I'm George Bush, and I Approve of This Message

In fact, I think that it is awesome...

A new ad with Will Ferrell as George Bush. Please, pretty please, send it to every conservative you know.

Sometimes it gets personal...

The comments below on Kerry's speech are a hugely abbreviated and tamed down version of the tirade I originally wrote at three in the morning, reacting, um, shall I say rather strongly to my father actually calling my brother a "*expletive* hate-America liberal because you're opposed to everything this country stands for". An accusation I can say without reserve is entirely false. The depth of my loathing for such abysmally empty and self-righteous rhetoric is apparently without limit, as it renders me actually incapable of expressing myself coherently when I encounter it, which I suspect is its actual purpose. Conservative pundits - the bad kind, the inflammatory kind - seem to live for saying the most outrageous thing possible, just to see sensitive liberals quiver with indignant rage.

What mystifies me most is that my parents are genuinely, truly generous people. Both of them are active in their community, mom is very active in her church and dad works regularly with Habitat for Humanity. There is really nothing they wouldn't do for their kids if they were able.

All of which makes their particularly bigoted, blinkered brand of politics all the more incomprehensible. Without taking a breath, they have no problem at all relegating my brother, who is gay, to second class citizenship - in fact they agree with it wholeheartedly. He's not really gay, after all, it's a lifestyle choice he made, or sometimes this belief shifts somewhat and homosexuality is instead a kind of disease from which he can be cured, possibly by medicine some day or maybe by prayer. Their rationale for the Federal Marriage Amendment is that "well, you're not planning on getting married anyway." As though this were the point, and not that in this and so many other ways, gays are denied basic rights and protections of partnership that heterosexuals take so much for granted they don't even realize they exist. About Kerry, about any political issue really, my parents do nothing but mouth the Fox/RNC party line - there is not one word out of their mouths that you couldn't write for them after reading or listening to Ann or Sean or Rush or Bill. Will they even take the time to watch Kerry speaking, or listening to a word that anyone actually said at the convention to make up their own minds about these things? Will they even, for that matter, pay any degree of actual attention to the actions of their VERY OWN REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT AND HIS ADMINISTRATION? Absolutely not, when they've got their team of reliable conservative filters working in lockstep to reprocess it all in gloriously re-translated patriotic jingoistic form. And naturally, holding our government accountable for their actions is apparently UNPATRIOTIC and marks one as HATING ONE'S COUNTRY (unless of course that government happens to be run by Democrats). I never imagined "democracy" meant "fascism" but I guess that just must mean I'm a REVISIONIST HISTORIAN. It's all extremely frustrating and sad to see that this is what democracy in America has come to: rule by the fingers-in-ears, hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil dittoheads, who no longer even take the time to hear what the other side might actually have to say, and where candidates have to deliberately dumb themselves down in order to gain the trust of large portions of the American electorate. It's all of course exactly how Karl Rove would want it to be.

So thank God the DNC has finally decided it's time to turn this misbegotten political machine around. Yes, I realize, I know, it's all politics, and they have their own self-serving purposes for doing so. But it's been a long long time since I felt so inspired about democracy the way I did hearing Barack Obama (for one small example) and Kerry as well lay it out plain and simple for all to see. It was almost like being a kid again, feeling the glorious promise I first felt when I visited DC as a nine-year-old and first got a feeling (naive and simplistic as it might have been) of the expansive, all-embracing, all-inclusive nature of democracy. And, I hafta say, it's a very good thing to feel.

Kerry Nails It

I thought it was a truly great speech - I was more than just relieved and or surprised, I suddenly for the first time genuinely felt in my bones that this man deserves to be President on his own terms, and certainly deserves it so monumentally more than the man currently in office. Though I liked Gore a lot, I never had as much of a conviction that he was the stuff that presidents were made of. After this speech, my concerns about Kerry have vanished. Most importantly for those of us on the America-loving left, he absolutely and unapologetically threw down the gauntlet and more importantly started taking back the syntax that the Republican party has been so obnoxiously attempting to trademark as their own - patriotism, faith, honor, duty, true deep and genuine love for this amazing country. I was frankly worried I'd get sick about hearing about his service, but when I saw Max Cleland introducing him, I suddenly understood how important it all was, how the RNC and Karl Rove with the aide of its bleaters like Ann Coulter, Rush, and Sean Hannity, and the entire Fox brigade, as well as its dirty tricksters, the kind that would twist in their ad campaigns a patriot who had served, like Max Cleland, into a terrorist-coddling traitor, all of these cynical, so-called, self-proclaimed Christians had started to abuse such truly wonderful words and ideas for the sole cynical and reprehensible purpose of dividing this country firmly along partisan lines. And it was amazing, not just with Kerry's speech but certainly capped by it, to see the Democrats through the entire four days pushing that loathsome pile of rhetorical garbage out the window and onto the heads of the thugs that have propagated it in the first place. Kerry's line about never abusing the most important document in the land, the constitution, for political purposes, was priceless. Win or lose, he and so many of the speakers this week have cleared my head and helped me see the political morass in this country for what it really is. And when was the last time I was genuinely inspired by a political convention like I was by this one? Come to think of it – never.

Riding that Donkey

The big news last night was supposed to be John Edwards speech, which was fine enough, but really ended up being the Rev. Al Sharpton's "answer" to George Bush, which was a phenomenal barn-burner.  I loved when he said something to the effect, "in closing I'd like to say..." and then let loose twice as hard for a good ten more minutes...  No doubt the "we decided to ride this donkey as far as it would take us" line will go down in convention speech history.

NPR fortunately has a lot of the speeches in full, in case anyone missed the big ones (namely Clinton's, Obama's, Edward's, or Sharpton's).  I also liked Kucinich's "I know weapons of mass destruction when I see them" speech.  ("Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.  Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction.  Crime is  a weapon of mass destruction...")

And tonight is the Big One.  Everyone sits with fingers crossed...

More Bad News about Voting Machines

And Florida for that matter.  (The link requires that you sign up for the New York Times, but hey, it's free so you should anyway!)

How in the hell are people going to hold Florida accountable?  It just never seems to stop there....

Barack Obama

Clearly the buzz is all about Barack Obama, and for damn good reason.  If you haven't heard/seen his speech, don't miss it.  Also, here is a transcript of it.  A staggeringly concise and effective speech that may be one of the most straightforwardly all-inclusive speeches I've ever heard from a politician, all the more amazing for having been entirely self-written (unusual to say the least for the majority of politicians).  His leveling of red states and blue states was a brilliant little stroke of E Pluribus Unum genius.  Even a Republican would have been hard pressed to take issue with such a speech (though I'm sure they're doing their damnedest today).  It's been a long long long time since I've seen someone inspire such genuine hope in the prospects for American politics, and even genuine pride in what it means to be an American.  I know that's a lot to throw on to one person, but he seems ready and willing to take on the burden.  And, yes, after just one speech and before he's even served as a U.S. Senator, already everyone is buzzing about the chances of his becoming the first African-American President.   Hell, he's already got my vote...

My Biggest Election Year Fear

Don't miss this editorial by Paul Krugman regarding the threat of paperless electronic voting.  Nothing worries me more than the threat of electronic voting with no paper trail, and nothing convinces me more that something is wrong with it than the stonewalling being done by Republican politicians (most notoriously Jeb Bush) whenever a call is made to do something about them.  It's a simple formula:  it's been determined beyond a doubt that electronic voting machines are faulty and that they can be easily manipulated by a third party with even a modicum of computer knowledge, and there are even now documented cases of just this very thing occurring.  It would therefore seem to be a no-brainer that everyone on both sides of the political fence would have an inherent interest in seeing that something is done about these machines.  And yet, for some reason, it is always Democrats that are calling for something to be done about them, and Republicans that keep saying either that a)there isn't enough time to do anything, or b)that nothing needs to be done.   

Remember that song, Things That Make You Go Hmmm.....?

There is also, of course, the rather more straightforward evidence of the well-known declaration by Walden O'Dell, the very Republican CEO of Diebold - an Ohio-based company that is one of the major makers of electronic-voting machines - that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." 

One would like to imagine that Republicans would like to prove that they can win a Presidential election fair and square, without putting a fix on the process.  But then again....

maybe not.

The Convention Begins

Thanks to our neighbor Vicky, who taped the convention, we were able to watch the major speeches last night, and thank God for her, because, somewhat surprisingly, it was something I'm extremely glad I didn't miss. Clinton as usual amazed me. I can't really remember ever personally seeing a politician who married true wonkishness with an absolute confidence in the power of his oratory the way he does. He knows how to bring things down to their essence - in this case, the essential difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches - in other words, shared responsibility, helping out one another, protecting the environment, providing children with quality education and the uninsured with health care and benefits for veterans, and working with the world community, as opposed to strong-arming our own government and the world and providing tax breaks for the rich. Having Clinton speak of course is a double-edged sword, because you know, everyone knows, that the thought is - yes, he's truly inspiring, he really is, but how can Kerry possibly compete? Everyone holds their breath and waits for the moment of truth...

But the true surprise, and Kelley kept talking about this, was how great Gore sounded. I agree with her that it was possibly the best, most concise, focused, and effective speech I've heard him deliver. One hopes that Kerry sees clear to hiring Gore's speechwriter and humor coach, because whoever they are, they're earning their pay in spades.

Seeing Carter was particularly interesting to me right now since I just finished the Carter section of Bob Woodward's "Shadow", his book about the after-effects of Watergate on all subsequent Presidential administrations (a book I strongly recommend, at least so far). And the Rev. Alston, Kerry's former shipmate on the now legendary swift boat (and yes, as www.jibjab.com suggests, they are going to drive this message of Kerry's service thoroughly through the American skull...) was phenomenal as well. He needs to learn to take a pause now and again, but only because his manner of evangelizing is so powerful that it would be that moment to let the emotion he's evoking escalate in the audience. A true find, and one hopes he's going to be following Kerry around everywhere on the campaign trail.

All in all, a very auspicious beginning to the convention. One can only hope that the message that is getting spoken at the convention gets out into America at large because hearing it articulated, especially by Clinton, made the choice disarmingly obvious.  I can't wait until the debates begin...