I’m going to try liveblogging Kerry’s acceptance speech tonight.
Also, I’m asking forgiveness in advance for all the typos — the laptop keyboard and I just don’t get along.
UPDATE
Stacy asks, I deliver:
I officially request you drink first.
A lot.
I’ll have a nice red wine buzz going before Kerry starts to speak in an hour. Then we hit the martinis.
Hard.
UPDATE
Anyone can play the Acceptance Speech Drinking Game.
(Hat tip, Spoons.)
Eric Morisset found a (mostly, modified, but not very mushy) pro-Bush article in — wait for it! — the new issue of Esquire. Here’s something from the first page to get you started:
I have to admit to feeling a little uncertain of my disdain for this president when forced to contemplate the principle that might animate his determination to stay the course in a war that very well may be the end of him politically. I have to admit that when I listen to him speak, with his unbending certainty, I sometimes hear an echo of the same nagging question I ask myself after I hear a preacher declaim the agonies of hellfire or an insurance agent enumerate the cold odds of the actuarial tables. Namely: What if he’s right?
What if, indeed.
Print this one out and read it before bed tonight.
Dick Cheney is the GOP’s “hitman.” Or so says Dan Rather.
I tapped the following together early this week after reading yet another media eye-roller about the alleged ill-treatment of a former senator from my home state (and trust me, you’ll hear these tall tales again tonight, as he’s introducing John Kerry in Boston), and sent it in to the Atlanta paper as an op-ed. They’ve run my stuff on occasion in the past, but as Cleland’s “smearing” is apparently an article of faith among the editorial staff, I didn’t expect to see this one in print, and to date, I have not been pleasantly surprised to the contrary. At any rate, here it is:
An Open Letter To Max Cleland
Dear Mr. Cleland,
I’ve been seeing your name in the news a lot lately, and much of what I’m reading is very disappointing. Your public statements regarding the end of your political career (“Republicans attacked my patriotism”) and the current Presidential race (“[President George W. Bush] decided to be Mr. Macho Man”) are unworthy of both you and your previously-honorable record of public service.
Nobody ever questioned your patriotism, Mr. Cleland. That was an old Dukakis-campaign straw man your flunkies cooked up to smear your opponents; even the liberal web site Slate admitted as much after an examination of your complaints.
What we did question was your good sense–and judging by your recent descent into the leftist fever swamps, those questions were well-founded. Just two years ago, you were running campaign ads that proclaimed, “Max Cleland supports President Bush on Iraq,” but today, out of power with no hope of being elected again, you’re parroting conspiracy theories that don’t pass that laugh test.
The bitterness in your comments since being defeated are difficult for us to hear, particularly given the sacrifices you made for your country, but that doesn’t make your recent wild claims any more accurate, or your removal from office unjustified. The voters’ decision on you was based on how you served in the Senate, not how you served in Vietnam.
You seem to believe that your lost limbs entitled you to that senate seat. They didn’t, any more than Bob Dole’s WWII wounds entitled him to the presidency. Come to think of it, I must have missed it when you endorsed Dole and fellow war heroes George H. W. Bush over Bill Clinton based on their combat records.
You weren’t cheated out of your seat by George W. Bush, Mr. Cleland. You were removed by us, the Georgia electorate, because you chose to represent Tom Daschle and the Democratic Left instead of Smyrna and Macon and Bainbridge. If you really need somebody to blame for your defeat, you can blame us. Or better yet, you can take a look in the mirror.
You were defeated because you talked like Zell Miller in Georgia, but voted like John Kerry and Ted Kennedy in Washington. You were defeated because we didn’t trust you any more, and we didn’t want you wielding power in our name.
You lost, Mr. Cleland. You lost because like your new best friend, Senator Kerry, you are simply too liberal for Georgia. You need not like those facts, but you do need to accept them, for your own well-being.
According to OpenSecrets.org, one of your most generous campaign donors in 2002 was California musician Don Henley, of the Eagles. Regarding your electoral defeat, you should take Mr. Henley’s advice and, at long last, “Get Over It.”
Scott Canty writes:
I don’t know what happened to him, but Andrew [Sullivan] is in the weeds and he desperately needs help. Can you slap some sense into him? I’ve been reading the slow disintegration this week, but I knew he had lost it when I read this:
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “As few as five people in black robes can look at a particular issue and determine for the rest of us, insinuate for the rest of us that they are speaking as the majority will. They are not.” – Rep. John Hostettler, the Republican who authored the bill that would strip federal courts of the right to consider the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. But, of course, it could also be said about the five Supreme Court Justices who made George W. Bush the president of the United States. The Republicans love courts when they reach the right decision; they just despise them when they don’t.
If he’s parroting the “selected, not elected” line, he didn’t just drink the Kool Aid, he free based the powder.
I saw that last night — at about the same time I decided I’d rather drink beer than blog. Go figure.
Anyway. This one time, I’m willing to give Sully the benefit of the doubt. I think he’s simply making the case that, when it comes to judicial activism, Republicans can be hypocrites just like the Democrats.
I think.
But if Sullivan brings it up a second time, then we’ll both know for sure that he’s done something with the Kool-Aid.
Yet another story requiring no comment:
Just 10 days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enraged French leaders by urging France’s Jews to leave for Israel, a group of 200 French Jews arrived to start a new life in the Jewish state, with Sharon at the airport to greet them.
As one
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I have to admit, I’ve been wondering what the big deal was over the Kerry “bunny suit” picture that popped up this week. I just didn’t have the same reaction everybody else had (i.e., cracking up); my thought was, “Oh, he’s in a clean suit.” That’s it. Then I read this today:
The pictures have prompted chuckles and jokes among political pundits covering the Democratic National Convention in Boston because, to people unfamiliar with shuttle operations, the head-to-toe light-blue suits look goofy.
However, astronauts, workers or anyone else getting inside a shuttle or near other spacecraft and rockets being readied for launch wears such coveralls to protect the delicate vehicles from contamination.
Exactly right. If you’re familiar with clean-area procedures, the “bunny suit” wasn’t that much of a giggle-inducer (and what the heck, Kerry looks goofy in normal clothes).
Of course, all of the above just reinforces how dumb it was for Kerry flack Mary Beth Cahill to freak out and accuse NASA of a “dirty trick” in releasing the photos. I’d bet you dollars to donuts (mmm, donuts) that nobody at NASA even thought there was anything weird about those pictures.
But now the Kerry campaign has pissed off the vast majority of a large workforce in the most crucial electoral state on the map. Bad move, Mary Beth.
UPDATE: Oh, good grief. Now a silly legal threat has forced NASA to remove the photos from their site. Maybe Rove really does have moles embedded on the other side–why else would the Dems be so dead-set on turning a non-story into an embarrassing black eye?
If this is an indicator of the Kerry campaign’s political savvy, Bush should be sleeping very well these days.
Before Drudge, before GoogleNews, before Instapundit — NewsfeedOnline found this story:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is in Boston asking for United Nations observers to monitor the November elections. Jackson says the present system in the U.S. cannot be trusted, but the UN can be trusted. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), several members of the Democratic Congressional Black Caucus, and radical feminist groups have added their voices in agreement with Jackson.
As Jeff Goldstein says, “Jesse who? Never heard of the guy.”
I’d watch a lot more of both conventions if everyone — candidates, speakers, journalists, delegates, everyone — was required to wear one of these.
Punch the Bag wasn’t exactly impressed with the foreign policy part of John Edwards’s speech last night:
Then Edwards turned the corner and headed down the national security path. C
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Did the UN learn nothing from Rwanda?
The U-S has introduced a new draft resolution on Sudan in the U-N Security Council — without the word “sanctions.”
But the draft still threatens economic action against the African nation if it doesn’t take steps to disarm Arab militias blamed for killing thousands in the Darfur region.
The change was made after some Security Council members objected to the mention of sanctions in an earlier draft — saying Sudan should have more time to end the violence in Darfur.
Sure looks like it.
Seattle PI has a fair story on blogs on bloggers:
Most bloggers, unlike traditional media outlets, don’t have the resources to research and publish in-depth investigative stories. And many bloggers rely on newspapers and magazines for their information.
At the same time, journalists are increasingly relying on bloggers to find experts and pundits and as new sources of information.
“People are creating this distinction between blogs and traditional media, but I think that distinction is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier,” said Brian Montopoli, who operates the blog campaigndesk.org for the Columbia Journalism Review.
Bloggers who mix news, analysis and opinion have forced reporters to move beyond simple “he said, she said” journalism, Montopoli said.
Read the rest here.
Sometimes you just have to shake your head:
John Kerry’s family dumped millions of dollars of foreign holdings as he launched his White House bid, gobbling up Made in the USA stocks in a huge politically savvy international-to-domestic shift.
The investments, mostly in the name of Kerry’s multimillionaire wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, sold stock in massive overseas players like Heineken, Sony, British Petroleum and Italian Telecom for red, white and blue companies like McDonald’s, Dell and Kohls.
In all, the Kerrys dumped as much as $16 million worth of international stock and bought between $18 million and $32 million in domestic holdings between 2002 and 2003, records show.
Okay, so far, so what? This kind of thing happens all the time in politics; innumerable politicians of all parties have traded in their Mercedes or Lexi for Chevys and Fords just before (or after) declaring their candidacy. It’s done to avoid being labelled as “helping them furriners,” and really, it’s no big deal. But then you read something like this:
Marla Romash, a senior adviser to Kerry, said the financial decisions aren’t political.
“The trustees and Mrs. Heinz Kerry have asked these investment managers, who make their own investment decisions, only to take appropriate steps to ensure that investments are responsible and financially prudent,” Romash said. “The trustees review these investments periodically with the managers to ensure that these investments are responsible as well as financially prudent.”
Oh, please. Ms. Romash, you’re lying, and it’s patently obvious that you’re lying. It’s not smart for a campaign spokescreature to assume that her audience is just mind-bogglingly gullible, particularly when it’s so easy to fact-check your ass:
[T]he timing of the sales appears to be an anomaly among a relatively consistent investment pattern.
Through most of Kerry’s federal disclosure forms, the Heinz Kerry trusts – which invest some of the massive inheritance after the death of her first husband, Sen. H. John Heinz III, more than a decade ago – show steady investments and sales of overseas assets.
In the spring of 2002, as Kerry seriously began weighing a presidential run, there appeared to be a marked increase in sales of overseas holdings.
Those stocks were sold because Sugar Mama’s hubby was running for president, and didn’t want to be embarrassed by his wife’s being invested heavily in foreign companies (on the other hand–what are Kerry’s overseas backers going to make of that?).
C’mon, Kerry campaign. Be honest enough to admit it. If we can’t trust you on something this obvious, why should we trust you at all?
I listened to a little bit of Hugh Hewitt’s Tuesday interview with French “journalist” Regis Le Sommier on a replay yesterday. One of the funnier bits (and there were a lot of them; Sommier clearly had no idea how much Hewitt was leading him along) came when Sommier dismissed a caller’s challenge about the French-built and Israeli-destroyed Osiraq nuclear plant being part of a weapons program, saying, “I know what I am talking about here. My father was a nuclear engineer.”
Hey, Regis! My dad is a dentist. Feel free to drop by anytime, I’ll give you a root canal, on the house.
That is, if you ever get over the one administered by Steven Den Beste today…
Taking Glenn’s advice — drinking beer tonight.
UPDATE
Somebody asked, so I’m going to tell. I’ve got Fat Tire on tap, and Rounders in the DVD drive. Life is good.
Via Roger L. Simon, Mohammed from Iraq The Model lays his cards on the table:
Can you answer the question what will be the response of Iraqis towards these horrible attacks? I
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I was going to Fisk the multiple idiocies of Regis Le Sommier, as catalogued by Lileks, but then realized there was no point; Lileks had already imbedded links to enough hard facts to thoroughly debunk Sommier’s nonsense.
Still, the breadth of Sommier’s ignorance and/or dishonesty (take your pick) is rather staggering, to say nothing of his apparently unshakable belief in things that aren’t remotely true. France was Saddam’s leading European trading partner and second-largest armorer. The French-built Osiraq plant–personally negotiated by none other than Jacques Chirac–was capable of producing bomb-grade nuclear materials. France’s Fina-Elf did have a huge financial stake in a Saddam-controlled Iraq’s oil business, having signed sweetheart deals with the dictator before the war.
None of these are opinions. They’re all established, documented facts. All denied, with the vehemence of the worst partisan spin doctors, by a guy who’s the American bureau chief for one of his country’s major magazines. This dude has the gall to complain about Fox News? He’s not a reporter, he’s a cheerleader. And a baldly dishonest one, at that.
Think about that little exchange with Lileks the next time you read about American “ignorance” vs. European “sophistication,” or the alleged high level of French education and/or “open-mindedness,” to say nothing about Euro charges that the US media is “unbalanced” compared to the completely equitable and fair-minded press in Old Europe. Ask yourself whether the opinions of people so devoted to flat-out lies are actually worth anything to you, or your country.
And also remind yourself: this guy, who apparently reflects a large majority of opinion in his country, is rooting for John Kerry. Hard.
It’s here.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation has launched a neat project. They’re putting up instructions and information on how to build your own DVR (aka, Tivo, ReplayTV, etc.) for HDTV programming. The Digital Liberation Front aims to get as many of these homebrew boxes in circulation as possible before the Hollywood-backed and FCC-ordered “broadcast flag” becomes manditory in HDTV receivers just over a year from now.
As things stand today, you can buy an HDTV capture card for a computer that does not recognize the broadcast flag, meaning you should be able to view, record, and save unlimited copies of any program that comes in through the card. These cards are perfectly legal today, and are not going to become illegal under the current law, but their production (at least for US sales) will end on July 1, 2005. After that, the networks and movie studios will be able to prevent you from making recordings or copies of recordings, depending on how the broadcast flag is set, and any new HDTV hardware will have to obey those rules.
This kind of project isn’t for a complete computer novice, but it’s not like building a flux capacitor, either. Anybody who’s comfortable installing software and a few PCI cards should be able to get a rudimentary HDTV PVR working on standard PC or Mac hardware.
As a confirmed DVR addict (ReplayTV in my case, a platform that makes extracting digital recordings for burning to DVD trivially easy), I’m planning to pick up a couple of pre-flag HDTV cards myself, even though I don’t own an HDTV monitor yet. Sooner or later, I’m going to want to burn an HDTV Auburn-Alabama game to high-capacity DVD, and I’m not going to depend on the goodwill of CBS or ESPN to graciously “allow” me to do so.
… but I did pay tuition there a decade or so ago.
Okay, that was a pointless aside, and not-very-artful way of saying that I didn’t watch a lick of Mrs. Heinz-Ketchup, Governor YEEEEAAAAGH!, or Senator Chappaquiddick last night. Instead, I got to enjoy a blissful evening at Atlanta’s Chastain Ampetheater hosted by the one and only Lyle Lovett (who, to the everlasting gratitude of his audience, remains blessedly apolitical in public).
Lovett’s shows are always a highlight of the summer concert season at Chastain, and this year was no exception. He’s stripped down the Large Band to an all-strings ensemble for this tour (two guitars, mandolin, violin, lap steel, cello and bass, plus drums and piano), dropping the horn section and most of the backup singers. The result is a leaner, more rootsy sound that emphasizes Lovett’s country and blues roots while maintaining a healthy dose of the jazz influences that make him such a unique perfomer and songwriter.
Personally, I love the sound a great horn section brings to much of Lovett’s music, and I have to say I preferred the 2003 set to the 2004, but these are quibbles. It was a marvelous evening, and nobody on stage ever so much as blushed at the thought of hitting a wrong note.
As has become the standard for Lovett’s local appearances, the show was stolen by Atlanta’s own queen of the blues, the luminous Francine Reed. It only took one song with Reed on backing vocals for my friends to say, “Now we know why you keep telling us to go see her!” Reed’s a gem, and a great performer; if you ever see her name on a marquee, do yourself a favor and buy a ticket.
As noted below, James Lileks got mugged by a French magazine editor yesterday; Hugh Hewitt has posted a brief rundown, just to whet your appetite for Frog Fricassee while we await today’s Bleat:
Spending a lot of time today with Regis le Sommier, U.S. bureau chief of Paris Match, a sort of Life meets Time meets People. Great exchange between Regis and Lileks, which I hope James writes about tomorrow. Regis acted towards Lileks as all French diplomats acted towards Bush Administration people throughout the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003. It wasn’t pretty, but it should inspire Lileks to some pretty good writing in tomorrow’s Bleat. Basically, Regis confirmed that the French would vote overwhelmingly for Kerry if given the choice. We knew that, but hearing it confirmed by a senior French journalist somehow makes Kerry’s politics much more distinct.
I maintain that the most devastating one-liner the Bush campaign could use would go something like this: “John Kerry–the French love him, and the feeling is mutual.”
The Wall Street Journal’s election prediction toy starts you off like so:
Larry Sabato is willing to go all out, and call all 50 states, yielding a Kerry victory.
There’s no direct link to the WSJ toy, because it’s a JavaScript pop-up. But you can click on OpinionJournal’s main page, and find the link on the left-hand column.
Fun stuff, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Some might critique Sabato because he has more or less come out as a Kerry partisan. True — but I’ve only seen that reflected in his written analysis, not in his numbers.
Drudge had the teaser up all night, but now we get the, ah, rest of the story:
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
Sounds like bad news, especially to electronic-voting enthusiasts like myself. But then the story also reports that a “county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future.”
So the problem wasn’t that the machines didn’t give proper election returns, the problem was that the data weren’t properly secured after the fact. All that says much more about the Miami-Dade Election Commission (as if more needed to be said) than it does about the machines themselves.
Furthermore, if we’re still questioning election returns two years after the fact, then we have a much more serious problem than bad data backup.
You hear me, Al Gore?
I’ve gotta take a moment to pat myself (and Will Collier, bless him!) on the back.
Last couple of weeks, this blog has been red hot. Traffic is up, which is flattering, but that’s not the main reason for all the self-congratulations. Postings are more frequent. Quality is improved. And best of all, I’m having more fun with this blog than I have in at least two years.
Am I drinking more? Nope – doesn’t square with improved quality and quantity.
Am I on Prozac? Not a chance. You read the stuff here lately?
Am I drinking better coffee in the AMs? I wish.
The blog is good again, for the simple reason that I like looking at it. And I like looking at it because of Sekimori, the brilliant bitch (her word!) who did the redesign.
Bet Sekimori could work some wonders for you, too.
All we got tonight was a teaser:
And so it came to pass that the very night I had to write a column about my daughter’s birthday was interrupted by a 20-minute argument with the American bureau chief for Paris Match. I will post my column to the Strib computer at 1 PM tomorow; my response to Chanticleer will be up by noon Central Standard Time. Short version: suggesting that Chirac was close to Saddam does not mean one works for Fox, you prique. Long version: stay tuned.
I can’t wait for the rest.
On the death penalty, Bush is for and Kerry straddles. On abortion, Bush is against and Kerry straddles. On same-sex marriage, Bush is demonstrably against, while Kerry is rhetorically against but cleverly finds a policy resting place that allows him to straddle.
It happens that I agree with Bush on the death penalty, prefer the Supreme Court compromises on abortion and disagree with him on a same-sex amendment. [I'm with Safire on two outta three -- ed.] But in all cases, this president takes a stand and makes clear what it is. Bush is not trying to be, in the biblical phrase, all things to all men.
Contrariwise, these Kerry straddles are troubling in one who aspires to trustworthy leadership. I won’t be watching his acceptance speech tomorrow for war stories, Clintonian crowd appeal or sudden, soaring eloquence. An end to the straddling would help.
I’m not holding my breath.
I’m wishy-washy on the death penalty. I don’t personally support it for practical reasons (kinda hard to commute an unjust execution, after the fact), but it’s also clear that the Constitution does indeed endorse it. Kerry says he’s against the death penalty, but straddles with the “except for terrorists” exception.
So I’m closer to Kerry than to Bush on that issue.
I’m pro-choice, but have no real complaint with a ban on non-medical-necessity late-term abortions. If the fetus is viable outside the womb, then in my mind, the state probably has an interest in protecting it. In any other case, the rights (if any — the Constitution extends rights only to those “born or naturalized” in the United States) of the unborn have to weighed against the rights of the mother. The fetus — baby, whatever, I don’t care — has potential. The mother already has a real life. Mom wins.
Make that two issues where I’m closer to Kerry than to Bush — doubly so when you add in the silly Right to Life arguments against stem cell research. On that one, I’m an absolutist, and Bush & the Republicans could very well have created a wedge issue which will go hard against them.
Same sex marriage? I’m for for for it. Oh, I could reach some kind of “civil union” compromise, and I’d like to see the courts stay out of it. But too many gay marriage supporters are too self-centered not to take it to court, and too many judges (either for or against) are too self-aggrandizing not to meddle. What it boils down to is, someday gays will win their marriage rights. Just not by any method they should take any pride in.
Of the three issues Safire discussed, I’m far closer to Kerry than I am to Bush. But, come November, I’ll almost certainly pull the lever for Bush.
Why? Because I can’t really be sure Kerry is on my side. He straddles. He obfuscates. He speaks in indecipherable Senatorese. If he won’t take a stand during the primaries, when he needs only to appeal to fellow Democrats, how can I count on him to stand up to a Republican Congress?
How can any of us count on him to stand up to al Qaeda? Or China? Or France?
I don’t like George W Bush. But at least half the time, I can be pretty sure where he stands — about double the percentage of your average politician. I know when I’ll have to fight Bush, and where I can let him lead me.
But Kerry gives me the feeling he’d sell out my one vote in a heartbeat, on the off chance of getting 1.01 more votes in the next election. Just like he sold out his Catholic belief that life begins at conception, his principled stand against the death penalty, and his once-firm stance on gay marriage, which. . .
. . .wait, did Kerry ever take a stand on gay marriage?
See what I mean?
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