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As usual, nobody else was invited. Getting into the Hilton on Saturday morning was like getting into the Green Zone in Baghdad. No questions were taken from the press or anybody else. Because he arrived on Friday night and spoke Saturday morning and was gone by lunchtime, few who weren't in the Hilton conference room ever knew he was here. Most of disabled vets were from out of town. There was a story in the Saturday paper, which nobody reads, and a segment or two on the Saturday teevee news, which nobody watches because it's the weekend and people have better things to do.
So how is this campaigning?
Nevada is, as you've heard, a Battleground State. The race is tight as hell out here. Bush won this state by just 20,000 votes last time around. The Republican lead in voter registration has dropped down to 8,000 since then, while the state has gained an electoral vote -- thanks to booming populations in Vegas / Clark County and up here in Reno / Tahoe / Carson -- and independents still make up 20 percent of the electorate.
Bush came through a month ago and spoke at the Reno Convention Center. My wife, a registered independent, got a personal invite on the telephone. She said no thanks. Apparently, a lot of people said no. A few days later, the teevee news was promoting a See The President scheme, whereby you went to the local Toyota dealership and the Secret Service would give you a free ticket if you looked right. Eventually, they filled the convention center's main room with a Bush-friendly crowd. That might not be anybody's idea of an effective plan to convince independent or swing voters to go your way, but at least there was a chance for a few undecideds to see Dubya in the flesh.
Cheney's little visit didn't seem to have any point at all, unless he is deeply worried about a couple hundred disabled vets voting against Bush / Cheney and maybe voting for someone who actually served in Vietnam. Then again, this seems to be the New Normal when it comes to Cheney on the campaign trail. Those who don't swear allegiance aren't allowed to be in the same building with the Veep.
Kerry & Edwards have yet to come through Northern Nevada. Maybe it's on their Chug Chug Choo Choo Hello America schedule; I don't know. When they do start assaulting us with their own special kind of "We can do better" love, I sure hope it is in a semi-public place. If Kerry or Edwards just walked down Virginia Street shaking hands -- in the manner they seem to do all the time in other states -- it would be far more than Bush / Cheney will ever do. It would be almost human. Posted at 1:28 AM
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Apologies, I guess, if things look a little screwy around here for the next few hours / days / years. I'm trying to work out some elegant dual-Front Page solution so that our Musical Site might also show up, or maybe some split-screen thing, or one of those Pop Ups everybody loves so much .... Posted at 11:51 PM
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It appears the Great Blogging Revolution of the DNC has been judged a bummer, a wash, and a terrible waste of the great potential exhibited a whole week ago when hundreds of Journalists proclaimed Political Convention Blogging to be the biggest, bestest, neatest trend in Media.
As a spectator this time around, I guess I could jump on the sad-clown bandwagon and agree that it was all a miserable waste of time, a bunch of silly hype, etc. But that's not actually true, except for the "silly hype" part -- and you should understand by now that any novelty whatsoever will be aggressively & endlessly covered by the convention media hordes: Lady in a funny hat, guys with boxes on their heads, trouble with the balloons, the usual heavy security, lines for the toilet, etc. Nothing will ever live up to convention-media hype. It has all been forgotten now, but four years ago the media hordes went just as loopy for "new media" at the convention. Not even the reporters who covered it could possibly remember what a big deal they made out of "e-journalists" attending the GOP & DNC conventions of 2000. Then again, who would want to remember writing this:
San Francisco Chronicle Let's take a walk back down "Internet Avenue," "Democracy Row" and "Internet Alley," the cleverly named, far-from-the-action areas set aside for "new media" at the 2000 conventions. There were many, many Web / Technology companies at these things, along with the online divisions of traditional media companies (ABCNews.com, Wired.com, etc.) and reporters from online magazines (Slate, Salon, ZDNet). Fine. Even though HotWired and Salon and several other online publications had been around during the previous conventions -- here's Salon columnist James Carville getting tossed out of the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego and HotWired's Brock Meeks reporting from the same party -- it was just unbelievably big news that they were once again covering the presidential campaign.
Can anyone ever forget the glory of 1996? Here's The Netizen's Jon Katz in an Aug. 25 Web column from those golden days:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Reminding us that New Media Hubris & Hypocrisy is certainly not new to 2004 (or 2000), Katz then informs us that lots of online reporters in 1996 were already doing exactly what he just attacked as the exclusive realm of "Dead Media."
The Netizen, which views itself as a beacon of the new digital culture, is in Chicago in considerable numbers and at great expense. Other online sites such as AllPolitics and PoliticsNow are covering the conventions in even more minutiae than the networks. Others may be more or less liberal or conservative, skeptical or accepting, but their very presence implies ratification and acquiescence. You tell 'em, Katz! Good times, good times. While the world may have forgotten this vintage 1996 blend of Web triumphalism and "conventions are worthless commercials" grumbling, the present offers much of the same in ever so slightly new skins. (Nice wine metaphor, jackass!) From this week, for example, here's Dave Winer's "online writers are at the conventions" triumphalism and Jeff Jarvis' "conventions are worthless commercials" grumblings.
Now Katz lives in exile, on a farm, and writes about dogs ....
Let's see if we can crawl back to The Point.
The point, I think, is that the convention-blogger buddies should not be Sad & Blue about the dim reviews they've received. Web-page writers didn't live up to the hype in 2000, and they didn't even get hype in 1996, because most newspaper & teevee journalists hadn't quite figured out the Internet existed. Imagine how sad you would feel to cover the whole thing, from the floor, making history, etc., and nobody even comprehends what you're talking about, let alone acknowledges your efforts in the New York Times.
Besides, there were at least a handful of blogs that did a good job some of the time. (You can't do a good job all the time at these logistical hellshows. Most of the 24 hours are spent talking to people, walking around, standing in lines, drinking with pals old & new, sleeping, sightseeing, drinking alone, getting lost, finding decent food and maybe listening to part of a speech or two. This leaves maybe two hours a day for the computer, anchored to some spot with wireless or wired Internet access. Oh, and then you need something to report or at least make jokes about. Spending 10 hours a day with a laptop on your, uh, lap? Then you should've stayed home, like the smart people did.)
If you're going to do this blogging stuff at the next convention, you should really start the work now. Set up some interviews, start calling people like your hometown delegates, post all kinds of crazy speculation, plan elaborate parties and get other people to pay the bills, trick people into drunkenly dissing the platform (you could win their trust online, gradually), etc.
And if you haven't read Hunter Thompson's book about the 1972 campaign, go buy a copy right now and study it very carefully. (If you've read it, but not during this campaign cycle, go get it off the shelf and pay attention. I read it every four years and always learn something new. It's also a terrific Early Days introduction to many party stalwarts and Washington insiders we all know and despise today.)
Thompson created a completely new & totally unique style of coverage that is remarkably similar to the style & tone of the best news / commentary weblogs. The unadorned interview transcriptions, big chunks of text from newspaper & magazine articles, funny graphics & photos, wild conjecture, personal insults, out-front bias, inside-baseball trivia, brilliant insight mixed with hungover analysis, strange conspiracies, breathless news flashes, goofy footnotes and running personal essay ... that was Thompson at the top of his form in 1971-72, and it had the bizarre dual impact of both changing journalism forever and ensuring that nobody like him would ever again work for any Serious Media Property.
You, however, are now working in the only media format on Earth where such nakedly-subjective all-you-can-eat narrative journalism is welcome. And that's mostly because there is no boss, or reliable income, or anything beyond your heart and brain and a fanciful electronic typewriter. Still, it is published work, available to as small or large an audience as you deserve. It is as real as Judith Miller's lies, as solid as Mike Barnicle's plagiarism, and hopefully more interesting than Jayson Blair's cheap-ass little fictions. ("Oh, I'm in Maryland, but I'm really in Brooklyn ...." That's the best the little crapbag could invent? Forget the "journalistic sins." He should've been fired, and then executed, for a tragic lack of imagination.)
Will you ever have the impact of ... oh, let's pick a name out of the air ... the New York Times' Judith Miller? Well, it's doubtful whatever you write will directly lead to the violent death of a thousand Americans in Iraq. But who knows? Go out there and give it a whirl, as they say.
(I hope some of the more politically connected bloggers, like Josh Marshall, will soon have a whole lot of stuff about the backroom deals & promises secured in Boston. I know the big promises have already been made, but with Edwards' coming in relatively late in the game, there should've been a lot of "smoke-filled room" talk about the lesser prizes & who's up to get them ... and who's up to be severely punished.)
There's all this talk about Kerry being the nominee of a fractured party, and once again nobody seems capable of remembering a whole four years ago when the GOP field included Pat Buchanan, John McCain, Steve Forbes, Elizabeth Dole, Lamar Alexander, Dan Quayle, Alan Keyes and John Kasich. (I think that's all of them.) And John McCain whipped Dubya's ass all the way to South Carolina, when Karl Rove authorized a last-minute "telephone poll" asking Republican voters what they might think about McCain having a nigger child out of wedlock. I'm not kidding! Nobody remembers anything.
But it's all there, thanks to Google, if anybody cares to look into it.
Whoops, it's Wine o'clock. Good-Bye Forever. Posted at 5:13 PM
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Not that I followed it at the time, but it appears the Justice Department has cleared the loathsome Sandy Berger of all wrongdoing in this "missing documents" ruckus:
The Wall Street Journal reports archives staff have accounted for all classified documents Berger looked at. Usual weirdness. Something terrible happened, this proves so-and-so is this-or-that, no it's a dirty trick, yeah but the other side did it, whoops nothing happened, okay cool, and if you hadn't read the news or the blogs for two weeks, you never would've known whatever happened did or didn't happen.
UPDATE: Why can't I find anything else about this? All that's on the News Google is a NewsMax.com thing weakly denying the story. Wasn't this a big deal for everybody a week or two back? UPDATE II: InstaPundit posted the same two links a few hours ago -- I hadn't looked at the site since this morning -- and asked the same question. InstaPundit had a lot of stuff on this, although it made my eyes glaze over. Also, the comments on the Atrios post are interesting. Why isn't this story showing up anywhere else? I've had the news on all afternoon.
Is this another one of those Friday Funnies? If so, it's a damned good day! The entire U.S. political press is either asleep or sitting on an airplane, crying dumbly over how their lives didn't work out. Posted at 3:47 PM
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It's going to be fast & furious between now and late October. The United States just caved in to France on the NATO command structure for Iraq, and NATO-led (not U.S.-led) training officers will start arriving from Europe early next month. The force will grow to "hundreds" over the next couple of months.
Diplomats said the command dispute was more about political symbolism than military security.
Some said Paris, Europe's fiercest opponent of last year's U.S.-led invasion, wanted to avoid handing Washington any international support on Iraq that could enhance President Bush's chances of re-election. Ooof! What's that old saying, "Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet the
same people on the way down"? I know, not the easiest thing to do when you're talking about the French.
Posted at 3:26 PM
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Matthew Yglesias on the Kerry speech:
Not totally true, but close enough. Saudi Arabia was at least mentioned as a noxious example of why depending on a single, massively corrupt and extremist sheikdom for so much of our energy is dumb & dangerous. Other than promising an initiative to come up with Magic Energy Crystals or whatever, I didn't hear anything specific about how that cozy Saudi relationship will change. (Funny how just two years ago, the invasion of Iraq was being sold as a way to push Saudi Arabia towards democracy. Hah! I wouldn't be surprised if the Saudis were de facto owners of the southern oil fields by 2005.)
Was just watching "Crossfire" -- I know, I know -- and Bow Tie Guy was basically reading off my unmet demands for Kerry's big sales pitch. The other guy (Begala, I think) was trying to gloss it over, saying the first part of the Plan is to fire the guys who brought on the War Fraud. And while that is true, to a degree, you don't fire your coach unless you've found a guy who has a better game plan. (Unless you're the Lakers, and you'll do whatever that spoiled dumbass Kobe tells you, even trade away the biggest, baddest center in the NBA, NCAA and all the international leagues combined. Fools.)
Must ... stop ... brain ... getting ... smaller ....
What if the October surprise is a handover of Iraq security to the Saudis (it's leaning that way) and the immediate return of 70 percent of our troops and a definite timetable (say, Innaugaration Day for Bush/Cheney, 2005) to remove the remaining 30 percent of our forces? Would that fly? As long as you don't let it look like the Fall of Saigon, it might work. Rove could set up Victory Parades in all the battleground states, Bush would give a triumphant speech ("Mission Accomplished, Part II") and a mysterious weeklong satellite / Internet outage would stop all news video of the mass executions and burning oil fields. With no civilized security force to protect them from the terror mobs, the Western journalists would happily take the United States' advice to kindly get on that cargo plane right now.
The trick would be to keep quiet about the Saudi part, even though it will be perfectly obvious to anyone halfway paying attention. Would the challenger have a chance if the Main Issue was suddenly solved? Imagine 100,000 U.S. troops marching down the Mall in Washington, two days before the election. The brass bands, troop carriers, the ticker tape, the solemn (yet victorious!) heroes, a million people gathered 'round to cheer and wave flags, and the "Star Wars"-style ceremony at the end, where Laura Bush even hangs a medal on the Wookie .... Why not? The teevee wouldn't even have time for Kerry, what with all this majestic human drama. You wouldn't even need to cancel the election. Posted at 2:36 PM
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From "Rod M.," via Yahoo Mail:
Damn, I guess I never really thought about it like that. Death to America!
Jesus. I can have it as many ways as I like. American politics is a Food Court. If I want lo-fat ice cream and Teriyaki beef bowl and a vegetarian burrito and an Orange Julius and some low-grade sushi and a Corn Dog all on the same tray, I get to have it ... and so do you! And just like your standard Food Court, none of the choices are very good. So most people go to an actual restaurant, or eat at home, or just have a "Workingman's Dinner" of seven beers and a bag of Lay's Jalapeno-Flavored Snax.
So much for that strangled analogy .... I'm convinced that the more political stuff you read or listen to -- and that's about all I've done since Sunday -- the weaker your mind becomes. And when your every thought is sort of internally parsed to fit your political goal, it shrinks the brain, desiccates the humor cells, destroys your ability to reason, and kills your human gift for honest self-assessment. Look at Ralph Nader: He was a guy known as this very moral, honest, serious public servant, and whether you agreed with his nanny-state approach or not, there was no doubt he was a very good soldier for his causes. Then he ran for president and just started telling the craziest lies. And he has never stopped framing everything in a lie, a lie to make him seem Innocent of whatever obvious bullshit he's pulled to keep feeding his silly Political Quest. It's pathetic.
I imagine Ralph in his plain little apartment last night, watching the convention on a flickering old black-and-white teevee, sitting in the dark on a ratty sofa, drinking rubbing alcohol from an austere cup. All that sacrifice for nothing, squandered for the cheap thrill of telling lies to Larry King, or having a forgotten grunge band play bad music behind him on a Seattle stage, music so bad that the little tiny bit of soul remaining in his cold, fame-whore heart was actually dying right at that moment. And still: No family, no real friends, not even any supporters worth counting. The old black telephone does not ring. Posted at 1:10 PM
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Because America is Safer, etc.:
The tabulations were produced in August 2002 and December 2003 in response to requests from what is now the Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security. One set listed cities with more than 1,000 Arab Americans. The second, far more detailed, provided ZIP-code-level breakdowns of Arab American populations, sorted by country of origin. The categories provided were Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian and two general categories, "Arab/Arabic" and "Other Arab" ....
Christiana Halsey, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, said the requests were made to help the agency identify in which airports to post signs in Arabic. Posted at 12:29 PM | What Are The Dogs Saying?Posted at 1:44 AM | Don't Even Try It
And now She Has Turned, as they say in the CIA. Wandering around the desert hills this afternoon, I was thinking about what I might say if a Space Monster landed in its Space Ship and demanded I explain what I might like in a Presidential Candidate. (Also, I was wondering about dinner.) And I couldn't really come up with anything beyond some Wicca-esque slogan like, "Do No Harm." Now that I've been drinking a while, this sounds better than ever. Do No Harm. I wonder how many "swing voters" would go for such a slogan. Maybe you could add "Undo Some Harm" to the mantra, but that would only produce debates and passion and whatnot. Posted at 12:25 AM | Thursday, July 29, 2004Can You Be Nostalgic For Nausea?Because a sick little person just asked, here's the link to my coverage of Al Gore's acceptance speech in 2000. Yes, I really did stomp out of the press box in disgust and go outside for a smoke. With Chris Matthews! In contrast, I guess Kerry's speech was a Home Run. Posted at 11:38 PM | That'll Work, I GuessDidn't cry or laugh or snort with disgust, so I guess Kerry's Big Speech did the job. Obviously, I wasn't planning to be overwhelmed. And I wasn't. Yet ... I got a fairly good feeling from it. Speeches are worthless, mostly, but a big-event speech like this serves not only to introduce the candidate to the millions who really haven't followed the primary round -- they have lives -- it's also a chance to clean up the bungles of the campaign so far, for those of us who sort of paid attention and maybe thought it would be nice if Kerry would step down due to those horrible voices in his head: Must kill the Pope, must strangle the Pope .... We didn't get the Power Point numbers & figures What Will We Do In Iraq strategy session I wanted, of course. Then again, I heard more defense / intelligence / diplomacy / priority talk than I could've reasonably expected, and I liked the talk about taking the pressure off the Reservists and getting another 40,000 full-time people in the military. I like hearing somebody willing to be an adult about things and say, "Well, Iraq sure wasn't quite what we were promised, eh? Never mind. Somebody's got to be a grownup and go fix the mess. I'll get it fixed, and if we have to go to war I'm going to make sure it's legitimate." And even if I think it was a Big Mistake to be talking about revoking any tax cuts -- how 'bout you people just quit wasting my money??? -- I suppose it was mitigated by the Fiscal Responsibility talk. I actually believe that stuff! Why? Clinton. I don't care if John Kerry was so liberal in the Senate that he approved and funded the sending of solid-gold naked Jane Fonda statues to Fidel Castro's bedroom each morning. He is going to be Fiscally Responsible because no Democrat is going to get near the White House in 2005 unless they do it old-skool, Slick Willie style. And we need some boring grown-ups to do some honest accounting in Washington. (Weird thing about the Clark speech, a bit earlier: That was the first time the guy didn't come off like a flakey nut. Where was that dude during the primary campaign? Jesus, between his pink sweaters & the Madonna endorsement, it was impossible to reconcile his primary character with the alleged War General.) I'm not one of these fake-centrist / "recovering liberal" bloggers who say, with no sincerity whatsoever, "Oh I'm a libby dibby something-or-other and I'll consider supporting Kerry, but he has to be as serious as Bush to get my vote, due to the War of Forever and all." (Because the Bush Administration has been so serious about getting Bin Laden & Al Qaeda .... ) I don't trust the Bush Administration, because I watched those people screw my trust like a viagra-crazed pedophile in Bangkok. Hell, 90 percent of the country would've given Carrot Top the benefit of the doubt, should he have been the president on Sept. 11. But you get about a year, maybe two years' max on that. (I find it ridiculous that you need to be a liberal / leftist to frown on the Bush Administration, and absolutely grotesque that being interested in the idea of replacing the president -- as we tend to do every four to eight years -- is somehow "being on the other side." But you know all that.) So, I would like to be comfortable voting for Kerry. Especially because I live in a Battleground State where my vote might actually matter. (If it gets counted!) If you were in that boat tonight -- NO PLEASE GOD STOP WITH THE GODDAMNED BOAT METAPHORS!!!! -- you, too, probably feel better about pulling the monkey for Weird John. That said, it would be nice to have some really detailed military / budgetary stuff from Kerry, now. Maybe it's on that John Kerry Home Page you hear so much about these days? This can't be all they've got, right? UPDATE (Midnight): Read the comments! Michael Totten & Howard Owens outed themselves as secret GOP-funded fake liberal Bush supporters! (No, wait, they just said I said they were the people in question. I thought it was Mickey Kaus! Oh, shit ... Mickey liked the speech! I give up.) Posted at 10:14 PM | That Was More Like ItWesley Clark's speech came a bit closer to answering the crucial, "OK, but what will you people do?" I'll link it once it's online. If you're interested in the defense part of this campaign -- which is the only real issue, far as I'm concerned -- go over to CSPAN and watch Clark's speech. Posted at 5:25 PM | Good News, Bad News, Etc.(To skip ahead to the Questions 4 Kerry, click the clicky.) Good News: Pakistan claims to have captured a "top al Qaeda man." It's Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, say the wires, who is wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There are many, many more "top al Qaeda" men living in Pakistan with minimal hassles by the Pakistani police and intelligence services, so it will be interesting to see how many are Captured between now and November. (A dozen were apparantly arrested last week.) (UPDATE: Here's the New Republic piece predicting a "July Surprise" during the convention, in which Pakistan would announce the capture of a senior Al Qeada leader. Also note that this arrest reportedly happened "a few days ago" but was not announced until this afternoon.) Bad News: Iraq, which Washington and London have since learned had nothing to do with al Qaeda or Sept. 11, has "become a battleground for al Qaeda." Why? "The coalition's failure to bring law and order to parts of Iraq created a vacuum into which criminal elements and militias have stepped." That's according to the British Parliament's foreign affairs committee bipartisan report issued today. "Committee members say the al Qaeda terrorist network took advantage of the post-invasion security vacuum to infiltrate into Iraq and launch a campaign of sabotage and suicide bombings," the VOA said. Worse News: Remember Afghanistan? Looking at Afghanistan, the committee said British forces, diplomats and aid workers were overstretched and they backed a call by Afghan President Hamid Karzai for more troops. Afghanistan -- home and training ground of the actual individuals who planned and executed the Sept. 11 attacks and so many others -- was a War so completely right and justified, only a loon could argue against it. The offensive was both focused and flexible. Casualties were remarkably low on all sides. (Sorry, Mark Herold.) It was a country where we actually were welcomed by much of the population, weary of the Taliban and decades of war and deprivation. While poverty, a tribal culture and endless abuse as a Cold War pawn made it damned unlikely Afghanistan would turn into a shining, modern and democratic state overnight, things sure looked hopeful for the long term. The whole world lined up to give money and send security troops. Unlike the strongman thug installed by the United States to run Iraq's "sovereign government," our man in Kabul was & is a soft-spoken charmer who seems truly committed to building a functional democracy and modern economy. He seemed to have a reasonable plan to transform those warlords into district governors who would at least occasionally answer to Kabul and contribute -- in small ways at first, obviously -- to a hybrid federalism that might one day be an example of how a semi-primitive Central Asian state joins the Modern World. How do you justify dropping that ball? Apparently, if you're part of the Bush Administration, you don't even try. You just keep repeating that "America is safer and the world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power," again and again and again, when the opposite is plainly true. Having failed to turn around even a single state that harbors and funds anti-Western Islamic terrorists, this administration's botched invasion of Iraq has now created a brand new home for terrorism along with the fuel to create a million more Mohammed Atta's -- and this time, they'll actually be Iraqis. Worse, Iraq itself is demonstrably more dangerous -- to our citizens and soldiers, the dwindling number of foreign workers and support troops, and the Iraqis themselves -- since the invasion began. If things continue at this pace, we will have lost two wars instead of winning one, and will have returned one state to terrorist control while leaving another to be picked apart by a motley group comprised of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and a thousand little terror groups nobody ever heard of before 2003. So, what I think a whole lot of "undecideds" and independents and center-left or center-right Democrats and Republicans want to hear from John Kerry tonight is this: 1) In general, how the hell do you plan to fix our Middle East & Central Asian mess? 2) Will you finish the job in Afghanistan? Explain, in detail, including troop numbers, foreign aid, intelligence, etc. 3) Will you make the capture or destruction of Osama bin Laden and his organization the immediate and highest priority of American defense and intelligence, as the current administration briefly promised to do? If so, how will you allocate defense and intelligence resources to make this happen? 4) The current administration is obviously trying to find a way out of Iraq. Can you please discuss these efforts -- including Powell's current mission and the Saudi proposal for a Muslim peacekeeping force, the NATO disputes regarding its involvement in training an Iraqi security force, the Arab League bickering, etc. -- and explain what is good or bad about each proposal, and how and why your administration will or won't adopt any of these efforts. 5) Now please tell us in very clear detail what plans you have for the American involvement in Iraq, including a specific strategy for total withdrawal and at what point such a plan would be implemented. You can qualify them as much as you like, but the plans must be specific. Here is a chance to use your Vietnam and Foreign Relations experience in a way that actually does something other than say, "Oh I'm a bad ass, I killed Charlie." NOTE: You are disqualified as the nominee if you mention your beautiful wife or any campaign slogan during this part of the speech. Same goes for any weaseling as regard your votes in support of the Iraq invasion, because most of us are smart enough to remember almost everybody in the House and the Senate voted for the invasion. And somewhere around 75 percent of Americans supported it, too. We were all had, blah blah. Hand wringing and name calling will not fix any of these problems. This isn't Cover Your Ass time. This is Answer the Freakin' Question time. Your opponents are too busy trying to convince people All is Well and Peace is War and Saddam = Osama, so if you're ready to tell the truth and make real plans and fulfill those missions, then you get to be president. I don't envy you at all, weirdo. Posted at 3:17 PM | More Convention-Blogging TipsJim Treacher's got 'em just for you! Posted at 12:36 PM | Human Space Flight Orbital Tracking
Yeah. The dog & I were outside about 9:20 p.m., looking at the pretty sky full of stars and a nice three-quarter moon hanging over the Virginia Range to the southeast. And then I look over toward downtown and see this bright-as-Venus ball of light hauling ass from the west. Smooth and silent, it faded long before it reached the horizon. Space Station! Went inside the house yelling about how I saw the ISS without even planning on it, and sure enough it had passed right over my house. Hooray! High Five to the Space Buddies up there. (Hate to be a space geek and all, but how crazy is it that you can see an odd light cruising above your home planet & then go check the Internet and find out that yes, the ISS just flew over your hometown?) I realize the ISS is pretty much useless, but it's still the only space station we've got. For now. And it won't be around all that much longer. Last Friday, the U.S., Russian, European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies agreed to scale that money-sponge way the hell down. Sad for those people who worked on the ISS, but good for those of us who would actually like to do more in space than low-earth orbit with various astronauts doing stupid elementary-school projects. Will ladybugs float in space? Let's find out! Posted at 12:09 AM | Wednesday, July 28, 2004Count All The Votes!Like I've said, I was filled with rage during the Florida debacle of 2000. Alcohol may have been involved, but the outrage was real. The sad thing is, election fraud is terribly common throughout American history, not to mention the rest of the world. I knew it then and I know it now, and I don't see a time in the near future when anything but landslide victories won't involve a significant amount of vote overcounting, undercounting and outright fraud. Here's an interesting bit from the Nov. 16, 2000, issue of the Washington Post: In [Richard Nixon's] memoir, "Six Crises," written in 1962, when he was planning a political comeback, Nixon said he made the decision because he feared American prestige would be damaged by suggestions that "the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box." I don't have the slightest idea how to guarantee the accuracy of the vote, and it's going to be much, much worse with these ridiculous voting machines. At least in the short term. UPDATE (11:36 p.m.) -- Max D. sends these news stories on the e-voting fraud: "Florida's Bad Record on Voting Records" and this Krugman column from yesterday. Posted at 9:13 PM | Crazy Al Provides 'Convention Drama'
I enjoy watching crazy charlatans with the preacher-ranting gift. (And no, Al Gore, it can't be learned.) But I do hope the emergence of guys like Obama means that the Democrats can finally put the crooks like Sharpton out to pasture. I have never understood this habit of allowing not-elected-to-anything criminal-frauds to maintain some elevated spot in the party just because they're self-proclaimed black leaders. (Then again, Sharpton used to be James Brown's manager. Manager of the Godfather of Soul? What other presidential candidate can touch that?) But, what the hell. There are still a lot of angry, angry Gore voters after 2000, and they are deservedly angry. If Sharpton fires up enough of them to go to the polls again, that should cancel out any indie/undecideds disturbed by Al's ranting. As much as that Florida fiasco pissed me off, I didn't live in a state where it mattered, and I deeply disliked both parties and candidates so much that it was hard to stay angry. Besides, you don't have to be a fancy historian to know both sides have benefited from creative vote counting -- and when a race is as close as it was in 2000, or 1960, or will be in 2004, the winner may well be decided by his campaign's skill at fraud. And so much for that news flash. Posted at 7:02 PM | We Had Boxes On Our HeadsBarry: What I've found over the years, I spend less and less time going to or listening to any aspect of the convention, and just sometimes try to actually make news myself. One time -- this is in Atlanta, when the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis -- and it was one of the first conventions where they had a designated Protest Zone, which is such a weenie idea: You sign up for your cause, you know, and protest 'til your hour runs up. Posted at 4:36 PM | The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004Did you hear that the Kerry campaign might replace Teresa Heinz-Kerry with Sheryl Crow? Posted at 3:35 PM | How Low Can He Go?Jesus, there's just no bottom for a presidential candidate, is there? Whenever you think, "Nobody can get any creepier than that," another horrible thing emerges. So Kerry ran around Vietnam "re-enacting" his combat exploits for a home-movie camera? And his handlers at the DNC think it's a Good Idea to include this repulsive, vainglorious death porn in the prime-time promo film introducing Kerry to the country? Is it too late for something to "happen" to John Kerry? Sudden Dick Cheney-style heart problems, or a vision from God telling him to take a knapsack and travel Canada by foot, forever? Some of the only tolerable moments of the televised convention have been on MSNBC's casual-yet-intelligent discussions led by Chris Matthews, who annoys the shit out of me on most days but is truly in his element at a Boston Democratic convention. Richard Holbrooke is on there pretty often, and every time he's talking I wonder, "Why can't this guy be on the ticket?" If this race is really about the war and how this country is going to conduct itself abroad, why can't we have a seemingly normal guy with a pretty impressive record (the Dayton peace talks, getting the U.S. back into the U.N. in a way that even pleased Jesse Helms, etc.) and all kinds of foreign experience and an actual life outside of politics, instead of a wooden whore with nothing to his name but a 35-year-long tunnel-vision drive to live in the White House? Same thing with Bill Richardson, now the governor of New Mexico. He was on "The Daily Show" last night. Funny, smart, seemingly human. Why isn't he on the ticket? Hell, he doesn't only speak Spanish, he's an actual Mexican! (Half-Mexican, anyways.) A well-known, pro-gun, tax-cutting friendly type who's the governor of a battleground state with a large Latino population ... hmm, nah, let's go with a one-term senator from the Deep South. I've got my complaints about Holbrooke & Richardson -- hell, they are politicians -- and I'm really just using them as Examples. The point is, there are actual humans out there, some even within the two-party political system. Why are we coronating a quasi-human weirdo like John Kerry? If, by chance, he wins this thing, it will only be because even more horrible news comes from the Bush Administration over the next 97 days. I'm sure they've got another dozen really filthy scandals brewing. Will the Liberal Media bother with any of 'em? Not this week! Too busy trying to get laid in Boston! (Anybody else notice how the Army's Abu Ghraib report was released under cover of the 9/11 commission's report on Friday? Of course not.) It is an absolute testament to the ass-covering & propaganda skills of the Bush Administration that people -- including me -- are talking about weird home movies made by John Kerry when these are the top stories in the nation's biggest newspaper right now: * Economy weaker than expected. * Iran testing equipment used in process to make nukes. * Suicide bomber kills 68 in Iraq, for a total of 120 killed in bombings and shootouts, including two U.S. troops, just today. As 15,000 media people have staggered around a trade show this week, more hostages have been executed, the deal for NATO training Iraqi forces has fallen apart, a Saudi-backed extremist Islamic paramilitary is about to take over parts of Iraq with the Bush Administration's blessing, Doctors Without Borders is fleeing Afghanistan after 24 years because the Taliban is killing off its staff, "Laughing UK Troops Tortured Iraqis," and a senior Interior Ministry official was assassinated in Baghdad -- joining another half-dozen Interim Government officials murdered so far this year, along with myriad mayors, councilmen, education officials and national industry executives. I don't know, but it almost sounds like we've got a bit of a situation over there. Could we get a little news on the teevee about this? Could the Democratic candidates please explain how they intend to fix this nightmare, or at least how they intend to get our 140,000 troops out of Iraq while they're still alive? We already know what the Bush Administration is going to do with the war they started for no apparent reason: Try like hell to get somebody to take over, whether it's a baby Saddam thug or the Saudis or a brigade of French poets. And maybe that's the only thing to do. But it sure would be nice if the opposition party could maybe detail what they plan to do if they're in the White House come January. This sort of leads back to Holbrooke, who at least has been trying to articulate a strategy even though it's clear he's inventing this strategy on the fly, just based on his own experience. Maybe I'd be a little more satisfied with Kerry if his speech went like this: "Hi, I'm the guy running. Here's Dick Holbrooke, he'll be Secretary of State. He'll explain what we'll be doing about Iraq. Also, Jobs 4 Everybody! Thank you." UPDATE (7:10 p.m.) -- Mark Friesen at the Oregonian just forwarded the Boston Globe story from the Sunday, Oct. 6, 1996, City Edition. It's as Drudge said it was: The films have the grainy quality of home movies. In their blend of the posed and the unexpected, they reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109. A longer chunk of the story is a little more revealing, isn't it? I still think it's weird that he re-enacted these battles on Super 8 film, but I know plenty of veterans from Vietnam and even World War II, and I know those old war tales have a powerful hold on the people who experienced them. Posted at 2:49 PM | Tuesday, July 27, 2004Obama-RamaHow lame is this convention, in terms of Entertainment Value? I'll tell you how lame: Even "The Daily Show" was kind of dull tonight. Yes, I agree that the new guy gave a nice speech, inspiring yet vague. (And how cute is it that David Brooks and other media pals quickly took to comparing Barack Obama to Tiger Woods. Hey, they're both black! Or part black, or something! Good for them, getting out of those negro gangs with the Hop Hop and cracks and all that bad stuff.) And Ron Reagan just might've redeemed himself as a human being. Okay, enough of this. I may or may not post the Special Secret John Kerry Acceptance Speech tomorrow. Either way, that's it for the conventions. I am sorry about it all being such a drag, but that's the way these things usually work. (Steve Gilliard is right.) Posted at 10:58 PM | Jimmy Friendly @ the ConventionI Can't Wait To Vote's Jimmy Friendly has been leading Blair & Welch around Boston, where hangovers are apparently a serious yet common local danger. I shouldn't really wish to be there, but if was possible to just be zapped to Boston by a sort of Magic Ray for a night and then wake up at home in Nevada, far from the carnage .... Well, who doesn't like a Magic Ray? Posted at 10:40 PM | Wow, Terror News From Ashcroft!I know you won't believe it, so go ahead and check the teevee. John Ashcroft is live from the DoJ, reading charges against a Muslim charity. And what investigation does this regard? The Holy Land charity, which made the news when DoJ seized its assets ... in December of 2001. It's a good thing they're following that "shut up and let the other party have its convention" tradition. Posted at 11:50 AM | Where Your Sadness LiesSometimes Tom Shales is funny: [Fox anchor Neal Cavuto] said the convention would be "predictably partisan." Gosh! Does that mean the Democrats wouldn't give equal time to Republicans? Heaven help us if the November elections are partisan, too. Yeah. I know teevee people feel clever when they endlessly repeat fresh 1980s' terms like "infomercial," but it isn't even slightly accurate. Since when do infomercials have panels of news anchors and "experts" criticizing the product featured? An infomercial with different comical reporters on every channel, fat ladies in ridiculous Uncle Sam hats, Jon Stewart popping up to befuddle Tom Brokaw, crazy protesters outside and the chance that Weird Howard might go crazy again on live teevee ... that's an infomercial I just might enjoy. Speaking of Jon Stewart, this interview has some good lines: "You're never quite sure where your sadness lies within the political system -- it's hard to be mad at them," he said of politicians, "in the same way it's hard to be mad, let's say, at a retarded guy who comes up and hugs you too hard." Posted at 11:29 AM | DNC Bloggy Notes* Daniel Rubin's convention blog is excellent. * Just saw this nice "Blogging the Conventions" piece by Glenn Reynolds. It's a good primer, and not just because he mentions me! * Atrios unmasked? Bunch 'o blogs say the mysterious Atrios is Duncan Black, a professor. (Also, his own site says it's "a weblog by Duncan Black.") Hey, Welch: Atrios is a story, right? Go get drunk with Duncan Black! (Lock Blair in the hotel room.) * It's "Internet Avenue" all over again: News Google shows 188 articles on Convention Bloggers. Here's hoping the bloggers don't vanish off the face of the Earth like all those loser dot-coms once praised for simply showing up at the 2000 conventions. * As requested by the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn, I will now "blog about [Zorn] blogging about those who are blogging the convention." * Here's a politics/convention robot-blog put together by the folks (or robots) at Technorati. * Commenting on CyberJournalist.net, Christopher Kintz writes: "I would like the bloggers at the convention to be absolutely silent. There's already too much US-oriented political material on the web. Was the global activity of a Democrat regime really that much different from that of the Republicans? Blog about something more interesting and useful, please." * There's a Buzznet site for uploading DNC photos. If you need a place to put your convention pictures, go sign up (free!) at Buzznet ... Marc Brown will tell you how to get busy! So far, the only pictures are from Welch, and it seems he smeared his camera lens with Hand Lotion from the Hotel. * Tony Pierce is blogging the DNC ... and he's drinking heavily. Buy the man an iPod. Posted at 12:45 AM | Monday, July 26, 2004Strength & Wisdom Are Not Opposing ValuesNo matter what I've said about Bill Clinton in less charitable moments, that guy sure knows how to win over this household, where we don't like any of the bastards. In four days of stupid, patronizing speeches at the 2000 Democratic convention, there was exactly one flash of "Whoa, what the hell?" That was Clinton's speech. I remember briefly feeling human, like I wasn't being talked down to like a common retard. Even Tim Blair shut up and actually admitted to a little bit of admiration for Big Bill's skills. Same thing tonight, for me at least: I went outside for a smoke when Hillary was speaking, took the dog for a long hike to avoid Al Gore, ran screaming from the house when Carter mumbled his lame-ass speech, and wouldn't budge from the couch when Clinton was up there. It's weird. I didn't buy his act at all in 1992, or 1996. Even during the ridiculous impeachment circus -- when his face was always on the UPI headquarters' row of teevees -- I didn't want to hear his bullshit, even if the Ken Starr brigade filled me with hatred. And then, after a campaign season starring the pathetically inept Gore and (then) comically bungling Bush, Bill Clinton started looking real good in the rearview mirror. Not such a bad eight years at all. Yeah, that's 70 percent dumb nostalgia at work. Anyway ... it's rare to have something good to say about national politics, so I'll just say Clinton's salesmanship tonight made a Positive Impression. Barring some incredible Kerry misstep, I'm already voting against the Bush Administration, for reasons I'll detail over the next 99 days. Still, it was nice to briefly feel a little better about supporting the Democrats. Posted at 11:20 PM | KERRY = BUSH = HITLERAtrios saw a fun protest sign. Posted at 1:32 PM | Fun Story Ideas For Bloggers!You've heard that the delegates, lobbyists, reporters and candidates are all "whores," right? Well, why not try an honest hooker while you're in Boston? According to this Reuters story, out-of-town prostitutes are arriving in "unprecedented numbers" to meet the conventioneers' strange sex needs. Get yourself an "escort" and tell his or her story to the world. Plus, sex with a hooker! Here are some other possible angles: 1) Pick up one of the hooker-ad booklets around the Fleet Center and see how the rates change based on your stated profession or the hotel where you're staying. For example, call an escort service and claim you're Robert Novak at the Sheraton and you need an hour with a fat Bulgarian. How much? Now try it again: Say you're a blogger and you need a vaguely warm body for 10 minutes, in a sleeping bag behind a dumpster. Now how much? 2) Do some of that George Plimpton-style participatory journalism: Make a BlogAd on your own site advertising whatever sort of sex act you'd like to try with a drunken middle-aged delegate. Don't "chicken out" when the e-mails arrive. Take that money! Write about it -- especially the resulting doctor's visits. Posted at 1:22 PM | Why Bother?All this ruckus in Boston, and there's hardly anything on the teevee about it. Fox News is running lots of stuff about murder trials and missing joggers. The financial news channels have the usual market reports, along with sad new stories about the economy. MSNBC has an interview with Lance Armstrong. Headline News has the usual Headline News. CNN is doing that "Crossfire" show from a parking lot outside the Fleet Center, which is the closest thing to covering the convention on any of the news channels, at this moment. The networks have the usual soap operas, Judge Judy and Jerry Springer. PBS has a puppet show. Only CSPAN 1 has anything actually useful for people interested in this silly process: videotape of Walter Mondale's 1984 acceptance speech. Watching this ancient footage of "Fritz" Mondale makes John Kerry seem like Prince. Will these be the last old-style national conventions? Jeff Jarvis has a half-dozen posts on the subject, and how the world might make better use of 15,000 credentialed reporters. (I vote for "dog food," but Jarvis has more constructive ideas.) Posted at 11:41 AM | The Dumb and the DeterminedFor a "media criticism" column of some kind, Matt Welch asked that I provide the links to the convention stuff I did last time around. And I've been putting it off, because it's boring work. Imagine my delight when I realized just such a little linky list was made years ago, by me! (Secretly, I must be clever.) Here's the thing I co-wrote with Tim Blair from the Los Angeles Dem mess, if by "co-wrote" you mean "we sat in my living room gulping wine and sliding the laptop back and forth until the word count reached 1,300." I have no wisdom to offer those bloggers covering the non-event in Boston, other than this bit from the Democratic convention in 2000: After two days of the convention, there is absolutely nothing new to report. The weather is so horrible even the dumbest protesters and meanest cops can't get a show together for the visiting media. The speeches are delivered to the press hours before the actual speaker reads the text, the various disabled and minority Democrats are mostly condemned to the empty afternoon sessions, and there is a general feeling that Al Gore may just have this nomination wrapped up. Other than that, make sure you read Dave Barry's daily election columns. He's been covering these stupid things for a long time and still manages to find new, cheap jokes about everyone involved. Posted at 11:17 AM | Speaking of Welch & Blair ...Forgot to link to Reason's Special Blog About Conventions, with live reports from Blair and Welch. Click often! Posted at 11:01 AM | Sunday, July 25, 2004The Longest Week
Yes, there's tanning-booth-orange Brian Williams inside the Fleet Center, solemnly reading nonsense about the Democrats' convention. Then there's some reporter introducing the inevitable protest segment with, "But will the protesters be as tightly organized as the convention itself?" Um, probably not! But thanks for putting the question out there! This segment includes a brief interview with a doughy middle-aged woman protester who believes her involvement will fight the "hippie fringe" image so popular in the 1960s. Also, delegates who arrive in Boston are scheduled to attend cocktail receptions. Next, we see John Kerry limply toss the "first pitch" at Fenway Park, during a Boston Red Sox game. This is breathlessly described as a "surprise," because it wasn't included on the convention events schedule e-mailed to assignment editors on Friday. A soldier (?) waits for the baseball to finish rolling, and then John Kerry rubs the soldier's head. I leave the room. This is going to be the world's longest week. Until the Republican convention, anyway. Posted at 7:07 PM | Friday, July 23, 2004Lighter and 100 Years YoungerGood God, how did all you people get here this morning? Well, good to see you all. Unfortunately, I'm leaving for the Yosemite High Country right this minute, so I won't have anything new until Sunday -- when I begin viciously harassing the candidates and journalists who are now collecting, cult-style, in Boston. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be struck by lightning up in the High Sierra and will return in the fashion of this oddball, who got hit by a bolt up in Maine and now thinks it involved angels. A Madison man who was struck by lightning this week says he feels "lighter and 100 years younger" than he did before the accident. "I'm feeling like my body is light. It's the best I've probably felt as far as energy in 10 years," said John Corson, 56, the day after he was struck by lightning while working outside his home. "It was like my whole body was just vibrating. It was like, a hell of a sensation. It was like chest pain, with someone's hand on my chest." The lightning left redness around his shoulders, he said. The bolt went through his body and tripped three breakers in the garage .... Corson said he thought people who are hit by lightning die, and he now believes in guardian angels. Hell, if lightning passed through my heart and tripped three breakers in the garage, I'd be worshipping winged ghosts, too. Anyway, here's hoping I come back feeling 100 years younger, with a song in my soul and a giant electrical burn on my back. (Thanks to Messrs. Steyn, Jarvis & Arellanes for the morning links. Mmmm, morning links ....) Posted at 9:23 AM | Happy Birthday, Bloggy Joe!Four years ago this week, I stupidly started a "campaign blog" to amuse myself while covering the worthless, vapid Democratic & Republican presidential conventions. The blog came in handy, as they say. Especially in Philadelphia, because I was stuck in some suburban Extended Stay Budget Suites place that was actually about four towns north of Philly. Everything was booked up six months in advance, while I cleverly made my own travel plans the week before the GOP convention. So I spent a lot of time sitting in that bland motel room by myself, drinking wine and watching the cable and bouncing around the Internet, looking for something of interest. And blogging. Oh, how I've come to hate that goddamned word. But way back in 2000 -- a quaint little time when everybody seemed to have a bit of money and the World Trade Center was still serving as the gleaming directional beacon for out-of-town drunkards and U.S. soldiers weren't coming home dead from Iraq every day -- it seemed like a hint of a very promising future. Especially for me. With a wireless gizmo and a tiny folding keyboard and a Palm Pilot and a bulky digital camera, I was almost a one-man wire service, a news columnist who actually covered news, free from the dull tyranny of editors, secretaries, snack machines, bad coffee, No Smoking signs, journalism-school graduates and all the other petty horrors of the Modern Day Newsroom. My favorite moment was getting stuck in the middle of a protest around City Hall. There were the usual giant puppets and "anarchists" and hippie girls and Free Mumia signs -- I wonder if they remember just how easy things used to be -- and there was also a bunch of reporters stuck behind the police lines with me. All trying to get through on their cell phones, but the circuits were overwhelmed. All of Philadelphia was a squirming, fetid mass of lobbyists, protesters, caterers, delegates, hookers, reporters, teevee hosts and one guy running for president. And with the possible exception of the nominee, all of those people were always on their cell phones. I sat on the stairs, tied my handkerchief around my face (careful with that tear gas!), unfolded the funny little portable keyboard and typed a few paragraphs. A weird thing called "Omni Sky" was attached to the Palm Pilot like a tumor. It sent the paragraphs into the air. The only problem was that my little dispatches then went to an editor at Online Journalism Review. And then, eventually, sometimes even on the same day, the editor would post my unedited blurbs onto the Official Web Site. If I was a smarter creature, I probably could've jerry-rigged some way to e-mail my posts to Blogger.com, and then they would magically appear right here on this site. Whatever, it worked out pretty well. I did the blogging at night and the wireless not-quite-blog deals by day. And a long daily column, too, which was the only thing anybody actually read back then. I figured it would only be a few more months or maybe even a year, and all the stuff would be in place. Reporting would become an honorable job again. No longer would people tolerate columnists who didn't get out there, or those thumb-sucking conventional-wisdom analysis pieces you always saw instead of real storytelling. Reporters would be reporting, free from the hateful insurance offices that had replaced newsrooms. Whoops .... Guess I misjudged that trend. As we now know, what actually happened is the non-journalists figured out just how easy it was to crank out opinions. And instead of a million tough-ass reporters breaking and making news from wherever it happened, we've got a million little Jonah Goldbergs and Maureen Dowds, all typing their little opinions based on the same AP copy. (Bitch & moan, whine & complain ... terrible, isn't it? Yet I do read the blogs, and if you want to see some Prime Examples, take a clicky tour through those sites linked to your left.) That so many of the bloggers are better than the Professional Columnists doesn't make me feel any happier about the way this thing has shaken down. (There's only a handful of good columnists in this country, along with many hundreds of awful cliché hustlers. Being as "good" as some no-name filler hack from Scripps-Howard or whatever is still being not very good at all. And you already know that, in your heart, so I'll shut up about it.) But you've typed a lot of half-assed, witless opinion, too, say my critics. Yep. I am sorry about that, but not quite sorry enough to stop. I plead Poverty, as usual. Give me a rich man's salary -- $25,000 a year would be fine -- and I'll report every day, on something, from somewhere, with the usual & total lack of objectivity as God Himself willed it. Anyway, it is still early in the battle, and over these next six weeks we'll get to see if bloggers are any better at covering a meaningless dog show -- minus the charming dogs, but still featuring the bug-eyed Ron Reagan Jr. Then, maybe, we'll see people with the time and leisure income to become one-person newspapers, wandering around, finding interesting tales, making up elaborate lies on a Mark Twain scale (you people can do better than Jayson Blair), posting interesting photographs, interviewing real humans, etc. Where was I? Right, blogging, birthday .... Four years ago I started this blog, and I haven't been very nice to it. Like an ugly child, it has spent much of its young life locked in the closet. No friends, no comments, no fun. And speaking of "no friends," Matt Welch asked me to make a link-list of the 2000 convention blogging and other online bits done by myself, Welch and the horrible Tim Blair. And I thought, "Fine, what the hell. And let's go ahead and start the goddamned blog again." So I did. Posted at 1:02 AM | |
Also, it is important to realize the conventions, while not meaningless, are in fact the end to a long process, not a thing unto themselves. In the GOP's case, that process began some six years ago when a faction in the party command structure decided to run the almost totally unknown George W. Bush against Al Gore. They gambled correctly that American voters would find the name familiar, without remembering they had voted Bush I out of office just eight years earlier. Only problem was that the hard conservative wing of the party didn't want anything to do with a Bush, at first. They saw Pappy Bush as a soft internationalist ... and a loser. But a savage machine was put together, and the Big Donors decided Young Dubya was just the kind of friendly face with a familiar name they needed to get a bunch of Nixon, Ford and Reagan-era thugs back in power, and it all worked out great!
I was just reading my pal S.K. Smith's web thingy, as she has been "keeping up" with the convention and -- at least until last night -- was 
Ah, how could I forget to post about the spaceship I saw tonight, right over Reno.
Yep, we had drama! 
What's the best way to kill the spirit after a fine three days of sunburn, booze, cruel yet majestic mountain hikes and campfire-seared steaks? Just turn on the NBC Nightly News, and feel the joy drain from your heart:
