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I didn't end up watching Bush's prime time speech, nor did most of this red-state that I live in. Why? The University of Utah football team was playing Texas A&M for their home opener. Since Rick Majerius retired due to poor health, this basketball town has been starved for a winner. The Jazz didn't manage to get into the playoffs this spring, so now everyone's hopes are pinned on the 19th ranked Utes football team. And they crushed those Aggies, 41-21, using mostly backups in the 4th quarter. Supposidly 35 million people saw this on ESPN.

Anyway, I read some of the line from his speech and it seemed somewhat stirring but mostly the same old vacuous promises. Slate's Saletan was right on the money saying the speech was asking people to give Bush another shot by ignoring or blaming someone else for the last 3.5 years. Bush says he wants accountability in schools (which must be why he hired a Education Secretary whose city defrauded students of an education by cooking the books to have low dropout numbers...Houston Miracle indeed) but none for himself appearantly.

And if you follow nutbar ex-Democrat Zell Miller's logic, we shouldn't even be having an election since there is a war on. Gee, I think FDR had elections, didn't Lincoln too, and that was during the Civil War. In short, I am glad I didn't watch, I might have thrown stuff at the TV.

This weekend I am watching the media sell Bush landslide via one suspecious poll by TIME that has him up 11 when 2 other polls have him up 3 or so points. Don't loose sleep yet, DC Democrats. Instead of whinning to your media sources, get off your butt and campaign for Kerry-Edwards.

Bill Clinton has an excuse. All those trips to McDonald's finally caught up with the poor guy. My prayers and best wishes are with him and the rest of the Clinton family. George W. Bush was classy yesterday, by the way, to share his prayers and wishes with this hard-right wing crowd at a rally. Reports of boos were false, although the right-wing shock jocks basically said Clinton was trying to step on Bush's post-convention bounce. Yeah I am sure that he would stoop to open heart double bypass surgery to reduce Dubya's bounce. That is about as convincing as saying Vince Foster was killed by the Clinton's...oh wait they did say that. Maybe that was one of Rush's drug induced statements.

Anyway, I should get going, I have basketball and homework over this long weekend. Aloha!

MIA

sorry loyal readers. I have been derelict in my duties of commentary and general posting because I was so damned tired yesterday. Wednesday's start at 7:35 AM for me and end at 4:45 PM. I know I shouldn't be complaining, many people work much harder than I do.

I tried to watch the convention, I really did. But it just makes me ill to hear them spouting their anger like that. There is no vision for the future or policy critique, just the twisting of roll calls or statements to say that you can't trust John Kerry. Why is their convention about Kerry, shouldn't it be about Bush? The only nice thing they say about him is about Terrorism and "moral clarity" some how insinuating that Democrats are immoral. They don't talk about Jobs, or Healthcare, or Fiscal policy or environmental policy or foreign policy (other than the War on Terror and Iraq).

Maybe Bush tonight will say something about why he should be reelected. He claims in his ads that he knows "exactly where to lead this country" but hasn't felt inclined to share that direction with us, until tonight. If it is the same direction we have been going in (my bet), the majority of Americans believe it is the Wrong Track. According to media sources and Matt Stoller's infiltration, Bush is going to appeal to married white women big time, primarily with "Flextime" legislation.

All I have to say is, too little too late. Democrats have pushed for this kind of thing for ages. I believe it was GOPers who tried to block paid family leave, upon request of their big business friends. Flex-Time is already the norm in many companies and the need to such legislation is not as dire. Simply put, it is classic Bush: a photo-op.

Republicans can talk all they want about "Family Values" (which is code for Right-Wing Christian beliefs) but if they don't start valuing families, there isn't much behind it. We aren't going to put prayer in schools (unless you count the Pledge of Allegiance), creationism, abstinence-only/no sex education, and so in all of America's schools. That is not what these married white women will go for. The ones that do are already in Bush's camp.

Democrats of course need to minimize the trend of married white women voting with their spouses, who tend to go 60-40 GOP and turn out the unmarried women in droves (because they are like 80-20 Democrats). I agree with those GOP pollsters that Women are the key to this election. Whether they act like sheep to their NASCAR husbands, or whether they want their kids (and their friends kids) to get out of this mess in Iraq will decide who is president.

Incidently, "W" doesn't stand for Women. "W" stands for Walker, and George Walker Bush stands for Corporate Cronism. In fact, he is their poster-child.

Awarded for Attendence

It was "demeaning to the nation," Senator Dole argued at the GOP 1996 convention, to be governed by people "who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned."

And now he is supporting Bush? Bush has made his whole life about making appearances, or in the case of the TX National Guard, not making them. This man is staking his reelection (according to last night's speakers) on showing up to ground zero a couple days after 9/11, despite Secret Service grumbles and giving our troops a fake turkey last year for Thanksgiving. Or getting Pakistan to join us on the War on Terror, which he decided yesterday on the Today Show isn't winnable (he had as recently as the 21st said it was winnable). That is all pretty pathetic.

Slate's Will Staletan makes basically this point in his piece. But the meta-point here is that anybody could have comforted the rescue workers on 9/14/01 or given troops fake turkey last year or even (with a half-decent State Department) gotten Pakistan to join us in the War on Terror.

But it takes a real brave man to send others off to an optional war waged under knowingly false (or at the very least, wantonly misleading) pretenses. Soon, one thousand American soldiers will have died because of George W. Bush's actions. Sure, Saddam is an evil, crazy man. But Osama Bin Laden (and Al-Qaeda in general) and Mullah Omar (and the rest of the Taliban) are much more pressing threats to this country than Saddam ever was, and yet they are still at large. Moreover, they are in a much stronger position to recover even if Bush manages to find them, because they have had 3 years to delegate control and set up contingency plans should one of them die/get captured.

If anything, Al Qaeda is harder to pin down (maybe not stronger) than they were before the War in Afghanistan, because we pulled out troops and intelligence services to go find imaginary stuff on Saddam and wage war on him.

America, let's not reward George W. Bush for attendence; let's punish him for his inattention to fighting the terrorists and truly keeping our country safe.

Protesting in Code

To Paraphrase the Comic Book guy, "Nerdiest sign ever." [courtesy of Edgewise]

GOP Convention, day 1

Wow, I am very unimpressed.

I didn't get a chance to watch Senator McCain, but I am watching Rudy and it is so very sad.

There is nothing of substance in his speech; here is the formula: 9-11, 9-11, terrorism, Saddam Hussien, John Kerry flip flops (with the entire audience laughing at Sen Kerry), you can't trust Kerry to keep you safe, 9-11, terrorism, amen. (oh they ran 25 minutes over)

There is nothing about what Bush has to offer for his second term or any domestic policies, or any policies either. Basically, it was to defend Bush's foriegn policy. There was nothing positive at all. It had the feel of a high school teen angst movie, where the pretty-ugly girl is being made fun of by the pretty girl who will ultimately get her comeuppance (maybe I was influenced by the movie I watched the last few minutes of Jawbreaker). I have also decided that when push comes to shove, GOPer are fundamentally immature. Oh and by the way, a "Nation of Courage" is a terrible slogan; "Hope is on the Way" actually is positive and makes sense.

How is George W. Bush going to convince Middle America to vote for him? By making Kerry seem even worse than him? CNN tried hard to say nice things, but I could see from their body language that they thought it was a terrible evening (0ne shook their head). The only thing they managed to say honestly was that Rudy went on too long. Bill Schneider is talking about how the choice of NYC was a big mistake because it shows how many people disapprove of Bush for all his behavior and the failure of Bush to live up to 2000 pledge to be a "uniter not a divider"

Democrats were sad that Kerry muzzled the Bush bashing, but it seem Bush isn't holding his crowd back. When Democrats critiquted Bush, it was his policy, not his character, unlike GOPers.

My friends at the convention (the bloggers) have basically the same impression. But you should still read them because they can tell you about the protestors, while I just have to read their blogs. But I having trouble suppressing vomiting after watching that travesty of a convention.

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