Welcome back, everybody, all four or five of you. :)

I've revived this online journal (yes, I have it parked at a site that has *blog* in its name, but I was sick of the term a long time ago) mainly to gain attention. My old site, maintained irregularly and hosted on my personal space at cox.com is difficult to update, and has limited linking capabilites.

I thought about dragging all of those posts over here, but it would be a mighty mess - no way that I can see to create archives with them, so I'll leave it be.

To read the posts there (mainly between February and the end of July, 2004) click here.

I promise to be diligent in my ranting, lest any of you feel I'm backsliding.

All of my fabulous links will be making the move as well, it'll just take a little longer, 'cause I'm lazy.

Doh!

Notes on the Democratic Convention:

Day Two

Ann Coulter is crazy.

USA Today, in lockstep with most major media today, felt compelled to respond to the never ending drumbeat of right wingnuts to "include" more conservative voices in tv and newspapers by hiring Ann Coulter to write a humorous column from the convention. There are plenty of conservative writers who possess at least a passing relationship to reality, never mind the truth. The dominatrix of wingnut-ism is not one of them. Coulter made some shocking remarks in a column after 9/11 suggesting "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Later, she produced this gem, probably my favorite: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

Her inaugural column was killed when ediitors found it had "basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable." Coulter ran to Faux News to spin a story about conservative voices being stifled, blah blah blah. Her main complaint is that the editors were incapable of understanding her brand of humor. I've read a number of her columns, and seen her on television enough to tell you she is as funny as a steel bar jammed up the ass.

USA Today ought to be bitch slapped for being stupid enough to think they could hire someone as batshit crazy as Coulter and get something resembling usable journalism in return. This ranks right up there with ESPN hiring Rush Limbaugh expecting sophisticated football analysis.

Notes on theDemocratic Convention:

Day Two

From Barak Obama's exceptional speech on Tuesday night:

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

Read the entire speech.

Well worth it.

Notes on theDemocratic Convention:

Day one, con't.

What's up with Ron Reagan?

The son of the late president Ronald Reagan, and his namesake, has popped up publicly in a big way over the last few weeks. He gave the eulogy at his father's funeral, then began appearing on the CableSpews channels advocating stem cell research. Careful always to declare himself neither a Republican nor a Democrat, he is nevertheless going to speak at the Convention on the stem cell research issue, one that the Republicans oppose.

Shortly thereafter, Ron was signed up by MSNBC as a political analyst. Smart move, keeping any political affiliation out of the public eye.

Then the convention started, and things have gotten very interesting. Not only is Reagan willing to speak counter to conventional wisdom, he conducted an interview with Michael Moore that was the best I've ever seen with Moore. More on that in a minute. Following the opening night's speeches, Reagan was on one of those goofy panels with the likes of Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and Howard Fineman, a very sorry excuse for a journalist. (Read: pandering sycophant).

The subject was Al Gore's opening speech, where he made a few joking references to the 2000 campaign, but also sounded the serious theme that would be repeated all night: Every vote counts, and every vote must be counted.

Reagan, asked if the 2000 election was still a big issue with Democrats responded, essentially, "Of course. At the time they felt the election had been stolen, and now they know that Al Gore actually won Florida, " I'm paraphrasing here, but those comments launched a barrage of "how do you know that" and "it is still in dispute, depending on who you talk to" and whatnot. Reagan stuck to his guns, citing a report put together by a consortium of newspapers, who went back and actually counted every last vote. Gore took Florida in the only full recount that has ever been done. Major newspapers like the Washington Post ran the story under nebulous headlines suggesting that the recount proved Bush the winner, though the opposite was to be found if one bothered to read deep into the story, somewhere on page A39.

The Michael Moore interview was conducted very casually, the two standing up in a room or hotel lobby - hard to tell. It was fairly long, and to MSNBC's credit they ran the entire thing in two long segments. Reagan kidded Moore about the success of Fahrenheit 9/11, and laughed at many of Moore's responses. In fact, he laughed with Moore about many of the things both of them were saying about the upcoming election, the film, politics generally. I got the distinct impression Reagan lost the distance an interviewer should have with his subject very early on.

It is true that Ron Reagan has been quoted at least once saying the Republican party today, captured by the neocons and religious fundies, is not the Republican party of his father. I mostly disagree, as much of what they do today was originally implemented under the Reagan administration, and the philosophy isn't that much different today, just more virulent. I'll grant Ron Reagan an out on this, chalking it up to nostalgia, to the fact that no one likes to think ill of their parent, especially one recently deceased.

But somehow it seems Ron Reagan is a free man now, free to speak on any political subject, and so far, he seems to have an affinity for the truth. Let's see how long he can last.

A further word about the former president's son turned advocate.

His speech was well done, explaining in simple terms the underpinnings of embryonic stem cell research, citing examples that made the concept easy to follow. Reagan framed the debate as one between science and progress on the one side, and superstition and fear on the other. There is no doubt whom he believes are on which side:

Now, there are those who would stand in the way of this remarkable future, who would deny the federal funding so crucial to basic research. They argue that interfering with the development of even the earliest stage embryo, even one that will never be implanted in a womb and will never develop into an actual fetus, is tantamount to murder. A few of these folks, needless to say, are just grinding a political axe and they should be ashamed of themselves. But many are well-meaning and sincere. Their belief is just that, an article of faith, and they are entitled to it.

He goes on to say:

But it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many. And how can we affirm life if we abandon those whose own lives are so desperately at risk?

And finally:

In a few months, we will face a choice. Yes, between two candidates and two parties, but more than that. We have a chance to take a giant stride forward for the good of all humanity. We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology. This is our moment, and we must not falter.

Whatever else you do come November 2nd, I urge you, please, cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research. Thank you for your time.

Full funding for embryionic stem cell research is part of the Kerry/Edwards platform. There can be little doubt which way the son of the godfather of modern conservatism is going to vote.

Later, interviewed by Tom Brokaw, he referred to a well known "conservative commentator's" remarks on the subject as "right wing bloviating.."

Notes on the Democratic Convention:

Opening day in Boston for the democrats went exactly as planned.

Al Gore was the first major speaker, reminding the faithful they were robbed of the presidency in 2000, a fact that honest people no longer dispute. The rest do to cover the greatest political theft in American history. He was self-deprecating, humorous, and more restrained then he has been over the past year, during which he gave several incendiary speeches crucifying The Shrub and his criminal cabinet for their behavior over the Iraq war.

He was followed by former president Jimmy Carter, a man known more for his activities since leaving the White House than for his achievements while occupying it. 80 years old and still soft spoken, he squinted into the lights, smiled, and dropped the hammer on the president's foreign policy. Words like "extremism" slipped over his lips with ease in his gentle southern accent as he laid out the point by point indictment against the war in Iraq and its wider implications. He lauded Senator Kerry for his service in Vietnam, going as far as to say that when called, at least Kerry reported for duty.

The audience for Carter was fairly quiet, possibly due to the oddity of the "aw shucks," smiling Carter using such hard language in a speech.

He was later followed by Hillary Clinton, a woman much loved or hated in this country, and there is no in between. Many of the party faithful wish she would run for president and it may be possible that in the future she will. I'd put a hefty wager against it, given the experience she had the first time around. She spoke of 9/11, primarily, then whipped the hall into a frenzy introducing her husband, the former president, Bill Clinton.

Arguably the greatest political speaker of the modern age, Clinton's arrival on stage was greeted with both a standing ovation and a deafening roar. Understanding his role as the one to lay out the sharp policy differences between Kerry and Shrub, he cut the ovation short, and got on with his speech.

Half scripted, half extemporaneous (as most Clinton speeches are), the acknowledged leader of the current Democratic Party spoke easily of the goals of the Republicans and his own party. As always, he managed to make specific points of policy sound like everyday conversation, a skill no other politician possesses, and an eerie one to witness. He divided his speech into several parts, each one coming together around a repeated phrase, in the best tradition of an old time southern minister. He even made reference to his own lack of military service, and that of Shrub's, in order to highlight the extraordinary fact of Kerry's own service, that of a two time volunteer from a privileged background. The contrast could not be sharper.

Clinton closed his speech exhorting the crowd, and those watching on television, to send Kerry to the White House. For a man whose disastrous personal life became a matter of public untruthfulness, he has an awesome facility to speak it in public, in a manner no other politician in the post war era has demonstrated.

I'll be honest: I'm no fan of John Kerry. I will vote for him because the alternative is four more years of deepening American empire, based on fascist premises that sane people should reject. It is a sorry state of affairs when the motivation to vote for someone is actually a vote against another. Kerry was on the wrong side of this war until too late, and it will be the issue that nags him all the way through this campaign, as it should. I can only hope he exhibits more political courage in both the foreign and domestic spheres should he be elected president.

Moment Of Honesty Amidst The Hype:

Following a harrowing address by a Muslim woman who lost two members of her family on 9/11, a 16 year old kid got up with a violin and completely silenced the hall with a nuanced, mournful rendition of Amazing Grace.

President The Donald?

As quoted from Salon:

Donald Trump on how he'd make a much better president than Bush, who he says has made a "mess" in Iraq and elsewhere: "[If I were president, Osama Bin Laden] would have been caught long ago ... Tell me, how is it possible that we can't find a guy who's 6-foot-6 and supposedly needs a dialysis machine? Can you explain that one to me? We have all our energies focused on one place -- where they shouldn't be focused."


Further Down The Rabbit Hole...

It isn't nice to be right all the time...

But my prediction that the Iraq war's weapons of mass destruction's failure to appear would be blamed upon the CIA and other intelligence agencies has come true today. The Senate Intelligence Committee released "phase 1" of an alleged two part report investigating the origin of intelligence used by the Shrubberies to perpetrate an illegal war on wildly false assumptions. The report cites all manner of failures attributable to the CIA, by implication exonerating the White House and most of the cabinet from lying through their teeth about the whole thing.

True to form, wimpy ass Democrats on the committee agreed to delay until after the November election "phase two," an examination of Shrub's role in the use of said intelligence to make patently false claims about the weapons that existed or were likely to exist in Iraq.

"The intelligence community's assessments of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's possession of prohibited weapons not only turned out to be "wrong" in hindsight, but they were "also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence" in the first place, said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the committee chairman, in summarizing the report." - Washington Post

"On one of the signal debates of the 2004 presidential campaign -- whether President Bush hyped intelligence to lead the nation into an unnecessary war against Iraq -- the Republicans may have already won an important battle. On Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee issues its much-anticipated report excoriating the nation's spy agencies for their dire -- and wrong -- conclusions about Iraq's weapons capabilities. The report shifts blame from the White House to beleaguered CIA Director George Tenet, whose resignation takes effect on Sunday." - Salon.com

To anyone who understands how fig-leafing works in Washington, none of this comes as a surprise. It fits right in with another favorite ploy, the "rogue elements" of the CIA whenever a covert operation goes wrong (is discovered to exist). In this case, an overt operation on the part of the administration to fabricate grounds for a war they were determined to engage since their first day in office.

Unfortunately, the disgrace masquerading as a free press has given them a complete pass, and now, so has the Senate.

Goldilocks

Who says John Kerry lacks a sense of humor? Speaking about himself and John Edwards as the Democratic ticket:

"We've got better vision, better ideas, real plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening to America -- and we've got better hair."


Pimping for Shrub

Another Republican surrenders his integrity.

Read this piece by Joe Conason in Salon. Well worth the day pass ad.

One mouth, two lies

Said by Republicans on the same day:

"Credible reporting now indicates that al Qa’ida is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process." - Tom Ridge, Homeland Security

"[T]here’s, obviously, no reason for panic, or paralysis.” - Senate Majority leader Bill Frist.

So take heart fans, nothing to worry about, and make sure you remain terrified and anxious at all times. And for the fashionistas, no worries, you'll remain color coordinated, because even though the terrorists have new plans to destroy us, the threat color palette remains unchanged.

Banana Republic

From Salon.com:

A call for elections observers ... in the U.S.

Still smarting from the 2000 Florida ballot debacle, nine legislators in the House sent a letter to Kofi Annan today asking for U.N. election observers to monitor the November presidential election. You might think that U.N. observers -- usually spotted in countries with questionable democratic credentials -- would be a tad unnecessary in the world's oldest extant representative democracy, but considering the 2,119 voters improperly listed as potential felons, who are ineligible to vote in Florida, maybe it's not such a bad idea. And if you think your name could be wrongly listed on the Florida felon rolls, make sure you check for it here, and call your county elections supervisor or call 1-866-our-vote.

I could write a noisy screed about Independence and the state of our republic, but this serves as a fine illustration of the handbasket we are in.