Bark Bark Woof Woof

I've compiled the Faithful Correspondent's Convention Diary entries into a single PDF document for easy reading and fond recollection. If you'd like a copy, please let me know in the Comments and include your e-mail address.

In exchange, how about making a contribution to Robin Weirauch, who's running in the 5th district in Ohio? Any amount will do. Of course, if you'd rather support your local Democrats, by all means do so. Or there's the DNC. Anything you do can make the difference.

Michael Kinsley whips out the calculator to see if there's any truth to the line that Republicans are better at handling the economy than Democrats. Guess what.

You know how sometimes, when it's really, really hot, you get this urge to crank up the old spreadsheet, download a bunch of numbers from the Web and start crunching away like there's no next fiscal year?

Me neither. But I did spend a bit of the past week watching the Democratic convention on TV, and I needed something to exercise my mind while that was going on. Convention season is the one time every four years when we pretend that political parties matter. In general, we have accepted the reality that campaigns for national office have become entrepreneurial, united more by shared political consultants than by old-fashioned parties.

So I thought I'd see if there was a difference between the parties that transcended the differences between the candidates. Is one of them, for example, a better steward of the economy? One year won't tell you much, or even one administration. But surely differences will emerge over half a century or so, if they exist.

[...]

It turns out that Democratic presidents have a much better record than Republicans. They win in a head-to-head comparison in almost every category. Real growth averaged 4.09% in Democratic years, 2.75% in Republican years. Unemployment was 6.44%, on average, under Republican presidents, and 5.33% under Democrats. The federal government spent more under Republicans than Democrats (20.87% of GDP, compared with 19.58%), and that remains true even if you exclude defense (13.76% for the Democrats, 14.97% for the Republicans).

What else? Inflation was lower under Democratic presidents (3.81% on average, compared with 4.85%). And annual deficits took more than twice as much of GDP under Republicans than Democrats (2.74% of GDP versus 1.21%). Republicans won by a nose on government revenue (i.e., taxes), taking 18.12% of GDP, compared with 18.39%. That, of course, is why they lost on the size of the deficit.

Personal income per capita was also a bit higher in Republican years ($16,061 in year- 2000 dollars) than in Democratic ones ($15,565). But that is because more of the Republican years came later, when the country was more prosperous already.

[...]

But maybe we are taking too long a view. The Republican Party considers itself born again in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president. That's when Republicans got serious about cutting taxes, reducing the size of government and making the country prosperous. Allegedly. But doing all the same calculations for the years 1982 through 2002, and giving each president's policies a year to take effect, changes only one result: The Democrats pull ahead of the Republicans on per capita personal income.

As they say in the brokerage ads, past results are no guarantee of future performance. [Los Angeles Times]

Oh, those tax-and-spend Democrats!

This blog is now the proud owner of the domain name www.barkbarkwoofwoof.com. All it does - for the moment - is lead you right back here, but it does make it easier for people to find. The regular http://barkbarkwoofwoof.blogspot.com link still works, so there's no need to change your "Favorites" list (assuming it's there in the first place).

I did it through a site called GoDaddy.com. It was pretty straightforward and the price was very reasonable.

Thanks, Danny, for the suggestion.

Thursday Night on PBS: Kerry's speech was great!

Friday Morning Phone Message: Karl Rove on Line 1.

Saturday Morning Column: What was I thinking? Kerry was incoherent and pandering.

The Faithful Correspondent files her last report on her adventure as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention from the comfort of home.

I've mentioned, as have all the publications, how coddled the Ohio Delegation has been all week. How lucky Dad and I have been to have fallen into politics in Ohio this year of all years. We have been told that "Ohio is the ethnic and economic barometer of the nation" - a Bill Richardson quote. The climax of our exhalted treatment came yesterday at the final morning breakfast-caucus where it became even more obvious that we as a group were being placed in the role, not as those whom one wants to favor, but as those from whom one wants a favor. We got the whole nine yards in terms of celebrity attention. The breakfast was sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Industry Management Association/Ohio AFL-CIO and a speaker was making his pitch as Dad and I got to the table, plates loaded with sticky buns, bacon, fruit, scrambled eggs, (passed on the pancakes and syrup). Several other noted Ohio Party officials spoke: the new chairman, Denny White, and Rep. Sherrod Brown from Lorain, while we downed our breakfast, plates clattered, waitresses passed coffee, diners chatted companionably in not-hushed tones. But the pep rally was only beginning.

Up rose Richard C. Holbrooke. I stopped eating immediately to listen and take notes of his words. I've admired him since Bosnia and beyond, and I love his soft-but-authoritative delivery. First he says, "I love Dayton". He loves Dayton because of the time he and his band of negotiators spent those many weeks there, forming the truce that stopped the murderous fighting between the Serbs and the Bosnians. Wright-Patterson AFB was the ostensible reason why the town was chosen, but it was Dayton that formed the healing atmosphere. And he says that although the Serbians involved in the negotiations were, as he put it, thugs and murderers, Dayton treated all with kindness and respect. He says the town became a living metaphor for peace and the striving for it that took place there. People of all ethnic origins from all over the state - and, indeed, from all over the country - came to demonstrate and pray for peace. "A Dayton" has entered the language in the diplomatic corps - as in, "why can't we do a Dayton?" It showed the world how all kinds of people live together in America.

He notes that Diana Kerry, one of John's two sisters, is present and that she's an experienced translator; the other sister, Peggy, works at the UN for Holbrooke. We had met Peggy at the Planned Parenthood reception Sunday night. She cares deeply about this administration's performances at the Cairo and other internation conferences on women's health and the executive gag rules.

Holbrooke says further that the two men, Bush and Kerry, have entirely different approaches to Iraq. John Kerry is a true internationalist. Bush is not. Kerry is the son of a diplomat, raised abroad, and knows foreign cultures. He volunteered three times: first for the navy, then to go to Viet Nam, then to Swift Boat duty. He chose the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (not a good career move according to his advisors). He KNOWS foreign countries. He has the respect of the world. An example: Ireland loves America - there are 45 million Irish Americans, after all. They cheered Ronald Reagan when he visited, they cheered Bill Clinton, but they BOOED George W. Bush. Bush had to travel around in a bubble for security reasons but also to shelter him from the hostile crowds. Holbrooke says that four more years of this and Americans living abroad will have security worries and companies will lose business. The unknowns in the coming weeks are, as we all know, are: 1) if they capture Bin Laden, 2) if there's another attack on our country, and 3) Iraq. We are not safer now than we were before Iraq. Our cities' and ports' vulnerability has grown hugely and still no money is being spent to beef up their security. At the cost of four days in Iraq we could protect, for example, Long Beach where our largest naval facility is located. The administration hasn't moved to do it. Finally, Holbrooke said, a response to accusations of Kerry flip-flopping should list these (he seems to like to number his thoughts):

1) Sadam's removal was a legitimate goal, as was the removal of Slobodan Milosovic.
2) Kerry twice supported resolutions to remove Sadam. Holbrooke did as well.
3) Kerry said that the effort to remove him had to be international.
4) Going to war without the Security Council's support, on the basis of faulty intelligence, was not what Kerry supported. It was a rush to war.
5) Kerry has actually been the one with the steady position as opposed to Bush who has now assumed Kerry's position. And finally, Mr. Holbrooke says what we all know, "Everyone knows that the winner of Ohio will be the next president of the United States."

Next to speak was Diana Kerry, the youngest of the two sisters. She tells us she was actually born in Dayton. She has degrees in history, education and theater. She was a translator at the Munich Olympics and taught for 15 years in an Indonesian school. She is now an enrichment teacher in Boston inner city schools. She tells us that until three years ago Indonesia was 85% in approval of the USA.. Now, thanks to Bush, only 15% are in favor of us.

She wants to tell us about her brother inasmuch as we are told people "don't know who John Kerry is". She says he has a host of loyal friends, loyal staffers who say to her "where your brother leads, I will follow". John has been a man of integrity; has demanded accountability in government - he was part of the Iran-Contra investigation, for example. "He will always tell the truth to the American people". Diana is now working to get the 5million overseas residents to register and vote. It is her ambition to get, not just a margin of victory, but a HUGE margin of Democratic Party victory. We can do it!

Dennis Kucinich races through his "Ohio makes a difference!" speech, barely pausing for breath. More cheerleading comes from Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, from Cleveland, who gives (shouts?) a speech that brings us to our feet, pounding the tables. She says, forget about those so-called swing voters, our mission is to turn out our base! Labor is the base of the Democratic party. She makes us all raise our right hands and pledge to pound the pavement to get the job done. We laugh at ourselves, but no one keeps his hand at his side and we all swear to obey.

Stephanie is followed by former Senator John Glenn, the most revered member of the delegation. John tells us that the two political parties haven taken a total role reversal. The Democrats used to be accused of incurring big debts, of too big a government and of too much foreign involvement. We have unnecessarily put our children to repaying our debts. He says that Margaret Thatcher, when she wanted to tackle the debt in Britain, eliminated whole specific programs and departments. THEN she cut taxes. We have runaway budgets and deficits . . . this is not conservatism. Senator Glenn tells us that what truly impressed him on Wednesday night was the sight of the former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs all lined up on the stage. Normally they are not political and to have them "come out" in public and commit as they did is extraordinary. He is angry that national guardsmen are going back for their second tour of duty. He says that Schwartzkopf had 540,000 troups in the Gulf War. You must have overwhelming force so that you will have enough manpower to control the country after the fighting stops. Republicans who vote according to their conscience - not those who vote the party line only - will have to think about whether they feel they got what they voted for. I stop after the breakfast to speak to Annie Glenn at the back of the room. I remind her of a small meeting held in Perrysburg when John was campaigning for Carter/Mondale. The event was so intimate that I've always felt as though I knew Annie Glenn. She remembered the local Holiday Inn and its woman manager. We had a good long talk and laughed about trying to exit the Fleet Center the night before.

The piece de resistance, for whom we'd been kept in our chairs, was John Edwards. Looking cheery and rested (!) he bounded onto the stage, said a few rousing words of encouragement - "Ohio is Ground Zero in this election", "We NEED you!", "We, John and I, will work hard and our wives will as well, but YOU HAVE TO HELP US..." Then, like Jolly Old Saint Nick, he disappeared through a back exit.
__________________________________

The evening began at 4:00 for me. I understood that if the crowds were thick Wednesday night, they would be solid wall-to-wall bodies on this last night. No chance for Dad to get a guest pass, no chance for me to find a seat unless I got there before 4:45. Which I did. Again I was on the aisle some 7 rows back from the stage. I was armed with a packet of Oreos and a bottle of Dasani as well as one of the three canvas bags that came as favors from the mayor of Boston or a candidate over the past four days. I put a newspaper in it, my crossword puzzle and left enough room for whatever sign or goodie would come my way over the evening. Behind me was the same gent from Washington state I'd sat in front of the night before. I was in one of the last two or three Ohio seats and and we shared the row with Washington. Beside me was a woman who was a delegate from the Native American community in La Conner WA, the Swinomish Tribe. She had beautiful, taut cafe au lait skin and was wearing a beaded fetish necklace. A reporter from King County's webblog was interviewing her and getting an update on the Native American Caucus that had taken place earlier in the week. Governors from AZ, NM, OK, MT, SD, and AK attended as did Mark Udall, Sen. Patty Murray and Patrick Kennedy. The governors of New Mexico and South Dakota told the caucus that they wouldn't have been elected if it weren't for the Native American vote. "Maria Cantwell will come when she needs to be reelected", said Lona Wilbur, the delegate.

I haven't space to repeat what everyone has seen on TV (if you watch Jim Lehrer or C-SPAN, that is), but I do want to end my assignment for the week by mentioning some of the speakers who might not have been seen, who impressed me and who left me with quotable quotes. Kwiesi Mfume: "Before we say anything about protecting Democracy in Baghdad, let's be sure we have Democracy at home." A not-so-guarded reference to Florida and the less publicized discrimination of Native Americans trying to vote in South Dakota. Barney Frank: "Yes, there's a Gay Agenda and it consists of wanting to be able to fight for our country, to be able to find work without fear of firing when our private lives are examined, of being able to marry the person we love. We think Ralph Nader trivializes our (GLBT) lives when he says there is no difference between the two parties . . . there's a huge difference if only on the basis of the Republican Party's treatment of us". And, finally: "On behalf of the Stonewall Democrats I'm proud to put our support behind the candidacy of John Kerry and John Edwards." Mark Warner: "Believe me Virginia is in play. I was told when I ran it couldn't be done, but Democrats can win Virginia if all of you work. Virginia has wandered in the Republican desert for 40 years and this Bush can't lead them to the promised land." Joe Biden: "Imagine if our president had reached out, after 9/11 when Paris Match and other French papers wrote "we are all Americans now", and asked that they join us in a joint effort to destroy the terrorists. Imagine if we'd all been asked to conserve energy in a program to free us from dependence on foreign oil and to start a program of national conscription. He squandered that momentary opportunity. It's only leadership if someone follows - and no one is following." Wes Clark: "Anyone who tells you that one party has a lock on the defense of our nation is committing a fraud. Repetition of a lie does not make it true."

As all the speakers - dozens - were leading us up to the final moments of the evening, CBS, NBC and CNN had their reporters squatting/kneeling sweatily in the aisle next to me. Yes, Terri Wallace sweats. It must be the most frustrating work. The cameras weigh 40 pounds (I asked) and the crew is in constant contact with the invisible voice in the booth above (except when they're not and, like children lost in Toys 'R' Us, panic ensues - are you there? can you hear me?). It's wait wait wait - call the booth - wait wait wait. And finally, arise after an hour of squatting in order to not block our view, move on. I never actually saw them speak into the ice cream cone of a black mike they clutched at the ready. Oh well.

And finally for me: Ah, yes, the daughters were beautiful, poised, funny and marvelous. I pulled out a kleenex and dabbed my eyes. And Max Cleland was perfectly wonderful, particularly when he said that Kerry's active protesting the war spoke for him when he was depressed and broken, told him that John Kerry was "my brother before I knew him". (I wept, I blew my nose.) And then my John Kerry strode onto the stage and hit a home run. He blew away the eager audience and Teresa as well, who seemed to faint in joy against the shoulder of John Edwards as Kerry paid loving tribute to her. If people needed to see the "real" side of John Kerry, or John Kerry's ability to show joy and warmth, they couldn't have asked for more. I also thought he showed a tough side and a practical side. I will be perfectly happy to have him as the president of my United States.

I made my exit before the balloons came down.

Thanks, Mom. You made me very proud, and I am humbled to be your Loyal Scrivener.

Prosperity is just around the corner - Herbert Hoover, running for re-election in 1932.

We've turned a corner, and we're not turning back - Bush/Cheney campaign for re-election in 2004.

So, according to the folks such as Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood, we don't need a paper trail for the electronic voting machines here in Florida. But someone in the Florida GOP apparently didn't get the word: they sent out a campaign flier urging Republicans to vote absentee.

The flier featured a smiling President George W. Bush and urged voters not to take a chance with the touch-screen machines.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," the front page of the mailer reads. "Make sure your vote counts, order your absentee ballot today." [Sun-Sentinel]

So who's responsible for this little screw-up? Who knows? There's no paper trail.

Everyone's heading home from Boston. The Faithful Correspondent and Dad are catching an early-morning flight out, but she has promised a final convention wrap-up later today or tomorrow. (In light of the amazing reports she sent to me, she's earned a little time off.) But the race is on, and things will pick up quickly. Sunday there's a Kerry-Edwards rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, as part of the battleground states tour, and that's just the beginning.

As expected, all of the pundits are all over The Speech. There's a good wrap-up of the commentary at Salon.com; the snarkiest comment being Fred Barnes saying Kerry's salute was "not very good" (I was unaware of Mr. Barnes's expertise in military protocol). Other than that, the concensus is that John Kerry exceeded all the expectations. David Brooks told Jim Lehrer that the senator set the bar high and got over it with ease - "it was a great speech." Not bad for someone who earlier this week labeled Kerry as a crashing bore.

Make no mistake: Karl Rove and his minions from Hell are geared up and before the first delegate was out the door of the Fleet last night the faxes and e-mails were going out. But there will be an added urgency and a whiff of fear and desperation as the Republicans haul out the big guns - and with any luck shoot themselves in the foot over and over again.

Update: My sister reports she saw The Faithful Correspondent on ABC-TV last night during the "wonderful Kerry speech." Darn! I was watching PBS.

And boy, did he.

"We have it in our power to change the world, but only if we're true to our ideals - and that starts by telling the truth to the American people," Mr. Kerry said, speaking rapidly over repeated cheers from his audience. "As president, that is my first pledge to you tonight. As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

"I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the advice of the military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who upholds the Constitution of the United States."

Yes!

The Faithful Correspondent makes friends and influences reporters.

As the week has gone on I've found the crowds at the Fleet Center are swelling. I was warned to get to the convention center as early as 4:00 in order to find a seat and to be available to be counted and signed off on my vote as a delegate. I took the instructor, Todd Rensi of the Ohio Kerry office, at his word and was in place on an aisle, six rows back from the podium by 4:15. What I didn't take into account that an aisle seat with the aisle between me and the podium would fill up with print reporters doing interviews, photographers and camera equipment mules, people milling about chatting and in general a world within the larger world of the main spectacle. My old acquaintance from Monday night, Derry Hooks, sat two rows in front of me and again he was photographed and interviewed. I reached forward to tap him on the shoulder and tease him about his stardom. He was as mystified as I was about why he was attracting so much interest. Well, he's about 35, tall, well proportioned, very black and neatly dressed...and he's well spoken. He sits in an accessable location. That says it.

Another much interviewed "celebrity" was the daughter of an Ohio politician, now retired from some statewide party job. She was featured on the podium as "The Youngest Delegate;" she may be 15, and led the sparse early crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance dressed in a tight sleeveless blue dress, heavy makeup and 4" high white heels. She and the rest of her family sat on the aisle across from me. She was led away to be interviewed on TV with her mother as chaperone. I wonder what opinions she was able to offer. But Daddy was very proud.

Speaking of interviews: I suddenly found squatting beside me a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. He asked the usual questions about why I was a delegate for Kerry (I was impressed by his intelligence, his internationalism, his nuanced take on policy); what I thought of Kerry/Edwards' prospects in Ohio (excellent - don't believe all you read in the daily polls); and why (jobs jobs jobs and angry conservative farmers who haven gotten what they thought they'd voted for). He took my name and e-mail address and I gave him the name of this blog [thanks, Mom!] so he could keep current with events. He was very nice and I'm glad he wasn't from FOX so I didn't have to be rude to him.

We open our room door every morning to find a pile of newspapers. This is one of the benefits of becoming a delegate I hadn't anticipated. We find the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, CQ, the National Journal, The New Republic, The Hill, Roll Call. Luckily for Dad he has plenty to read while I'm off waving flags and holding up signs of support at the convention. A piece this morning in one of the above that I carried to breakfast offered the opinion that in the end no one misses the major networks or Dan, Peter and Tom telling people what to think. There is so much better coverage on CSPAN and PBS that the ratings of both of them has tripled as the ratings of the majors has just about vanished. Opinions can be had on FOX and CNN if opinions are wanted and many people can do without.

Last night I sat next to a woman from Toledo, the 9th District. We compared notes on how the Kerry Toledo campaign manager was doing in covering the territory. His territory is northwest Ohio and I allowed as how I thought he didn't recognize that there was a wide world out beyond the city of Toledo although he's responsible for both the 9th and the 5th Districts. The area is huge - all of the northwestern quadrant of the state - but more attention should be paid and more volunteers recruited. Since he (Scott Fairchild) is living with the woman's family for the duration, she felt she could tell him what we needed. I told her I thought that our campaign for Robin should be more closely coordinated with the Kerry campaign and that Scott could learn a lot from us about the opportunities he could seize in places like Fremont and Fostoria where, surprisingly, there are a lot of Democratic voters among the farmers and a lot of disaffected Republicans. Maybe we can make more progress in the next couple of months - we shouldn't try to do it alone.

In midafternoon Wednesday Dad decided to attend the Rural Caucus which was meeting between 2:00 and 4:30. He felt he needed to become more familiar with the issues that concern people living in the sparsely-poplulated counties Robin represents. Since this is the campaign headquarters, the caucus involved representatives from all over the country. Noted early in the session were statistics showing that of the 250 poorest counties in the USA, 240 of them are rural. We had seen dire rural poverty when we lived in Michigan. There is hopelessness, there is alcoholism and drug abuse, and the schools are as neglected as those found in the worst inner city neighborhoods. The meeting was well worth his time. He was told that in the Bush-Gore election of 2000, 22% of rural voters gave more votes to Bush than to Gore. The most recent polls among potential rural voters have that number at around 11% who say they will vote for Bush. The number is shrinking because these very conservative voters care about a balanced national budget. They also care about the disappearing access to health care in their area and the failing schools. They'd like to have internet connections that allow children to be educated in a school nearby through computer aided teaching. Many don't feel they got what they voted for in 2000. The opportunity is at hand for John Kerry and his policy for rural areas should appeal to many more of these important voters.

I was early enough last night to be present for the roll call, for the ceremonial presentation of the flags, and for the first speakers who follow one another for brief moments - perhaps 5 minutes each - in the spotlight. The New Mexico representative who's a Navaho chief, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, State Senator from Massachusetts Diane Wilkerson, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, Rep. Tom Allen of Maine, State Controller Steve Wesley of California. Cue the Fife and Drum Corps made up of little boys (Scouts?) who did a fine job. Cue the Youngest Delegate and the Pledge (with God). Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of NY, Rep. Joseph Hoeffel Senate Candidate, Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania, Sen. Frank Lautenberg of NJ.

(Distraction caused by an elderly woman who collapses in the second row to my right and is quickly surrounded by fire, police, EMS, oxygen tanks, folding gurney - all of which she refuses. She settles her highly decorated hat back on her head and resumes her seat. Whew!)

We see Donna Christian-Christainson of the Virgin Islands, Ed Pastor Rep. from AZ, Senator Pat Leahy of VT who jokes about Cheney's verbal suggestions to him, Amy Klobuchar of Hennepin County MN, Raul Yzaguirre the CEO and President of La Raza and at last the more luminous stars. John Glenn speaks of the current erosion of the twin pillars of scientific research and higher education that fueled our prewar economic boom just as other countries are buttressing their own efforts. The very exciting Robert Kennedy, Jr. who is an environmental lawyer and chair of Riverkeeper tells us that GWB is the greatest danger to our environmental goals and law. He says that polluters are in charge of governmental agencies, lobbyists for the companies that pollute are entering government service in order to gut the laws that control the excesses of their own industries. He tells us that our children are going to pay for our own joyride as we shift the responsibility for clean up and repair on to their shoulders. Theirs will be our deficits, too. He tells us that humans need more than a large paycheck to have a rich life and that a clean environment is needed for the soul. This is an angry young man on a mission.

More speakers stand before us and will remain nameless as I run out of space. The evening hours tick on with one speaker following another interspersed by musical interludes featuring artists unfamiliar to this elderly listener - Wyclef Jean, the John Mellencamp group - and other moments when we rise to sway and dance in place to "the bouncing ball" as in old movie theaters. Some unforgettable moments are those when a real orator shakes us up - esse Jackson and the incomparable Al Sharpton who brings me close to tears: "I suggest to you that if George Bush had been responsible for appointing the justices who decided the Brown v. Board of Education case, Clarence Thomas would never have gone to law school." "It's not for government to decide who's sleeping in the bedroom, but to be concerned with who's eating in the kitchen." "George Bush asked blacks to drop the Democratic Party which takes them for granted. Well, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation allowing every freed slave 40 acres and a mule. We tried up to the Hoover administration to get the government to make good on that promise. We never got the 40 acres and we never got the mule. So we decided to RIDE THIS DONKEY ALL THE WAY TO TODAY!" I wish I could get a transcript of all he had to say. "Mr. President, our vote is sacred to us having been washed in the blood of Chaney and Goodwin and Mr. President, OUR VOTE IS NOT FOR SALE!"

The last exciting moment I'll recount was the appearance on the stage of the nine former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As John Glenn told us this morning at breakfast, generals will be endorsing George Bush's campaign depending on where their politics lay, but the Joint Chiefs are not normally political. To have them come out in public and commit as they did is extraordinary. Shalikashvili spoke for the group when he said, "I'm an old soldier and a new Democrat." He voiced for the other generals the disapproval they share at the way the adventure in Iraq - Bush's War - has been and is being conducted. This appearance was an historic moment not to be dismissed by the press or the Republicans.

Of course, the introduction of Elizabeth Edwards by their beautiful daughter, Cate, was touching and Elizabeth's tribute to her husband was as well. John Edwards accepted the nomination and the long, long applause with sweet wonder on his face and graceful acknowledgement. He saluted his parents in the boxes and gave warm praise to the character and strength of John Kerry. I watched the Glenns sitting two rows in front of me as they listened intently to John. He is an appealing speaker and will add depth to the ticket. We cheered and cheered. And then I decided it was time to fight my way out of the building. A man in the row in front of me began to leave as I did and I grabbed his hand while he played block. The aisles were absolutely packed - no fire marshall would have approved had he been allowed into the building by security. We fought our way to the stairs and then I hied myself down the escalators to the waiting buses and, after 8 hours at the Fleet Center, to bed.

My folks will have barely unpacked from Boston before they're heading back out onto the campaign trail again.

Next Sunday afternoon, August 1, both JOHN KERRY and JOHN EDWARDS and their spouses, THERESA HEINZ KERRY and ELIZABETH EDWARDS, will bring the message of “A Stronger America” to “Middle America” and specifically to Main Street, Bowling Green, Wood County, Ohio.

This post-convention visit to Bowling Green by our Presidential and Vice-President nominees, as well as their spouses, is clearly a once-in-a lifetime historic event for Northwest Ohio! After the convention there will be very few occasions when both candidates and their spouses will be traveling and/or campaigning together at the same time.

This visit also signals in no uncertain terms how so very important we in Northwest Ohio are in the 2004 Presidential election! You will want to be here to welcome our nominees.

Gates to the event will open at 1:30 PM at the on the north side of the “Four Corners” of BG at the intersection of Wooster and Main Streets. Entertainment will be provided preceding the arrival of the bus tour.

Free parking will be provided BGSU’s Perry Stadium located at the junction of Interstate 75 (Exit 181) and E. Wooster Street. Free shuttle buses will transport guests to and from the downtown rally site.

This is from an e-mail sent by Allen Baldwin, Chair of the Wood County Democratic Party. So if you're in the area, stop by. Rumor has it my folks will be on the dais with Kerry and Edwards. How cool is that?

This is a little over the top, even for Fox:

It's no secret that the Fox News Channel panned Teresa Heinz Kerry's convention speech last night. Within minutes of its conclusion, Fox's panel of mostly conservative pundits deemed it "odd," "self-centered," "eccentric," "bizarre" and "extremely self-indulgent." But now the editor of Ms. Magazine is calling on Fox convention reporter Chris Wallace to apologize for comparing Heinz Kerry last night to Eva Peron, the power-hungry wife of an Argentine leader who headed a fascist regime.

[...]

Wallace, who left ABC News last year to work at Fox and who pledged to maintain his objectivity at a news outlet known for its conservative bias, was reporting from the convention floor last night. When Heinz Kerry's speech ended, he complained to Fox anchor Brit Hume, "It seems to me that her speech tonight was really all about Teresa Heinz Kerry, her vision of America, her understanding of where we ought to go, much more so than it was about her husband."

Wrapping up his report, Wallace said, "I have to say, by the end, I half expected her to break out into "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," referring to the signature song from "Evita," the Broadway musical about Peron's life. Chuckling, Hume thanked Wallace for his "very candid analysis." [Salon.com]

First Hillary and now Teresa. What is it with conservative men and strong women? It's like they feel their manhood is somehow threatened by them so all they can do is make snarky comments about them. What, Ann Coulter isn't good enough for them?

From the New York Times:

Frederick C. LaRue, a top Nixon campaign official who passed money from a secret White House fund to buy the silence of the Watergate burglars, died Saturday at a hotel in Biloxi, Miss. He was 75.

[...]

Mr. LaRue denied suggestions that he was "Deep Throat," the secret Watergate source used by Bob Woodward in his joint coverage of the scandal with Carl Bernstein for The Washington Post. Mr. LaRue said he believed the secret informer was an amalgam of several people, but Mr. Woodward has said that it is one person and that he will reveal that person's identity after his death.

I always thought "Deep Throat" was Hal Holbrook.

Here's some coverage of the Ohio delegation from the Toledo Blade:

In yet another sign that Ohio is considered the chief battleground state in this year's presidential campaign, Minnesota's convention delegates gave their voting turn to Ohio's delegation to allow it the honor of putting Mr. Kerry over the magic number of 2,162 delegates - the number needed to hand him the Democratic nomination for president.

"Ohio takes great pride tonight in being the state to put this voting over the top and making John Kerry's candidacy official, as we cast 159 votes for the next president of the United States, John Kerry!" shouted former astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn.

I'm sure glad that someone I know - my mom - was in that delegation...it makes her a part of history.

The Miami Beach city commissioners voted Wednesday to create one of the broadest domestic partnership registries in the country.

Any couple from anywhere in the world can now come to Miami Beach and register as domestic partners, and enjoy the rights that come with that designation in Miami Beach. Among them: the rights to hospital visitation, participation in healthcare decisions and emergency medical notification.

"This ordinance provides more rights and is open to more people than any other in the state, and with it the commission has gone as far as it can within its jurisdiction to recognize all families," said Stratton Pollitzer, South Florida director of the gay-rights group Equality Florida.

"It is one of the strongest in the country in terms of benefits and accessibility."

Unlike the registry in Broward County, which has been considered the state's most progressive, Miami Beach's has no residency or government employment requirement, and it formally recognizes partnerships recorded in other jurisdictions that have registries.

It also provides a few more specific rights than Broward's does, such as the power to make funeral decisions and the right to participate in the education of a partner's child. [Miami Herald]

Note that this ordinance applies to all people, not just gays and lesbians. Hmm. Sounds like we're heading down that slippery slope; what will happen if we let straight people live together?

The Faithful Correspondent learns that the most important work at the convention is not done on the floor of the Fleet Center or on prime-time TV.

It took me too long to get myself to breakfast . . . .8:15 and nothing was left but juice and a few slices of bacon. So I guess I'm on the Atkins whether I want to be or not. This report will be more on the events of the day than the actual evening convention because we found them more interesting on the whole. Dad had been able to scrounge a "Important Guest" pass for last night and so was able to go with me (to keep me from getting lost?) and sit in the seats up near the roof. He loved seeing it all first hand.

Our Ohio morning breakfasts feature speakers of both local and national political stripe. Because our state is so key to victory we have been assigned one of the better physical locations - the Sheraton is campaign headquarters as well as being where Ohio, Michigan and New Mexico delegates have accomodations. (Very handy when you are sleep-deprived.) But we also are addressed in the mornings as though we are truly important by people who flog us into concerted action to register voters and help them get to the polls. Today we had Henry Cisneros and a video of Madeleine Albright. But more on that tomorrow. As for yesterday, the state representative from Port Clinton, Chris Redfern, opened the meeting. He headed the Edwards campaign in Ohio back when. He introduced to us a veteran who was on Kerry's Swift Boat and who was there to testify to not only to Kerry's bravery but his humanity. We all are familiar with the stories of how truly courageous John Kerry was and how his shipmates banded together very early in the campaign out of devotion to him. This one repeated the scary story of being trapped in a narrow canal with fire on both sides. What we haven't heard as much about it is how Kerry allowed sampans of Viet Namese civilians - people with their grandparents and their young children - to escape. Practice would have had the crews capture the boats and imprison the people in order to question them. Kerry insisted that they be allowed to flee. This veteran said that "his captain" showed great kindness and humanity for someone so young.

After breakfast Dad and I talk to the Congresswoman from Ohio's 9th District, Toledo's district and parts east along Lake Erie, Marcy Kaptur. Marcy had been introduced at this morning's meeting as the longest serving woman in Congress and she's particular honored for her outstanding work with John Dingell of Michigan to protect the Lake Erie coastline of northern Ohio. Another of Marcy's causes is to amend NAFTA. She opposed it when it was first proposed and in the meantime she has made it her business to monitor how her district is being affected by it. She traveled to Mexico to examine what has happened to Ohio plants that had been moved there in the last 10 years, their impact on the environment and their working conditions. She distributed a CD to members of the delegation for them to see what she saw and to show it to our friends. Marcy takes care of her district and is re-elected again and again. She is being seriously challenged this year by a candidate chosen by the national Ohio's Republican Party that is determined to oust representatives like Marcy, but her campaign manager tells us "no problem." We want her to know how great a candidate [for the Ohio 5th district] our Robin Weirauch is - Marcy recruited her - and to thank her for giving us this chance to make a difference. In turn, she compliments Dad and me for our active support of Robin. She says something that you would never hear in states like Massachusetts, New York or California, "Given your position in life [sic], one would expect you two to be Republicans and uncaring. You deserve praise for your concern for the ordinary person." Marcy lives and represents a part of Ohio that is conservative so she is used to the fight and unused to finding all sorts of people - not just union members - worried about what happens to the least of us.

At noon we are again late. Having committed to attend the Emily's List luncheon - expensive tickets, but worth it - we realize that we should have been there at 11:30 and it is now noon. We race to grab a cab and there's a line a block long waiting for rides to the lunch. Everyone has been in a morning meeting that just got out and are as late as we. When we finally succeed we are happy to share with another woman who tells us she's from Nebraska, fighting a hopeless battle of course, but winning in the district in which she lives - 90 miles west of Lincoln. Her husband is a trucker and he tells her he drives so she can work for the Democratic Party. The cab driver is Haitian (all cab drivers seem to be Haitian in Boston) and is new to the city. We say "The Convention Center and step on it." Really. But we fail to tell him the NEW convention center. After the long 20 minute drive to what begins to look familiar, he lets us off, speeds away and we realize that we're at the FLEET Center, not the new facility on the harbor. Another $12.00 later we reach our destination at, now, 1:15, and just in time to hear the last few minutes of Ellen Malcolm's introductory remarks. As you no doubt know, Ellen conceived of and nursed Emily's List into being. It's goal is to elect pro-choice Democratic women in as many districts in the country as possible. We are seeking money from their PAC to underwrite Robin's campaign and wanted to support them by attending and being visible at this luncheon. The speakers we heard yesterday were, no other word, fabulous: Barbara Mikulski, Nancy Pelosi, Ann Richards and Jennifer Granholm.

Barbara was the first female Democratic woman elected to the Senate, she's the grandmother of them all. Her delivery is strong for so tiny a woman and her voice rings out as strongly as would that of a male's although in a higher pitch. Nancy Pelosi shared with us the tingley feeling she had occupying Tip O'Neil's office where people, senators, had had to come to ask for favors. Now they come to her. Ann Richards, oh you know her well . . . there's no one like her and she hasn't lost any of her wonderful delivery of jokes and serious, passionate ability to persuade. She loves to compare this administration to a bad marriage: he's cute, he's sexy, you get married, you find soon that he's spending all his time on the couch watching football and spending his money on guns and hunting trips, the yard looks like a jungle and there are dismantled cars up on blocks in the driveway. You realize it's time to divide the sheets and sign the divorce papers.

The last was the best. Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's new governor, is as beautiful as a movie star. Her delivery is so quiet and powerful that the room of 2000 guests was so still you could have heard a pin drop. She evoked the image of The Butterfly Effect, where a butterfly moving its wings over a marsh in . . . . .Texas ? . . . .caused a windstorm to arise in, say, Massachusetts. She described women as coming out of their cocoons and taking flight. We can make a difference. The message to the room from all five women was the same and said so powerfully - women, it's your time. Go For It. Ellen Malcolm said we want to all announce after the 3rd of November "Mission Accomplished!"

I decided to get to the convention hall later last night so Phil and I had a bite to eat in the bar at the hotel around 6:00. Luckily the man in charge of Ohio's part in the convention passed by and we were able to get him to find a guest pass for Phil. So Phil got to experience the bus ride, the walk into the convention center, the crowds and confusion - worse last night than the night before - and to see from his perch under the eaves all that transpired down below. My seat this time wasn't as choice as on Monday night. I sat in a row of four or five vacant seats that quickly filled up with a group that had come in together and talked over and around me throughout the evening. Something of the same was happening behind me. Two men must have thought they were at a cocktail party, so much loud (perforce because of the general din) happy social talk did they exchange. In the row in front of me sat a mother and her 6 (?) year old with his little tricorn hat sporting a "Thank You Howard Dean" button. A puzzlement, but then, a 14 or 15 year-old multi-pierced young woman was seated two rows in front of us. I read in this morning's paper that there's a widespread practice of variants of credential exchanging taking place. No kidding. Our leader this morning said, NO MAS. Tonight is serious business, roll call and registration of delegates and we must be there NO LATER THAN 4:00 - the fire marshalls are going to lock the doors!

The speakers last night were from the more liberal side of the party, knowing, I read, that with no TV coverage, the party can feel free to give a nod to the more liberal wing who love hearing Dick Gebhardt, Tom Daschle, Carol Mosely Braun, and Howard Dean lash the team. Howard Dean was particularly interesting in that he received a huge, extended, standing ovation which he was reluctant to quell. For someone there to endorse the candidate he seemed to love feeling as though he were the candidate and indeed, he said, "I was hoping for a reception like this but on Thursday night" - heh, heh. Other memorable things he said were: "We must restore a world leader to the world." "We won't be shouted down by those who carry a banner of false patriotism." "We will soon be proud to be Democrats in states like Mississippi, Oklahoma and TEXAS!!" - big cheer. He was strong and very forthright. Less strong was Christie Vilsack, the Iowa governor's wife who first endorsed John Kerry, giving her husband permission to abandon his support of Gephardt. She was all but inaudible, poor dear.

By cell phone Dad and I decided to exit, the time being now 10:20 and we wanted to get back to our room so we could watch the coverage of Barack Obama. As it turned out we watched him on one of the TV monitors in the hallway near the concession stands at the arena. A crowd of people about 10 deep gathered around the set. His message was "E Pluribus Unum . . .we are ONE nation, not red and blue states or one religion or another or gay or straight." There's no doubt that he's a star. Sadly, a black woman who was on the escalator toward the exit of the building at the same time we were, muttered, "He's wonderful, but I hope they don't destroy him . ." I thought of that remark this morning as I listened to Henry Cisneros, the former "Bright Star" of the early 90's. And I worry for John Edwards.

We watched Teresa Heinz Kerry on our room TV and were so proud of her and pleased at her reception, at the warmth of her affection for her sons. I heard someone this morning say that the audience in the hall didn't know when to applaud, that her delivery was confusing. Oh . . . .bosh! We loved her and I bought a pin this morning after breakfast that reads "SHOVE IT . . . .GEORGE W." I'm wearing it proudly.

From the New York Times:

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.

A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.

"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition.

Here's the Miami Herald's take on it (registration required).

Wow.

I think I just saw the birth of a new political force in America.

Thanks to Michael for the link.

The Faithful Correspondent can be forgiven for the late filing - she needed her rest; yesterday was a long day.

I can see that not only will I be sleepless in Boston, but I'll be hungry - probably not a bad thing for my shape, but not so good for my brain. We decided to skip the DNC Women's Leadership Forum Luncheon yesterday and take a walk down the block to look for a place where we could eat at a table smaller than the 8-seaters we are fed at in the big ballrooms, breakfasts with the Ohio Democratic Party, lunches with other pressure groups (today it's Emily's List in the Back Bay Ballroom). We went to the Cactus Club, an outdoor Mexican cafe with tables on the sidewalk under the trees. No margaritas at lunch, but good tacos and a chicken wrap that was too big to handle. I'm impressed by all the trees lining Boston's streets. Something you don't see in New York except along the park, or Seattle, Chicago or Detroit. More cities should try to do this. Perhaps there would be a happier citizenry.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Ohio Party's Hospitality Suite where candidates for Ohio offices can meet and greet the current elected officials and delegates. Theresa Fedor, a state senator, is there - we know her and have a chat about our efforts for our Congressional candidate. There's a gorgeous spread of food and a full bar. Had I known that that would be the only food I'd see until breakfast I would have helped myself, but I was eager to get on the bus to the Fleet Center by 5:00 so I wouldn't miss the speeches. Little did I know . . . .how could I? . . . that I would be speeched to the limit before the night was out. Still, I was too excited to wait until the hour when experienced convention-goers choose to go to their designated seats, something nearer 7:00 or later, and no doubt taking time for a pre-convention snack.

At 5:00 I get onto Bus 8, the one serving our hotel and the Hilton across the street. It's about a 20 minute ride to the big, old, former Boston Garden, once home of the Celtics and Bruins. We are let off in a parking lot that's part of the complex - part train station and part arena. The walk to the Center takes us past the "pen" where the protesters are caged. The ACLU is suing the city of Boston over the way protests are being handled, but no one can think of a different way to do it given the demands of Homeland Security. Most of those who want to protest whatever have chosen to do it by marching around the Public Garden and the Common, spurning the area near where they would have more visibility by the delegates in particular. I can see why. But those protesting Israel's treatment of the Palestinians have decided to use the "cage", a many-layered wire fence enclosure under a train track adjacent to the bus parking lot, as illustration of how the Palestinians are in fact treated. A platform has been constructed so speakers have microphones to broadcast their outrage. Signs hanging on the fence read "The Prison of Palestine", "Future of The First Amendment", "Free Speech In America" and "Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Boston - SHAME!"  I hang around for a bit, but can't hear what the speaker is saying. His audience is only those who are enclosed with him, sadly.

The Fleet Center, having been built atop a train station, requires you to take an escalator to the 2nd Floor where Time magazine has set up a large display of their history covering conventions (I pass), then to the 3rd where memorabilia of old hockey players and basketball greats are displayed. If you were an alternate delegate you'd proceed to the 4th floor where the seats under the eaves, in low oxygen, are located, but I'm entitled to a seat on the floor, so I walk down many steps to the carpeted playing floor (or ice, depending) where the Bruins and Celtics used to do their work. Ohio is located in two pie-shaped quadrants directly under and to the right of the speaker's platform. Wonderfully close to the action. Above and to the right is a sort of elongated box where CNN and NBC's reporters (John Roberts, Candy Crowley) talk to the camera over the din of the constant noise of the speakers on the podium, the babble of the seated and standing delegates, the people chatting in groups in the aisles, the mic feedback, the wandering local and pool reporters and camera handlers giving and taking orders, rock music between speakers . . . I marvel at the reporters' ability to concentrate.

I have found a seat next to an empty seat in the fifth or sixth row back from the front aisle. On the other side of the empty sits a large black gent who introduces himself as Derry Hooks, delegate from Cincinnati. We make friendly conversation while a woman is speaking passionately above us on the podium. The raised podium holds two speaker's rostrums and behind are bleacher seats where a backdrop of "typical citizens" are seated. A woman temporarily seated behind us tells us she's been selected to be one of those people and as such is instructed not to wear any bright colored clothing or shiny objects - candidate's buttons or flashing jewelry - that might reflect distracting light into the camera. She's meant to be a piece in the tapestry. Mr. Hooks becomes the subject of an interview by a reporter who inserts herself into the seat between us. She's Joan Lowy from Scripps Howard and I look over her shoulder to copy some of her notes. Mr. Hooks is exceptionately articulate, a teacher and member of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. He loves his job and he has much to say about why he cares about this election. He believes John Kerry understands what it's like to be a working person and George Bush doesn't. He bemoans the loss of jobs in Ohio and regrets that more working people are politically apathetic and discouraged. Word must have gotten around that Derry Hooks was a "good interview" because later a young woman who takes her notes in French also comes to sit next to him to get his point of view. She's from the Quest France, a newspaper in Brittany.

The backdrop of the stage is an enormous screen upon which the name and elected position of the speaker is shown, or photographs of John Kerry's life are shown, or Bobby Kennedy and his words, or Jack and his, or later, before the "main event", a montage of the landscapes of the USA unfolds while we listen to the beautiful voice of a male singer named Bebe Winans sing "The Star Spangled Banner". At one point in the evening Glenn Close, looking younger and more beautiful than ever, speaks in introduction of the nine women senators - Mikulsky, Boxer, Feinstein, Murray, Cantwell, Landrieu, Lincoln, Stabenow and Clinton. The Elder Stateswoman, Mikulsky, is chosen to fire us up to work for the election of John Kerry and John Edwards. Close is called back later to conduct the remembrance of 9/11 which includes a woman whose son and pregnant daughter-in-law went down in one of the suicide planes. A huge panorama of the New York skyline is beamed onto the screen showing the twin lights that replaced the towers for several weeks after the event. Then the house lights are dimmed and we all light up mini-lights that have been passed around while a violin played by a young member of the Boston Youth Chorus plays "Amazing Grace." Extraordinarly moving.

As the evening goes on more Important People are introduced: Bill Richardson, Chairman of the Convention, presents Jimmy Carter, who takes on Bush's foreign "adventures" and praises Kerry's restraint and judgement. The Reverend David Alston, a black minister from South Carolina and who was on Kerry's Swift Boat in Viet Nam, bears witness to his captain's bravery and strength of character - his words are more moving than any I've heard recently on the subject. Soon Richardson brings on Al Gore, looking tanned and trim. The ovation for him is long and loud. He seems to tear up at the enthusiasm for a moment. Al's remarks are funny, self-deprecating, strong - he's so much better at this than he was four years ago! - he says "every little boy and girl in America has the chance to grow up and win the popular vote" (laughter), and "take it from me, every vote counts - and should be counted." At the end Tipper comes out and they reprise The Kiss.

We hear from Terry McAuliffe, from Stephanie Tubbs Jones, first African American woman on the House Ways & Means Committee, from Robert Menendez of New Jersey, from Ed McElroy of American Federation of Teachers, from Gloria Feldt, from Rod O'Connor and Alice Huffman of the Convention Committee . . . . .and at last, from Hillary who speaks of the urgency of electing John Kerry in a lead up to her introduction of Bill. When Bill Clinton approaches the podium the standing ovation blows us all away. He is adored, it seems, by the entire host of convention delegates. I am interested to see that George Stephanopolis is standing in the front aisle with headphones on throughout the last portion of the list of principal speakers. He follows along with the words shown on the teleprompter facing the podium. I'm aware of how moved he appears to be by the speech made by the Rev. Alston on the specifics of Kerry's heroism in Viet Nam, shaking his head in wonder. I pay close attention to how he receives his former boss, Bill Clinton. Stony faced at first, he stares at the speaker and seems to shrug off some of Clinton's most dramatic claims for how he and Gore left the State of the Union and how it stands now. But little by little the old Clinton magic works on little George S. and soon he is laughing along with the rest of the crowd. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when that break-up occured six or seven years ago. In any case, Bill Clinton is the rightfully crowned master of rhetoric and political speaking. He has lost none of his ability to fire up a crowd. He is charming, funny and very very winning. I hope he works his tail off for this election of Kerry-Edwards.

Just before the end - I wasn't really sure when the final final end would come - of Clinton's speech I decide to head for the exit to avoid the crush for bus seats. But I get confused at how to get out of the building and find myself doubling back through the security station, soon to get caught up in the surging crowd of people going in all directions. My sense of direction is notoriously poor and eventually I find that I'm all but alone, wandering around the perimeter of the Fleet Center looking for the bus's parking stations. Cops point me one way and then another. Eventually I find myself within the empty protesters' "cage" which is tantalizingly close to the buses, but separated by the double layers of wire fence. It's exit is beyond the parking lot so I must circumnavigate the lot and soon I notice that the buses are leaving. I panic and begin run, following the fencing around the edge of the big lot until finally I wind up where I should have been a half hour before, others are there as well, and no bus. The remaining ones say "Off Duty". A person in charge tells us we should have taken the trains, but the waiting group is now large enough to be able to tell him to "shove it" (a direct quote from Teresa) and to find us a bus. In due time an "Off Duty" bus comes and we put those in wheel chairs aboard first. I decide that I'm old enough to follow the lame and helpless and grab me a seat. I'm home in bed by midnight - Dad has been watching it the convention on TV and is awake to greet me.

Thus endeth the first lesson . . . . . .

Atrios's real name is Duncan Black. Corrente pays tribute to the man who, for many bloggers including myself, inspired us to get into the business. I began by writing comments at Eschaton, met up with many fellow bloggers such as Tena and NTodd, and finally took the plunge last fall. Now blogging has achieved its fifteen minutes at the DNC and it's due in no small part to the work of people like Duncan Black.

Gee, wouldn't it be cool if Atrios met my Faithful Correspondent?

John Kerry is a plodding bore, but he may the right guy after all.  Argh!

He also notes, "If this man becomes president, I have to stop being a pundit because I know nothing about politics." There's one more reason to vote for Kerry.

I spent most of last night watching the C-SPAN coverage of the convention in hopes that I'd catch a glimpse of the Ohio delegation and see a familiar face. But if they caught her on the screen, I didn't see it.

Dad called last night from his cellphone and caught me up on his activities yesterday. He's been going around beating the drum for Robin Weirauch, the congressional candidate in the 5th district of Ohio.

I made it through Jimmy Carter's speech but faded out before Bill Clinton got to the stage. No matter - I caught the replay this morning on C-SPAN. What a speech. If this is going to be the tone of the campaign from the Democrats, the Republicans have got a tough job ahead to keep up. After all, you can't play the victimhood card when you're not being demonized.

I'm awaiting my daily dispatch from the Faithful Correspondent; you'll see it as soon as I get it.

From the Faithful Correspondent:

Today was a day of figuring it all out. We first needed to figure out how to access the second floor of the building where the Ohio Democratic Party's information and registration desk is located and where all the daytime meetings and caucuses will take place. We're on the 20th floor and the elevators will go from the lobby to there, but access to the the second and third floors has been blocked out, you can't get there from here, perhaps for security reasons - no one tells us. Sandy Isenberg, chair of the Lucas County Democratic Party, is on our elevator with Frank Szollosi, councilman, and she explains the drill to us: we must go down to the lobby and ride an escalator to the second floor. OK, got that, do it. We register at the Ohio desk, giving the names of person to be notified in case of catastrophe to me, the delegate, with address, phone, relationship, cell # of same. We head for breakfast at the cafe off the lobby, pausing to buy a handful of buttons, stickers, a bag for me, a polo shirt for Dad, a bumper sticker. Four buttons for $10, money going to the DNC. Collectors items, I assure myself. An investment. We have schmoozed with Dennis White, Ohio Democratic Party Chair and Todd Rensi, the convention coordinator for Ohio. The hotel is filling up as more delegates arrive and now the lobby is swarming with all sorts, sizes, colors and shapes of happy and excited human beings wearing Kerry buttons and the t-shirts of their respective loyalties. Bottles of water and cookies decorated like political buttons are on offer free thanks to the Sheraton hotel. It's like a huge cocktail party but at 11:00 in the morning.

Dad takes himself off to go to see where Vermont is couched so he can talk up Robin Weirauch to the Dean Foundation in hopes of getting a grant for Robin's campaign. The Vermont delegation is a tiny cluster of people housed in the Hilton, who are lonely and happy to talk to the guy from the big importat Swing State across the street. No Howard Dean, but Dad left him a message. Worth a try. Dad also stops at the Sheraton concierge desk and makes a dinner reservation. Then we head to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by cab, but not before we nearly knock down Dennis Kucinich who's standing by the revolving door. A tiny little guy with an appealing, open face.

At the Museum we spend a couple of hours wandering through this treasurehouse of Americana - there are all the famous Copleys, Peales and Sargents, and wonderful American furniture. There's also a superb special exhibit of Greek art and artifacts depicting athletes performing some of the same games as are now acted out in our modern day Olympic games, all tracing the ancient sources and sites. Modern photography of great athletes and Muybridge's experimental "action" photography hang beside amphora showing wrestlers and chariots. It's a beautifully conceived exhibit.

We've been invited to attend a cocktail reception given by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's Action Fund, the IRS category 501-C5 (political arm) of the PPFA. It's held at the law offices of Foley Hoag in a building at the Seaport Trade Center, the new development on the docks out in the harbor. The firm has given pro bono legal service to Massachusetts Planned Parenthood for over 26 years . . . .many thousand of dollars worth and they were duly honored by the current board chairperson of the Advocacy Fund. The party was packed in expectation of hearing Gloria Steinem, who is now involved with Voters For Choice Action Fund, and Gloria Feldt, President of Planned Parenthood. The Glorias didn't disappoint. Steinem is a dynamic speaker who filled us with dread and a sense of urgency about the importance of this election. "Nothing in the 30 years I've been involved with women's issues has filled me with such a sense of crisis as we face now . . ." And Gloria Feldt told us that if Planned Parenthood volunteers and clients can get out the vote we will move 3% of the electorate to Kerry and to victory. It all sounded so possible and so important. We came away inspired. Dianne Luby, the President of the affiliate introduced John Kerry's sister, who has been a friend of Steinem's for years and has attended the conferences in Cairo and Beijing with her. She spoke of the immediate actions Kerry would take to reverse the Bush executive orders with regard to women's choice here and abroad. Also in the room was Teresa Heinz Kerry's sister, a pretty little plump woman much resembling her sister.

Our evening ended at Jimmy's Harborside Restaurant, a short walk away from the law offices. We had a table overlooking the water and next to the table of 18 people where Jerry Brown (Governor Moonbeam) held court in his distinctive tenor whine. He reminds me of the former Mayor of Toledo, Carty Finkbeiner, who controls any conversation because his voice is the loudest. Madeleine Albright stopped by to pay her respects to Jerry's group before moving off to her own table. She looks younger and thinner than her photographs. And behind us in the corner was a table of eight which featured Joe Biden and some others we didn't recognize. The two of us were as star struck as teenagers, I confess, but I'm sure by the time the week is out we'll have become completely blase.

Time to turn in . . .morning and the daily caucus comes early. Both Clintons tomorrow night at the Fleet Center.

The Democrats are unified in Boston! It's all phony and it won't last.

Ah, jealousy rears its shiny head.

It's getting so that there may be more attention paid to the bloggers at the DNC than the "mainstream" media.  The list of bloggers is impressive; the most comprehensive listing I've seen is at Iddybud, where Jude has listed all of the blogs, the credentialed bloggers, those who were credentialed and then "disinvited" because (so they say) of a lack of space, and others such as delegates who will be blogging from the convention, including my Faithful Correspondent.

I guess the big question is what will blogging contribute to the convention?  What dimension can it bring?  That's hard to say.  When the first coventions were televised in 1952, it didn't seem to make a lot of difference, according to historians - the conventions went on as they always had, and back then, when there was actually some spontaneity and news generated from them such as the battle between Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower for the nomination, it was not, as Garry Trudeau called it in 1972, a study in foregone conclusions.  By 1956 the parties were paying attention to TV, and that's when they started to put a pretty face on the nuts-and-bolts of the covention business; timing their hot speakers for prime time and getting the attention of the voters in between roll call votes with "spontaneous" demonstrations.  But since the 1968 disaster in Chicago, conventions have been scripted down to the last pop of the last balloon and the over-the-air networks have reduced their coverage to such that you're more likely to catch a rerun of The O.C. than you are of convention coverage.

As one droll pundit noted today, the conventions on TV are four-day party infomercials, and I can't argue with that.  If, however, there can be anything added to it by bloggers who, it is to be hoped, will not be following the script but looking at the human moments - the discussions in the platform meetings, the chants from the "free speech zones," or the take on the whole experience by someone who's never been to one of these parties before, it will add sense and dimension.  And maybe - just maybe - it might make a difference.  Here's hoping.

Ricky Williams is retiring.

My folks arrived safely in Boston. They checked into the hotel and got the laptop up and running - I got an e-mail from them at 8:30 last night saying all was working well.

So we're ready on both ends to provide you with a delegate's view of what's going on and who's who at the DNC.

My friend Bob notes:

Is it just me or does anyone else find it absolutely amazing that the U.S. government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington, and determine exactly what that cow ate. They can also track her calves right to their stalls and tell you what kind of feed they ate.

But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around in this country, including people that are trying to blow up important structures in the U.S.

My solution is to give every illegal alien a cow as soon as they enter the country.

"Welcome to America. Have a cow."

There's a new sci-fi series on USA called The 4400 which tells the story of people who, over a period of many years, just disappeared as if they were beamed up to a spaceship and then suddenly returned (just like at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Well, that seems to be what happened to George W. Bush's service records for the summer of 1972. According to this report in the AP,  "A Pentagon official said Friday the earlier contention that the records were destroyed was an 'inadvertent oversight.'"  But they still don't account for where he was that summer.

Meanwhile, a search for pods in the basement continues...

Preliminary reports from my Faithful Correspondent have her prepped and ready to hit Beantown tonight.

If her excitement is any indication, this is going to be a very good year for Democrats.  It has gotten a lot of people energized and ready to take action.  Some people credit Howard Dean, some credit still-lingering anger over the election of 2000, and most credit the amazing arrogance, blundering, and radical conservativism of the Bush administration.  I think all of it feeds into this stoked-up energy that will break out into the open this week at the convention and hopefully carry on until November 2.  I know that I and some friends are making contact with local party offices so we can help get the word out, either by lending a hand at the office or doing whatever it takes.  I haven't actively participated in a political campaign at that level since Jack Gilligan ran for governor in Ohio in 1970.

And there's some good news on the polling front, according to this in the Sun-Sentinel:

WASHINGTON -- Democrat John Kerry holds a 10-point lead over President Bush in Pennsylvania, and a slight lead in Oregon, polls released Friday said.

Two new Florida polls found the race deadlocked in a three-way race, suggesting that independent Ralph Nader again could play a pivotal role in the essential swing state of 2000. Bush won the disputed Florida election by a margin of a few hundred votes, and Democrats blamed Nader, who had more than 97,000 votes, for tipping the balance in the state and awarding Bush the presidency.

For Kerry to be that far ahead in Pennsylvania is amazing. This is the state that has been described - at least in the center of the state - as the Alabama of the north as far as rock-ribbed conservatism is concerned. But you don't get ten points ahead by just carrying Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And with Kerry picking up strength with the Hispanic vote, he's trending ahead of Gore in 2000. But it's not being done by magic. It's being done by a lot of people who took it for granted that someone else would get out there and make it happen. Well, we learned what happened when mindset kicks in. The downside is all too obvious. The upside is that people like my parents who heretofore never did much more for a political campaign then contribute money and vote (their work in other areas such as Planned Parenthood and land conservation are another matter entirely) are now on their way to Boston to give their time and energy to getting John Kerry elected. They've always led by example, which is the best way.

So, let's get out there and get going.

I get it now...it's a war of ideology, not terror!

Unlike every other war in the 20th century, David?

First note some additions to the Blogroll:

• Current Events Monitor by Island Dave provides a wrap-up of news, blogs of note, and good tidbits of information in a concise and precise fashion.
• BlondeSense by came to my attention via Winding Road.  How can you not love a site that describes itself as being written by a self-described "wise ass?"
• Boston D Party is the blog of the Democratic Convention.

Now let's see what's out there in TLC blogland.

• Natalie at All Facts and Opinions mourns the passing of the Kucinch campaign and heads off for two weeks of training.
• And Then...  finds a connection between the treatment of chickens and prisoners, and it's not so far-fetched.
• archy on the politics of taxes and how nothing is sacred when it comes to trying to win political advantage.
• Amy gets frisked.
• bloggg is on the move.  Good luck - I hope it goes as smoothly for you as it did for me.
• A belated happy birthday to Chris!
• Andante heaves a Collective Sigh over a car, then (scroll down) exposes yet another O'Reilly moment.
• The Farmer at Corrente cites an essay in The Nation that speculates that 9/11 is God's fault.
• NTodd is giving Lance a run - or should I say "bike" - for his money.
• Echinde of the Snakes points out the double standard for Republican celebrities versus Democrats: Dennis Miller gets a free pass while Whoopi, Margaret Cho, Linda Ronstadt, and the Dixie Chicks get hosed.
• The Fulcrum links to a very scary article by Robert Reich on what could happen in a Bush second term: Neocons Gone Wild.
• The Gamer's Nook has an explosive story.  That's all I'll say; you read it.
• The Gotham City 13 has a caption contest going.  Go and monkey with it.
• Norbizness at Happy Furry Puppy Story Time endorses a candidate.
• Iddybud has a list of the credentialed bloggers at the Democratic Convention.  Don't forget that my Faithful Correspondent will be there as well.
• Keith at The Invisible Library takes a look at "traditional" marriage.
• It's Craptastic! reports on how Bush backers are helping get Nader on the ballot in Iowa.
• Kick the Leftist says Colin Powell was right to rant against the Philippines cave-in to the kidnappers.
• Left is Right has the latest on yummy Army food.
• Bryant at Make Me a Commentator brings back absurdism.
• Welcome back Mercury X23 after an extended break - and congrats on the script deal!  I'm envious...maybe I should send him a copy of Can't Live Without You.
• Pen-Elayne lays out a couple of good rants.
• Respectful of Otters reveals that there's a website to help homeless people find jobs.  I know it sounds odd...but check it out.
• Rick has the best report on poker ever.
• Rook's Rant on National Intelligence.
• rubber hose reflects on various aspects of the abortion issue based on the thoughts of Trish Wilson.
• SoonerThought notes that Bush is losing ground with Hispanic voters.
• Jeff at Speedkill relates another Bill O'Reilly outrage.
• Steve Gilliard has a thumbnail tour of Boston.
• Wanda's on a short hiatus.  Wish her well.
• WTF Is It Now? points out the Rorschach version of the Dodge Ram logo.  What do you see?
• The Yellow Doggerel Democrat takes a look at Billmon's economic analysis.

That should keep you busy for a while - it sure did me.  Happy Friday!

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military has found 94 cases of confirmed or alleged abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001, the Army's inspector general said Thursday in a long-awaited report made public at a hastily called Senate hearing.

The number is significantly higher than all other previous estimates given by the Pentagon, which had refused until now to give a total number of abuse allegations.

There's a blog for the Democratic Convention called Boston D Party. Check it out.

My commute home may take a little longer tonight.

Security tight for Clinton book signing

If you go to the Bill Clinton book signing today at Books & Books in Coral Gables, bring your copy of My Life, your admission ticket -- and a lot of patience.

The signing begins at 3:30 p.m. but customers are expected to line up long beforehand for a glimpse of the former president. The store, at 265 Aragon Avenue, will close at noon to prepare for the sold-out event. No one without a ticket will be allowed inside, so don't bring your children or spouse or grandma unless they have tickets, too.

Guess I better go home down US 1...

From the AP:

The main investigative committee in the Republican-led House will look into allegations Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger mishandled highly classified terrorism documents, lawmakers said Wednesday.

Even though the matter already is the subject of a Justice Department criminal probe, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis said the panel has "a constitutional responsibility to find out what happened and why."

"At best, we're looking at tremendously irresponsible handling of highly classified information," said Davis, R-Va.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said the questions the committee should answer include whether there was any attempt to cover up embarrassing materials, what happened to documents removed by Berger that are still missing and what security risk the entire episode poses.

The decision by House leaders to launch a congressional investigation came the same day the White House acknowledged that its lawyers were notified months ago about the Berger investigation. In yet another development, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee filed a Freedom of Information request for any correspondence about the probe between the Justice Department and the White House.

Which reminds me; where are we on the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's name to Bob Novak? How's that investigation into the Republican staffer's raid on the Democratic computers coming? What's the status of the examination on the energy policy meetings? After all, if they're so quick to investigate Sandy Berger, they must be hot on the trail of those other evil-doers.

From the AP:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Winding up her summer tour across Europe, Bonnie Raitt drew thunderous applause at the Stockholm Jazz Festival for dedicating a classic to President George Bush.

"We're gonna sing this for George Bush because he's out of here, people!" Raitt crowed Tuesday night before she launched into the opening licks of "Your Good Thing (Is About to End)," a cover that was featured on her 1979 album, "The Glow."

The song, written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, has been sung by several notable performers, including Mable John and Lou Rawls.

Raitt's comments resulted in a round of applause and even whistles from among the estimated 3,000 concertgoers at the Swedish capital's annual jazz event held on the banks of the downtown Skeppsholmen island.

Swedes are skeptical of Bush, and the Scandinavian country refused to support his efforts in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Grammy-winning singer is no stranger to political activism. Her Web site urges fans to learn more about preserving the environment and she was a founding member of MUSE, or Musicians United for Save Energy.

Notice that Ms. Raitt was not escorted under guard from her hotel.

Josh Marshall has some campaign slogan suggestions for Bush/Cheney:

1. Not as terrible as it could have been!

2. Four more years and we'll be safe!

3. Peace!

4. Incompetence and exaggeration, not bad-faith or lying, as shown in two recent reports!

5. Are you better off today than you would have been today assuming that that idiot Al Gore had won four years ago and he was president instead of me?

And here are a couple of mine:

1. Remember what happened the last time we elected a Democrat? (Oh, never mind.)

2. Bush: He's not as think as you incompetent he is.

3. Strong Leadership Built on War, Bigotry and Fear: Hey, it worked in 1933!

4. At least he didn't lie about sex.

Okay, readers; your turn.

My Faithful Correspondent is getting ready to leave for the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

I thought you'd like to know how I'm preparing for my trip to Boston on Saturday.  I spent most of yesterday afternoon sorting through the mail I've gotten in the last couple of weeks from the city of Boston - three duplicate packets from the Chamber of Commerce with brochures telling me where-to-go-dine-sightsee-shop-stay in the city and environs - from Ted Kennedy who wants me to join him at a caucus about health care and tell my personal story, from Seniors For Kerry, from Ethnics For Kerry and from all the Women's Action Committees that want to feed me, listen to me, inform me and in general ply me with drinks and hors d'oeuvres into the small early morning hours.  I've gotten a letter from the chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, from DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe (two letters and a couple of e-mails), from the Mayor of Columbus, from the Mayor of Toledo, and a cute little Ohio For Kerry button from Jerry Springer who is about to run for governor in a year or two.  There's a DNC Delegate Tracker, Roger Austin, who is always available to answer questions and soothe me - he's in charge of MI, OH, and WV.  My e-mails come daily from the ODP, the DNC, moveon.org, impeachbush.org, the Wood Country Democratic Party, Emily's List, Planned Parenthood Foundation of America's Action Fund (I'm going to their luncheon), my friend Roger Austin and from the Toledo4Kerry headquarters giving me updates on events and needs.

I've signed up for anything Planned Parenthood wants me to do and also for the Democratic Women's Caucus.  I've sent a very large check to Emily's List in order to eat with them Monday noon.  I'm aware that I must attend a (location still-to-be-designated) state caucus breakfast every morning at 7:30 in order to pick up my credentials without which I will not be allowed to board the shuttle bus that will carry me to the Fleet Center.  My photo ID is required, too, and will be also at the PPFA cocktail party Sunday night at a nearby friendly law office.  Security will be iron clad.  I have composed a schedule and I hope that I have the necessary tickets and passes that will allow me to attend the caucuses and luncheons that I've chosen.  I have a pile of exciting sounding gatherings where bold face people are promised as bait - Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Mikulski, Barbara Boxer . . . . and that cost a bundle to attend, but conflict with other dates I've made.  I'll decide on those later.

After throwing away most of the mail we've gotten in the last few weeks - I think I'll pass on the Seniors caucus and the Ethnic one - I'm down to plane tickets and hotel confirmation.  I think.  Your father is serene in the knowledge that all he's required to do is wander around looking for Ohio people to collar and sell on our candidate, Robin Weirauch [running for Congress in the 5th district]. He's having a large ID card made for his lapel that announces he's the Campaign Finance Chairman for the RobinForCongress committee.  He's deadly when he's on a hunt like this and I fully expect us to return with a pocketful of commitments to our campaign fund and for speaking engagements from - Jerry Springer? - nailed down.

We don't go until mid-afternoon on Saturday, so there will be time for us to talk.  We're both working hard for Robin and already have had some real success.  I'll report on all of that in early August.  Right now we have this on our minds and are so happy we stumbled into this great adventure.

Stay tuned for further reports.  And, if I may allow myself a point of personal privilege, I am really proud of them.

From the Petoskey News-Review:

105th candidate says felony conviction is 'old news'

BY FRED GRAY NEWS-REVIEW STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 3:43 PM EDT

Jeff Garfield, one of six Republican candidates for the 105th state House district, was convicted of felony cocaine possession in Genesee County in 1989, fined $3,000 and placed on three years probation, according to court documents.

Two years later, he violated the terms of his probation by leaving the state for Alaska, the circuit court documents state.

Garfield, 39, an Otsego County commissioner who is running on a platform of strong conservative and religious values, said Monday that the felony conviction was "old news."

"I've proven myself in the 15 years since then, and we should be talking about the things I've done, my qualifications, my community service, my faith in God.

"God gave me a second lease on life and I'm taking advantage of it."

The Michigan Constitution does not prevent a convicted felon from running for elected office in the Legislature. It requires only that a candidate be a qualified elector. [Emphasis added]

Remember when the Republicans were all outraged over the poor moral example that President Clinton set by having an extramarital affair? Yeah. Right.

(PS: One of the other candidates in this primary race is Jack Ramsey - the father of JonBenet Ramsey. They certainly are growing an odd crop of Republicans in northern Michigan this year.)

I'm a self-effacing curmudgeon who delights in pissing people off. Including myself.

These guys win the Stupid Criminal Award this week:

ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. -- The party's over for four jail inmates accused of walking away from an unlocked cell block, buying more than two cases of beer and returning to share it with other prisoners.

Ridgy Dean Coleman, Jimmy Joe Stapleton, David Wayne Blizzard and David Allen Hopkins were charged Monday with escape and introduction of intoxicants into a penal institution.

The escape happened Thursday night after cell block doors at the Hawkins County Jail were accidentally left unlocked and a faulty control panel failed to alert jailers, Sheriff Warren Rimer said.

Two of the inmates then walked out through a fire exit, left the door propped open with a small Bible and made a hole in the exercise yard fence.

They walked to a nearby market, bought some beer and returned to the jail.

When the booze ran out, the other two inmates made another beer run to a different store.

Authorities believe the inmates bought a total of three 12-packs and an 18-pack of beer.

"I guess they thought if they came back they wouldn't be charged with escape," Rimer said, "but they were wrong."

The store visits didn't raise alarm because the inmates were wearing street clothes borrowed from other prisoners. The crowded jail doesn't have enough orange jumpsuits for all inmates.

"It's an unfortunate incident, and the inmates involved are going to be punished," Rimer said. "It wasn't really anybody's fault."

The sheriff pointed out that all 36 inmates on the cell block could have tried to escaped while the doors were unlocked.

"At least they came back," he said.

But they forgot the fried pork rinds.

A couple of interesting pieces illustrate how John Kerry can beat George W. Bush.

First is Kevin Phillips's article in The Nation that explores a Kerry win by doing essentially what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 - win over the disaffected members of the other party.  The "Reagan Democrats" were the more conservative members of the party who were not happy with the leftward lurch of the party in the 1970's.  Phillips points out that there is a group of Republicans who are not happy with the takeover of their party by the Religious Reich.

Strategizing on behalf of a family with more luck and lineage than gravitas, the principal strategists for each Bush President--Lee Atwater for number 41 and Karl Rove for number 43--have necessarily been Machiavellian students of the Republican presidential coalition and how to maintain it. After helping to elect 41 in 1988 because Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was an Ivy League technocrat unconvincing as an occasional populist, Atwater observed that "the way to win a presidential election against the Republicans is to develop the class-warfare issue, as Dukakis did at the end. To divide up the have and have-nots." Since then, the focus on keeping Republicans together has evolved and intensified.

Despite the Republican weakness evident in 1992 and Bush's second-place finish in 2000, Rove is notable for his preoccupation with the GOP "base," which he presumably thinks of in normal majoritarian terms. However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful--and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile--to focus on the GOP's "unbase." This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues--campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs--are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush Administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats.

Taking things somewhat further, these members of the "unbase" of the Republican presidential coalition ought to be the Democrats' key target because (1) they have some degree of skepticism about Bush and (2) they are the segment of the GOP coalition most logically open to recruitment for a progressive realignment, short-term or otherwise. That is the way small or large realignments work: by wooing the most empathetic part of the current coalition.

In 1992, when Perot drew 19 percent of the November vote, George Bush Senior got only about 80 percent of the Republican vote. Most of the "unbase" and part of the base deserted. If McCain had been well funded in 2000, he might have been able to get 30-40 percent in GOP primaries nationally, and even without serious money, he did win the primaries in seven states, including New Hampshire, Michigan and Connecticut. Sticking with the idea that the GOP "unbase" is somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent, Bush can afford to lose 5 to 7 percent of the overall Republican electorate. But if he loses 10 percent, he's probably done for, and if he drops 15 percent, he's finished.

It could happen. Back in late winter, when Kerry still had a winner's aura from the primaries, one CBS News poll showed 11 percent of those who had voted for Bush in 2000 were unprepared to do so in 2004. That was enough to put Kerry ahead, at least until the GOP's spring advertising blitz.

[...]

To win this election decisively, John Kerry is going to have to feel the same outrage that Howard Dean felt, and he's going to have to express some of it with the same merciless candor that the Republican dissidents have employed against two generations of Bushes. In today's circumstances of a nation on the wrong track, most swing voters--especially wavering GOP men who grew up on John Wayne movies--will not be content with pablum. The Edwards selection seemed assertive, but if Kerry reverts to equivocation, he could face the ultimate epitaph on a political tombstone: Here lies John Kerry, the first Democratic nominee to lose to a Bush President who'd already dropped fifty points in job approval and earned the snickers of half the world.

David Gopoian notes in Salon.com (subscription/Day Pass required) points out that Bush has reached the limit of his bases; he's got the evangelicals and the conservative white males - the NASCAR dads - wrapped up. That's all well and good, but it isn't enough to win the election.

The votes Bush needs are to be found among moderates and liberals -- hardly an auspicious prospect for him. It is possible, but unlikely, that Bush will amass enough additional votes from conservatives to make up for this deficit.

[...]

All things considered, Kerry (as well as the Democrats through him) has achieved remarkable progress in making himself and his party relevant following the post-9/11 political doldrums and the Republican tsunami of 2002. The data collected for the 2002 American National Election Study portrayed a Democratic Party tattered, fearful on national security matters, and lacking confidence in its own leaders. That Kerry stands poised to win a presidential election in the aftermath of the preceding few years is, in itself, extraordinary.

General trends corroborating the steep climb facing Bush were reported last week by GOP consulting firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates. Findings from its survey of battleground states indicate that undecided voters there "are currently poised to break away from President Bush and to John Kerry." By more than 5 to 1, these voters see the country as worse off rather than better off compared with four years ago.

The short version of both of these stories is that Bush has reached the limits of his appeal to the independent vote, and the Democrats have got to be, in a favorite phrase I hear all the time in my office, pro-active; to get the independents to not just abandon Bush but to actually vote for Kerry.

From Goldberg and Guthrie:

Flag Burning Amendment
It's back, and apparently the vote will be "razor thin."

I know many Democrats may support it. Apparently, the majority of Americans support it. And God knows Republicans - by and large - support it. All of these people are idiots. If you support the flag burning amendment, you are an idiot. You don't understand anything about democracy. If some of these people are not idiots, they are bad people. If an otherwise smart person supports the flag burning amendment, they are either suffering from a mental disability or they are simply a bad person.

I am embarrassed and ashamed that members of my party will vote for this. I am embarrassed and ashamed that even one American thinks this is a good idea.

That's my contribution to the political discourse today.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Shaquille O'Neal has arrived in Miami, and the city has ground to a halt.

This is just a waste of time:

Yesterday, MoveOn.Org and political watchdog Common Cause filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming that Fox News Channel's slogan "fair and balanced" violates the federal agency's prohibition against deceptive advertising. At the same time, the Independent Media Institute, an advocacy group for alternative journalism, announced it had filed a challenge against Fox News' trademark on the term "fair and balanced." [Wall Street Journal]

C'mon you guys; haven't you got better things to do than this? You know that all this will do is get the Fox folk giggling. Everyone knows that "fair and balanced" is bullshit, but "deceptive?"  Leave the nutsery to Judicial Watch.

George W. Bush may not exactly be The Manchurian Candidate (and Dick Cheney is no Angela Lansbury), but it's close.

Now that bloggers are getting press credentials to cover the conventions, some "real journalists" are miffed.  Some of these ink-stained wretches are claiming that bloggers aren't worthy of getting the same level of respect that they are.

In the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, called bloggers "witty, candid, irreverent, passionate, shrewd and outrageous Internet chroniclers," but then put them in their place. "… Make no mistake," he wrote, "this moment of blogging legitimization -- and temporary press credentials -- doesn't turn bloggers into journalists." What makes them different, Jones said, is that "bloggers, with few exceptions, don't add reporting to the personal views they post online, and they see journalism as bound by norms and standards that they reject. That encourages these common attributes of the blogosphere: vulgarity, scorching insults, bitter denunciations, one-sided arguments, erroneous assertions and the array of qualities that might be expected from a blustering know-it-all in a bar."

And then there's this:

"They're certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo," said Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri.... Bloggers "should be put in a different category, like 'pretend' journalists," McPhail said. (This observation prompted blogger Athenae to write a post on Eschaton titled: Well, Pardon Us For Living.) [Salon.com]

Here at Bark Bark Woof Woof my Faithful Correspondent has gone to extensive efforts to make sure that she will be able to send reports from the convention; she's gotten Tech Support (my brother) to supply her with a dial-up connection so she can send me reports daily from the scene.  There will be no pretenions of journalism other than the eyewitness reporting of one of the convention delegates, and with any luck, I will be posting her missives on a regular basis as the convention proceeds.  And I have the feeling that her reports will give you more of a taste of what's really going at the convention than the observations of the credentialed bloggers or the journalists sitting in the skyboxes at Fleet Center.

Today marks some interesting milestones.

• Thirty-five years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon.  I was up in my grandmother's summer house on Northport Point, Michigan, and we watched it on her Zenith portable black-and-white out on the porch.  If you were around, where were you?
• Two years ago today, Sam died.
• It's the birthday of my good friend Ken.

And at 5:17 EDT this morning, visitor number 20,000 stopped by Bark Bark Woof Woof.  Thanks to all of you, regulars and passers-by; it's nice to have your support and encouragement.

Overheard or read somewhere and I can't remember where:

George W. Bush objects to "four activist judges in Massachusetts" changing the marriage laws of the country, but he has no objection to the five activist justices who made him president.

And this one:

The Republicans rail against trial lawyers like John Edwards, but if it wasn't for a trial lawyer, George W. Bush would still be the governor of Texas.

Here's a fad I hope doesn't catch on.

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- Law enforcement officials in the Florida Keys are mystified by a bizarre new pastime -- young people dangling themselves from meat hooks on a popular sandbar.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said on Sunday that the Monroe County sheriff's office and Coast Guard were called on July 12 to the sandbar off Whale Harbor in Islamorada where locals say wild behavior is becoming a tradition.

They found that five young people had erected a bamboo tripod and hung meat hooks from it. A young woman, her feet brushing the surface of the shallow water, dangled from the frame, hooks embedded firmly in her shoulders.

According to a Coast Guard video, she did not seem to mind the hooks.

Lt. Tom Brazil of the Coast Guard told the Key West Citizen newspaper that a young man, who also had hooks embedded in his heavily pierced and tattooed skin, assured him the group was "just enjoying the afternoon."

A Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami said the group had clearly done this before and intended to post photos of themselves on a Web site dedicated to "body modification" -- the ritualistic piercing of the body.

"It looked like a daily routine for them," she said, adding that the hooks had been inserted in the skin in a professional manner and had drawn very little blood."

"As long as they weren't creating any kind of ruckus or riot within a crowd they really weren't breaking any laws."

The Coast Guard passed the video on to federal justice authorities but no further action will be taken.

Brings a whole new meaning to the term "well hung."

Far be it from me to criticize another person's faith - or lack thereof.  It is one of the most personal and private aspects of life, and as long as it doesn't interefere with the rights of other people or threaten our well-being, I don't have a problem with having a political leader touting his faith and practice.  But I think this article in the Miami Herald gives me pause and concern that George W. Bush has crossed over that line.  His arrogance and stubborness in linking his faith to his belief in the rightness (pun intended) of what he does as president is dangerous.

Journalist Bob Woodward, in his book Plan of Attack, reveals a lot about the governing style -- and the fervent faith -- of the president. Woodward writes that when he asked the president whether he consulted his father, Bush seemed surprised by the question: "There is a higher father that I appeal to." And, when replying to a question about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush said to Woodward: "But you run in different circles than I do. Much more elite." The remark pulls you up short. Bush -- the son of patricians on both sides, educated at Andover and Yale, former governor of Texas, president of the United States of America -- does not run in elite circles?

But that upper-class, Episcopalian and alcoholic playboy no longer exists. The reborn Bush is a Texas evangelical Christian, a Methodist, who feels at home among ordinary folks at the Midland Men's Community Bible Study Group in Midland, Texas. He has, in effect, become one of them. He talks like they do and believes what they believe: that the Bible is the literal truth. Good and Evil oppose each other. There can be no middle ground.

Hence, when Woodward relates how he asked the president whether he had ever doubted his course of action in Iraq, the president replied: "I haven't suffered any doubt."

"Is that right?" Woodward asked. "Not at all?"

"No. And I'm able to convey that to people."

To those who had lost sons or daughters in the conflict, Bush said, "I hope I'm able to convey that in a humble way."

In the president's view, to doubt his policy would be to doubt his God-given calling. Shortly after his State of the Union message of 2002, in which he had called Iraq, Iran and North Korea "the axis of evil," Bush addressed an audience in Daytona Beach. "We've got a great opportunity," he said. "As a result of evil, there's some amazing things that are taking place in America. People have begun to challenge the culture of the past that said, 'If it feels good, do it.' This great nation has a chance to change the culture."

In the State of the Union address of January 2003, Bush repeated his theme of moral transformation: "Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country -- the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted -- the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."

The White House, the Cabinet and Congress all contain strong supporters of Bush's evangelical crusade. Bush appointed a devout Pentecostalist and member of the very conservative Assemblies of the Church of God, John Ashcroft, to be attorney general. Michael Gerson, the president's speechwriter, graduated with a degree in theology from Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical institution. Bush's electoral strategist, Karl Rove, received an honorary degree in May from the controversial evangelist, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, at his Liberty University for his "commitment to conservative ideas."

It doesn't matter to me if Bush hires evangelicals, and I don't give a rat's ass where he goes to church or what he believes in. What does scare the bejesus out of me is that he believes that his mission is handed down from God, and therefore to be against Bush is to be against God. This is not the mindset of a man who is allegedly elected in a free society; this is the arrogance of a dictator standing on a balcony and screaming to the masses that only he knows what is best for the nation and the world and anyone who comes between him and his mission must be struck down.

Democrats are often criticized - and sometimes rightly so - for too tolerant of other points of view, no matter how radical or bug-infested. This time, however, the limits have been reached. Let George Bush believe what he wants and let him spread his gospel. But let's not let him do it any more from the White House.

How do you like my Bob Novak impersonation?

My friend Brian saw Fahrenheit 9/11 today at a theatre in Albuquerque.  His review:

Well...frankly, didn't see too much that's really new.  Parts of it dragged in places, but then it was also rushed out of editing since it included news footage of hostages taken in Iraq just like two months ago.  But it was more powerful and more emotional then I thought it would be, and not nearly as tough on Bush as it's critics portray.  Man, I've read some real nit-picking about how he editing this way, or took that out of context, and frankly, it wasn't that bad.  Okay, so he never showed Bush except when he looked like a buffoon, but then he does that often. Looks like a buffoon, I mean.

And I think he should have dug deeper into the Bush/Saudi/Bin Laden links.  He did bring up one new thing, which is that when Bush released his service records recently, one name was blacked out.  Fortunately for Moore, he has an earlier, 2000 campaign copy, and the name is a Major Bath, the other guy suspended with Bush for failing to take their physicals.  Bath is one of Dubya's good buddies, and he makes his living investing the Bin Laden families money for the Carlyle Group, with George the Elder on the board of directors.  He makes a good case that Iraq was little more then a diversion to direct press and public attention away from the fact that Saudis, and Saudi money, including that of Bin Laden's family, along with [that of] the royal family's, was behind 9/11.  That, and the fact that every time Dubya fell on his face business-wise, with Harkin and with Arbusto, where his founding partner was Bin Ladin's older brother Salem,  it was Saudi money that bailed them out.

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone who hasn't already made up their mind is going to see it.  Oh, and a note to Marty Chavez [the mayor of Albuquerque] ...if you want more people to patronize downtown, maybe you shouldn't be whacking them six fucking bucks to park in a garage for two hours to see a friggin' movie!  Sheesh!  Those are practically Manhatten rates!

NTodd mentioned that he's a huge fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I replied in a comment with my top ten list based on the the criteria that if I come across them on non-commercial TV (HBO or TCM) I will stop what I'm doing to watch:

1. Casablanca
2. The Great Escape
3. Dave
4. The Dirty Dozen
5. The Sting
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
7. M*A*S*H
8. Star Wars
9. Meet Me In St. Louis
10. The Wizard of Oz

So, what are your top ten?

I am not one of those people who keeps up with the latest trends in things.  For example, I had an 8-track player in my cars until 1984 when I bought a Subaru wagon with a cassette player, and it wasn't until I got the Mustang last summer that I had a car with a CD player.  That goes for my computer as well.  I still have my 1984 Apple IIc in boxes in the closet, and I still use MSN dial-up at home for my internet connection.  It's slow, but I'm too set in my ways to change to cable or DSL because I've had the same e-mail address since 1997 and it's a pain to change.  Hey, you're talking to a guy who still has a 1920's candlestick telephone in the living room.
 
Anyway, last night I went on-line to check my e-mail.  Outlook comes up and then starts asking me to "sign in."  I'm supposed to have Secure Password Authentication, but the error message said that the server rejected it.  Hmph.  I tried again.  Same thing.  I checked the e-mail account on the small chance that something went chingada* with the account, but all was normal on this end.  (I can check my account through Hotmail - nothing but spam).  I went to sleep figuring it should right itself in the morning.
 
This morning, same shit.  So, as a last resort, I called MSN Tech Support.  Now I have a little history with MSN Tech Support.  Last winter I was running into this same problem.  Over a period of three days and seven or eight different phone calls to them, I got ten different reasons for the problem and fifteen different solutions, all of which were pointing to me being the culprit, even though I had done nothing to change the settings on my end.  One of the tech support guys said it's because I have POP3 e-mail account instead of web-based ("No one's supposed to have POP3 anymore!" he tells me in a huff.)  He was followed by a woman who told me POP3 is fine but my "parameters" are wrong.  (I think she has boundary issues.)  Finally I got to a guy who said that I need to go into my e-mail via Hotmail and check and see if there's an e-mail with a blank name and a blank subject line.  I did, and there was.  Delete that, he told me, and all will be right.  Presto.  He said it happens occasionally and they're trying to get it resolved internally.  "So, it's not my fault," I ask him.  "No," he replies.  Well, what a relief...I feel vindicated.
 
This morning's call was not much different - I got disconnected after ten minutes and had to call back, and when I did,  I had to listen to lousy music (The Hollywood Strings version of Stairway to Heaven was my favorite) and brief MSN ads while they were "working to get to your call as soon as possible."  Fortunately I have a speakerphone in my den (see, I can keep up with some forms of technology) so my neck wasn't in pain...at least from the phone.  Finally, after about a fifteen minute wait due to high call volume, "Robbie" comes on the line.
 
Now we all know that Microsoft outsources their tech support to exotic places like India or Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and "Robbie" has a definite Indian accent.  Not like Fisher Stevens's character in Short Circuit, but pretty close.  He's very nice and he asks all the right questions, and I give him all the right answers.  We finally agree that it is not in my computer, even though the Help Desk is saying there are "no known issues at this time."  "Robbie" confides to me that he's had four calls with a similar problem and the standard troubleshooting doesn't work.  He says I can check my e-mail via Hotmail (and by the way, the blank e-mail was not there) and check back with them in 24 hours while they work on it from their end.
 
I note a couple of things in this exchange.  Even though I didn't get my problem fixed, I feel like I've made some progress - MSN no longer immediately blames the customer, which I think is a step forward.  The second is this nagging question as to why MSN feels they have to have their tech support people adopt American-sounding nicknames.  I know that "Robbie" is in India or somewhere, yet they insist on making them sound like they're in Utah.  Yes, there is the issue of outsourcing jobs - we know that it's a lot cheaper to pay "Robbie" and his colleagues in rupees than in dollars - but why hide behind such a transparent cover?  Do they really think that their customers would be upset if they were talking to someone named Sugith?  Their customers call to get their computers fixed, not worry about the international jobs situation.  Just get our computers working so we can blog about outsourcing.
 
Meanwhile, I'm checking out the pricing on cable modems.
 
[*chingada - New Mexican Spanglish for "Cheneyed."]

I decided to go into the office this morning to finish up a project that needed to get done in peace and quiet - and it never hurts to build up a little comp time.
 
I got home just in time to catch Dave on TV.  What a great movie.  First, you have Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver - both magnificient - and second, a great story.  For those of you who don't know it, Kline plays Dave Kovic, an ordinary guy who is a dead ringer for President Bill Mitchell.  He's drafted to double for the president while Mr. Mitchell has a tryst with an aide.  The president suffers a stroke in the middle of action, so Dave stays on as president.  Catch it some time.  It was a nice suprise to find it on while I was doing the laundry.
 
Tomorrow is another car club event - a softball game with the Fort Lauderdale chapter at Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach.  We're meeting up at Denny's on US1 and SW 104th at 10:30 for the ride up.  If you want to join us, be there and bring along something to drink (non-alcoholic, please), your baseball glove, and some sunscreen.

John Kerry, with all his talk about values, is a phony, and I should know because the guy I'm for is an even bigger phony than he is.  So there.

George W. Bush calls John Kerry an elitist.  This is coming from a guy who hails from a patrician New England family, went to prep school at Andover, college at Yale, and grad school at Harvard.  His grandfather was a senator from Connecticut, and his family spends the summers on the shores of Kennebunkport, Maine.
 
I'm not a psychologist, but my years of studying theatre and character development in playwriting and dramatic literature lend some insight to this behavior.  George W. Bush is ashamed of his roots as a son of the ruling class and is in a power struggle with his father.  This is the stuff of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night; the story of a dysfunctional family dealing with dissoulte sons who are struggling with their own failings and demons and their desperate attempt to garner approval from their father.  Meanwhile their mother, a morphine addict, lives in a dreamworld where nothing can disturb her "beautiful mind."
 
O'Neill's play is a wrenching examination of his own family, written in his last years and held from production until after his death to spare his family.  But in the Bush family, they have made the world their stage.  This is a play that needs to close before Act III.

Dick Cheney says he's staying on the ticket.
 
Well, that's not exactly a Muppet News flash.  Every time there's an incumbent up for re-election, especially if he's in trouble in the polls, there's backstage chatter about dumping the veep if he's seen as a drag on the ticket.  They did it to Quayle in '92, Spiro Agnew in '72 (he took care of that issue himself in October 1973), and even Nixon in '56.  Ironically, the pundits who talk the most about getting a new vice president are the ones who say that the veep choice doesn't win elections.
 
The last president who changed vice presidents when he ran for re-election was FDR in 1944, dumping the slightly daffy Henry Wallace in favor of little-known Missouri senator Harry S. Truman.  Wallace turned Socialist and ran as a presidential candidate in 1948, so it seems that FDR made a good call on both counts.

Here's the link to the Bush-Kerry parody of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land.  Turn on your computer speakers and enjoy.  (Thank you, Tabitha.)

It's the middle of July - the low spot for tourism in Florida - so let's see what's being written about down here and generate some virtual visitors.
 
First, welcome Misha-Pooh to the Florida Blogs roll.  She's got a unique style, and she's also an advocate for animal rescue - gotta love that.
 

• Blogwood gets ready for Bush's visit to Tampa today, and also has an alert as to the whereabouts of the Pigmobile that will greet the preznit.
• Blunted on Reality wonders if Pat Boone - the 1950's icon of wholesome goodness - might have some issues with the gay marriage amendment.
• Disourse.net, one of the blogosphere's big dogs, is based here in Miami and written by University of Miami (my alma mater) professor Michael Froomkin.  Today he notes that Miami has the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world.
• Florida Politics covers that and a bit more.  The blog is on a break until next week, but there's a story about George W. Bush's flagging support in the Cuban community - which is very big news.
• Kop's Blog has his take on the latest horror stories from Abu Ghraib.  Let's not be "stunned and speechless" any longer. 
• Take a look at News from the Sixth Borough - even though Greg's on vacation.
• For those of you who think that BBWW is nothing but all-liberal-all-the-time, note that Ocean Guy: Somewhere on A1A  is a Republican who is also a thoughtful and good writer.
• South of the Suwannee wonders what's in a name in some of the un-p.c. geographical designations here in Florida.
• Spacecoastweb is based in that part of Florida that became famous in the 1960's - Cape Canaveral - and examines whether or not the Bush campaign needs to worry about winning in that part of the state.
• Steve Koppelman, aka "hatless.com," shares some sweet South Asian snacks in Fort Lauderdale.
• Sticks of Fire just got back from vacation and promises a narrative of life in Panama City.  Meanwhile, he left us a missive about street names.

It goes without saying that there's a lot more out there for your blogging pleasure, including, of course, the usual suspects at The Liberal Coalition.  Happy Friday.

This is more or less a follow-up on the previous posting. I got to thinking about the doomed Federal Marriage Amendment and what it would do not only for gays and lesbians but for the rest of our society. Unlike the dire predictions of the social conservatives, I doubt that fire and brimestone will come cascading down upon this country like some plague out of the Old Testament if two men who love each other wish to share their lives and fortune in a manner that is recognized by the state. It isn't social engineering; it's evolution - or rather, a recognition of the obvious. (And lest you think that the so-called "gay society" is something new, read Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb.) And it comes down to the simple factor that the ultimate test of this or any society is putting the rights and responsibilities of that society into the hands of the people that live in it with the confidence that they will make the right choices.

There have always been challenges to free choices. Some are cultural, some are religious, some are just plain traditional. We've codified them in social, religious and secular ways, and we've changed them over time to fit with the evolution of our civilization. These changes have always been met with strenuous opposition, usually with dire predictions of death knells and so forth. It didn't happen when women were allowed to perform on stage in 17th century English theatre, it didn't happen when Lincoln freed the slaves, it didn't happen when women were granted the right to vote, nor when Truman desegregated the troops, Brown v. Board of Education was handed down, or the ban against interracial marriage was lifted in 1967. I seriously doubt that the world will stop spinning on its axis, shrivel like a cinder, and crash into the sun if gay men and lesbians are allowed to make the same choice as their straight brothers and sisters - or their parents.

That brings up another point. The social conservatives who are so dead set against gay marriage predict that it will destroy "traditional marriage," which I assume is that between a man and a woman. Well, it's been pointed out many times that "traditional marriage" has been on the verge of destruction for generations - divorce, adultery and adandonment rates are high, and domestic violence is one of the most often-reported crimes in the country. And yet every year more and more people get married, and while there are a lot of stresses on married couples these days, they keep trying to make their lives work. The fact that their optimism is tempered with experience and the realities of human failings and that shit happens doesn't seem to dissuade others from trying. So as long as there are people who love each other and care enough to want to make a commitment beyond their immediate gratification, marriage - traditional or otherwise - will go on. And it may flourish as long as people are given the choice.

So the most important vote about Greatest Challenge to Our American Way of Life - the gay marriage ban - "explodes with the pale puff of a wet firecracker.*" All this sturm und drang, and all the Republicans can muster is 48 measley votes. Oh yes, there are threats by backers of this reactionary bit of medieval social engineering that they will be back, but like so many attempts at legislating morality, it will fizzle and go out.

I'm ambivalent about gay marriage myself. When I had a partner, we considered ourselves to be married, as did our families. We owned a house together, shared finances, and found a good lawyer who wrote us wills and medical testaments that granted each of us rights of survivorship. Would we have gotten married if we'd had the opportunity? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it would have been nice to have the choice. When you get right down to it, that's all we're asking for - the chance to have the choice.

*Inherit the Wind, Act II, Scene 2, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

The smoke has cleared over western Miami-Dade County, the tanker-truck rollover that had I-95 shut down in both directions in Broward County for most of yesterday has been cleaned up, and the new superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools faces his first Board Meeting this afternoon. Here in the office we have a huge project that involves three different state forms in four different versions that must be completed by this afternoon. So it's going to be pretty quiet on the blog front until we get this done. Check out the blog rolls and I'll get back to you later today or tomorrow.

Fox News Channel seems to be very thin-skinned about its image. Witness the hilarious battle last summer against Al Franken where they tried to sue him for borrowing the "fair and balanced" slogan for his book. The judge laughed them out of the courtroom. Now it's Outfoxed, the documentary by Robert Greenwald about life behind the scenes at FNC that has them all worked up.

At yesterday's standing-room-only press conference for "Outfoxed" in New York, an FNC statement was released suggesting the flick was part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Besides dismissing as incompetents former FNC employees who used "Outfoxed" to blow the whistle on the news channel's openly biased ways, the Murdoch company took aim not so much with the movie's director, but at the New York Times and liberal philanthropist George Soros as the central demons in the unfolding drama. Soros, because the Center for American Progress, which Soros supports financially, backed "Outfoxed," and the Times because FNC insists the paper didn't give the network enough time to respond to an article it published in its Sunday magazine about "Outfoxed." FNC complained to the Washington Post that it 'only' had 24 hours to respond. But the Times writer insists FNC had three days, and says he has the emails to prove it. (FNC claims the Times was "taking orders" from Soros on the whole matter of when to contact Fox.) The issue appears to be a red herring anyway, because as the Los Angeles Times notes today, it gave FNC an entire week to respond of its "Outfoxed" story and the network never bothered to reply. [Salon.com]

That's the typical behavior of a bully - happy to dish it out, but can't take it.

Via the War Room at Salon.com, the Kerry-Edwards ticket bounced up, a month after being behind Bush-Cheney in the aftermath of the Reagan funeral, according to SurveyUSA. Kerry-Edwards is now at 47 to 44. But take a look at the breakdown: Kerry is ahead in some surprising areas, including the Hispanic vote, which is usually considered a lock for the Republicans. He also draws well in younger voters (50 to 38 among 18-to-34 years old) and older voters (50 to 45 among 65+). That looks like pretty broad support at this point in the game.

My friend Brian writes:

"[Dan Quayle has] got far more on the ball than Edwards does, and yet that comparison is not being drawn by anybody yet that I've heard." -- Rush Limbaugh

Please Mr. Limbaugh, please let me make the comparison! Let's see...both are from wealthy and influential families, both are intellectual lightweights who never did an honest days work before being elected to public office, both have been rumored to snort more then their share of cocaine, and both ducked their National Guard duty.

Oh, wait...you wanted a comparison with Edwards, and here I was thinking how favorably he compared with Dubya. You know, now that I think about it, Rush's question may have just answered one of my own that I've been carrying around for years. That being, what on earth was George the First thinking when he picked Dan Quayle? I remember him telling the press, when asked what he thought about Lloyd Bentsen's nomination, "Just wait until you see who I pick for a running mate." And then I remember...seeing this moron bound onto the stage, and thinking "What the fuck?"

Well, maybe...just maybe...knowing that he already had the election won, George was thinking "If I can get this turkey to fly before the American public, maybe, just maybe, I can get one of my asshole sons elected one day."

T'is the season, it seems for unflattering films about the people in power. First there was Fahrenheit 9/11, followed by The Hunting of the President. Now it's Rupert Murdoch's turn in the barrel in Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed.

If Rupert Murdoch had created a news network that was overtly political, even if those politics were scarily right-wing, that would be one thing. We are supposed to live in a marketplace of ideas; everybody gets a chance to air his views, and some of us, like Rupert, get more chances than others. But Fox News is the modern mass media at its worst, pushed to its logical extreme.

Rather than politics, Fox News offers only lockstep ideology. It does not present arguments; it blends fearmongering and happy talk, rinses in red, white and blue, and pours the mixture down our throats. Instead of challenging its audience, it simultaneously terrifies and comforts them, painting a hostile world constantly in need of good, old-fashioned Republican-style American might. It shows us a busy screen of sound and fury, but devoid of all thought. It's a nonstop thrill ride for the paranoid American body politic, and the public -- at least Murdoch's target audience -- has been as delighted as kids on their first visit to Disney World. Fox News has conquered the TV news landscape so thoroughly that the other networks have remade themselves in its image. [Salon.com]

Yet another reason to get that AARP discount card for the movies.

From Salon/AP:

Hoping to boost new prescriptions, the makers of Cialis are launching a new program that guarantees patients' satisfaction with the erectile dysfunction drug.

The program, called "Cialis Promise," lets patients to try the drug for free, If they don't like it, the pills will be replaced free with one of the rival brands, Viagra or Levitra.

ICOS Corp. and its partner, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. will begin touting the offer in new television and print ads set to launch Monday.

Paul Clark, chairman and chief executive officer at ICOS, said he's betting the ads will back up what studies have shown: that Cialis is preferred over its two competitors.

"We're putting our money where our mouth is," he told The Herald of Everett. [Emphasis added]

Okay, anybody want to hit that one out of the park?

Don't let the happy talk from moderates like Arnold or the independence of John McCain fool you. Tom DeLay is the real face of the Republican Party.

My friend Bob went along on the Occasional Sunday Morning Drive yesterday:

A small group of our club members get together on an occasional Sunday morning and take a drive, usually out to Key Biscayne, for cafe con leche and tostado. We meet up at Denny's at 104th and US 1 around 7:00 a.m. and go from there. It's about a fifteen mile drive up US 1 and then out the Rickenbacker Causeway and over the waters of Biscayne Bay.

This Sunday six cars, two Mustangs, one Austin Healey, one TR-6, one MGB (newly acquired by John Jones) and a 300ZX made the early morning journey.

Although warmer, now that summer is here, it still was a beautiful morning and we traveled with our usual accompaniment of cyclists as an escort. The conversation was enjoyable, ranging from club activities, to the Studebaker XUV, to memories of summer camps past, housing prices, and the building boom in Homestead. These topics were linked somehow, but you had to be there. All this mixed with some good laughs, cafe con leche and tostado.

The drive home through Coconut Grove's Main Highway and down Old Cutler Road beneath the tunnel of banyan trees made this another wonderful Occasional Sunday Morning Drive.

Again, you are invited to join us the next time the invitation is e-mailed to the club membership. I know it’s early, and some of us are doing our best sleeping at that hour, but the trip, camaraderie and the cafe con leche is worth it.

You don't need to have an antique car to join in the fun - I take the Mustang, and it's a '95. If you're interested, join us.

...is the late president spinning in his grave.

(CNN) -- Ron Reagan will speak in prime time at the Democratic National Convention on the importance of stem cell research, a senior adviser to presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry told CNN on Sunday.

The Kerry adviser, who did not want to be identified, said the appearance of the younger son of the late former President Ronald Reagan came about after "overtures were made by both sides -- friends of both."

The adviser did not say on which night Reagan, 46, will speak. The four-day convention kicks off July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ron Reagan, a self-described liberal whose political views were often at odds with his conservative Republican father, has said publicly that he does not support President Bush's re-election.

Reagan raised eyebrows during his father's burial service in June when he said in his eulogy that his father "never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians, wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage."

Many observers thought the remark was aimed at Bush, who often speaks publicly of the role faith plays in his life.

Reagan later told CNN that he did not set out to take a dig at Bush, though after so many other people made that connection, "I began to think maybe I was. I just didn't know it."

Interesting evolutionary trend, isn't it? The son of one president comes to his senses, while the son of another has none whatsoever.

Rep. Tom DeLay, majority whip of the House and a paragon of virtue and moral absolutism - when in comes to scolding Democrats, that is - is under investigation for illegal fundraising in Texas.

In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.

DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.

The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.

[...]

But DeLay and his colleagues also face serious legal challenges: Texas law bars corporate financing of state legislature campaigns, and a Texas criminal prosecutor is in the 20th month of digging through records of the fundraising, looking at possible violations of at least three statutes. A parallel lawsuit, also in the midst of discovery, is seeking $1.5 million in damages from DeLay's aides and one of his political action committees -- Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) -- on behalf of four defeated Democratic lawmakers.

DeLay has not been named as a target of the investigation. The prosecutor has said he is focused on the activities of political action committees linked to DeLay and the redistricting effort. But officials in the prosecutor's office say anyone involved in raising, collecting or spending the corporate money, who also knew of its intended use in Texas elections, is vulnerable.

Documents unearthed in the probe make clear that DeLay was central to creating and overseeing the fundraising. What the prosecutors are still assessing is who knew about the day-to-day operations of TRMPAC and how its money was used to benefit Texas House candidates.

Several weeks ago, DeLay hired two criminal defense attorneys to represent him in the probe. He previously created a fund for corporate donors to help him pay legal bills related to allegations of improper fundraising, and is now considering extending its reach to include the fees for these attorneys.

DeLay declined to comment for this article. Stuart Roy, his spokesman, said: "DeLay is doing everything moral, legal and ethical to increase the Republican majority and advance conservative ideas. He raised legal campaign money for effective political activity and that makes his critics enraged. Unfortunately, some Democrats are making an attempt to criminalize politics."

Cristen D. Feldman, the Texas lawyer who filed the suit, said in response, "I guess DeLay and his team forgot they were from Texas . . . [where] the prohibition against clandestine corporate cash is 100 years old."

[...]

DeLay's effort to build a Republican majority in the state legislature by channeling large campaign donations to Texas from lobbyists and corporations with interests before Congress dates at least from the 2000 election.

In an e-mail dated July 24 of that year, Enron Executive Vice President Steven J. Kean advised colleagues that DeLay had sent notes to company executives "about designating portions of their contributions for use in Texas."

Three days later, Enron sent a check for $50,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC) in Washington, and three top executives sent checks totaling $25,000. Around the same time, RNSEC transferred $1.2 million to the Texas Republican Party, which in turn donated $1.3 million to 20 legislative candidates that year, according to federal and state records.

There's a lot more here, but what it boils down to is that Tom DeLay basically raised money to redistrict Texas in accordance with his wishes and strategy and got big corporations in Texas to pay for it. The fact that it was legally doubtful is irrelevant as long as it furthers the greater good of getting Republicans elected in Texas. There's a moral absolute for you.

Update: I see that fellow TLC members including Michael at Musing's Musings, Xan at Corrente, and Steve at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat are on this story, too. Get the pitchforks...

The Republicans are fond of painting John Kerry as "out-of-the-mainstream." And yet...

Two weeks before the Democratic convention and under pressure from conservatives, President Bush is escalating his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, moving the issue to the forefront of the campaign and underscoring what his aides said was a critical difference between the president and Senator John Kerry.

[...]

Mr. Bush's renewed advocacy of the amendment — also voiced in a campaign appearance on Friday — came as the White House appeared to be struggling to reconcile conflicting pressure from conservatives eager for Mr. Bush to champion the ban and some Republicans concerned that the issue could alienate undecided moderate voters.

[...]

Mr. Bush's conservative base clearly supports the amendment, but polls have shown that while a majority of undecided voters oppose gay marriage, there is little enthusiasm among them for amending the Constitution to ban it.

Seeing as how the president has no role whatsoever in implementing a Constitutional amendment, the only purpose this serves is to rally the Religious Reich - as if there was a need to get them all in goosestep with the Republicans anyway. Even Lynn Cheney is saying that it's a matter best left to the states - echoing her husband in 2000. So who's out of the mainstream here?

The Toledo Blade has a very disturbing story in this morning's edition about the battle for hearts and minds (or what passes for that in the Religious Reich) of "Christian" voters.

COLUMBUS - When Jeff Baker thinks about the presidential race, he thinks about religion.
"I try to concern myself with what concerns God," said Mr. Baker, a 50-year-old pharmaceutical representative who lives in Newark, 40 miles east of Columbus.

Based on what the Old and New Testaments say about morality, Mr. Baker said he will vote for President Bush, who is anti-abortion and has embraced a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

"God will allow us to choose one of these men. The economy is improving. The war in Iraq is what it is. The issue of this nation's moral conscience is most important to me. If this nation turns its back against what God stands for, He could pull his hand of protection away from it and this nation would face the consequences," said Mr. Baker, who attends a Southern Baptist church.

Gee, it must be nice to know exactly what it is that concerns God. (And not to be too snarky, I'm wondering if this pharmaceutical rep has been trying a few too many samples.) And the idea that "God will allow us to choose one of these men" certainly discounts the possibility that God had a little help in 2000 here in Florida.

Very few things piss me off more than these religious zealots who claim that 1) America is a "Christian" nation, 2) that the idea of separation of church and state is a myth (see Rev. Scott's comment later in the article) and 3) that it is their right and duty to measure every person by latitudes of right and longitudes of wrong in exact minutes, seconds, and degrees. To quote the immortal Jacques Brel, "if people like them had their way, they would paint the world the color of goose shit."

The weather looks good for our Occasional Sunday Morning Cruise from South Miami out to Key Biscayne this morning. The Mustang is freshly washed, the top is down, and I'll take along my Dave Brubeck Time Out CD. No, it's not a bike ride...but t'will serve.

I'm not a bigot, but queers getting married is icky.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

Florida's relatively new touch-screen voting machines, touted as a solution to the state's 2000 presidential election meltdown, didn't perform as well as machines that use an older technology during a statewide election earlier this year, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis.

Records from the March 9 Democratic presidential primary show that votes were not recorded for one out of 100 voters using the new ATM-style machines. That's at least eight times more than the number of flawed votes cast in the same election with pencil marks on paper ballots tallied by an optical scanner.

Of course, even if we went back to pencils and paper ballots, it doesn't mean everyone will get to vote. As the following post illustrates, the state can't even make up its mind as to who to allow to vote, never mind how.

From the Miami Herald:

TALLAHASSEE - Florida election officials conceded an enormous mistake Saturday and abandoned the controversial list the state was using to remove convicted felons from the voter rolls.

After defending the list against mounting criticism as late as Friday evening, the state made an about-face. The reason: a flaw in a database that failed to capture most felons who classified themselves as Hispanic.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood announced at 1 p.m. Saturday that an "unintentional and unforeseen discrepancy . . . related to Hispanic classification" had forced the agency to eliminate the entire list from further consideration this year.

The announcement was an embarrassment for top state officials from Gov. Jeb Bush down, and it was enthusiastically lauded by voting rights advocates -- and those on the list.

The Division of Elections had created the list of registered voters with possible felony convictions. It then directed local elections supervisors across Florida to identify convicted felons whose voting rights had not been restored and remove them from the rolls.

Yet of the nearly 48,000 names, just 61 were classified as Hispanics, in a state where Hispanics comprise 8 percent of the population.

"We are deeply concerned and disappointed that this has occurred," Hood said in the statement. "...We will be reviewing the issue to determine how it could have occurred and why it was not recognized until now."

The result of the flaw: The state will now allow individual county election supervisors to create their own system of removing ineligible voters. The Florida Constitution requires that ex-felons be prohibited from voting unless the right is restored.

Gov. Bush, in Miami at an event honoring military personnel, said the failure to list Hispanics in the screening process "was an oversight and a mistake and that's why we're pulling it back."

"This will give us the proper amount of time to make sure that the database for screening felons will be a useful tool for supervisors," he said.

"THIS SMELLS"

Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation, who was co-counsel in a lawsuit challenging an earlier 2000 purge list, said: "This smells to high heaven. It strains credulity to think that Hispanics were somehow left off the list, while African Americans remained on the list."

Hispanics in Florida register Republican more often than Democratic. By contrast, more than 90 percent of the nearly one million black voters in Florida are Democrats.

The state's sudden decision surprised some civil rights advocates, who last week called the list "infirm."

In a letter written just Friday to the Florida Justice Institute and obtained by The Herald, an attorney for the state wrote: "If your request to withdraw the `entire list' was implemented, the Division of Elections would be in violation of Florida law."

Yet, a day later, the state changed course.

In other words - busted!

My Faithful Correspondent went to see Fahrenheit 9/11:

Our Wood County Democratic Party threw a fund-raiser last night at the Cla-Zel Theater in Bowling Green on very short notice - like 6 days. Al Baldwin, the chairman for nearly 20 years, e-mailed his list that a special showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 would be shown at 7:00, tickets costing $20/ea with the profits going to the party. The funds would be used to open a storefront party headquarters for the balance of the campaign year 2 months ahead of schedule - funds being so short they were going to wait until after Labor Day. To Al's amazement and everyones absolute delight, over 200 people bought tickets - the theater was packed. Elected officials from both Lucas and Wood County showed up to be recognized and candidates for offices, local and national, were there to shine in the spotlight before the movie.

If you haven't seen it, read the reviews in The New Yorker and New York Magazine before you go. It's interesting how each reviewer came away with different bruises inflicted by Michael Moore. Denby thought the movie "over the top" with radical and paranoid claims and accusations, but he was moved by the Flint, Michigan mother who takes herself to Washington to rail outside the White House security barrier at those inside who took her son for no reason. Our audience was, too. We were all in tears, apparently, being red-eyed when the lights turned up at the end. But for me, although extremely moving, the lasting jolt was somewhere else. The critic from New York Magazine, whose name escapes me, also characterized Moore as angry, but he was horrified and moved by the previously unreleased shots of dead and wounded, both Iraqi and American soldiers. There was an Iraqi mother screaming in anquish at what we've done to her family; there were shots of a raid on an Iraqi home where soldiers drag away a college-student son; there were shots in an Army hospital of armless and legless GI's with hideous wounds, both mental and physical. None of the people in this country have been made to face up to what we've done in Iraq, wounds that will last forever and animosity that will only grow in fervor. We take hopeless and unemployed young me in places like Flint, sign them up for the Army or Marines and turn them into killers. Abu Ghraib should have come as no surprise.

I'm still thinking about what we saw. It seems to me that, whether one wants to or not, we should all make ourselves see what Moore shows us if only to force us to reflect on the results of our actions. The movie is attended by, mostly, the converted. but it will animate our anger and our desire to see this administration gone in four months. I'm hoping other rural districts will do what ours did and fill their theaters with crowds of voters. It's not possible to dismiss this movie whether it's agitprop or not; it's important.

I wish I'd seen this.

WASHINGTON -- Howard Dean wasted little time getting to the point in a debate with third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Friday. After listening to Nader's standard posturing about how only he can save the Democratic Party and the nation from the "corporate interests" that have consumed politics and government, the former Vermont governor struck hard: "Ralph, I think you're being disingenuous about your candidacy this year."

In his rapid-fire delivery, the onetime Democratic presidential front-runner rattled off all the ways he saw Nader as a hypocrite: Nearly half the signatures Nader gathered in a failed attempt to get on the Arizona ballot were from Republicans. A significant amount of his campaign kitty comes from Bush-Cheney donors. And, said Dean, "you accepted the support of a right-wing, fanatic Republican group that is antigay in order to help you get on the ballot in Oregon" -- a reference to the Oregon Family Council, which produces a "Christian Voter Guide" and campaigns against gay marriage.

"This is not going to help the progressive cause in America," Dean continued. "The thing that upsets me so much about this is, you have the right to ... get in bed with whoever you want to, but don't call the Democratic Party full of corporate interests. They have their problems, we all have ours, none of us are pure. And this campaign of yours is far from pure."

[edit]

The exchange took place against a backdrop of polls showing that Nader may play the spoiler for Democrats again this year as he did in 2000, when he siphoned votes in key states from presidential candidate Al Gore and helped put George W. Bush in the White House. But now, having provoked hostility from many Democrats with his quixotic but damaging third-party run in 2000, Nader is having trouble finding a third party to call his own. Last month, he was rejected at the convention of the Green Party under whose banner he ran in 2000. He's straining to get on state ballots via minor third parties, including the rump of the Reform Party, founded by Ross Perot and last used as a vehicle by far-right-winger Pat Buchanan in 2000. Nader recently pulled out of Arizona after a group of voters backed by the state Democratic Party challenged the validity of signatures he had collected to gain ballot access.

[edit]

Yet Nader appeared unbowed in the debate. He was alternately charming and strident, returning again and again to his theme that American politics is a puppet pulled by the strings of corporate America. While most progressives would cite the invasion under false pretenses of Iraq as the major issue of the campaign, Nader said it was "the domination of our country by a concentration of greed and power in the hands of multinational corporations who have no allegiance to our country other than to control it or abandon it as they see fit." Almost as an afterthought, he slammed John Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, for voting for the congressional resolution to authorize the war in Iraq, and accused Dean, who opposed the war, of abandoning his principles by his support of the Democratic ticket. Nader also called for a pullout of American troops from Iraq. But he kept returning to his basic theme that the Democrats can accomplish nothing but betrayal: "If you really want to do something about poverty and the criminal justice system and the failed war on drugs, how can all that fit inside a Democratic Party that has ignored, year after year, changes for a more just and prosperous America?"

Dean parried effectively, with the directness that helped win him a fervent following during the primaries, before he crumpled after his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. "I'd grant you that there is significant corporate influence that we don't like," he said, and pointed out that Nader should not let the "perfect be the enemy of the good."

Dean continued: "I'm not running for president right now, not just because I lost in Iowa, but [because] I made the calculation that if I did, I would take away votes that would otherwise go to John Kerry and result in the reelection of George Bush. That is a national emergency, and we cannot have it. My argument simply is, When the house is on fire, it's not the time to fix the furniture." [Salon.com subscription/Day pass required.]

Now if we could only get this kind of debate between John Kerry and George Bush...

The Florida purge list is coming under attack, this time for leaving off Hispanic felons.

Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged yesterday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list.

Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American.

About 8 percent of Florida voters describe themselves as Hispanic, and about 11 percent as black.

In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican.

Elections officials of Florida's Republican administration denied any partisan motive in use of the method they adopted, and noted that it had been approved as part of a settlement of a civil rights lawsuit.

"This was absolutely unintentional," said Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother. "The matching criteria were approved by several interested parties in the lawsuit, and the court. I don't know how it got by all those people without anyone noticing."

Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Governor Bush, said: "The governor is complying with the law and complying with the settlement. Recognizing now that there is a discrepancy, the Department of State is looking into the options."

Anita Earls, one of the lawyers for plaintiffs in the civil rights suit, said state officials had not given them the kind of access to data that might have uncovered the flaw.

The method uses race as one of several factors in determining whether a felon has registered to vote. If a voter's first name, last name and date of birth are the same as those of a convicted felon but the race is different, the name is not put on the list for potential purging.

But the database of felons has only five variables for race: white, black, Asian, Indian and unknown. And a voter registered as Hispanic whose name and birth date matched a felon's would be left off the purge list unless his race was listed as unknown.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Kristen Perezluha, said the felon database used F.B.I. criteria for judging race and so never listed Hispanic.

Oh, so it's the F.B.I's fault. It has nothing to do with the fact that every other database in the country - including the U.S. Census - includes some form of designation for Hispanic - including the quaint "Spanish surnamed." It must have been based on the theory that no Hispanic Republican (or the wayward child of a big Bush backer) would ever commit a felony, so there was no need to include them on the list. Makes sense to me...

Nick Kristof offers some unsolicited advice to Bush and Cheney:

Now that John Kerry has found a running mate, Mr. President, you need to lose one. Dick Cheney has to fake chest pains.

The first time he begs to be removed from the ticket, you should show your loyalty and refuse. Only after he has sorrowfully insisted — absolutely insisted! — on retiring should you reluctantly consent. (This should happen well before the Republican convention so it doesn't look too desperate — or staged.)

Four years ago, Mr. Cheney brought national security credentials and gravitas to your ticket. But this November, he'll remind swing voters of the Iraq mess, intelligence-fixing and the leak of the name of the glamour spy, Valerie Plame. Not to mention Halliburton's overcharging.

Mr. President, many voters find you likable and a better bet on national security than Mr. Kerry — as they say, Mr. Kerry looks French — but they wake up at night wondering whether you're actually a hard-line, mistake-prone ideologue. And that's the problem with Mr. Cheney: the first thought swing voters have when they see the vice president is "hard-line, mistake-prone ideologue."

So you need a running mate who revives the 2000 image of you as a compassionate conservative. That's Colin Powell, if he — and Alma — would do it.

Mr. Powell reassures swing voters because he's not an ideologue, and he would improve your standing among black voters. In 2000 you won only 8 percent of the black vote, but you could raise that to 25 percent or more with Powell.

If Powell won't do it, there's Rudy Giuliani. He's strong on national security and crime, but soft on abortion, which is what you need with swing voters. Then there's John McCain; that choice would allow you to win at least the first battle with Mr. Kerry.

[edit]

Oh, and there's an October surprise you can spring that will almost guarantee a victory. After you've taken Mr. Powell as your running mate and he's won plaudits around the country, announce a week before the election that you're taking time off from the campaign on doctor's orders because your own heart has been under strain. That way, you'll get an extra week's vacation on your ranch — and, if voters believe it, another term in office.

(For the president's eyes only: Mr. President, you're probably wondering why you should take advice from a columnist who criticizes many of your policies. You may even imagine that I'm an ardent Kerry supporter. But look at it this way: I want to be read, and if Mr. Kerry wins, he'll adopt boring, reasonable positions, and I'll be stuck with nuanced analyses that even my mother won't read. In contrast, you may not always be great for this country, but you're terrific for sputtering pundits.)

(For my regular readers only: Don't feel betrayed by this column. I'm not actually being as helpful to the president as you may think. Mr. Bush has shown that he pays close attention to all my advice because he consistently does precisely the opposite. So Mr. Cheney is now guaranteed a spot on the ticket.)

Nick's being too cute by half - he should leave that to the bloggers - but it's nice to see him crack a smile.

From NBC 6.

Aid Workers Retrain Man Raised As Chicken
Sponsor Says Man Is Making 'Remarkable Progress'

A man in Suva, Fiji, is being taught to act human after being raised as a chicken.

Sunjit Kumar was locked in a chicken coop for several years as a young boy, after his parents died and he was handed over to his grandfather.

He had little contact with humans during that time and picked up the habits of the birds.

Kumar escaped from the chicken coop and was taken to a local hospital. But the staff did not know how to treat him, so they confined him. He spent 20 years there, often tied to his bed.

Kumar, who is now 32, finally got a second chance at life when he was discovered by Elizabeth Clayton, a native New Zealander and president of the Suva Rotary Club.

Clayton said doctors examined Sunjit and found no mental defects. Professionals agreed that his condition was the result of years of neglect and abuse.

"He had imitated or imprinted with the chicken," Clayton said. "He was perching, he was picking at his food, he was hopping around like a chicken. He'd keep his hands in a chickenlike fashion, and he'd make a noise, which was like the calling of a chicken, which he still has."

Clayton took over Kumar's care and he has reportedly made "remarkable progress," learning to walk and speak like a human.

I was wondering what kind of family would do this to a person, but then I remembered what Woody Allen says at the end of Annie Hall: "I thought of that old joke, y'know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.' And, the doctor says, 'Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. Y'know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd but, I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs."

[Updated for minor edits]

From the Miami Herald:

TALLAHASSEE - As state and Miami-Dade County election officials work to approve software that will clear up a nagging problem with touch-screen voting machines, a Herald review of internal election department documents has found that there are a host of other flaws that have never been publicly acknowledged and are not expected to be fixed by the new programming.

The situation has led to a fractious relationship between Miami-Dade, the state and the touch-screen machine maker, Electronic Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb. At one point, a state Division of Elections e-mail shows, Miami-Dade Assistant County Attorney Murray Greenberg threatened to sue the company -- and make it "close up shop nationally" -- if more problems were discovered with the equipment that was certified as working two years ago.

In a June 3 letter to ES&S, obtained by The Herald in a public records request, Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Constance Kaplan demanded answers to three problems with the iVotronic equipment that she said could take "labor intensive and costly" actions to fix. She asked ES&S to resolve these issues "expeditiously:"

• The central database machines used to tabulate votes are incapable of holding all the audit data at once, requiring a "labor intensive and costly" solution that could complicate a recount in a close race. Audit data is used to back up the system.

• The optical scanners used to read absentee ballots have problems when information is merged from the three machines the county uses.

• And the county could potentially mix up votes if it were to try to use phone lines to transmit data from the polling places to the election center, which it doesn't plan to do.

That reminds me of the story about the thousands of dollars NASA spent to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Russians solved the problem by using a pencil. Perhaps we'd be better off going back to paper ballots and pencils. At least you can recount those ballots.

Catching up on the buzz...

All Facts and Opinions on the personal elements of the FMA.

And Then...there's Dick Cheney's poll numbers.

archy on Bush's reaction to Kenny Boy's indictment.

blogAmY on Karl Rove.

bloggg has fun with music.

Chris also has fun with music, this time with the 1980's.

Collective Sigh gets historical on Bush.

Corrente and The Farmer find themselves in strange company.

NTodd catches Joe Scarborough in an unscripted moment of honesty.

Echidne of the Snakes examines The Pill and its place in the Pro-Life movement.

The Fulcrum ponders the link between the Edwards announcement and Tom Ridge warning about terrorism.

Monty Python is coming to Broadway, according to The Gamer's Nook.

The Gotham City 13 has a photo of the real photo op staged when they pulled down Saddam's statue last year.

Happy Furry Puppy deconstructs Tom Ridge.

Jude picks up on the dump-Cheney thread.

The Invisible Library takes a break after finals.

It's Craptastic has new spiffs.

KtL shakes his head over Bush's WMD claims.

Left Is Right reveals plans in the works to cancel the election.

Bryant deconstructs Ann Coulter.

Michael on the Cheney Doctrine.

New World on the perils of videotaping in New York.

Pen-Elayne on how our government makes life irritating for the foreign press.

Rivka on John Edwards as a trial lawyer.

Rick has a gig tonight if you want to see him on stage.

Rook's Rant wonders if Cheney is channeling Spiro Agnew.

Upyernoz tries to kick caffeine. Good luck, fella.

SoonerThought on the Southern Strategy.

Speedkill takes a look at John Derbyshire's VP beauty contest.

Steve Gilliard flies some flags.

T. Rex updates his Where Are They Now? list.

Trish Wilson on the wingnuts paranoia about the real motive behind gay marriage.

Wanda chimes in on Cheney.

WTF Is It Now?? chortles at the latest line on Bush's military records.

And last but never least, Steve at the Yellow Doggerel reflects on Billmon's reflections on blogging.

There you have it - my choices from The Liberal Coalition for this week. As always, check out the rest of the Blogroll as well.

Kenneth Lay, the indicted former chief of Enron, could trade his pinstripes for an orange jumpsuit. So what would happen if he decided to turn states evidence?

Lay could dish the dirt on several important topics: the Karl Rove-brokered push that resulted in Enron paying Christian conservative turned super-lobbyist Ralph Reed $300,000; Lay's dealings with secretary of state turned super-lobbyist James Baker; why Enron hired Ed Gillespie, the man who now heads the Republican National Committee; the reason for Lay's decision to allow the Bushes to use Enron's fleet of airplanes as their own; what happened in those meetings with Dick Cheney and his energy task force; and what really happened with the California energy crisis. [Salon.com - subscription/Day pass required]

He wouldn't be the first Bush crony to turn on his former pals, and if the election starts to look like Bush is on the way out, what has Lay got to lose by telling all?

E.J. Dionne in the WaPo:

Republicans grumbled that Edwards was Kerry's "second choice" after Republican John McCain. Can't blame the GOP for trying. But it's hard to think voters will hold it against Kerry that he tried to reach out to Republicans during a period of rancid partisanship.

Oh, yes, and one more point on that experience thing: "When it comes time to make the decision to send our young men and women into harm's way, that decision should be made by a leader who knows that such decisions have profound consequences. There comes a time when our nation's leader can no longer rely on briefing books and talking points." That was McCain in 1999. He was talking about the man who became our current president. You wonder which side will be most eager to cite that quotation.

From The New Republic:

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.) [Emphasis added.]

Gee, what a surprise.

The Kerry-Edwards pairing must be getting under the skin of George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON, July 7 — President Bush campaigned today in North Carolina, where he criticized Democrats for blocking some of his judicial nominees and took a back-handed swipe at Senator John Edwards, the state's freshman Democratic senator and now Senator John Kerry's choice for his running mate.

When a questioner in Raleigh noted that Mr. Edwards had been described as charming and a "nimble campaigner" and asked Mr. Bush to compare the one-term senator to Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush snapped back: "Dick Cheney can be president. Next?"

In his terse response, Mr. Bush appeared to be reflecting an acknowledged Republican strategy of emphasizing Mr. Cheney's government experience in making unflattering comparisons with the youthful-looking Mr. Edwards. [New York Times]

That kind of snotty comment is both an insult to Senator Edwards, who, as previously noted, has served as long in elective office as Mr. Bush, and also opens the president up to scrutiny - not to mention the jokes - about just how much of the presidency Mr. Cheney has already assumed.

The Bush/Cheney campaign must be really freaked out. It means that for the next four months we're going to be treated to even more of this. Wow - what a great time to be a blogger.

As the following couple of posts illustrate, the Republicans appear to be slightly panic-stricken by Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate. Watching David Brooks on Jim Lehrer last night was a study in seeing a conservative commentator have the flop-sweats on national television. Brooks conceded that the Edwards pick was a good choice for Kerry, and even as he tried to push the lack-of-experience line, he had to acknowledge Mark Shields's instant response with Bush's own political career track.

As the New York Times editorial points out, it takes a certain maturity and self-confidence for a presidential candidate to choose someone who could potentially upstage him but get the ticket elected. Wow - placing your ego on hold in order to win an election. What a concept.

It's one thing to choose a running mate for geographic balance or special expertise. It's another to admit that you're short on charm. Mr. Edwards, a terrific orator with a Clintonian empathy, may make Mr. Kerry look even more wooden by comparison. But if he'd picked Richard Gephardt, Mr. Kerry would have been the life of the party in Boston.

Look at it that way, and this selection says something very important about Mr. Kerry. He has the confidence, and the good sense, to share the spotlight with someone who can make his campaign better.

No wonder the Republicans are freaking out; they don't know how to deal with an honest opponent.

From the Salon.com War Room:

One of the leading Republican criticisms of John Edwards, high up in the oppo research package almost immediately e-mailed to reporters from the Republican National Committee this morning, is this observation of Edwards' career path: "Never Held Elective Office, Politics Took Backseat to Legal Career." That's an odd criticism coming from people who pretend to abhor Washington insiders, even as they control most of the federal government -- but it's especially strange that Republicans would want to raise the issue of inexperience given who's on top of their ticket. John Edwards was, as anyone who heard him during the primary season knows, born to a mill worker and the first person in his family to attend college. As a young boy, he wanted to become a lawyer to fight for working people. And he did -- a really good one. After his successful career as a trial lawyer, Edwards decided to try his hand at government. (Sounds like the up-by-the-bootstraps, private-sector-success-turned-public-servant stuff of many GOP dreams). Edwards has served a term in the Senate, where he sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-sponsored the Patients' Bill of Rights with John McCain and Ted Kennedy. But, the RNC says, he has only served about six years in the Senate, so he isn't qualified to be V.P. This is, perhaps, the definition of chutzpah.

Of course, Bush has quite a bit of experience with "inexperience." He served about the same amount of time as Texas governor, from 1994-2000, in a state where the executive yields much power to the Legislature, and before that he was a failed oil executive who used profits from the sale of his Harken Energy stock -- sold miraculously right before the stock value plummeted, which was the subject of an SEC insider trading investigation -- to buy into the Texas Rangers, a deal that made him a multimillionaire. If this man is qualified to be president, we're pretty sure we can trust John Edwards as No. 2.

I guess the Republican way of thinking is that experience in government and politics only matters if you're a Democrat.

Oh, and just in case you think the Republicans might have a point in their ad about Kerry going with his "second choice," check out this piece in The American Prospect about the tempestuous veep selection battle back in 1980. As you'll recall, Ronald Reagan first approached former President Gerald Ford to run with him. Ford, who recalled how Reagan ran against him in 1976 and blamed for weakening him in the run against Jimmy Carter, turned him down flat. Reagan then turned to his most tenacious primary opponent, George H.W. Bush. But according to the Republicans, that was then, and besides, It's Okay If You're A Republican.

John Edwards has charisma, intellect, optimism, and energy. Well, [sniff] that's fine if you like that sort of thing.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

ORLANDO -- Gov. Jeb Bush had come to pitch the virtues of reading, but instead got stumped on a math question Tuesday.

During a speech to high school students who mentor younger children in reading, a teenager asked the governor a basic geometry question taken from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which Bush has championed.

"Me and a couple of my friends ... we know that the FCAT is a very important part of schooling in Florida and we were wondering if you could answer one of the questions we remember from the FCAT?" said Luana Marques, 18, who just graduated from Freedom High School in Orange County and is heading to Flagler College in the fall.

The luncheon crowd at an Orlando hotel, gathered to honor 200 students who take part in the Teen Trendsetters Reading Mentor program, laughed and Marques posed the question: "What are the angles on a three-four-five-triangle?"

The governor gave a steely grin and then stalled a bit. "The angles would be ... If I was going to guess ... Three-four-five. Three-four-five. I don't know, 125, 90 and whatever remains on 180?"

Marques had an answer, although it wasn't the right one: "It's 30-60-90."

The correct answer was 90 degrees, 53.1 degrees and 36.9 degrees, said Michelle Taylor, a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Florida, when told about the governor's pop quiz.

Bush thanked Marques for the answer and then launched into a defense of the FCAT test, which the governor has taken and passed.

[edit]

"If the point is, I haven't been in school for the last 30 years, that's true. But if I'm going to be graduating from high school and I can't pass a 10th-grade aptitude test, then I'm fooling myself," Bush said. "The fact that a 51-year-old man can't answer a question, is really not relevant. You're still going to have to take the FCAT and you're still going to have to pass it in order to get a high school degree."

Marques said later that she had asked the governor the math question only as a joke but she does believe the governor and others who call for the use of the test should be able to pass it.

"I think I offended him," Marques said of the governor. "I don't think he had much of a sense of humor."

Later Gov. Bush was overheard saying he'd get Marques at recess.

It's Edwards.

I first heard it at 8:00 a.m. via CBC News (the Canadian Broadcasting Company) of all places. I would have been here sooner but Blogger was bloggered.

Whew.

On the flight back yesterday I was flipping through American Way, the American Airlines in-flight magazine, when I came across a story that unfortunately did not make it up on their web edition. The newest SUV to make its debut this summer will bear a nameplate from automotive history: Studebaker.

To those of you younger than 40, the Studebaker nameplate won't mean much unless you're into cars. Studebaker began in the 1830's as a wagon manufacturer (the ubiquitous Conestoga covered wagon, as seen in movie and TV Westerns, was built by Studebaker), switching to cars in the early 1900's. It was one of the five or so auto manufacturers that managed to survive both the Depression and World War II, only to fall on hard times in the 1950's and early '60's. They made some interesting cars, especially the bullet-nosed 1950 models and the Hawk series, but by 1960 they were building what could charitably be called "granny cars" like the Lark. In 1963, in a desperate attempt to reclaim part of the market, they introduced the Raymond Loewy-designed Avanti. It was a sleek and powerful sports car with a fiberglass body, and it knocked the automotive world on its collective ear. But it wasn't enough to save the company. Their factory in South Bend, Indiana, was too antiquated to handle the rapid changes in the auto industry, and an ill-advised merger with struggling Packard burdened the already weak company. Even taking on the exclusive distribution of Mercedes-Benz in the US didn't help, and they finally ceased production in 1966.

Shortly after Studebaker went under, the rights to the Avanti were bought up and the car, called the Avanti II, was built and sold at a premium price. It's been through several owners, but it's still being built in Georgia. Avanti Motor's newest venture is the Studebaker XUV, an SUV with a strong resemblance to the Hummer (so much so that GM sued them; they settled when Avanti made some minor design changes). It will be available with either gas or diesel engine. According to the story in American Way, the Studebaker will sell for around $79,000. That's a lot more than an Explorer, but right up there with some of the Mercedes SUV's out there.

The rationale behind reviving the Studebaker name is the company's attempt to connect with the 19th century "prairie schooner" and its 21st century counterpart, the SUV. But for those of us who remember the last cars to carry the logo except the Avanti, it's a good fit - big, boxy, and slightly out of sync with the times. Nevertheless, I wish them all the best; I have a soft spot in my heart for ventures like that; I'm holding out hope to see if Ford will bring back the Edsel.

[Updated at 6:05 p.m with minor edits and additional information on Studebaker's history.]

While I was sitting in the waiting area of gate H-15 at O'Hare this afternoon waiting to board my flight, I overheard CNN Airport News quote Senator Kerry:

"I'm heading out to Indianapolis to give a speech tomorrow, but before I go we're gonna do a little rally here in Pittsburgh at Market Square, so if any of you can make it, I'm told the gates open at 7 in the morning -- if you're up at that hour -- but at 9 o'clock tomorrow we're gonna have some fun, and then we'll head out to the Midwest again and back on the trail."

Of course everyone is expecting him to introduce his choice for his running mate.

Pete at Kick the Leftist is predicting that it is Edwards. (Pete made that call three times, no less, but I think that's because Blogger has been having the computer version of brain farts for the last couple of days). My own gut says it's Edwards, too, but I've been wrong before, as anyone who knows me will promptly remind me. I wouldn't take odds, but I'm willing to go that Edwards is the favorite, followed by Gephardt, then Clark. I think Vilsack was thrown in there just to round out the field. I'm guessing that Teddy the Wonder Lizard missed the cut. Anyway, we'll all be waiting at nine tomorrow morning. And just to be prepared, I like my crow medium-rare.

Michael at Musing's Musings had this posted, and I just had to pinch it for myself. After all, this proves two things: that the Canadians do have a sense of humor, and that the name of this blog is seen in places you least expect it.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, eh?

For you hard-core Lanford Wilson fans, today is the day make some scrambled eggs and Bath buns, sit on the front porch and reminisce about anti-war demonstrations in the 1960's, go to Harley Campbell's funeral, close a song deal with Columbia Records, and come to a realization about where your life has been - or hasn't been. Let's talk about the future.

Today is also a travel day for me, leaving here mid-afternoon and connecting in Chicago to a flight to Miami. Regular blogging will resume tomorrow when I once again have access to a high-speed connection versus the snail's pace 26.4 kps I am presently using (I went out and waxed my dad's car while the Blogger page was loading). If you have the day off, get out there and enjoy it.

My friend Brian sent me this little tidbit of news from CNN while I was in Canada:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy members about holding voter registration drives.

The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

"We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote counts and it's important to reach out to every single supporter of President Bush," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

I'm sure I'm not the first blogger to notice this, but may I just say to the Bush/Cheney campaign, "Are you nuts?"

In the first place, any church that engages in political activity like that stands to lose its tax-exempt status. That's black-letter law, and I'm pretty sure that giving a church directory to a political campaign qualifies as political activity.

Second, I think it's a sign of desperation that the Bush/Cheney gang has to try to shore up their base with religious conservatives. You would think that there is one group they could count on. Apparently not.

Thursday, July 1, 2004

Stratford, Ontario is the home of the Stratford Festival of Canada, producing some of the best theatre in North America. It started out in 1953 under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie, doing one Shakespeare play under a tent on the banks of the Avon River and has now grown to an annual event that lasts seven months (April – November) each year. It used to be they did only classic plays – Shakespeare and the like – but today you can see all manner of theatre from avant-garde to frothy musicals like Gigi. I’ve been attending regularly since 1970. I’ve missed a few years here and there, but my parents, who started coming in the 1960’s, haven’t missed a year yet, sometimes coming more than once a season. In 2002 they had reservations to come back in October and see Christopher Plummer in King Lear. But a visit to the doctor in September revealed that my father needed surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm; not something you could put off. He had the surgery moved up so that he was in good enough shape to make the trip and see this production. The show must go on.

Late evening: We saw a fantastic production of Noises Off directed by Brian Bedford. It being Canada Day, we watched the parade up the main street of town, replete with local marching bands and Shriners driving around in their little cars. Before the curtain, they played “O Canada!” and we rose to our feet and joined in. One thing I’ll give the Canadians…their anthem is sure a lot easier to sing, and it isn’t about bombs bursting in air.

Friday, July 2, 2004

Even a world-class operation like the Stratford Festival can, on occasion, produce a clunker. Back in the early 1970’s I saw a production of Othello with an Israeli actor by the name of Nachum Buchman. He looked the part and the set and costumes were great, but Mr. Buchman’s accent was so thick that it was nearly impossible to understand him, and the show clunked along like it was running through a swamp. But rarely have I seen a play at Stratford fall flat. Today, unfortunately, was one of those rare occasions. We saw a lifeless and oddly uninteresting production of The Count of Monte Cristo. I expected a swashbuckling tale of adventure and revenge, but in spite of some spectacular sets and very well choreographed swordplay, the acting was stiff, the dialogue cheesy, and the payoff at the end was a real letdown. I know that it is hard to turn a 1,400-plus page novel into a two-act 100-page play, but there was something missing… like real energy. I’m hoping that today’s show was the only turkey in our lot.

After the show I stopped at a shopping mall and loaded up on contact lens solution. It sells for about $9.49 a bottle here versus the $10.49 in the US, and with the exchange rate, that comes in at about $7.15, so I cleaned them out of their last two bottles in stock. Come and get me, FDA. As I was leaving the mall I passed by a travel agency. They were offering real deals on vacations in the Caribbean – yeah, I know that July is not the high season for trips to the tropics, but still…. They were offering a seven-night stay at an all-inclusive resort in Varadero, Cuba, for $649 (US $488) per person, along with other bargains at other places on “that imprisoned island.” It seems ironic that citizens of “the freest nation on Earth” can’t take a trip to Cuba without getting in trouble with their government. What is sad is that Cuban-Americans, who have valid reasons other than vacation for traveling there, are under even tighter restrictions than before. This is just to keep a bunch of political cronies in Miami in the Republican camp.

A note on Marlon Brando, who died today at the age of 80. There are going to be a lot of tributes paid to him for his amazing portrayals of classic roles, such as Stanley Kowalski and Don Corleone. But he also brought Method acting to the forefront of film work, which is no mean feat. Method acting, by which actors do everything they can to assume the character they are playing, was pioneered by Konstantin Stanislavski in the late 1890’s at the Moscow Art Theatre and brought a naturalism and honesty to the portrayal of characters in tune with the new movements of realism and naturalism on the stage. Brando’s use of Method acting in film was revolutionary. Films are made out of sequence and done in short bits with long waits between shots. There are often numerous takes, and putting two minutes of film together for one scene can literally take all day. For an actor to maintain his character in the Method style requires discipline and concentration beyond that of working through two acts for two hours on the stage. Marlon Brando set the example for many actors on the stage and screen, and while he had an eccentric personality and made his share of flops, he was true to his craft and his art. And he also had the ability to laugh at himself – witness his performance in The Freshman. All in all, he was a great man and his contribution to the art was just as great. The real tragedy is that he did most of his best work fifty years ago.

Saturday, July 3, 2004

The hotel delivers a copy of the National Post to my door every morning. This seems to be Canada’s version of the Wall Street Journal in terms of its editorial content – slightly to the right of Der Volkischer Beobachter. Their editorials are snooty towards the Liberals, they gleefully ran Christopher Hitchens’s spittle-flecked review of Fahrenheit 9/11, they toady up to the Americans (their editorial today on the observance of the Fourth of July was sycophantic), and in today’s edition they reprinted Charles Krauthammer’s defense of Vice President Cheney’s use of the F-bomb. I’m used to seeing suck-up editorials to Bush in the American media, but seeing it in the foreign press is a little disconcerting.

Afternoon: We had a leisurely picnic on the banks of the Avon River and watched the ducks and swans dabbling in the creeks that run around the islands that make up the shore parks. Before lunch we stopped at a bookstore where I avoided spending any money – a first for me, I’m sure. Tonight we’ll be seeing “the Scottish play.” (Why do I not mention the title? Theatre superstitions die hard. Anyone familiar with both Shakespeare and the theatre will know what I’m talking about. Those who aren’t won’t care.)

Late night: The Scottish play was excellent. We saw it in the Festival Theatre, which is located on or near the space where they first performed the plays under the tent. This production had everything a good play should have – intrigue, politics, romance, and good special effects that didn’t overwhelm the characters.

Stratford brings back a lot of memories. The town has grown a lot in the last thirty years, but it’s still maintained its small-town charm. There are still small bookshops where you can browse to your heart’s content or just wander through some of the riverside gardens. This weekend, being a holiday weekend in both the USA and Canada, you’d expect to find large crowds, but it’s not been overwhelming. The theatres have had good turnouts but not full houses, and you can usually find a seat in a good restaurant. And the weather has been great – clear and not too hot.

Sunday, July 4, 2004

Morning: We’re seeing Anything Goes this afternoon before heading home. Before that we’re having lunch at a little restaurant called Bijou.

One of the things that makes this trip fun is not just the theatre but going to some of my parents’ favorite restaurants. They have formed friendships with some of the local restaurateurs, including Jim Morris, the owner of Rundle’s, which is a fantastic place with an amazing menu. We also visited another favorite, The Old Prune (where its name came from I have no idea). These places make going to Stratford as much a festival in the gastronomic sense as they do in seeing the plays.

After the show: The production of Anything Goes was fantastic; probably the best musical I’ve ever seen done there. Of course, having fourth-row center seats didn’t hurt. I have a special affinity for the show, seeing as how it was the last play I was in where I actually “trod the boards.” I played Lord Evelyn Oakleigh in a community theatre production in Harbor Springs, Michigan in July 1995. The guy who played the part in today’s production is a better dancer that I am. Not surprising.

Late that night: We returned home, stopping on the way at Chili’s for a burger – what a change from the food we’ve been getting for the last four days. And back in the USA. There was no line at Customs at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit – a few perfunctory questions, a cursory glance at our passports, and we were back on I-75 going 65 miles per hour instead of 100 km/h. It’s good to be home. Now I just have to find out what kind of mess we have to clean up back here in terms of what Bush and his gang have done while I’ve been gone, and start to plan for next year’s trip.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July.

Welcome to Stratford, Ontario...and since MSN has yet to figure out a way for accounts from the USA to work here, I'm not going to be able to do much blogging without racking up a ton of international calls. Right now I'm routing this through the MSN dial-up number in Toledo, Ohio, and that can't be cheap. Sorry about that, but what can you do, eh?

I'll keep a diary of the shows and my impressions of being in a nice place without having to see pictures of Bush and his minions all over the news. I'll give you an update when I get back to America on Sunday night - the Fourth of July.

Today is Canada Day - the 137th anniversary of the Confederation. I think they treat this day the same way we do the Glorious Fourth - fun celebrations, fireworks, and generally enjoying their life in a free country. (I have never liked the chauvinism we Americans have about "freedom." Canada is, in some ways, more of a democracy than the USA. And they're not so damn smug about it.)

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your week and weekend, and I'll be back with a full report and review of the plays I'll be seeing at the Stratford Festival of Canada.