana Kerry to interfere with the Australian election? Who told her to act in a manner that is calculated to undermine the American-Australian partnership on the terror war? Frankly, not only should this disqualify him for the presidency, it should disqualify anyone involved in his campaign from ever holding public office. Those who condone this interference in a wartime alliance must be punished at the polls, and their party as a whole should be blocked from any power whatsoever until they atone for their actions.

This effort makes clear that John Kerry does not understand, or care, about the dangers facing the US and the democracies in the 21st century. His personal ambitions trump national security -- a disgusting and craven quality that will repulse Americans in November. It appears to be the only consistent theme in Kerry's public life, from his fraudulent 1971 Senate testimony all the way to his serial vacillations on the war on terror during this campaign.

That seems about right. Terrifying.

Dinner Party

The dinner party went very well last night; you'd think these people had never eaten a properly cooked meal before. I spent most of the morning cleaning (mop the bathroom, vacuum the rug, hide the Coulter books) and then shopped in the afternoon. One of the guys was supposed to come over and help me cook at 5, but he and his roommate didn't get here until 6, which delayed the completion of dinner till 7, but that was fine because everyone was late getting here anyway. Maybe the 6 train was running slow. I just cooked the first hour of dinner by myself. I managed to burn myself trying to move a pot, which then made assembling the piononos a challenge (the fact that the plantains weren't quite ripe also made it a challenge) but somehow it all came together. Here's what I made, roughly speaking.

Mango Chicken
Chicken breasts
Mangoes, in equal number, ripe
Sugar

Cut each chicken breast into 4-5 strips. Lay them in the bottom of a baking dish. Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh from the pit. You'll want to keep the juice too. Chunk the mango. Cover the chicken with the mango pieces and juice. Sprinkle with a little bit of sugar to counteract the mango's natural loss of sweetness when baked. Bake until done.

Piononos
Ripe plantains (the key to plantains is that the less edible they look, the more edible they are)
Canned black beans
Monteray or Pepper Jack cheese
Oil for frying

Peel the plantains and slice them lengthwise into 1/4" thick strips (one plantain should make 4-5 strips). Fry these strips until they're done. Let them cool a little bit, trust me. On a cookie sheet, form the strips into rings. If they're ripe enough, you should be able to accomplish this just by pressing the ends together. If they're not, you'll want to use strips of foil around them to hold them in rings. Fill the rings with black beans. Grate the cheese and generously top each pionono with cheese. Bake until the cheese has melted. Serve with the condiment of your choice.

Coconut Rice
Rice
Coconut Milk
Water

Measure out enough rice to feed your crowd (1 1/2 cup = 6 servings). Add one can of coconut milk per 6 servings. Add enough water to make up the differential for proper rice moisture (1 1/3 cup water for 6 servings). Put it all in a large pot and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Cover and simmer until done.

Bread Pudding
Lots of bread
Lots of sugar
3 cups cream
10 egg yolks
2 cups milk
1/2 c - 1 c dried apricots or cherries or whatever you like

Combine 1 c sugar, 1 3/4 c water and dried fruit in small saucepan. Dissolve sugar at low heat, then bring to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes. Drain the fruit, reserving the liquid. In a double boiler, heat milk and two cups of cream, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming. In a large bowl, combine egg yolks and 2 cups of sugar and beat until smooth. Beat in cream mixture. Tear bread into chunks and arrange two layers covering the bottom of a very large baking dish or two smaller ones. Scatter fruit over bread. Fill the dish with more layers of bread. Pour egg mixture over bread, and press bread into liquid to make sure it absorbs. Allow the dish to stand for a few minutes. Now would be a good time to preheat to 350, or whatever your preferred baking temperature is. Bake for about an hour or until a knife comes out clean. While it's baking, combine 1/4 c. water and 1 c. sugar in a small saucepan and dissolve over low heat. Bring to a boil and keep a close eye on it. Once it comes to a boil, do not stir. When it turns a nice brown (not too light, not too dark) add a cup of the reserved fruit liquid. Watch yourself, because it will go crazy on you there. Make sure the thicker liquid dissolves. Boil for about 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and add 1 c. cream. When the bread pudding comes out of the oven, pour about half of the caramel sauce over it and allow it to cool a bit. Serve with a dish of caramel sauce that your guests can use to taste. Do not anticipate leftovers. I've never seen one of these things (and I've made some pretty huge recipes of this) last more than 2 hours.

So that was my dinner party. Good times.

Excuse and Reminder

Excuse: Blogging will be light-to-nonexistant this afternoon, as I have a ton of people coming over for dinner and still have cleaning/shopping to do.

Reminder: Send in those fisks! Doesn't matter if its yours or someone else's. Just send 'em. Either email them or leave a comment.

Nnnyaaaar!

This is a stone riot. [What exactly is that? -- ed. It's a figure of speech, that's what it is.]

Lunching with Liberals

Today at lunch, we somehow got on the topic of Schwarzenegger, which I wasn't too thrilled about because I have a strict policy of avoiding political discussions at all costs. You would too, trust me. Anyway, one of my friends declared that Schwarzenegger was an awful governor because he (my friend) had been to LA, and there has never been a more unequal city, with such insanely rich people and such horrificly poor people, etc. Everyone was nodding and agreeing, and I had to say something. I wasn't going to leap to Arnold's defense too vigorously because I don't have any desire to be outed as a conservative, but something had to be said. I decided to go with the obvious: Arnold has been governor of California for about 10 months. L.A. has been profoundly messed up for, what, 30 or 40 years? I pointed out that it was hardly fair to blame all of that on Arnold, and furthermore, the best governor in the world wouldn't be able to turn L.A. into a utopia in 10 years, let alone 10 months. It just ain't gonna happen.

At this point, something curious happened. One of my very liberal friends said, "You know, I guess you just can't count on the government to take care of things or change things. Some things you have to work towards yourself." And I thought, "DING DING DING! WE HAVE A CONSERVATIVE!" A large part of the current conservative movement is that idea that the government ought not take care of people, it ought to give them the tools to take care of themselves. Now, I'm not sure that he meant it in a conservative way, he may have meant it in a "the People should rise up" sort of way. But maybe there's a glimmer of hope.

"Get active"

I just got an email entitled "Get active" from the John Kerry campaign and I assumed that it would some how be a preliminary offering from THK's new Department of Wellness. I was wrong -- it was another missive from my buddy Mary Beth.

Dear Friend,

The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin, Snoopy and Charlie. Those are friends. You and I ain't.

This week, we asked you to help the Democratic Party -- and once again you delivered. Thanks to you, we have the resources to fight back against vile attacks from the Bush-Cheney campaign and to build the infrastructure that will get out the vote on Election Day.

So this means you have the resources you need and will not be emailing me again trying to get me to fork over wads of cash? I'm not gonna hold my breath. Once again, "vile" may not be the best word to make friends and influence people.

During the past week, our campaign to take back the White House took another giant leap forward during the Democratic Party's volunteer organizing conventions. Thousands of precinct leaders and other committed volunteers gathered at Democratic Party organizing conventions around the country to receive the vital training that will help them get voters to the polls on Election Day. These tireless volunteers will recruit and train others in their neighborhoods to methodically locate every targeted voter and get them out to vote.

Boy, somebody drank a double shot of adjectives with her bagel this morning. We've got committed volunteers, vital training, tireless volunteers, targeted voters and methodical location. What more could a boy ask for?

Victory on Election Day depends on our volunteers -- whether they choose to spend just a few hours, or to put their lives on hold for the next seven weeks. Democratic candidates still need more volunteers, and I urge you to sign up today.

I've always found the "lives on hold" bit to be slightly creepy, especially the people who did that for Dean. Or the lady Dean mentioned at the convention who saved nickels and dimes from her disability payments to give to him. Anyway, MB, I won't be volunteering. I have to wash my hair.

In every battleground state, volunteer leaders and Democratic staff organizers are running a massive phone bank and door-to-door canvass operation. This vast and growing organization is working to identify and register John Kerry supporters and to get the facts to undecided voters. As we approach Election Day, this organization will become the largest get-out-the-vote operation in history.

Except for the Republican one, which will get out more votes than you and you will find yourself at a "victory" party drowning your sorrows with French wine and EZ Cheez, wondering how the Evil Rove beat you.

No political campaign in American history has engaged as many people as this one. The dedication of our volunteers is inspiring.

Oh yes, bust out the meaningless platitudes. So, Mary Beth, how many people are on your email list, 2 million, is it? Didja know Bush as 6 million on his? Of course, they're probably all wealthy white people who read the emails between beating the servants and stealing the oil from naked Iraqi peasants. But there are still more of them.

We urge you to become a part of this incredible effort. The future of your country depends on it.

Oh, well in that case. So if Cheney implies that life might be more dangerous with you, that's a hanging offense, but you can say that the entire future of our country depends on voting for you? I...don't understand.

Thank you,

Παρακαλώ.

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

Katie Mango, Personal Fisker to Mary Beth Cahill

Watcher's Council

I'm a bit tardy in posting this, but here are the results of last week's vote.

Council

It’s Not the Thought, It’s the Dream That Counts
Ubique Patriam Reminisci

Patriotism, and the Lack Thereof
Four Right Wing Wackos

Austria Responds to Arnold’s Smear
Damnum Absque Injuria

 
Non-council

The Bush Doctrine
Citizen Smash - The Indepundit

An Interview With John O'Neill
Right Wing News

Full results are here.

Day(s) Late, Dollar Short

In the Washington Post, we have this choice morsel:

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."


"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

Well, feel free to "break" that story any time. Other stories you might consider breaking include:
1) Gravity makes stuff fall down.
2) The earth rotates around the sun.
3) The stork does not bring babies.

Incidentally, did anyone else snicker when Dan Rather referred to himself as "this reporter"?

The Collective Mind

I'm the lips!

FISKFEST!

I've decided to start a Carnival dedicated to the week's best fiskings -- a fisk-fest, as it were. This week's deadline will be Friday at 11PM. Send your best fisk of the week to kmangoum~at~aol~dot~com.

Also, since this is new, please put up a link to advertise so we can get it off the ground. Spread the word!

Fisking John

Dear Friend,

Any friend of Mary Beth's, well, isn't a friend of mine. But welcome. This could be a good time.

We are at one of the defining moments of this campaign -- one of those points we will look back on when we win. We will remember that George Bush and Dick Cheney tried to completely ignore reality -- and we will remember that we stood side by side and refused to let them get away with it.

Two things -- first, the press, even the lefty press are already writing their "How Kerry Blew It" retrospective stories. Second, let's talk ignoring reality. The GOP isn't the party who's candidate can't distinguish his own biography from "Apocolypse Now." No magic hats there. Or how about this reality John -- Vietnam ended 30+ years ago and quite frankly, the American public doesn't give a damn what you did there. Bill Clinton pretty much neutralized that point. The reality is that we are in a war right now and we'd prefer you talked about it. The reality is that the economy is doing much better. That's a lot of reality that your campaign hasn't quite digested yet.

George Bush and Dick Cheney wake up every morning with their fingers crossed, hoping the American people will ignore their miserable record, forget their trail of failures, and fear the future.

Since you seem to be all about people running on their record, when will you be telling us about your distinguished and influential Senate career? I really wish people would lay off on that whole "fear the future" bit. As far as I can tell, we should be afraid. We have clear, concrete evidence that there are a band of highly dedicated, highly talented people who want to see as many of us as possible. Sometimes fear is healthy. If we're in a scary portion of history, burying our heads so we don't feel so afraid is not a smart strategy.

But with your help, we are going to make sure that the American people see through their bluster and posturing, and see what a mess they have made.

Bluster and posturing are positions that seem to be more closely associated with your campaign, dear. Ya'll seem to have reflexive campaigning down.

Please make a contribution to the Democratic Party today:

Please bite me.

George Bush and Dick Cheney have lost over a million jobs, made our health care crisis worse, and turned record budget surpluses into record deficits.

Wow, they personally lost a million jobs? Man, that's absent-minded. I just lose my keys sometimes. Did they look under the couch cushions? Sometimes I lose things there. Didja ever think, John, that the loss of a million jobs might in some ways be connected to the burst of the dot com bubble, the inevitable recession that followed the 90's, and a major terrorist attack?

They misled America into war, failed to plan for the peace, and are running up a $200 billion bill at the expense of America's middle class taxpayers.

Oh, the middle class. See, the IRS sorts the money based on whether it comes from lower, middle or evil class people and uses it for different things. The lower class money goes for things like paying for clubbing baby seals and holding expensive soirees to celebrate things like "National Pancake Month". The middle class money is ear-marked for immoral wars and grants to wealthy corporations. The evil class doesn't pay anything. And meanwhile, back on earth... How would you have led us into war, since you've said that you would have gone anyway? Are you aware that plans never survive the first contact? Do you think that government money should be spent for things like defense? If so, why are you complaining?

And now they are acting like they are doing us a favor by standing for re-election. They even have the gall to tell the American people how risky it would be if we turned them out of office.

Boy, somebody has his designer briefs in a twist this morning. I think that it would be risky for you to turn them out of office. That's why I'm not voting for you.

The biggest risk to America's future is four more years of Bush-Cheney's incompetence, misinformation, and ill intent.

NO, YOU FRIGGIN' MORON! THE BIGGEST RISK TO AMERICA'S FUTURE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WANT US DEAD!

Don't let Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party run away from their record. Send a "Don't yield an inch" contribution to the Democratic Party right now:

Once again, how about you run on your record, Johnny?

There are seven critical weeks left in this campaign. There will be moments when everything seems to be going our way -- and times when we will wish events were moving in a different direction. But we will never lose faith. We will never stop working for victory. And we will never yield an inch to our opponents.

When you've got moments that things are going your way and whole times when they're going the other way, you have a problem, dear.

Remember this: they are the ones who are hoping and praying that reality does not catch up with them by Election Day. We are the ones who are going to make sure that it does.

Speaking of reality catching up by election day, better hope those Swifties and POWs and other vets don't catch up with you by Election Day. Or really ever, it sounds like.

The rest of this campaign will be tough. But, we will be tougher. They will throw everything they have at us. But we will give as good as we get. And when the dust settles on Election Day, we are going to pull through to victory.

Feel free to continue thinking that. You know, continuous process stories are a sign of a sinking campaign, just FYI John.

Thank you for all you have done to help me, John Edwards and other Democratic candidates.

Always glad to be of service.

And, most of all, thank you for standing with us through thick and thin. Together, we will win.

Oh no...shades of Universal (corporate motto: "We Will Win!") Anyway, um, good luck with that, Johns.

Thank you,

It's the least I can do.

John Kerry

Katie Mango

Irony Watch

John Kerry has an op-ed in the OpinionJournal today, and I don't really feel like performing a full fisking (if you do, leave me a link and I'll post it), but let's look at the title.

MY ECONOMIC POLICY: A new CEO in Washington would be good for American business.

You know, "MY SUMMER VACATION" might have been a more interesting choice. It strikes me as just a tad rich that a man who has never worked a day for a company would be going around referring to himself as a CEO. Let's go to The Biography for a second. He went to Yale. There are no reports of him having a job at that point. He enlisted. He came home. He went to Boston College law school. He worked as a prosecutor. He became a senator. It's astounding to think that someone could make it to the age of 60 without at some point engaging in acts of commerce, but that seems to be the case with John Kerry.

John Edwards isn't much better. He at least worked his way through college/law school, which doesn't really give him a lot in terms of actual business experience, but at least he's flung a few fries in his day.

In contrast, George Bush has a Harvard MBA, worked in the oil industry (and yes, I know that wasn't particularly successful, but 90% of business ventures aren't, and flops tend to be extremely educational) and was managing general partner of the Texas Rangers. Oh, and if we want to talk Executive experience, there's that little bit about him being governor and president.

Dick Cheney was the CEO of Haliburton, and even though we all know that Haliburton is evil (Why? -- ed. We just know it, okay.) that still does put him a few squares above Kerry on the "I Know How To Be A CEO" show.

If Kerry had called his op-ed "A John Kerry administration would be good for businesses," he'd still be wrong, but the chances of the actual business people who read the Wall Street Journal snorting latte out their noses as they read it would be much smaller. And remember John, people don't vote for people who cause them to snork latte.

Exciting News

Stephen Schwartz (my hero!) and Winnie Holtzman are coming to speak to us on October 13th. Yay!

On Gay Marriage

Andrew Sullivan is, of course, entitled to support whichever candidate he chooses, for whichever reasons he chooses. I'd like to point out though, before he sells his birthright for a mess of marriage, that Kerry's not on his side either. From CNN.com:

Both Bush and Kerry have said they oppose same-sex marriage but would support states establishing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Bush supports a federal constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, which Kerry opposes.

However, the Democratic nominee has expressed support for an amendment banning same-sex marriage in his home state of Massachusetts, which in May became the first jurisdiction in the nation to allow gay men and lesbians to marry.

And after the vote in Missouri, Kerry also said he would have supported the amendment if he had been a voter in there.

So they're both out to get you, but one might also get you killed. Vote accordingly.

More Mary Beth

As many of you know, fisking Mary Beth Cahill is one of my favorite pastimes. I've just received another email from her, so it's that time again.

Dear Friend,

Hey Buddy, haven't heard from you in a while. Absence made the heart grow fonder, eh?

Every incumbent seeking re-election needs to defend his/her record.

One could also argue that every incumbent seeking higher office also needs to defend his/her record, but that would not be particularly helpful to your cause, so I suppose I can understand you overlooking this point.

But George Bush can't defend his record of exporting jobs, soaring health care costs, dangerous dependence on Middle East oil and a disastrous foreign policy.

Alright, let's look at these things. I know nothing about outsourcing, but Daniel Drezner, who seems to be exceptionally well-educated on this issue, says that it's actually good for the economy and leads to job creation. Something about efficiency. Health care costs are soaring, and if you want to point a finger on this one, go track down John Edwards. Dangerous dependence on Middle East oil (not to nit-pick, but shouldn't it be Middle Eastern?) is something that I think we're going to have to pin on Henry Ford, if anyone. Just to review, we've been dangerously dependant on Middle Eastern oil for at least 35 years. We were under Clinton. And Bush I. And Reagan. And Carter. Short of a miracle, we would be under a Kerry presidency also. Dangerous dependence on Middle Eastern oil is bad, and I would love to see this change, but at the moment, promising energy independence (especially without further domestic drilling/exploration) is somewhat like promising an end to hurricanes. Wonderful, but inpossible. I think our foreign policy is working as well as can be expected. You are, as usual, free to disagree.

His campaign only has one strategy left: throw all their resources into a negative campaign spreading lies about John Kerry.

Yep, that's exactly it. Except not at all. Let me clue you in on a little secret, MB. Can I call you MB? I'm on yours and Bush's email lists. I get a lot of bitch, whine, complain, and smear emails. Guess which campaign they come from? Yours! For example, this email has the subject "Respond to Vile Republican Attacks." Calling your opponents vile is not the best way to appear above the fray. Bush at least has a set of plans. Kerry has a set of anti-plans. Kerry's plans only exist in relation to Bush's. If Bush went away, there would be no plan, because Kerry would have no one against whom to rebel. If you really wanted to describe the GOP strategy, here's what it is: 1) Go out and deliver powerful, positive, simple and strong stump speeches, 2) Remain above the fray as far as negative attacks go, for the most part, and 3) Watch ya'll self-destruct.

What we've seen during the past few weeks is just the beginning. The Republicans are continuing to spread their lies about John Kerry.

Not that I'm suggesting that this is your problem, Mary B, but I'm assuming it wasn't a Republican forger who put a bee in CBS's bonnet, I would guess that was a Democrat (and if any of you post a "Rove, evil mastermind" sort of comment, I'm banning you. You've been warned.) and since they're forgeries, I suspect those count as lies too. Incidentally, I haven't gotten any whining emails from Bush about those. And you also have Michael Moore, MoveOn, etc on your side, so I don't think we have a monopoly on the continuing to spread lies front.

The Democratic Party is crucial to our campaign's strategy of responding to these slanders. The sooner you can make your donation to the Democratic Party, the better -- by receiving your contribution now, the Democratic Party will be better able to budget and plan its future response to these vile assaults.

I don't understand campaign finance reform. I thought that after the convention, fundraising was over and Kerry was stuck with $75 million. And I feel like Mary Beth tried to hustle me for a last minute donation back at the time of the convention with some reasoning relating to that rule. As I said, I don't understand it.

Help us fire back by contributing to the Democratic Party today:

Or maybe I'll just ignite small piles of bills. Or use them to pay for things like food.

You know how the Bush-Cheney attack machine works: their false, malicious, and slanderous campaigning is going to continue, and the lies are going to keep coming. You've seen their pattern -- they register an outrageous charge and poison our politics; then a few days later, they retract their statement. Dick Cheney's recent remark about the increased likelihood of terrorist attacks if John Kerry were elected is just another example of this strategy in what has become the most negative presidential re-election campaign in modern history.

Once again, see Dan Rather, the Hitler ads, and the collected quotes of Michael Moore, John Kerry, John Glenn, etc. Other than that, I have no response to this. Not because she's right, simply because I don't feel like it. If you can't see the absurdity of that paragraph by now, I have nothing more to say to you. And I don't think the Dems have a lot of room to talk on retracting statements and changing positions. And that Cheney bit was Dowdified and you know it.

Every time they hit us, we will hit back harder. Help us by giving the Democratic Party the resources to go on the offensive and set the terms of this campaign. We can counter this new attack campaign -- but only because those of you receiving this e-mail have given us the funds to fight another day.

Well, some of us, maybe. Others of us just use you for fisking material to entertain our readers.

Please make a contribution today, and help the Democratic Party fire back against these vile attacks.

There's that word "vile" again. You know, Mary Beth, I think you might ought to consider a digital version of the saying "A lady never raises her voice." That might serve you well here.

Thank you,

You're welcome. Any time. Any place.

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

Katie Mango
Campaign Manager Fisker

Quote of the Evening

"Well you're the Mayor of Inappropriateville at the moment!"

Suggestion for CBS

Jeff needs a job. You obviously need a competent researcher/editor/B.S.-spotter. So why not give him a call -- I'm sure you could spare some money for his salary from the soon-to-be-created "What Used To Be Dan Rather's Salary" fund. And just in case you're worried about him having a professional appearance, we bloggers will even chip in to buy him some really nice PJs, maybe with feet and a flap in the back. Or a suit, although that might encroach upon his blogger superpowers. So why not give the man a call? Heck, a grown man in footie-pajamas running around in the news room would still be less embarrassing than having Dan Rather loose.

Chronicle of a Cake

It was going to be angel food, but the egg whites fell. It had to be salvaged though, because I have a party to go to and need to make some sort of edible contribution, and here I had a bowl of sweetened, floured eggwhites. So I added chocolate, more flour and oil, assisted the whites in their descent, plopped the concoction in a pan, and baked at 350. It came out better than I expected, but somewhat dense. And slightly dry. I wasn't going to take a cake of very questionable merits to a party of people I don't know too well, so I knew a taste test was in order. I cut myself a tiny wedge. It was edible. Not great, but edible. So now I had an edible cake with a hunk missing. Classy.

Quickly, I requisitioned pudding, Cool Whip and Kalhua. I shredded the cake and doused it with Kahlua. I crumbled it over the bottom of the pan and smeared it with pudding. I crumbled on more cake and then sealed the whole thing with Cool-Whip. Now I will attempt to transport this concoction 8 blocks on foot, 63 blocks by subway, and another 4 or so blocks by foot. Without creating some sort of a catastrophe. I'll let you know how it goes.

Blogging in PJs

I was busy today and the rest of the blogosphere seemed to have Dan Rather hogtied, so I don't think I was really missed. One comment that came through today that fascinated me was Jonathan Klein's contention that "Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas."

This, of course, begs the question, "Can someone be truthful while wearing pajamas?" You'll have to decide for yourself -- I'm wearing pajamas at the moment. Do you believe me? Does that make me less credible? Has my IQ dropped since I took off my collared shirt? Are my reasoning capacities impared? Would I seem more credible if I added a robe? Anyway, since we seem to be stuck with the stereotype, let's embrace it.

I think this calls for a gallery: Bloggers in Pajamas. Get a friend or relative to take a picture of you at your computer in your pajamas or a version thereof modified to a PG level, and then either email it to me (kmangoum~at~aol~dot~com) or host it someplace and leave me a link in the comments. Also, spread the word, because I'd like to get as many assorted PJ Bloggers as possible. We'll see if this goes anywhere.

Let's see them PJs! Spread the word! Ever wanted to see Glenn in his Blogging Pajamas? Hugh? Oliver Willis? (Stop! -- Ed. Sorry! Think happy thoughts. Rainbows. Puppy dogs. Etc...) Well, apply a little blogosphere pressure and let's see what happens.

The Church of the Rhythm Of Life

Ambra, who you should be reading, sticks it to John Kerry for his "sermon" to the National Baptist Council.

Politicians have no shame. When it comes to earning the "black vote", everytime an election rolls around, all of a sudden, everyone remembers how "religious" and "deep" and "spiritual" they are, and church appearances abound. If I were a pastor, I'd charge their shady behinds to come speak to the congregation. The cynical part of me is tempted to think some of them actually do. To be clear, I'm not a fan of campaigning from the pulpit; not even when I am in support of the candidate. To be more specific, I detest it. It is abuse and misuse of God-given authority and influence. I use the term "pulpit" loosely. In this case, it was the 124th Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, which took place this Thursday in New Orleans. Jesse Jackson was there, and you better believe John Kerry wasn't too far behind (reg required).

It doesn't take a child prodigy to realize that the "black church" (I hate that term) is largely Democrat. This is because the black community is largely Democrat. It can therefore be deduced that the predominately black "National Baptist Convention" was a safehaven for John Kerry to practice his choir-preaching. It's amazing how bold people get when they know they have nothing to lose. John failed to realize that sometimes the choir is more jacked up (vernacular translation: in a very bad condition) than the congregation itself (those of us who were raised in church know what this means). The choir folks, has issues.

And it just gets better from there. It's always fun to watch not-especially-devout politicians play pious for political reasons. Like the Howard Dean "Job's my favorite New Testament book" moment. Could we, at some point, get a non-religious pol who would say, "Ya know, I don't particularly care for religion"? I wouldn't agree with him, but it would be better than watching them pretend to be something they aren't. I don't think that's what Paul had in mind when he talked about being all things to all men. The other thing I don't think people like John Kerry realize is that the demographic we'll call "born again" can spot a fake a mile and a half away. You can quote the Bible and sing the hymns and even put your hands in the air, but if you ain't one, they'll know. And fittingly, John Kerry chose to preach on the "Wolf in sheep's clothing" bit.
Quel irony. (10 points per obscure musical theatre reference...)

Because I'm a Girl

Mary Katharine Ham has a great piece up at Townhall.com called "Because I'm a girl," which takes the idea that as women we need special sorts of affirmative action to succeed in the world and mocks it mercilessly.

I may just gravitate towards male-dominated professions, but I've sure gotten the "well, but you're a girl" treatment before, generally in situations involving power tools. I remember my guidance counselor in high school informing me that my two options for "practical arts" credit were "Intro to Foods" and "Keyboarding I". Well, I could already cook better than most anyone I knew and I was a pretty darned good typist too. So I asked to look at the schedule of classes myself, and lo and behold, there was a shop class that had open seats and was at the time I needed. I went back and informed my counselor that I intended to take shop, and he told me that wouldn't be a good idea because I was a girl, but finally let me take the class. It was a great experience with a wonderful teacher who had no problem with me being female and I wound up shop foreman.

So then the next year, I was building a set for the school musical and for some reason needed to use a power screwdriver that we didn't have down on the stage, so I went back to the woodshop to do it. We'd gotten a new teacher over the summer, and this one believed that you had to pee standing up to understand power tools. He wouldn't let me screw two boards together because "you might break a nail." "They grow back," was my terse reply. Another time, a male friend and I went to use the band saw. The teacher would only speak to Cory, not me. I have this same problem in hardware stores. Trying to get a hardware store guy to a) speak to you and b) treat you like a knowledgable person is very difficult when shopping while female.

These, in the grand scheme of things aren't that significant. My life is not scarred by them. Mostly, I felt that I ought to actually write something as well as link to Ham's piece.

Oh -- I'm also offended by the idea of affirmative action. I want to sink or swim by my own merits, not based on whether or not they (Who are 'they'? You know...them) feel bad for me and that I needed an additional leg up.

It's All About the After School Programs

Yesterday, John Kerry issued the following complaint about the war in Iraq:

"$200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford after-school programs for our children," he said. "$200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans."

Let's leave aside the veterans for the time being.

The war in Iraq is about after-school programs for our children, specifically about preventing one like this. Now, you can argue about whether or not this is the right way to go about it and we can go in circles all day, but the current strategy is to hunt down and kill terrorists wherever they are before they start arranging our kids' extracurriculars for them.

Bad Idea of the Day:

Florida

Who's brilliant idea was it to take a hurricane-prone low-lying penninsula that's one part swamp and one part sandbar and at no point more than 50 feet above sea level and that has a wide variety of hostile local flora and fauna, including alligators, panthers, and fire ants, cover it with golf courses and expensive homes and theme parks, populate it with the sort of people who don't see living in that sort of place as insanity, and then give them a say choosing the fate of a nation and the leader of the free world? I'm just asking.

(And yes, I used to live in Florida. I can talk.)

10,000!

I just had my 10,000th visitor! Maybe that was you. 10,000's a drop in the blog-bucket, I know, but it's a good start. I'm so glad you folks decided to stop by and listen to me rant. Ya'll are great.

Three Questions

Wizbang has a great post up this morning in which Jay answers three questions about his opinions of Iraq and other critters. The whole thing is good, but this was a great point:

Some argue we were caught by surprised at the "insurgents." Democrats love to say, "They promised us there would be people with flowers in the streets" conveniently ignoring the fact there were people with flowers in the street. (literally, ironically enough)

Let me be more precise than the big media. The "insurgents" are not people who want Saddam back. The few loyalists Saddam had were gone long ago. What we have in Iraq today is radical Islamists who want to kill infidels. The "Iraq war" ended long ago. We won. The global war on terror however, continues.

Let's be clear... What we have now in Iraq is people who are taking advantage of geography. They would kill you or me in the street tomorrow or hundreds of us with 747's if we let them. They are not attacking because we ousted Saddam. They are attacking because they want you, me and the poor Marine over there dead. The Marine just happens to be in range.

As I said, lots more. Scoot.

For What It's Worth

I have no idea if this holds even the slightest bit of water, but it's interesting. Powerline reader Tom Mortenson seems to know something about document analysis, and he says that the new documents about Bush's failures to attend physicals or other requirements are forgeries.

It's interesting, especially if they are indeed forgeries, simply because it adds a certain thriller-novel layer to the campaign, among other things. The fact is though, I don't care about Vietnam. It ended more than a decade before I was born. My dad didn't go to Vietnam, largely because his number never came up and also because he's a bit younger than Bush and Kerry. Does that make him a bad person? Nope. I understand that Vietnam is still a festering wound in the American psyche, at least for some, and I understand that it will be that way for a while. Heck, we're still not over the Civil War. Vietnam, in my understanding, split the country in similar ways and that may take a very long time to heal over. Refighting that emotional battle isn't going to make it better and it's not going to make it go away and it's not going to change the past and it's not going to bring anyone back. So let's remember the dead, acknowledge the living, and move the #*&$ on.

I had another brilliant point that was supposed to go right here, but it seems to have escaped me. I'll update later if I remember. Take a raincheck for now.

UPDATE: Powerline is all over this, and they've basically definitively concluded the documents to be forgeries. Not that that will stop me from hearing about them all day like they'd just been carried down from Sinai. CNN.com's big breaking news headline is that "Bush Suspended from Flying in Air National Guard" or something similar. Slow news day. Maybe we'll get "Dinosaurs Extinct!" tomorrow.

Powerline's alert reader says:

I was a clerk/typist for the US Navy at the Naval Underwater Systems Center (NUSC) in Newport RI for my summer job in 1971 when I was in college. I note the following with regard to the Killian memos:

1) Tom Mortensen is absolutely correct. Variable type was used only for special printing jobs, like official pamphlets. These documents are forgeries, and not even good ones. Someone could have at least found an old pre-Selectric IBM (introduced around 1962). Actually, I believe we were using IBM Model C's at the time, which was the precursor to the Selectric.

2) I also used a Variype machine in 1971. I fooled around with it in my spare time. It was incredibly difficult to set up and use. It was also extremely hard to correct mistakes on the machine. Most small letters used two spaces. Capital letters generally used three spaces. I think letters like "i" may have used one space. Anyway, you can see that this type of machine was piloted by an expert, and it would NEVER be used for a routine memo. A Lt. Colonel would not be able to identify a Varitype machine, let alone use it.

3) US Navy paper at the time was not 8 1/2 x 11. It was 8 x 10 1/2. I believe this was the same throughout the military, but someone will have to check on that. This should show up in the Xeroxing, which should have lines running along the sides of the Xerox copy.

4) I am amused by the way "147 th Ftr.Intrcp Gp." appears in the August 1, 1972 document. It may have been written that way in non-forged documents, but as somone who worked for ComCruDesLant, I know the military liked to bunch things together. I find "147 th" suspicious looking. 147th looks better to me, but the problem with Microsoft Word is that it keeps turning the "th" tiny if it is connected to a number like 147. And finally......

5) MORE DEFINITIVE PROOF OF FORGERY: I had neglected even to look at the August 18, 1973 memo to file. This forger was a fool. This fake document actually does have the tiny "th" in "187th" and there is simply no way this could have occurred in 1973. There are no keys on any typewriter in common use in 1973 which could produce a tiny "th." The forger got careless after creating the August 1, 1972 document and slipped up big-time.

In summary, the variable type reveals the Killian memos to be crude forgeries, the tiny "th" confirms it in the 8/18/73 memo, and I offer my other points as icing on the cake.

I wonder, what are the penalties for forging military documents?

Counter

Courtesy of Kevin over at Wizbang, I now have a counter tracking the days since John Kerry has faced the press. It's over in the sidebar. Kevin has a "Universal Count-up" script if you'd like one, either for his purposes (tracking the response time on the 60 Minutes Ben Barnes hatchet job) or for mine, or for whatever else you'd like to count. Have fun!

The Literary Kerry

Over the past few days, I've realized that John Kerry reminds me not only of Gilderoy Lockhart, but also of characters from some of my other favorite books. So who else is he?

The Dodecahedron, from The Phantom Tollbooth:

My angles are many,
My sides are not few,
I'm the Dodecahedron,
Who are you?

...announces the Dodecahedron, a man with a 12-sided polyhedron for a head upon meeting Milo, Tock and the Humbug. With 12 faces, he has one for every occasion, ensuring that none ever wear out! And he's always helpful when you need to know which way to go! He'll never tell you which way to go, but he'll always be glad to tell you that you're going the wrong way. This seems to be Kerry to a T.

Pippin, from The Short Reign of Pippin IV, which is a brilliant piece of political satire by John Steinbeck. It's hilarious, and you really must read it. The general idea is that political turmoil in France forces an amateur Parisian astronomer named Pippen to become king. All of the many, many factions of the French political system, from the Communists to the Socialists to the Christian Atheists to the Royalists agree to support him for their own reasons, mostly to use him as a patsy in their struggle against the other groups (for example, the Communists need someone to rebel against, so they need a King so that they can revolt, the Socialists want a king to keep the Communists in line, etc). This seems to be how Kerry's being played. The Clintonites want to see him lose so Hillary can ascend, the left is using him to try to tear down Bush, etc. Kerry's a patsy for all kinds of people in this election, and he's under the mistaken impression that they like him. At least Pippin wasn't delusional.

Both of these books are excellent, by the way, and I recommend them most highly. And they're short. Go read them.

My Rules

1) Do not date a composer.
a) Or a musician.
b) A successful, working, stable actor might be acceptable.
2) Do not date within the Program. That would be incestuous and wrong.
3) Do not date a non-Christian. That would be a bad idea.
4) Do not date anyone until you have at least 10 friends in New York City.
5) Do not even think about dating anyone who does not meet the first four criteria.
6) Do not even think about dating anyone who you are not absolutely sure is straight.
7) Do not even think about dating anyone who you are not absolutely sure is single.
8) Do not date anyone who you are not absolutely sure is single.
a) Do not assume that they are. Ask questions.
9) Do not date anyone who is not VERY financially stable or is not certain to become so in the near future.
10) Become engaged within 2 years, because that is when the student loan people are going to start expecting me to give them large sums of money.
a) It is better to give the loan people his money.

Go!

UPDATED slightly because some people, including my mother, were freaking out over #10.

In Keeping with My Promise:

Sweet Cumquat has a new blog, The Mockingbird. She and I obviously see the world in radically different ways, but I'm sure it will be worth reading. She's also been added to my blogroll.

And if you go stop by...be nice.

Testing

Testing? Testing? 1-2-3-4... Blogger has been flaking out on me since last night and I'm not altogether pleased. I'm hoping this gets through. If it does, more blogging later tonight.

Announcements

I fisked Mary Beth last night. Blogger ate it. I'll redo it when I get home tonight. In any case, that's why I didn't blog yesterday.

In other news, a spot has opened up on the Watcher's Council. If you think that you should be the one to fill it, check out the rules and responsibilities and give it a whirl.

I fisked Mary Beth earlier. Blogger ate it. I'm tired. Today was a very long day. I promise I'll blog more tomorrow.

Mary Beth

The title of this email really said it all: "It's Time For You To Report For Duty." Does the Kerry campaign have focus groups?

Dear Friend,

Cut the crap, Mary Beth, I'm tired.

As you know, the nation is looking to your state as a campaign "battleground" that just may decide the presidential election. George Bush is spending millions of dollars to run misleading ads about John Kerry in your state, and Bush will be visiting many times between now and November 2. Now more than ever, we need you to volunteer with our campaign in your state -- and we've got work for you to do starting immediately.

Several things. One, get an automated program to insert the name of my state. It isn't hard and makes me feel more specialer. Second, you make it sound like Bush alone will be working for my vote in my state. If he is, then doesn't he deserve it, and if he isn't, wouldn't that be worth mention?

The Democratic Party is launching a huge phone banking and door-knocking effort over the next several weeks in your state. We need volunteers in dozens of locations every night, starting this week.

I'm booked. Sorry, Toots.

We're reaching out by phone and in person to identify John Kerry supporters and undecided voters -- and to recruit new volunteers. That is the work that wins elections. It's hard work, but it's also great fun, and a great way to meet other supporters in your area.

I damned well know plenty of supporters in my area, than you very much. In fact, today I've had three people rant about Bush to me in private conversations, one give a speech on why we should vote for whoever we find most appropraite bearing in mind that Bush is evil, and one encourage me to maintain my Missouri voter registration in order to swing the state, all unaware that I am in fact a Bush supporter. As I said, I know plenty.

Tell us what evenings or weekend afternoons you're available to work with us and view locations by clicking here. A campaign organizer will contact you to confirm times and locations and to answer any questions you may have.For those of you who can make a larger commitment, we also need volunteers to help supervise phone bank locations. We'll train you how to do it. Even if you only have two hours to give -- those two hours will make a huge difference. Click here to tell us when you're available to get involved, and we'll call you.

How 'bout this -- my people won't call your people and we won't do lunch.

Sincerely,

At least one of us is.

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

As I said, I'm tired.

Mary Beth

The title of this email really said it all: "It's Time For You To Report For Duty." Does the Kerry campaign have focus groups?

Dear Friend,

Cut the crap, Mary Beth, I'm tired.

As you know, the nation is looking to your state as a campaign "battleground" that just may decide the presidential election. George Bush is spending millions of dollars to run misleading ads about John Kerry in your state, and Bush will be visiting many times between now and November 2. Now more than ever, we need you to volunteer with our campaign in your state -- and we've got work for you to do starting immediately.

Several things. One, get an automated program to insert the name of my state. It isn't hard and makes me feel more specialer. Second, you make it sound like Bush alone will be working for my vote in my state. If he is, then doesn't he deserve it, and if he isn't, wouldn't that be worth mention?

The Democratic Party is launching a huge phone banking and door-knocking effort over the next several weeks in your state. We need volunteers in dozens of locations every night, starting this week.

I'm booked. Sorry, Toots.

We're reaching out by phone and in person to identify John Kerry supporters and undecided voters -- and to recruit new volunteers. That is the work that wins elections. It's hard work, but it's also great fun, and a great way to meet other supporters in your area.

I damned well know plenty of supporters in my area, than you very much. In fact, today I've had three people rant about Bush to me in private conversations, one give a speech on why we should vote for whoever we find most appropraite bearing in mind that Bush is evil, and one encourage me to maintain my Missouri voter registration in order to swing the state, all unaware that I am in fact a Bush supporter. As I said, I know plenty.

Tell us what evenings or weekend afternoons you're available to work with us and view locations by clicking here. A campaign organizer will contact you to confirm times and locations and to answer any questions you may have.For those of you who can make a larger commitment, we also need volunteers to help supervise phone bank locations. We'll train you how to do it. Even if you only have two hours to give -- those two hours will make a huge difference. Click here to tell us when you're available to get involved, and we'll call you.

How 'bout this -- my people won't call your people and we won't do lunch.

Sincerely,

At least one of us is.

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

As I said, I'm tired.

Which English Civil War Faction Are You?

As for me:

You are a... ROYALIST!! You believe in wholesome traditional family values like the Monarchy, burning witches and fighting the French. Youre also a snazzy dresser and a demon in the sack, but watch out - the Puritans are coming and theyre obviously not getting enough at home!!

Or something. Be sure to take the quiz.

From the Department of PC

"Siege Suspect"? Siege Effing SUSPECT?

NYU Suicide

This is tragic.

The Sun Rose, and They Were Turned to Stone

In keeping with my policy of exposing trolls to sunlight, I'd like you all to meet "sweet cumquat", who seems to be anything but. As you may recall, I decided not to ban "bonnie" because I found her so entertaining. "sweet cumquat" isn't as funny, and therefore, there's less sport in keeping her around. Also, she seems to enjoy taking potshots at my other readers, which I don't like. So it's up to you -- do I ban her or does she stay?

Here are her latest comments:

Re: The Stragglers she writes:

Perhaps actual arrogance would be a better phrase.

Gee, weren't you people the same ones pasting American flags on everything you own and singing along to "I'm Proud to Be an American"?

Maybe you were too busy buying Gucci purses that day.

Right, that's me, the fashionista shopper. She of the many purses. And many pairs of shoes. (The people who know me are snickering at this point...)

Re: Boing!:

Good thing kdeweb wasn't in that "Lefty" writing class as (s)he writes, "It must be hard not to be able to be jumping up and down right now. I SO am." Words from the wise indeed.

I had no idea that National Defense meant randomly choosing countries to invade. Thank you for clearing that up.

I tolerate insulting remarks directed towards myself. I do not tolerate them directed towards my friends. You have been warned.

Re: San Fransisco Surprise: Mango says,

"Republicans, on the other hand, are willing to lose an election for a cause they believe in. Bush knew when he began that the war in Iraq could cost him the election, but he did what he thought was best. And he still isn't flinching."

He's not flinching because he has no conscience.

This is no longer about "Republicans" and "Democrats". It is about blood drenched fascism versus awareness.

People such as those who vehemently live in a state of denial about the truth of the current administration continue to amaze me. Those of you posting here *seem* to be fairly literate, intelligent people, and yet you refuse to be party to the truth. Why?

Well, first off, I didn't say that first bit, Debra Saunders of the San Fransisco Chronicle did. I agree that this is about blood-drenched fascism versus awareness. Our disagreement comes over whether Saddam Hussein or George Bush is the bloody fascist. This should not be a discussion point and I have other things to do today, so I'm not going beat this one to death. Shocking that smart people could disagree with you, isn't it? I personally have made my peace with the fact that many people that I know and respect as intelligent people have views that are opposite mine. I would suggest coming to a similar personal resolution -- it lowers your blood pressure and prevents ulceration of the stomach lining. She adds:

Oh, and by the way, go back and look at George W. Bush's during the last election. Then report back and tell me what his vision was for the presidency at the time.

Also, please post for me his clear goals and vision this time around. He has nothing to stand on but his policies of the last four years. If we're being honest about it, these included dragging us into an illegal and unsanctioned war, dropping bombs on children, raising the deficit from 0 to billions, bringing the unemployment rate to unprecidented levels, dropping needed social programs to fund war, being caught in numerous lies and half-truths, using 9/11 to further his own political and financial goals and on and on.

I have things to do and will handle this one later. Actually, just go to Agenda For America and handle yourself.

Re: Has the Onion Infiltrated Kerry/Edwards '04?:

Typical. You hear a rumor and it now has become truth in your mind. You couldn't find the actual press release and so have decided to pretend it's true.

If you dig a bit deeper, you will find that the spin put on at the RNC about Kerry's record is nothing more than good sound bites. That is, if you are willing to actually take the blinders from your eyes.

1) I didn't hear a rumor, I read a news story in an average, everyday newspaper. I'm not entirely sure why said newspaper would make up the existance of said press release, and therefore have no reason to doubt that it exists. That's not unreasonable. As for Kerry, spin or no spin, I disapprove of the majority of his record. I object to his slander of Vietnam vets, I object to his voting on defense and intelligence funding, and I have serious issues with his prevarication. I don't like his healthcare plan, and I don't want anyone to have their taxes raised. I know where Bush stands and I choose to stand with him, eyes wide open.

Re: Troll-Fishing:

I find it fascinating that you do not comment about my posts. In fact, it seems that you have removed posts you've made that I have commented on. Hmmm..now why would that be? Perhaps because I am literate? Perhaps because my comments contain a kernel of truth you would rather not face?

First off, I delete posts for one reason and one reason alone -- to remove double (or triple or quintuple...darn you, Blogger!) postings. I don't delete comments, or at least, I never have before. I may start. Mess with me and we'll see. I generally don't respond to your posts because I have other things to do, I'm convinced that I'm never going to convince you, and quite frankly, you aren't worth the carping of my tunnels.

Re: Wahling in Times Square, Day 2

I know you will find this shocking, but some of us in the protest crowds WORE BRAS. shhhh! Don't tell anyone lest they lost their illusions about "Lefties".

What's more, some of us in the protest crowds have college degrees and corporate jobs.

See, the thing is, you would have to suspend your narrow thinking in order to see the truth. While I was marching with 500,000 like minded people I saw: veterans of the Armed Forces, women with babies in strollers, men in ties, children who had made their own eloquent signs, elderly men and women. Oh and get this, I saw numerous people who would look right at home sitting inside the convention hall at the RNC. The difference was they were awake and aware and you could see that in their eyes.

God, lefty women are defensive about their breasts and founation(al) garments. Babe, I know some of you have degrees and jobs. That's good. I'm not especially impressed by that, but I'm all for you being a useful member of society. Put that capital to work! As to the demographics of the march, yes, I'm aware that crazy and/or misguided people come in all shapes and sizes. Unlike the left, I am not automatically impressed by diversity. A diverse group of wackmobiles is no better than a a homogenous one. Worse, maybe, because they're harder to profile. (Now you're just being intentionally inflamatory. -- Ed. Yep! Ain't it fun?)

Re: Protest In Times Square:

Ah, well I bow down to your larger than can fit in a Wonderbra breasts. How marvelous for you.

I agree the cops *were* marvelous. In fact most of them agreed with the marchers, seeing that the Republican currently holding office has not seen fit to give them the raise they deserve. 99% of the time though, they had no problem "keeping the peace" as we were by and large peaceful protesters.

Like hell most of them agreed with the marchers. Every cop I've talked to has firmly supported Bush and though that the protesters were nuts. Also, the 10,000 member NYPD Sergeant's Union strongly endorsed Bush. At least a few of them have to like him. By and large peaceful yes. Entirely peaceful, not by a long shot. Nothing better than violent pacifists.

Re: Enemies of the Mango

Do you really think that Kerry's campaign leaders gave that statement in response to Laura Bush's less than eloquent remarks?

No, the real reason that statement was made was because it's true. Certainly you know that by now since two men from the Bush campaign have quit because they admitted collusion with the Swift Boat smear campaign.

First off, go read the entire interview, Laura just says that in the context Democratic tactics against Bush, the Swiftvets aren't really out of line. Second, if you want to talk collusion, just take a gander at the DNC/Kerry/527 web. Charlotte couldn't weave one tighter.

Re: Poor Dear

Sounds valid to me. He has a lot of integrity, actually, to write about this.

I believe what he is saying is- by and large, the corporate media has been cowardly in their covering of the "real" news. It has become more than apparent to a lot of people that we are handed sound bites and told to make our own conclusions from them by the media. Rather than giving us a clear and objective viewpoint, reporters give us bias reports based upon who their "daddy" is holding the paycheck. It's sad, really, that we have to rely upon foreign press sometimes to tell the whole story rather than get our information from our own national media.

Of course it sounds valid to you. It sounds whiny to me. I have nothing snarky to say. Tom Grey has a good rebuttal in the comments.

Re: Sound of the South:

No, no, it's not the Southern accent that makes him sound....er...less than intelligent. It's his lack of intelligence. Such as this:

George's Intelligence

Bush threatens America

(If all y'all want to follow her links, go down yonder to the comment section and click on them. I don't care enough to move them for you.) Okay, I mean this -- next person to comment with a "George is Dumb" them is getting banned. I don't care if I like you or not, one such comment and you're out. That's how sick of this I am.

Re: Mingling with Mary Beth

Mango says, "That would put the women of Afghanistan back in burqas. That would put all of Afghanistan back under Taliban rule, oppressing 25 million people, give or take a few. That would put Saddam Hussein back in power."

Honey, I'm assuming you were alive and cognizant during the time when OUR government gave the Taliban money and weapons in order to fight the Soviets. Yes, that's right folks, we KNEW all along what the Taliban stood for because our government helped bring them to power. Same with Saddam.

See, here's the thing, when we allow the politicians who run our country to go unchecked, we allow them to prop up puppet governments who they *think* will do their bidding simply because they give them money. More often than not, this plan backfires and we are then running in, chasing out the very people we brought to power because they learned to be powerful unto themselves and cut us out of the deal.

Actually, dear, you assume wrong. Alive? Not for the first 4 years. Cognizant? Well, of the sorts of things that are interesting to relatively bright 6 year olds but not of the politics of Central Asia -- I was 7 when the Berlin Wall fell. I was more interested in bugs, volcanos, Pompeii and the Swiss Family Robinson. In any case, if the US created the Saddam Hussien problem, it seems like it would be our responsibility to fix it. I'm certainly opposed to the US installing dictators School of the Americas style. What "WE" did before I was born is of far less consequence to me than what "WE" do now.

Re: Cavorting with Campaign Managers

Gosh, Katie, it's too bad you have to keep deleting my posts. I guess they make too much sense for you and you have nothing to say to counter them? Typical.

I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I'm not deleting your posts, perhaps your mechanism is faulty. I'm seriously considering banning you though, not because you're right but because you're annoying.

Alright, that's really all I have time for, although there's more there, so happy hunting. Now you guys get to play Ceasar -- thumbs up or thumbs down? Does she stay or does she go?

Poor Dear

Edward Wasserman seems to have gotten his diary entry and his Miami Herald column mixed up this week. It's called "Cowardice in the Newsroom," and largely consists of whining about how hard it is to be a journalist, especially with those pesky bloggers around. It doesn't really seem to have a clearly defined thesis other than that. I'm not really sure what to make of it, actually. Go read it and let me know what you think. Here's the first bit:

News is a messy and elusive form of information. Reporters don't just stroll through a meadow of stories in bloom and pluck a bouquet. What gets reported first depends on what journalists hear about. Then the story must seem interesting, significant or both. It has to be something that the journalists have the brains, will and resources to pursue. And they'll want to know what rival organizations make of it, what sources they routinely rely on say about it, and a multitude of other things.

Plus, news is a collaboration. It's a team effort, and regardless of how strictly the team is run, news reflects the collision of values, perspectives and passions of the people who create and produce it -- and their guesses as to what the reality they're chasing actually consists of.

That's a long way of saying that journalism is crude, tentative and fumbling, that it always involves compromise and that there's a healthy measure of give-and-take in the process of producing it.

But anybody who enters the profession makes a core commitment to do his or her best to determine and tell the truth. And I think that commitment is now under assault.

The attack doesn't come from ideologically committed journalists and commentators who put together reports clearly selected and spun-dry to sell a political line. There's a transparency of motive here that, as long as they retain some minimal respect for fact, may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all of us.

The more compelling danger concerns news organizations in the so-called mainstream. By that I mean those that aim to deliver a broadly informative report on current affairs to a demographically diverse audience that isn't defined by some overriding ideological predisposition. These are the country's best-staffed and most influential news organizations, and they're losing their nerve.

I understand why. It's hard now even to write for publication without being uncomfortably aware of just how thoroughly what you say is going to be inspected for any trace of undesirable political tilt and denounced by a free-floating cadre of rightist warriors.

A Free-Floating Cadre of Rightist Warriors. That's a beautiful phrase. Insulting, or at least meant to be, but nicely worded. J-school must have done you some good. Of course, they'd kick me out of the FFCRW if I didn't say something mean to you, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

If that's apparent to me as a mere columnist, I can only imagine the current mind-set of supervising editors: If we give prominence to this story of carnage in Iraq, will we be accused of anti-administration bias? And -- here it gets interesting -- will we therefore owe our readers an offsetting story, perhaps an inspirational tale of Marines teaching young Iraqis how to play softball?


Now, both stories may well be integral to news of Iraq. If so, both should be told. The problem arises when the softball story is nothing but a Pentagon publicist's brainstorm seized on by right-wing bloggers -- and the pressure to tell it comes not from a principled desire to deliver a factual account that is broadly emblematic of significant happenings in Iraq, but from a gutless attempt to buy off a hostile and suspicious fragment of the audience base.


The underlying problem is that news then becomes a negotiation -- not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience. News of great significance becomes not an honest attempt to reflect genuinely contradictory realities, but a daily bargaining session with an increasingly factionalized public, a corrupted process in which elements of the news reports become offerings -- payments really -- in a kind of intellectual extortion.

This sounds like the "I'm not paranoid, little green men really are trying to kill me" defense. Or in this case, "I'm not biased, any news I don't agree with is simply a fabrication seized by the FFCRW."

The performance of this country's finest news organizations in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of March 2003 will be remembered as a disgrace. To be sure, it was an angry, fearful time, and independent-minded reporting might not have been heard above the drumbeats of patriotism and war. But it's hard to read the hand-wringing confessionals from news organizations that now realize that they got the prewar story wrong without concluding that the real problem was they were afraid to tell the truth.

Which truth are we referring to? What are you talking about? Is this column supposed to be coherent? At least in the FFCRW, we use specific and colorful examples to back up our misguided claims.

Resisting undue outside influence is part of what news professionals do, even when that influence comes from the public they're honor-bound to serve. It's hard enough to get the story right, without holding it hostage to an open-ended negotiation with zealots who believe they already know what the story is.

Burn! And you somehow hold the monopoly on information because you a) teach journalism ethics (good grief), b) you have a shiny laminated card that has your picture on it and the words "PRESS" and c) one a week, you dash off some drivel and the Herald pays you for it? Why do you get to decide what story I need to hear? I'm sorry for your angst, sir. I'm sorry that we in the FFCRW make you uncomfortable. Somewhere, a very small violin is playing a very sad song just for you.

An HSA PSA

If you've ever wanted to know everything about Health Savings Accounts but were afraid to ask, Jeff has put together a very clear, pedestrian, and relevant explanation that you really ought to read. In fact, go now, then come back and read what I have to say.

I'll wait.

Alright, so here's the additional brilliance of the HSA: Social Security is screwed, and if you're under the age of 45, you probably are too. It's a giant pyramid scheme, and we're running out of suckers to fund it, so we at the bottom are going to pay in and never cash out. Private savings/retirement accounts would solve this problem, making it so that the workers of today fund the retirees of tomorrow instead of the workers of today funding the retirees of today. And that's all well and good. The problem arises when the workers of today start saving their money for tomorrow instead of handing it over to the retirees of today. That money can't be in two places at once, so to make the switch, there's a huge cost. Not really any way to avoid deficit spending, because you can't just pull money out of the air. However... the HSA can help make up the shortfall by taking money that was originally going into the black hole of the insurance companies and putting it into the retirement system. It's like printing your own cash! No, not really... but it definitely will help my generation make the switch if we can have a few thousand extra a year put into sheltered savings accounts.

John Forbes Kerry vs. Mary Beth Cahill, The Catfight!

From MSNBC:

John Kerry wanted to hit back. It had been a miserable August as he took incoming fire about his military service from a gang of hostile Vietnam vets. But no, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and other staffers argued, the Swift Boat ads would blow over. Finally, Kerry had had enough. For three or four days, as he campaigned across the country, Kerry ripped into Cahill, furious that the mostly baseless attacks on his valor were driving his numbers down. "He was very angry," one old friend says. "The calculation had been made that this wasn't going to hurt him." Kerry's solution was to reach for an old ally. "Get Vallely," he screamed.

Vallely the Ally. Cute. Later:

Kerry may have taken it out on his staff, but he has only himself to blame for his current predicament. Kerry tied himself in knots over Iraq, saying he would have voted for the war even if he'd known there were no weapons of mass destruction—a move even his friends say has hindered his ability to attack Bush on the subject. And he shut down his campaign's TV ads between his convention in Boston and the Republicans' gathering in New York to conserve cash—giving the Swifties a strategic opening. Cahill stands by the strategy. "We jointly made the decision about when to respond, and when we did,it was a very direct and strong response from him," she says, pointing to a mid-August speech when Kerry accused the Swifties of doing Bush's dirty work. Cahill insists that the campaign went through a similar ebb in March, when it took a big hit in the polls as it concentrated on fund-raising. (At the time, the campaign was saved by the downward spiral in Iraq.) She maintains that her conversations with Kerry remain private; others say there's nothing unusual about the candidate's venting at his aides—in this campaign or any other. "The truth is that he'd be lost without her," says one senior staffer. "She saved this campaign once already."

Cahill is likely to survive the turmoil, but Kerry's friends and closest advisers say the senator is already leaning more heavily on another old chum: John Sasso.

Is this why I haven't heard from my good buddy Mary Beth since Thursday night? I miss her, and I suspect you do too.

Attention:

I am apparently the #1 Google hit for the string "there is a track sing by female,called i am gonner be your number one.

Friend, I hope you found what you were looking for.

Speaks for America

Jeff does a nifty little compare/contrast on Kerry and diplomacy and defense, and comes up with this quote, which I find very interesting:

"Instead of demeaning diplomacy, I will restore diplomacy as a tool of the strong, I will make it clear that when the secretary of state speaks, he or she speaks for America, not for the losing cause of internationalism inside an administration obsessed with its own hubris and swagger." -- Senator John Kerry, December 3, 2003

So it's clear that Kerry believes that the Secretary of State should be the one to go forth into the world and engage in acts of diplomacy, and that America should essentially stand united behind that negotiation.

This, of course, comes as a surprise to well-informed persons everywhere, who know that Kerry, as a 1st Lieutenant (junior grade) went and held peace talks with the Viet Cong, with whom the United States was at war at that time. Additionally, well respected (at least internally) members of the Democratic party, like, for example, Jimmy Carter, go off and engage in personal diplomacy all the time, visiting Cuba and renouncing US policy there, etc, Several Congressional Dems got the urge to go to Baghdad and be wined and dined by Saddam, and determined that he was pretty darned swell, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

As the Bush ads say, "There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does."

On The Jobs

I don't know how this piece made it through the New York Times editorial board, but it's an excellent look at the myth that presidents can "create jobs".

An intelligent voter could be forgiven for thinking that the most important domestic consideration in the election is how many jobs the candidates would create over the next four years. And writers who in another season were buzzing over interest rates, or Monica, now swarm over the monthly jobs report as if it were a running report card on the president -- the Beltway equivalent of the stock market.

This mind-set has come to frame the way we think about virtually every economic issue, even those -- like the budget deficit -- that have little impact on employment. It has colored our sense of history, so that a reader of campaign news might reasonably conclude that Bill Clinton ''created'' 22 million jobs and that Bush first ''lost'' nearly 3 million and, then -- wonder of wonders -- won half of them back.

There is one problem with such thinking: virtually no one involved with presidential politics, and virtually no economist, believes it. Robert Barbera, chief economist at the brokerage firm of ITG/Hoenig, says that in his 30 years in the business, ''the notion that presidents create and lose jobs is the most grotesque mischaracterization of the economic backdrop'' that he has witnessed.

[...]

Robert Reich, secretary of labor under Clinton, says bluntly, ''Job numbers are largely a function of population and the business cycle, and the business cycle has its own rhythm.'' Administrations should be able to improve the quality of jobs -- shorthand for raising both the requisite skill level and the compensation -- Reich argues, but the lead time is so great that presidents have little political incentive to try.

[...]

The third, and most serious, flaw is that focusing on the number of jobs fosters a simplistic and illusory sense of what a president can do. It misdirects policy toward ''creating'' jobs, which are, if anything, an outcome of good policy rather than an end. As Randy Kroszner, a former member of the Bush White House Council of Economic Advisers, puts it, ''To think we have a magic lever, blue for jobs, red for growth, that's mistaken.'' His real point is that the levers are not, in the long term, distinguishable. Jobs result from growth -- from employers' desire to increase profits, not from their desire to increase payrolls. Countries that have tried to target jobs specifically -- say in Europe, by restricting the freedom of businesses to lay off workers -- have discovered an unpleasant paradox. Lessened flexibility in the labor market leads to more tentative hiring and fewer jobs.

[...]

Anti-Nafta signs dotted the gym, and Kerry delicately maneuvered around the issue of trade. He admitted, courageously, that he couldn't promise to hang onto every job that goes overseas. Switching gears again, he exclaimed that he had heard from workers whose last assignment had been to ''pack their equipment into crates and ship them to China'' and that this would ''never'' happen under a Kerry administration. Big cheer.

Then Kerry described how he would ensure this -- his plan for 10 million jobs. The central points include subsidizing health care, tightening the tax treatment of U.S. companies that operate overseas, reducing the general corporate tax rate and giving manufacturers and firms affected by outsourcing an incentive to hire. How does that add up to 10 million? Actually, it doesn't. Kerry's ''plan'' isn't an industry-by-industry summation; it's simply a forecast, based on population trends, for what will occur in the labor force if the economy returns to health. Any economics student could have come up with that number or with some other one.

The piece is very long and only riveting if you happen to enjoy economics. It's a good, informative read, however. Impress your friends and amaze your family with your knowledge of the job market!

You Aren't Special, Despite What Barney Says

Ann Althouse pokes through the Midnight Meltdown and finds this little morsel:

"With two months to go, the choice could not be more clear," the statement continued. "A president who sides with the special interests or the Kerry-Edwards team who will put middle-class families first."

She asks:

When and why did we start assuming that government should "put middle-class families first"? Why not children? Why not lower class people who would like to make it into the middle class? Or is "put middle-class families first" now what politicians say to oppose those they accuse of putting the "wealthiest Americans" first when they are afraid of making of voters worry that tax money will be channeled to the underprivileged? (And it's always "families" now. Has anyone ever heard a politician offer to lift a finger for single people?)

And really, why are we putting anyone first? If I were going to start with any group of Americans that ought to go to the head of the line, I'd say "our armed forces and their families" but after that, I'm not sure why anyone needs to go first. And I'm not a huge fan of "the children" either. I mean, yes, the children are precious and adorable and the future and sweetness and innocence and hope, but if you improve life for the adults, you're probably going to help the children as well. As for the singles, well, they get a general societal "screw you", which is about par for the course. I've always hated how churches have family activities and then special events for "the singles". I mean, it's not that I want to go hang out with the baby brigade, but there's got to be a kinder way.

Pattern?

Okay, this is really entertaining.

Breaking Out the Fisking Stick

I haven't read Newsweek in forever, and now, on my first day back, I get to fisk Jonathan Alter within an inch of his life. It's good to be home.

Shortly before the 1992 election, a World War II veteran approached NEWSWEEK and other major media outlets with an unsubstantiated story about how he said he saw President George H.W. Bush strafing unarmed Japanese fishermen in the Pacific when both men were young Navy fliers. None of us published or broadcast the explosive allegations until after the election, and if we had, Bill Clinton's campaign indicated it would have denounced them. The same thing happened in 2000, when a book called "Fortunate Son" alleged youthful illegal activities by George W. Bush. No one from Al Gore's campaign would touch the story until later, and the book was withdrawn by the publisher.

Contrast those with the case of the Swift Boat veterans, whose thoroughly discredited accounts of John Kerry's Vietnam service have been treated with re-spect and whose book is now a best seller.

Oh yes... the publishing industry was just going about its business, only publishing factual, non-partisan books when suddenly, those evil Swiftvets came out of nowhere, snuck their plates into the presses, and now they're being taken seriously! Do the titles Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Crimes Against Nature : How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, All the President's Spin : George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, A Pretext for War : 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties, Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 and the collected works of Michael Moore ring a bell? Even a small one? And we're throwing a syndicated hissy-fit by one relatively ill-financed book by a bunch of highly decorated veterans? This may not be the height of, as they say, couth.

While Kerry has repudiated an ad made by MoveOn.org that ridicules Bush and Dick ("I had other priorities") Cheney for skipping a war they hypocritically favored, Bush has repeatedly refused to do the same on his side, which gives the news media license to take the whole thing seriously.

First off, Kerry repudiated one MoveOn.org ad out of heaven knows how many. People close to what we loosely describe as his campaign are going berzerk and threatening to smear anything in sight, including the aforementioned highly decorated vets. He's not really winning the Miss Congeniality award at this point. As for Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney, it's important to note that perhaps he, well, did. In 1964, Cheney got married and in 1966, he had a kid. Prior to that, he was a bookish college student, who got, go figure, student deferments. The conspiracy theory would suggest that Cheney went to college, got married, and had a kid all for the purposes of avoiding the draft, but Occam's Razor would suggest that Cheney went to college because he was smart and wanted to learn something, got married because he fell in love, and had a child for reasons related to being married. And beyond that, who friggin' cares? A lot of people got deferments. Dean did. Clinton dodged the draft altogether. In any case, this all happened 17 years before I was born. Could we talk about the current war, please?

Bush told The New York Times last week that he thought Kerry was telling the truth, but he still wouldn't denounce the ads attacking Kerry as a liar. (His call for a ban on all "527" independent ads is a transparent dodge.)

Also known as a smart move. Let me clear this up for you, Jonathan. You want me to say that I hate Nestle's Crunch Bars for some odd reason. I up the ante and say that I hate chocolate. I haven't dodged anything, and I may have, depending on your affiliation with the Hershey corporatin, made you look like a fool while following your orders.

So much for any sense of decency. The man who was once an inept right-wing president but a nice guy is now just an inept right-wing president.

Personally, I'm fine with my president not attacking the freedom of speech of a bunch of vets. And then we have an ad hominem attack. You're in fine form today, Jon.

Of course, Bush's nastiness is in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, who used surrogates to accuse each other of sexual improprieties, and scores of candidates who followed. For all the hand-wringing, going negative works, as Bush's uptick in the polls indicates. So if playing rough is just part of politics, why are the Democrats so much worse at it? Even when they win, Democrats never quite close the toughness gap.

It's not that you're bad at being nasty, because you're not, you're really very good at it. It's just that an ounce of unpleasant, relevant truth strikes much harder and wounds much more deeply than a ton of lies, half-truths, and screwball conspiracy theories. And as for the nastiness of surrogates, let me remind you of the existance of MoveOn.org, ACT, MediaFund, and the rest of the liberal 527s, also known as the "Non-rainbows and puppy dogs" wing of the Democratic party. One example: Ten years ago, Kerry briefly considered supporting a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax, then withdrew the idea. Bush now has an ad up savaging him for it. Three weeks ago, Bush floated his own trial balloon favoring a national sales tax. When he withdrew it, the Kerry campaign said, "Oh, OK," and declined a chance to air ads blasting the president for planning to tax every shopping trip to the mall.Oh, Good God! People might pay taxes at the SHOPPING MALL?!?! That would be the end of America as we know it. I'm betting the reason that Kerry declined to attack that is because a lot of Americans would line up now to vote for Dubya if he promised that, because it would mean they'd have more money to spend and they wouldn't be penalized for saving their earnings, etc because it would involve the abolition of the income tax. In other words, because it's a good idea, pointing it out to the voting public and encouraging discussion on this point would be most unwise for Mr. Kerry.

Part of the explanation lies in the DNA of the two parties. When FDR's critics lambasted him as a "dictator" and "traitor," he responded with brilliant humor, lampooning the GOP for going after "my dog Fala." But his Democratic heirs mostly lacked either the light touch or the instinct for the jugular, which is one reason so few have made it to the White House. In the last half century, every Republican ticket except one has contained Richard Nixon, Bob Dole or one of the Bushes, all of whom proved expert with the shiv. (The one exception, 1964, is not coincidentally the only time Democrats, led by LBJ, played rougher.)

Not our fault ya'll don't have a sense of humor. And especially that you nominated the most humorless man alive as your nominee this year. You've got most the comedians in the country on your side and you still can't come up with good jokes. I refuse to feel sorry for you.

Usually the toughness gap is the Democrats' own fault. Because liberals are temperamentally self-critical [read: whiny], they tend to see more grays than black-and-whites. Republicans are better at closing ranks. If Kerry were the GOP candidate this year, hardly anyone in his party would be trashing him privately or predicting defeat, as some Democrats are doing.

Of course, if he were in any way a viable candidate or were running an even somewhat competent campaign, perhaps that wouldn't be happening either.

A related contrast comes in the way the parties address their own constituencies. Republicans offer "red meat," a sense that they share the resentments of their audience. Democrats, schooled in political correctness, tiptoe around their friends, ever anxious not to offend. This conditions them to be more defensive and reactive toward their enemies.

This has to do with the fact that Democrats are more inclined to want to be popular and Republicans prefer to be right.

The year 2004 was supposed to be when Democrats found their fighting spirit. Howard Dean's early success convinced Kerry and the rest of the Washington Democrats that only a feisty, give-'em-hell campaign had any chance of success. But Kerry's one tough race, against moderate Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld in 1996, may not have fully prepared him for the task. While Clinton faced real conservatives in the Hobbesian world of Southern politics, Kerry hails from a state where Michael Dukakis was seen as a tough guy.

Ouch.

If Kerry loses, the Washington Democratic establishment may be done, too. Fire-breathing liberals, mirror images of the ideologues on the right, will take over the party, likely dooming it to yet more defeat in a country that is fundamentally moderate.

What's with this future tense garbage? I'd say that's exactly what has happened, and how we wound up with Kerry in the first place. The fire-breathing liberals have taken over the party. It is doomed. Somewhere, a very small violin is playing. Kerry can prevent that by finding his voice and finally crystallizing his indictment of Bush in a few words that voters can actually remember. None of them need be about the Vietnam War. He's been running for president for the past year and he still hasn't found his voice? That would seem to be a problem.

Nothing Like a Good Fisking

Jeff fisks John. Hilarity ensues. And he's got facts and stats and numbers and everything!

The Newsweek Poll

Yesterday, as everyone now knows, Time released a poll showing Bush to be 11 points ahead of Kerry, and today, as everyone will know in about 15 minutes, Newsweek has released a poll saying exactly the same thing. You can find the details of the Newsweek poll here and I don't know a lot about polling and statistics (musician...) but here's something that really struck me.

The polling was done over two days -- Thursday and Friday, and that averaged out to a two-day polling of 52% Bush and 42% Kerry. Now lookie here: The voters polled on Thursday (pre-acceptance speech) polled 49% to 43% in favor of Bush. The voters polled on Friday (post-acceptance speech/midnight meltdown) polled 54% to 38% in favor of Bush. Look at that one more time. On Thursday, Bush polled 6 points ahead of Kerry. On Friday, he polled 16 points ahead of Kerry. That's one heck of change. This may not be as significant as it seems, but it certainly seems pretty darned significant.

UPDATE: I did a little bit of very rudimentary number crunching, and here's what I came up with. Overall, the percentage of Republicans/Democrats/Independents in this poll was 38-28-34, and the number of Republicans polled each day held relatively constant, at 38%. On Thursday, the sample slanted a bit left with 34% Dems and 28% Independents, a swap from the overall, and on Friday, the Dems and the Indies were even, at 31% a piece. Now, I believe pollsters do a bit of calculating from these numbers to get them to align to the population as a whole, and I myself have no idea how to do so, but in any case, the 10 point overnight shift in these numbers is pretty impressive.

UPDATE UPDATE: Now Newsweek actually has its story on the results up, and it too points out the Friday phenomenon. I'd like to point out that I beat them on this point by a full 11 minutes... It says:

Coming out of the Republican National Convention in New York, President George W. Bush now holds a 11-point lead over Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry (52 percent to 41 percent) in a three-way race, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. The poll was taken over two nights, both before and after Bush’s acceptance speech. Respondents who were queried only on Friday, after Bush’s speech, gave the Republican a 16-point lead over Kerry.

The 11-point lead represents a 13-point bounce for Bush since an Aug. 5 to Aug. 10 poll conducted by Newsweek’s pollster, Princeton Survery Research Associates, for the Pew Research Center. The president’s post-convention bounce was substantial vs. the two-point increase received by Kerry after last month’s Democratic National Convention and in line with the size of other post-convention bounces.

In late July, Kerry led the incumbent by 7 points. Removing independent candidate Ralph Nader from the mix actually has no significant effect on the spread between the other two candidates: Without Nader, Bush draws 54 percent of the vote, Kerry 43.

So there we have it.

This Morning's "Well Duh!" Award Goes To...

...CNN.com, with the headline US: Sudan attacks racially based." No shit, Sherlock! Although, actually, if you dig a little deeper, you realize that "racially" refers to black non-Muslims being slaughtered by Arab Muslims, presumbably for being infidels, not for being black. Not that the article actually says as much -- that would be way too much to ask.

The Stragglers

For the most part, the protesters have departed and left us in peace, which is nice, except for the NYPD, who was enjoying the overtime. I'm sure they need a rest though. In any case, not all of the protesters have given up, as I discovered today walking down 3rd Ave.


These folks are from September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. I'm not sure what good they were doing by strolling along in the turn lane, but whatever, I suppose.

UPDATE: Apparently they were doing something called "Stonewalk," which involves walking with a stone commemorating civilians killed in wars around the world. I like Stonewalk somewhat more than I like 9/11FPT, although that assessment is only from casual perusal of their webpage. The mission of the group seems to be "to serve as a reminder of the true cost of war," and that's swell, although I think that a memorial stone for victims of facsism, communism, and the victims of dictators might also be a good idea. I'm all for remembering the true cost of war, just as long as we don't forget the true cost of pacifism. Anyway, today's agenda was:

10am depart from American Friends Service Committee office at 15 Rutherford Place, and pull stone to 96th Street Mosque at Third Avenue. Remarks at Mosque approximately 1:45pm will feature Peaceful Tomorrows' Talat Hamdani and Bob McIlvaine, the Imam and other representatives of the Mosque. Stone will be pulled back to AFSC offices that afternoon.

So there we have it.

Councilly Goodness

This week's Watcher's Council winners are:

Council

Peter's Comment Touched Me Deeply from E-Claire

Non-Council

The Big Lie: Still Going from Dislogue

The full results can be found here.

I got exactly zero votes this week, but I wasn't really expecting to win -- I just thought the others might enjoy a dose of fisking and tape stories to spice up their reading.

Flashback

Going back to the (ahem) immortal words of Mark Mellman the Melmo, campaign strategist to Kerry:

Incumbents have enjoyed an average bounce in the vote margin of 8 points. On average, incumbents' share of the two-party vote has declined by 4 points between their convention and Election Day. [...] Perhaps most important, the average elected incumbent experienced a 4-point drop in his share of the two-party vote from the post-convention polling to Election Day. Thus, to beat the odds, President Bush will need to be garnering 55% of the two-party vote after his convention. Anything less than that and the president will remain in grave political danger.

He's getting there, especially when the early-week polls turn over. Now, don't think that I consider Mellman's prognostications to be worthwhile as anything other than fertilizer, but it's fun to see what he said last week, don't you think?

Disclaimer: I cherry-picked bits from his memo to support the current situation. The memo was sufficiently incoherent and meaningless that I felt no real ethical qualms about doing so. My feeling is, if he wants to random statistics to back up random claims, that's fine, I can too. After all, the only poll that really counts is on election day, right Mark?

Golf

John Kerry's Midnight Meltdown, as history may record it, made me think about why it is that my brother is a good golfer. Part of it, of course, is that he's a very gifted athlete, has a very natural swing, has a great teacher, and is generally very smart. The thing that really works to his advantage, though, is that he's one of the most even-keeled people I've ever met. I assume he has emotions in there somewhere, but they're not really apparent. He's very forgiving of other people and also very forgiving of himself. Consequently, when he hits a bad shot, which everyone does once and a while, or has a bad hole, or a bad round, or whatever, he's able to keep his cool, pick up the pieces, and keep moving. Many of the kids against whom he competes don't have his ability. As long as they're playing well, they're pretty good, and then they dub one in the bushes, and they start throwing clubs or swearing or stomping around and then they've hit a bad rescue shot into the sand trap and by the time they finally get on the green, they're too mad to putt properly, so they wind up three-putting, and then they have to go on the the next whole and then the whole thing repeats, getting worse and worse.

This seems to be about how things are going in the Kerry campaign right now. The most annoying bit of it is that Kerry keeps aiming at the murky waters of Vietnam and then complaining when he loses his ball. Last night was a bit of rhetorical club throwing, and it's just as tacky from the stump as on the green.

Boing!

Time to start the "The Only Poll That Counts Is Election Day" Watch!

Holy crow!

(Via Insty)

San Fransisco Surprise

Every now and then, the most surprisingly conservative editorials come out of San Fransisco papers (also, occasionally, the Village Voice) and today has another fine specimen. Debra Saunders (who hired her?) churns out a real doozy of a column that you really ought to read in full, but here are some tasty morsels:

The conventional talk about the Republican National Convention was that, like the Philadelphia convention in 2000, this would be a parade of moderates putting a kinder face on (what by implication is mean) conservatism. Instead the 2004 convention has been a parade of moderates and conservatives putting themselves on the line for President Bush because they believe that he is right about the most important issue before America today: The war on terrorism, which in this room includes the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

[...]

That's the central difference between the GOP and the Democrats: The Democrats were willing to -- no, they chose to, by nominating Kerry -- sell out their core issue in order to beat George W. Bush.

That's how fanatical their hatred is.

Republicans, on the other hand, are willing to lose an election for a cause they believe in. Bush knew when he began that the war in Iraq could cost him the election, but he did what he thought was best. And he still isn't flinching.

[...]

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that Bush is not political -- he is political. He's president. I am arguing that the Democratic Party has become so political that it stands for absolutely nothing. Dems know it, so they nominate men who also stand for nothing -- but raw ambition.

[...]

Some of the very folks who bellow, "Bush lied," are crossing their fingers in the hope that Kerry lied.

"I don't think the Democrats have confidence in the American people," Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot noted. That's why the Democrats are "angry."

And many Democrats think that they're going to lose. A famous wartime poster had Winston Churchill's face looming over the words, "Deserve victory." You deserve victory when you believe in a cause so much that you are willing to take risks for it.

This year, the Democrats abandoned their principles, implying either that they don't trust the America people to appreciate their message, or that they don't trust their message. Democrats aren't willing to take risks, but they are willing to choose someone whom they want to mislead the public. For that alone, they deserve to lose, and I think they know it.

Amen.

A Nation Deceived

This looks like it will be an excellent new book. It's called "A Nation Deceived," and shockingly, it's not about George W. Bush. Or John Kerry. It takes down the myth that acceleration/double-promotion (skipping a grade) is a bad way to challenge extremely bright children. The abstract says:

America’s schools routinely avoid the easiest and most effective way to help highly capable students, according to a sweeping new national report. While the popular perception is that a child who skips a grade will be socially stunted, fifty years of research shows that moving bright students ahead has strongly positive results, both academically and socially.

This is true. My family and I have been advocates of double (or more) promotion since I started 1st grade and jumped to 2nd at Christmas. Didn't do me no harm, and I know many, many, other people who did something similar, most of whom turned out okay, and the ones that didn't, well, they were messed up anyway.

Why haven’t schools, teachers, and parents accepted the idea of acceleration? The report considers the reasons why schools hold back America’s brightest students:

Schools are not familiar with the research on acceleration.

The philosophy that children must be kept with their age peers.

The belief that acceleration "hurries" children out of childhood.

The concern that acceleration could hurt students socially.

Political concerns about "equality" for all.

The concern that other students will be offended if one student is accelerated.

There's a little bit of truth to the last one. In retrospect, it would have been better for me to simultaneously skip a grade and switch schools, because being the new kid is a label that can eventually be surmounted -- being the smart kid is much harder to live down. All in all, however, I consider double-promotion one of the better educational things that ever happened to me, and I hope this book will help make it more mainstream. The book doesn't seem to have been released yet, but I'm looking forward to reading it.

Has The Onion Infiltrated Kerry/Edwards '04?

The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News has issued a little takedown of John Edwards, saying,

AFTER POUNDING President Bush for the past year — accusing him of deliberately lying about intelligence, starting the Iraq war to boost his poll numbers, dodging the draft during Vietnam, maliciously harming the environment, hijacking the government for the benefit of his “oil buddies” and being a mindless cowboy — Democrats have expressed shock and horror that Republican National Convention speakers stooped so low as to (gasp!) point the American people to Sen. John Kerry’s voting record.

[...]

After Cheney and Miller criticized Sen. Kerry’s voting record, which the Massachusetts senator found so embarrassing that he barely referenced it during his own convention speech, his running-mate, Sen. John Edwards, said in response: “There was a lot of hate coming from that podium tonight.”

If that is hate, what do you call the vicious invective that Democrats have hurled at President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the past 3½ years?

Good point. Now here's the really interesting point:

Edwards’ comment came the day after a Kerry/Edwards press release accused Cheney of getting his wife pregnant in 1965 for the sole purpose of avoiding the draft.

Excuse me? Did they really say that? I can't find the press release, but I don't doubt it exists. Honestly, who on earth thought that that would be a good press release topic? And how do they know? Were they there? Have the Cheneys said something to that effect? If I were the Cheneys, I'd schedule a nice photo-op and rebuttal session with Mom, Dad, and Baby 1965, the child they longed had longed for for so long, etc. Except that this line of argument isn't worth that. Completely stupid. Completely and utterly stupid.

Reactions

Stephen Green and Jeff Harrell both have relatively eloquent responses to Bush's speech. I have nothing eloquent to say, mostly because I used up my store of mental energy for the evening on Mary Beth, which is a pity, really, like filling up on Spam and having no room left over for cannoli.

Jeff says a lot of good things, and then says:

The conclusion of the President's speech began with the words, "In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other." He was honest and funny and sincere and passionate, almost to the point of openly weeping before a televised audience of tens of millions. "These four years," he said, "have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget." The message is clear, isn't it? Nobody knows what the next four years could bring. America could reach heights never before achieved, or another attack on our homeland could plunge us into unimagined depths. We know where George W. Bush stands, and tonight he asked us to stand with him. He asked us to trust him to lead in an uncertain time.

I can't think of a time in recent memory when a President or Presidential candidate made such a request of the American people. Nor can I recall a time when it seemed that so many were so willing to extend him that trust.

Good speech.

Stephen also has a lot of good things to say, especially this:

There was no overriding theme to President Bush’s speech, except for the unspoken one: “This is who I am.” No, wait -- let me amend that. The unspoken theme was, “This is who we are.” As Americans.

[...]

Forget the war. Forget policy. Forget everything but two men who want something from me. Kerry could never have joked about the way he walks – or made any other joke at his own expense. Bush can, and did. That's a guy comfortable in his own skin, and that's a guy I'd give something to, before the other guy. I'm pretty sure a lot of people recognize that, even if only instinctively. In other words, my gut tells me to vote for Bush.

My brain does, too.

Bush did indeed give the speech of a lifetime. He was warm, he was funny, he was as humble as the most powerful man in the world can be, and he made us remember who we are as Americans, where we've come from, and where we've been. American history for George W. Bush doesn't begin and end in Vietnam, it begins with a bunch of courageous pilgrims on a little boat sailing thousands of miles across an ocean to an unknown and unforgiving land on a quest for freedom, and if it ends, well, it will end over his dead body. John Kerry gave nothing away in his speech -- no tangible criticisms that could be criticized, no lofty platitudes, and none of his soul. I loved watching George W. Bush give his speech for the same reason I love watching Hugh Jackman act -- because he lays it all out there, all of it, his whole soul, and you can take it or leave it. The amount of strength required for that amount of vulnerablity is something that is truly beautiful. The only way I can describe what came across at the end, when Bush began to break down, is love. Love for his country and love for the people he leads. It wasn't a farewell address, but towards the end, it almost had that feel. The songs I'd compare it to would be, in no particular order, "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, and "Once Before I Go" from Boy from Oz and a lot of other songs that make me cry. Beautiful.

Mingling with Mary Beth

You know, it had been about 36 hours since I'd last heard from my buddy Mary Beth, and I had begun to believe that she was in a spa somewhere, covered in salves to ease her aching buttocks, still recovering from the collective spanking delivered by good ole Zell last night. But apparently, she's back and cranky as ever.

Dear Friend,

I'd missed you, Mary Beth, I really had.

Tonight, immediately after one of the nastiest, most divisive conventions in history comes to a close, John Kerry will take the stage at a rally in Springfield, OH and lay out his plan for the future to strengthen this country and reverse the last four years. I want to give you -- our online supporters -- a preview of what John Kerry will say.

Yep, let's reverse the last four years. That sounds like a great idea. Where would that put us? Well, let's see. That would put the women of Afghanistan back in burqas. That would put all of Afghanistan back under Taliban rule, oppressing 25 million people, give or take a few. That would put Saddam Hussein back in power. That would put another 25 million people, roughly speaking, back under totalitarian rule. Pakistan would still have the Khan nuclear program ticking along, and Libya would still be cranking along on its WMDs. And we'd all be without our nifty tax cuts. We'd be starting a recession instead of ending one. The only thing that I think we all wish we could reverse from the last four years would be to see the towers standing again. And John Kerry can't repeal September 11th. All in all, reversing the last four years seems like a pretty dumb idea to me.

Thank you,

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

No, thank you, Mary Beth Cahill, Campaign Manager.

Excerpts of John Kerry's Upcoming Remarks

The election comes down to this. If you believe this country is heading in the right direction, you should support George Bush. But if you believe America needs to move in a new direction, join with us. John and I offer a better plan that will make us stronger at home and more respected in the world. And we need your help to do that.

Not to be persnickity about this, but you know, you had a whole convention, and then a whole month after that to tell us what your plan was. The press has been waiting with baited breath for an interview -- any interview. And you haven't said a darned thing. That's not the smoothest strategy.

For three days in New York, instead of talking about jobs and the economy, we heard anger and insults from the Republicans. And I'll tell you why. It's because they can't talk about the real issues facing Americans. They can't talk about their record because it's a record of failure.

This is a bit rich coming from a man who has done nothing in 20 years in the Senate and his running mate who has done nothing in his three. At least Bush has a record, and it's not a bad one, considering that in 3 1/2 years, he's had an inherited recession, a massive terrorist attack on a major financial center, and two wars. And the economy is recovering decently. I'm personally okay with that.

We all saw the anger and distortion of the Republican Convention. For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

They didn't attack your patriotism, and methinks that thou dost protest a wee bit too much on the patriotism... Now, considering that you're running around saying that Bush is "unfit to be president," it would seem that you feel declarations of the opponent's fitness or lack thereof to be fair game. I mean, Bush isn't saying you're tall and haughty and only managed to get into Boston College. He's saying that you, based on your record, probably shouldn't be handed the keys to the country. You're running for president. He's supposed to say that. The political process has not broken down. Review your history. This is normal. How about instead of saying that you're not going to have your record questioned, you come up with some answers for when it is questioned. That might be a little bit more useful, and also a lot less whiny.

The vice president even called me unfit for office last night. I guess I'll leave it up to the voters whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty.

See previous post. Nobody friggin' cares. That was Vietnam. The only reason I care about Vietnam at all is that you seem to have made up a good part of what you did there, which only bothers me because having a pathological liar for a president is not an appealing prospect. I mean, John, c'mon here, do you honestly believe that the American public is going to vote against the most competent veep we've ever had and replace him with Captain Ken-doll because he got a deferment 30 years ago and you didn't? And, let us recall, that's not for lack of trying on your part. I'd lay off that line of argument if I were you.

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit. That's the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it's not going to change. I believe it's time to move America in a new direction; I believe it's time to set a new course for America.

I would argue that never having lead anything before would render one unfit for duty, but I think I've beaten this horse to death. How the hell, short of overthrowing Saudi Arabia, do you suggest, practically and immediately, removing the House of Saud from our oil-buying equation? Especially since you oppose drilling in ANWR? I'm as much of a hydrogen optimist as anyone, but the fact of the matter is, we're at least 10 years from a sustainable hydrogen infrastructure, and we've got to buy our oil from someplace. The oil belongs to the Saudis, they can price it however they like, just like the people of Boston can price tea and lobsters in any way they choose. This is a stupid argument and you know it. What friggin' "new course" are you setting? Mary Beth just told us you're going to reverse the last four years. That ain't a new course, honey. Where are you going? You don't say.

And we have a specific plan to do just that. So tomorrow morning, John and Elizabeth and Teresa and I are hitting the road across America's heartland. From here, we'll go out and talk with Americans in towns across Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And because a stronger America begins at home, we'll talk about our plan to create jobs, cut taxes for the middle class, lower health care costs, and make America safer and more secure.

You're going to create more jobs than there are in fact unemployed people in the US. And you're going to do this while keeping taxes low (except on the evil rich!), adding $2 trillion or more in new spending, and somehow beef up security, lower drug costs, cure all disease with stem cells, and get the French, Iranians, Koreans, to love us. And of course you'll raise the minimum wage, which will lift everyone out of poverty. And Al Qaeda will disappear.

And I've got a bridge to sell you, Johnny.

And one more thing... you dragged a bunch of supporters out to a rally at midnight to announce that you'll announce a plan tomorrow? If I came out at midnight to see someone, they'd better not only give me a plan, they better give me a smile, a handshake, and maybe more than that. I mean, if I went to a Bush-Cheney rally at midnight, Cheney had darned well better be doing the Twist... Just announcing that you're going to announce something is a waste of your supporters time, and it's tacky and rude. That is all.

UPDATE: Paul at Wizbang liveblogged Kerry's midnight performance. Go read. Apparently Kerry led off with "And now that the President has Finally finished his speech, I have 5 words for America, 'This is your wake up call.'" It's midnight, John. Normal people are sleeping. You'd be much better off if you were sleeping. No one gets a frickin' wake-up call at midnight, and no one wants one. Someone who calls you at midnight is more accurately described as a pain in the arse. You are indeed our midnight wake-up call, Johnny.

Please, Mr. Kerry

For the love of all that's holy and good, please stop it with the "Cheney got a deferment" bit. Please. It doesn't help you and it's painful for me to watch. At this point, you're self-parodying. Just stop.

How Can You Not Love This Man?

That was magnificent. George Bush is magnificent. The self-depricating humor, the picturesque phrases, everything. Magnificent. And so sincere. He almost lost it in towards the end, and so did I and the people I was talking to at the time.

And by the way... Dubya is WAY hotter than John Edwards. Completely real, strong, and loves his wife. Beautiful.

ABC seems to like the speech. That was dynamite -- out of the park. The first bit was unimpressive, but my goodness, the end.

UPDATE: By the way, you may not have noticed, but tonight, with the exception of the word "America," he didn't have a Texas/Southern accent tonight.

You can find the text here.

In just 11 minutes, Kerry will be holding a big rally in Cincinatti. No one will care.

ABC is reporting that the crowd in the hall had a very powerful emotional connection with Bush, and they were wondering if that carried over to the TV viewers. It did. When he was tearing up, I was too.

For the Seekers

I get a lot of search hits looking for either:
a) the lyrics to "The Victors" (aka "Hail to the Victors")
b) the identity of the composer of "The Victors" or
c) a MIDI file of "The Victors"

These seem to find me because I'm a composer and write about that, and also because I'm a Michigan grad, and occasionally type out the fight song when important things like crushing victories over Ohio State happen. I always feel vaguely bad about being the #3 hit and not having the answers, so here you go:

a) Now for a cheer they are here, triumphant!
Here they come with banners flying,
In stalwart step they're nighing,
With shouts of vict'ry crying,
We hurrah, hurrah, we greet you now,
Hail!

Far we their praises sing
For the glory and fame they've bro't us
Loud let the bells them ring
For here they come with banners flying
Far we their praises tell
For the glory and fame they've bro't us
Loud let the bells them ring
For here they come with banners flying
Here they come, Hurrah!

Hail! to the victors valiant
Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes
Hail! Hail! to Michigan
the leaders and best
Hail! to the victors valiant
Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes
Hail! Hail! to Michigan,
the champions of the West!

We cheer them again
We cheer and cheer again
For Michigan, we cheer for Michigan
We cheer with might and main
We cheer, cheer, cheer
With might and main we cheer!

Hail! to the victors valiant
Hail! to the conqu'ring heroes
Hail! Hail! to Michigan,
the champions of the West!

(Copyright L. Elbel/The Regents of the U of Michigan)

It is key to thrust your fist into the air every time you say "Hail!" and to clap on all other beats.

b) Elbel. Louis Elbel wrote "The Victors". He is the composer. This is why the field is named after him (not the football field...Elbel Field).

c) You do not need a midi file of "The Victors." You just don't. There are very few times when you need any sort of midi file, and I'm almost certain this isn't one of them. I'll give you the solfege, though.

Mi! do re mi do re mi.
Fa! re mi fa re mi do.
Soh! La! mi mi fa do re mi re do Soh!
Mi! do re mi do re mi.
Fa! re mi fa re mi do.
Soh! La! mi mi fa do re mi soh mi re do!

So now you can sing it yourself, with hand gestures, if you feel up to it.

Ode to a Kodak

I have to say, I've become very fond of my digital camera, especially considering the circumstances under which it was acquired. I have a Kodak EasyShare CX6230, a lower-end camera that came to me because of the carefully calculated campaign of evil perpetrated by Dell Computers. You see, my mother, about a year ago, purchased a Dell Inspiron (or something) laptop while my dad was in the hospital in Houston. It worked fine-ishly until about March, at which point it died. Deader than a doornail. She spent days at a time on the phone with "tech support."

First they said she needed new software. So she tried to install that. It was still dead. They said she needed more memory (and bear in mind, she wasn't running anything fancy on this thing -- XP, Quicken, Solitare, and AOL. That's about it) and had her send off for more memory so she could install it herself. It was still dead. So they sent her a box, and told her to send it in for repairs. She did, and waited almost a month for its return. When it returned from the "Service Center" at the beginning of May, it was accompanied by a note that said that it needed its hard drive replaced, but the "Service Center" did not have a replacement hard drive, and so she should call a certain phone number to see about ordering one, presumably to have it delivered to our house and we would get to install the hard drive ourselves. No dice.

At this point, I took over the phone correspondence, and called the Dell people, informing them in no uncertain terms that they would either fix the laptop properly or send us a new one. Several hours later, I finally got them to agree to take back the computer and send us a replacement. Weeks went by. No replacement. No word from them. And no functional laptop. After three weeks had elapsed, we called Dell back and demanded our money back. I had, in the interim, purchased a PowerBook G4, and it had arrived, customized, 4 days later. Mother kept eyeing it longingly, and so we decided that we'd have the Dell people refund our money and run, not walk, over to the Apple store and get her an iBook.

The Dell people were not so helpful though. They offered us a refund of about 60% of the computer's value, since we'd owned the thing for more than 6 months. They were not impressed by our argument that the computer had died within 6 months, and if we had known that they were going to be so terrible about replacing the thing, we'd have demanded a refund then. The other offer they made us was that they would actually send us a replacement camera, and in compensation for our three laptop-less months and 50 hours on the phone with tech support, they'd send us either the cheap digital camera or cheap printer of our choice. We eventually talked them up to the slightly-less-so-but-still-cheap models, and that's how we came to own this little Kodak.

About 10 days later, a replacement laptop actually DID arrive, and we promptly sold it for just less than we'd originally paid for it, and used the funds to buy Mom an iBook. And I got the camera. It's not fabulous, but it was free-ish, and it's not so valuable that I have to worry about it. All's well that ends well, I guess.

From Whence They Came?

Glenn points out this article about Kerry's medals, an issue about which I am not particularly passionate, except to the extent that it shows that Kerry is a scheming, manipulative μαλάκα, and probably ought not be trusted. The article questions the Silver Star with Combat V (there ain't no such critter) and then goes on to say:

    No one knows who provided the additional flowery language concluding, “Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself.…” Well, someone certainly did.

    In a statement to Fox News’s Major Garrett, Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan explained that Mr. Kerry had lost the first two citations for his Silver Star and had asked the Secretary of the Navy to provide a new one. Leaving aside the unprecedented appearance of three separate Silver Star citations on Mr. Kerry’s Web site all containing different language signed by three different people, this explanation makes no sense at all.

    Veterans lose citations all the time.They simply ask the appropriate military records office to send them a replacement copy, and it does. There is no mystery to this standard procedure that requires the intervention of the Secretary of the Navy.

    A legal watchdog group, Judicial Watch, has issued a statement, which may be read at www.judicialwatch.org, that reads, “Kerry should remove [the] Silver Star citation from his internet site pending review by [the] U.S. Navy.” It raises other questions about the Web site records as well." (Emphasis added)

Okay, now let's bring back to the center that which we set aside. The Kerry campaign has all three citations. I'm not sure on this, but presumably they were given to the campaign by the candidate himself, as I would imagine that they are a part of his file and would have to either be released by him or with his blessing.

Now, if Kerry has citations one and two now, he presumably had them at the time he requested citation three, which would render false his claim to have lost them. The same could be said for requesting citation two when he had citation one.

If Kerry did indeed lose both citations one and two, which strikes me as improbable, as legend has it that Kerry saves everything, but fine, let's assume he did, then procedure, as I understand it, would have been to Xerox (or whatever) the old citation, slap a signature on it, and send it on along. The only reason one would need a different citation, with different/additional language, would be if neither of the previous copies existed. But if Kerry did actually lose the citations, the Navy obviously still had a copy that it could release because, obviously, the documents we have today had to come from somewhere.

The article continues:

   There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for these inaccuracies. But in the midst of a heated campaign, it is hard to find the time to review the many forms involved.

    There would be no shame in Mr. Kerry’s removing the questionable documents from his Web site until he has a chance to do so. As General Thomas Wilkerson, the president of the U.S. Naval Institute puts it,“It is to your best interest to have your record in good order. If it is wrong, you are accountable. And if you use it to advance your career, it is even more important.”

Do we know who produced these records? If it was Kerry, it seems very sketchy to me that he would continue to go back for reissues of citations that he already had (I believe we call this 'fishing for a compliment'). If it was the Navy, I'm curious why the citations were reworded when the originals were in Kerry's file. Very interesting.

Mad as Zell

Today's KerrySpot nails Terry McAuliffe's response to Zell Miller's tour de force last night. Jim Geraghty writes:

...When did this country become such a bunch of wimps that we don't even make a counterargument against someone because they sounded too angry? And show me one thing in Zell's speech which was hateful. Angry? Sure. Hell, maybe even furious. But there is a difference between anger and hate.

Terrible Terry could have, and should have, argued that Kerry's votes on defense were the right call because of... some sort of reasoned argument that the bills that these defense systems were in were full of pork or $300 toilet seats or something like that. He should have laid out the benefits of the defense policies in a Kerry administration. He could even have argued that Zell exaggerated, that Kerry believes (today) that preemption is necessary at times, etc.

Instead, Terry whined that mean old Zell scared him. Hey, the Bill Clinton "I feel your pain" huggy-fuzzy-wuzzy (or is it "wussy"?) stuff was great for the 1990s, when we thought the world was at peace. But we weren't at peace, and now we know we live in an era where a bunch of maniacs have decided they would rather die than live in a world where we live unmolested. We (okay, I) want a mean old SOB running things, some tough-as-nails cranky ex-Marine with a mean streak a mile wide whose idea of dealing with threats includes a crowbar, duct tape and a hill of fire ants.

It is a mean, nasty world out there, and speaking in gentle tones about cooperation isn't going to keep us safe. Despire some NRO folks fears, I think this speech will go over better than expected, because a good chunk of the population, more than just Republicans, is mad as Zell and not going to take it anymore.

My only critique with Zell's speech was that he didn't use hand gestures, which gave him the appearance of an irate Irish stepdancer, but other than that, it was perfect. And yes, the meaner, the better. If the rest of the world is scared of Dubya, that strikes me as a perfectly fine thing.

Sound of the South

Dean sticks it to Ken Layne and Andrew Sullivan with all the sweetness and gentleness of Zell Miller going for the throat. It's a beautiful thing. In response to their contention that Zell is a racist, bigot, and Dixicrat, Dean writes:

Okay, so just let me make it blunt: Ken Layne, you are a bigoted, ignorant, condescending twit. Andrew Sullivan, you are no better than the worst fag-bashers of the world. No wait, you're worse, because you know better, but you did it anyway.

The both of you heard an angry man with a southern drawl, and you injected your own cheap, tawdry, disgusting prejudices into the mix, and didn't even think twice about it.

You both disgust me.

You know, this is a bit off the topic, but I wonder if part of Bush's perception of ignorance problem stems from the fact that he has a very Texas drawl and speech cadence. I believe studies have shown that people tend to look down on the intelligence of someone with a strong southern accent. I also wonder if he can't pull off some varient of Yankee accent and simply chooses not to. I suspect he can and simply doesn't care.

For Whom The Bagpipe Tolls

I only found one protestor today, although that may have been because I wasn't really looking. After three days dressed as a protester, I put on black dress pants and my nifty new green knit tank top from the sale at Ann(e?) Taylor Loft that I got on Monday and engaged in acts of capitalism. Didn't actually buy anything, although the mini foodprocessors at Bloomingdales were on sale and they had them in all different colors to match your decor and really, I just want to buy something from Bloomingdales so I can walk around with a medium-sized brown bag with the words "Medium Brown Bag" on the side. But I digress. I spotted this fellow on the Avenue of the Americas (6th) at Rockafeller Center. I'll let his signs speak for themselves, because, to be honest, I have no idea what they mean. They are signed "John Lennon".






The really notable thing about this particular demonstration, however, was that he had a boombox at his feet that was playing bagpipe music at a rather high volume, much to the bemusement of the onlooking traffic cops.

Cavorting with Campaign Managers

Mary Beth Cahill seriously raises my blood pressure, thankfully, it's low to begin with, or else we might find outselves in a "Mary Beth Lied, Katie Died" sort of situation. So here she goes again, and bear in mind, this is an official correspondance with the Kerry campaign.

Dear Friend,

You wish. With a friend like you, who needs an arch-enemy?

Tonight, Dick Cheney -- Halliburton's representative in the Bush White House -- accepts the nomination for vice president. Republicans are attacking John Kerry at their convention because they have no plan and a dismal record. These attacks are only energizing our supporters. Over the last few days, more than 80,000 Americans have stepped forward and contributed record amounts online to the Democratic Party. Thank you for once again demonstrating a commitment whose impact will last well beyond this election. Together, we will defeat the powerful special interests behind the Bush-Cheney campaign, and together, we will build a stronger America.

Have you been watching the convention, Mary Beth? The GOP has specific plans, and have been far more upbeat than the Dems. The Republicans are attacking John Kerry because it's so easy. More than 80,000 people, you say? Why, that's almost 0.08% of the likely voters in this country! What a groundswell of support! My, what big grassroots you have, Granny!

In addition to your tremendous outpouring of financial support to the Democratic Party, our campaign is signing up new volunteers at a record pace. In fact, we are now closing in on 2 million online supporters. What an achievement that will be -- crossing this milestone right in the middle of the Republican convention.

You got 2 million people to consent to give you their email list. Shockingly, not all of us are your friends. And so you hit 2 million folks during the GOP convention. It's the beginning of the general campaign season. Of course people are signing up about now. I'm not impressed.

John Kerry will call the two millionth person who signs up. So please contact your friends and ask them to sign up for our campaign.

And if you sign up RIGHT NOW, he'll throw in the obscene bumper sticker of your choice AND the conversion whisk. Don't delay! Operators are standing by!

You know, I'd really enjoy it if that 2 millionth person was a Bush supporter who enjoys having fiskable material delivered directly to his/her mailbox. If you want to be that person, here's your chance.

When we talk to you about the influence of special interests like Halliburton, and the difference that you can make, it is NOT just campaign rhetoric. No firm has benefited more than Texas-based Halliburton, Dick Cheney's former company.

Balderdash.

Let's look at the facts:

Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract worth more than $7 billion for the rebuilding of Iraq. This contract was "coordinated" by the vice president's own office. That same year, 2003, Dick Cheney received $178,437 in "deferred compensation" from Halliburton.

Reports show that Halliburton drastically overcharged America for gas being imported into Iraq, and skimped on basic services to troops like providing clean working conditions and safe food.

In all, Halliburton has overcharged the U.S. government $186 million. They even used tax dollars to pay an employee in Iraq $82,000 a year to "walk around and look busy."

Dick Cheney is watching out for Halliburton, and Halliburton is watching out for Dick Cheney. A recently filed 2003 financial disclosure form reveals that Halliburton invoked an insurance policy last year to indemnify Cheney for what could be steep legal bills "arising from his service" at the company.

Nevermind that investigations have found nothing untoward in Cheney's relationship to Halliburton. Don't you think that if something actually COULD have stuck, the Dems would have investigations all over it like mallard on a duck? The Halliburton no-bid contracts originated under Bill Clinton, and anyway, who would she like to coordinate the contracts? Colin Powell? If I needed someone to work out a deal with a muffler company, I wouldn't call them myself, I'd have my father, who's done business with them for years do it. That only makes sense.

Let's commit ourselves today to sending Bush back to Crawford and Cheney back to Halliburton in November. Again, you have an important role to play in this fight. Tell your friends that if they support our campaign, it is time to get involved.

Thank you,

You aren't even slightly welcome.

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

Oh go fall in an uncapped oil well.