By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
September 3, 2004, 5:20 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
An
undecided voter reacts to Bush's speech: Until he screwed up his
courage and chose freedom and freelancing, blogger Dave
Copeland ("Cope") was a business reporter and columnist at
the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife.
His take today:
Bush's speech: Bush had me through the early portions of his speech
-- a lot of his proposed economic policies make sense and would seem to get
government out of the way of job creation. He spoke in far more specifics
than Kerry -- which was one of my big problems with Kerry -- and saved his
candidate bashing for the second half of the speech.
But by 10:43 he was losing me, reverting back to that goofy looking man
who wanted to protect me, any unborn children I may have, and any gay friends
I may know, from myself. And his blind insistence that we will prevail in
Iraq -- well, this is where he suddenly became more like Kerry, abandoning
specifics and talking about past accomplishments.
He completely skirted around the Patriot Act. And in the end, he presented
himself as a man with strong convictions about his personal values and beliefs.
The only problem is that he is a man with enough power to force those personal
values and beliefs on all of us.
The bottom line? After two convention speeches, a summer of sniping and
the revelation of even more flagrant flaws with the two-party system, I still
feel as if this election is more about choosing the lesser of two evils and
staying the course, as opposed to choosing a leader and making the country
as good as it once was. ...
There's more, and it's interesting and thoughtful. While Kerry can get more
specific, Bush won't undo much of what bothers Dave above: His personal
religious views becoming the country's laws.
Dave's conclusion: "...let's hope the debates clear some things up for
me."
The first presidential debate is
slated for Thursday, Sept. 30 at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.
Jim Lehrer, executive editor of PBS's "The NewsHour," will moderate
Link
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Related: Bush's
camp may cut 1 debate: The Arizona Republic reports today,
NEW YORK -- Could Tempe find itself the odd location out for the upcoming
presidential debates?
President Bush's campaign won't say for sure whether he will agree to the
three debates proposed by the independent Commission on Presidential Debates,
or if a Republican strategist was right this week when he said the Bush campaign
would agree to only two debates.
The commission, without a formal agreement by the Bush camp, set debates
for Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Fla.; Oct. 8 in St. Louis; and Oct. 13 in Tempe.
A vice presidential debate between incumbent Dick Cheney and Democratic presidential
nominee John Kerry's running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, was
set for Oct. 5 in Cleveland.
GOP strategist Scott Reed was quoted by the Reuter news agency this week
as saying the Bush camp's position is that "two debates are sufficient
and will not dominate the entire fall schedule."...
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Primary sources: I thought some of what I heard last night had been
promised at the last GOP convention. C-Span showed
this video last night, which is why the same programs proposed in Bush's
2004 speech (text)
sounded familiar. Also on C-Span, we got to watch John Kerry talk sports
until CNN picked him up, then he launched into the Kerry-Edwards
Post-Republican Convention Campaign Rally speech in earnest.:
Here are some excerpts from George W. Bush's 2000
acceptance speech (text).
Social security: America has a strong economy and a surplus. We
have the public resources and the public will, even the bipartisan opportunities
to strengthen Social Security and repair Medicare.
Social Security has been called the third rail of American politics, the
one you're not supposed to touch because it might shock you. But if you
don't touch it, you cannot fix it.
To the seniors in this country, you earned your benefits, you made your
plans, and President George W. Bush will keep the promise of Social Security,
no changes, no reductions, no way.
For younger workers, we will give you the option, your choice, to put
part of your payroll taxes into sound, responsible investments.
This will mean a higher return on your money in over 30 or 40 years, a
nest egg to help your retirement or to pass on to your children.
When this money is in your name, in your account, it's just not a program,
it's your property.
Now is the time to give American workers security and independence that
no politician can ever take away.
Taxes: The last time taxes were this high as a percentage of our
economy, there was a good reason; we were fighting World War II.
Today our high taxes fund a surplus. Some say that growing federal surplus
means Washington has more money to spend.
But they've got it backwards. The surplus is not the government's money;
the surplus is the people's money.
I will use this moment of opportunity to bring common sense and fairness
to the tax code....
On principle, no one in American should have to pay more than a third
of their income to the federal government, so we will reduce tax rates
for everyone in every bracket.
Now is the time to reform the tax code and share some of the surplus with
the people who pay the bills.
War: A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of
Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just,
the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming.
The surplus is long gone and the deficit will dog us for years to come,
so it's unlikely that much or any of the domestic programs proposed last
night will be funded.
Link
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Social security and you and me: With the stock market bolstered by
our automatic 401k payments (but not consistently growing), CDs paying less
than 2 percent and straight savings accounts even less, I
don't
want
to fund my own retirement. There isn't any way for "the little guy" to
turn a nest egg into a cozy retirement at these rates..
With my luck, I'd run out of money at 68 (the victim of a sinking stocket
market and anemic CD returns), yet live to be 100 -- which is exactly the
fear that Social Security promised to ease.
Here's
an excerpt from a piece by Stanford professor Michele Landis Dauber,
author of The
Sympathetic State, offering historical background on Social Security's
history as a form of "disaster relief":
(Franklin D.) Roosevelt saw that the political logic of disaster relief
could also apply to temporal risk-spreading: because no one knows what
economic hazards might occur in the period of their own old age, that uncertainty
provides a powerful motivation to support a general program of old age
disaster relief. As the New Yorker editorialized in 1936 in favor of Social
Security, "fear accumulates in a man's life, like fluff balls in his
pocket, and the security program will, for multitudes of people, wipe out
the long, insistent dread of eventual poverty. This, not its monetary relief,
is its most important benefit to the race." That fear was particularly
acute in times of large-scale economic transformation (then, from agriculture
to manufacturing) and attendant social dislocation.
Obviously, the "hazards and vicissitudes of life" that Social
Security guards against are just as threatening today as they were in 1934.
The transition from a manufacturing to a service-oriented economy, globalization,
the outsourcing of middle class jobs, the rising cost of higher education
and housing that is depleting the ability of the middle class to save for
retirement, fears of being a burden to children, lingering illness, and
extended widowhood – all of these things strike the same chords of
panic today that they did in 1934. The market is still a potential disaster
for those without time to wait out its fluctuations. As Christian Weller,
senior economist at the Center for American Progress, pointed out in his
June 15, 2004, testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging,
even those retirees who have the means to invest for their own retirement
face widely divergent outcomes based on the state of the equity and debt
markets during their working lives and retirement. Compounding this uncertainty
is the potential "disaster" of outliving one's retirement savings – the
timing of one's own death is usually as difficult to forecast in advance
as the state of the economy.
Link
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Is
free municipal wifi good? David
Weinberger blogs some pushback on yesterday's post about Philadelphia's
proposal (Philadelphia
is considering investing $10M to blanket 135 square miles with wifi coverage).
Link
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Dueling festivals: Once
upon a time, Labor Day Weekend meant the Cajun & Bluegrass Festival at
Steppingstone Ranch in Escoheag; that gave way to the Rhythm
&
Roots
Festival, which moved to Ninigret Park in Charlestown, and this year includes
not only cajun, zydeco and bluegrass, but also jamgrass, reggae, and NRBQ. Donna
the Buffalo, pictured at right,
is the host band. The
music starts at 5 p.m. today ($25), noon on Saturday and Sunday ($40 each day;
$100 for all three days, $130 with camping).
Meanwhile,
the (First Annual) R.I.
Reggae Festival moves into Steppingstone Ranch in Escoheag for one
day, Saturday from 1-10 p.m..Tanya Stephens, "the reigning Queen of Dancehall,"
is the headliner. $30 gets you in.
Link
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Added two new blogs to the Garden
Blogs page. Enjoy the long weekend, and
good luck, Florida!
September 2, 2004, 5:55 p.m.
Alt-convention coverage: bloggers, The Daily Show
Convention
links | RNC
convention blogging | DNC
convention bloggers (sometimes) blogging RNC bloggers
A sample of some of the more thoughtful blogging at the RNC:
W
is for Women: GOP convention blogger Matt Stoller:
"The Bush campaign is not anywhere in the hemisphere of where these women
are…" Leslie Sanchez, political analyst for Bush/Cheney
I spent three and a half hours in a training session for grassroots leaders
of the GOP, hosted by GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's group that led the Republican
Congressional takeover in 1994. The audience was full of ardent supporters
of the Republican party, mostly elderly women who loved organizing and wanted
to improve upon their already ample expertise and fervent belief-system.
Either lovely old ladies or nasty grandmas, depending. Anyway, the most interesting
part of the day was a presentation by Leslie Sanchez, Bush/Cheney advisor
and
frequent commentator on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN, on how to win women voters.
According to Sanchez, women voters make up the majority of registered voters
in every battleground state, and they are angst-ridden, scared, tolerant,
cynical,
distrusting, and want and fear change. They are also the key to this election.
...The bottom line here is that the President's messaging strategy so far
has been a failure with women, and women will decide this election. This
Convention is an attempt to fix this political problem, but the only real
solution is to scare women into voting for him, because Bush has no real
successes that he can credibly point to (and that women believe).
Stoller does a good job with this, but the women
we've seen on stage -- Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Bush and the embarrassing Bush
daughters -- aren't doing anything to offset the parade of rich, angry white
men having snide fun while not addressing the concerns of average
Americans.
Even the President, speaking tonight about his vision, can legitimately be
asked why the vision hasn't already taken form, given that his party controls
both houses of Congress.
If the vision centers on privatizing Social Security,
as early leaks suggest, that will do nothing to reassure those whose security
in old age derives from the promise that the government will keep them from
the poorhouse even if the stock market and savings interest
rates
let
them down.and their secure
job
moves
to
India
If the face of the Republican party is a smirk surrounded by purple-heart
bandages, expect a Kerry win Nov. 2.
Nobody who voted for Al Gore is
likely to vote for Bush this time, but a lot of 2000 Bush supporters -- fiscal
conservatives, gay Republicans such as Andrew
Sullivan, people living on fixed incomes, people of faith
who aren't so sure that the
voice
speaking
to George Bush and molding
American
policy is actually the voice of God -- are likely to stay home or vote for
Kerry.
Case in point: Albatross? from the convention blog The
Command
Post:
The Washington
Post reminds us that George Bush may still finish his first
term with fewer Americans earning a paycheck than when his term begain.
Spin: Tacitus at redstate.org:
It's like
Home Depot in here. By: tacitus · Section: Red State at
the RNC
Herein, an exchange overheard at one of the canned blogger events here in the
RNC bloggers' ghetto. Read on.
Michael Mack, 35-year old chairman of the "Young" Republicans,
was trotted out to speak with all the bloggers. As is its wont, RS studiously
ignored
the prepackaged offering until our ears pricked up at this exchange:
Mack: "I thought Schwarzenegger was positively Reaganesque."
"Wait a minute -- you're describing a man who disagrees with nearly
every one of Reagan's positions as Reaganesque?"
"Yes! He was Reaganesque!"
"How is that Reaganesque?"
"He was charismatic! Dynamic!"
"By that criteria, Barack Obama was Reaganesque!"
Pause. Frozen grin. Then, turning away from one of the bloggers with whom
he was brought out to speak: "Hey, I'm doing an interview here."
Barack Obama, who is running for Senate
from Illinois against Alan Keyes, gave the keynote speech at the Democratic
National Convention, the role played by wild-eyed Zell Miller last night.
Powerline: Too much and too little?
Tonight was attack John Kerry night. The two men sent to do the job were Zell
Miller and Vice President Cheney. Miller's attack was probably the most hard-hitting
I've heard at a convention -- certainly the most hard-hitting since Hubert
Humphrey laid into Barry Goldwater in 1964. The Vice President's attack was
typical low-key Cheney....
Nonetheless, from a strategic standpoint, I think it might have been more
effective to find a happy medium between Miller's fire and brimstone attack
and Cheney's monotonous speech (Rudy Giuliani comes to mind). Don't misunderstand.
I loved Miller's speech, and why not? It hammered a guy I don't like and reminded
me of the old days. That's all it takes to satisfy me. And if Miller didn't
energize the base, Bush should concede tomorrow. But will this speech convince
the undecided to vote for Bush? Was it too strident for amodern audience? I
don't know, but I'm a little worried.
Cheney's speech, I fear, was simply too boring until the end. He seemed
to be going through the motions during much of it. Some may say that this
is just
Cheney's style, but I remember him being more effective -- more into it --
in his 2000 acceptance speech. Cheney did warm up towards the end when he
zeroed in on John Kerry. In fact, he got in a few zingers. I just hope that
America
was still tuned in by then
Finally, from
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing (who's not
in NYC):
Joshua Dickens says, "Webzine
founder and filmmaker Ryan Junnell is doing this documentary installation
on the RNC and managed to find his way not only into the convention
center but also onto the news with this 'Girly Man for Arnold' sign. He's selling
it on eBay to hopefully help fund the project and get his producer
out of jail."
It's up to $61 now. The auction ends Wednesday.
Link
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Grampa
on The Daily Show: At Random
Abstract (sometimes not safe for work)
My mom sent me an email this morning, my grandfather was interviewed in
New York
about the GOP Convention. It turns out is was the Daily Show, and my wife
thinks
she saw him in the commercial. Stephen Colbert interviewed him and in the
commercial clip I guess my Grandfather says "You are a terrible reporter!"
You can read his email he sent out about the encounter here.
He used to be reporter and is a retired writer.
By trickery, perhaps a star is born By Ernie Dickinson...
It's worth clicking the link.
Last night, Stewart showed a video satire his crew put together called "George
W. Bush: Words speak louder than actions, pretending it was a link
of an official campaign film" A
viewer put the clip up (no streaming server, so you have to wait for it
to download
before
it starts playing).
And, on Nightline, Ted Koppel explained the journalistic convention that leads
to "he said / she said" news, which Stewart (and many others have
criticized) for allowing two sides to speak with equal weight and no debunking,
even if one of them is full of it.
Koppel said the President could make an aside in a speech accusing Koppel
of being a pedophile and a drug dealer, and the stories would lead with that.
(Koppel didn't say so, but there might also be an always-lame "Koppel
denies the accusations.") And it would take a week for the truth to catch
up.
At that point, the segment ended without Stewart getting an opportunity for
the follow-up question, "Why wouldn't the reporter add 'The president
offered no evidence and longtime Koppel associates say the charges are absurd."
I hope the growing friendship between Stewart and Koppel (Koppel appeared
on The Daily Show Tuesday night to plug Stewart's Wednesday Nightline visit)
might lead to Stewart's show slipping into the ABC timeslot when Koppel retires.
Link
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Religious
Left Says It's Ready for Major Political Push: I was startled to
see this headline. I thought the word religious was glued to the word "right."
Here's the Newhouse lead,
NEW YORK -- With a full-page ad in the New York Times, a flashlight-illuminated
protest on Broadway and a plea from rock star Bono for spiritually motivated,
poverty-fighting activism, the religious left has sent a message to the presidential
candidates and the voters during the Republican Convention.
After years of impotence, their movement is back, progressive religious leaders
say.
While it is hard to tell if that assertion has real political muscle behind
it, political analysts on the right as well as the left agree that the movement
appears determined to make the case that God is not a Republican.
Link
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|
|
| Ricky Williams,
when he had dreads, when he played for the Dolphins, before he walked
away from the game. |
Run Ricky Run is both the
website of former Miami Dolphin Ricky Williams and the
headline of a story Fred Gardner writes about Williams and the NFL system,
All NFL players get hurt," says veteran AP football reporter Dave Goldberg. "The
beating you take is horrendous." Goldberg calls Williams "a throwback
to the '60s, a free spirit, very bright. When he was at Texas he decided
he wanted to get to know Doak Walker, the old SMU halfback, and they became
friends. It was an interesting pairing... Ricky is really atypical. The professional
football environment is -let's not call it fascist, but it's the military
mindset, and the players buy into it." Goldberg recalls an NFL executive
he admired, George Young, deciding to shock everybody at an owners' meeting
by announcing that he was a Democrat. When he heard about Williams's retirement,
Goldberg says, he recalled a comment by Young, who was the Giants' general
manager: "Never draft a guy who's too smart."
including quotes from Williams' journal, such as,
[After meeting the great running back Jim Brown] "He told me the other
day, 'You are no mystery to me. I knew you from the time we met.' We talked
a lot about athletes using the voice that sports gives them. Jim is really
down on some athletes for not using theirs, and so am I. Jim says we are
just like slaves who don't use the voice because we're too interested in
making money for ourselves and taking care of ourselves chasing that all
mighty dollar. Instead of a better existence for everyone...
and,
"The marketing lady from the NFL called and asked if I wanted to do
it [a VISA commercial for which another participant would be paid three times
as much]... Me, thinking I was in the top echelon of players in the NFL...
the marketing lady explained that I wasn't there yet. We got into an argument
about the top 3 selling jerseys in the NFL. I started to realize that I don't
ever want to be there if that means acting the way she wants me to, or anyone
else wants me to. If I get there the way I want, being myself, then I can
be proud of it, but I'm not going to be proud of it if I get there behaving
the way someone else thinks I should."
AP: Ricky
Williams says he's going to travel to India for a couple of months
Thanks to my Canadian correspondent Eric Lilius for the pointer.
Link
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Wireless in the air: AP reports,
Philly
Considers Wireless Internet for All:
For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square
miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.
The ambitious plan, now in the works, would involve placing hundreds, or
maybe thousands of small transmitters around the city — probably atop
lampposts. Each would be capable of communicating with the wireless networking
cards that now come standard with many computers.
Once complete, the network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere
radio waves can travel — including poor neighborhoods where high-speed
Internet access is now rare.
And the city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs
far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers, said
the city's chief information officer, Dianah Neff...
And,
Amsterdam
Start-Up to Offer WiFi Internet Citywide:
Amsterdam's Web surfers could soon be liberated from their home computers
and Internet cafes, with plans by a start-up firm to make their city the
first European capital where laptops can hook up anywhere to the Web.
HotSpot Amsterdam launched a wireless computer network on Monday with a
supercharged version of the WiFi technology that is used to turn homes, airports,
hotels and cafes into Web-connected "hot spots."
The first seven base stations are up and running, connecting historic areas
that date back to the 13th century, while the entire city center will be
covered by 40 to 60 antennas within three months, HotSpot Amsterdam founder
Carl Harper said.
"We'll go on to cover all of Amsterdam with 125 base stations. The
idea is to prove to the big boys that it can be done, and that consumers
can live with a mobile phone and mobile Internet. The landline is dead," he
said. Many computer makers build WiFi chips and access cards into their products
as a standard feature.
...HotSpot Amsterdam charges 4.95 euros ($5.98) a day or 14.95 euros a month
for a connection of 256 kilobits per second, equivalent in price and speed
to a low-end home broadband connection, while 24.95 euros a month will buy
a connection twice that fast.
Link
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Hurricane
Fleeing from Frances: Buzz
Bruggeman in Orlando, Fla., writes (Here
we
go again...),
Living through a hurricane less than three weeks ago, followed by about 10
miserable days of either no power or AC, and then no AC, the prospect of another
hurricane just doesn't seem quite fair....
Tonight the weather guys who got caught napping the last go around have become
the rock stars of local TV.
While the Republican convention has not been pre-empted, I dare say that no
one is paying much attention. Tonight when I came back from picking up some
copies, the lines at the gas stations were long. Someone later told me that
batteries were in short supply and one grocery store was out of bottled water.
...Wednesday I need to be in San Diego for DemoMobile! I just spoke to Delta,
and they do have a plane leaving early. So, do I exit stage left, or hang around
to enjoy the storm?
Californian Doc Searls got a call from Buzz -- he's on his way.
Fleeing to Frances: Ryan Towell blogged
Hurricane Charley for WeatherBug
and,
according to his blog, he
and fellow WeatherBug meteorologist Stephanie Blozy have flown from WeatherBug's
home in Gaithersburg,
Md., to Jacksonville, Fla., and are now driving south on I-95 to
meet the storm.
To the moon? Lou
Josephs (creds) blogs,
The entire US Space Shuttle Fleet, all 3 of them, are in the hangar at the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The hanger was built in the 70's that means
it can
only withstand winds of up to 115 miles an hour sustained with gusts to 123.
That was code before Hurricane Andrew. There is no way to move them to safety.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBong has more on this:
Kennedy Space Center employees were sent home leaving the Space Shuttle
Orbiters to fend for themselves..The folks on Space.com's
message board are
keeping watch. "Shuttle_guy" sez "We
are securing the facility and the Shuttle Orbiters for the storm. For everything
up to a category IV hurricane we have a "ride out" crew on the base
during the storm to do what they can safely do to protect the Flight hardware.
However for category IV and V the hardware is on it's own. No one will be on
the KSC property for this storm which is expected to remain a strong Cat. IV." According
to "najaB" all three orbiters are in the Orbiter Processing Facility
(OPF) which is the least protected of KSC facilities. Most ominously "najaB" reports
that "...in the original plan, the Orbiters weren't supposed to be in
the OPF during a storm - they're supposed to be transferred over to ride
out the
storm in the [40-year-old Vehicle Assembly Building]. I guess nobody ever
thought that all the Orbiters would be immovable in the OPF at the same time
that KSC
would be staring down the barrel of a Cat 4 storm..."
Here's the link I keep checking.
August 31, 2004, 6:20 p.m.
Convention
links | RNC
convention blogging | DNC
convention bloggers (sometimes) blogging RNC bloggers at The
Tank and beyond
Reuters/Robert Galbraith
|
| Texas delegate
Pat Peale wears a bandage decorated with a purple heart on her
chin during the first day of
the Republican National Convention to mock the three Purple Heart ribbons
awarded to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry in Vietnam.
Peale,
former Cooke County Republican
Chair and vice president of the Cooke County Republican Women, was quoted
as saying she had gotten a purple heart earlier in the day 'swimming a
river I think it was.' |
Delegates' purple-heart bandages diminish the wounded, and themselves: If
Pat Peale's chin becomes the enduring image from the Republican National Convention,
blame Morton
C. Blackwell.
AP reports,
The bandages were handed out by Morton Blackwell, a longtime GOP activist
from Virginia, with the message: "It was just a self-inflicted scratch,
but you see I got a Purple Heart for it."
Blackwell is Republican
National Committeeman from Va., and a member of the Council
for National Policy; he was a cofounder, with Rev. Jerry Falwell, of
The Moral Majority, and Special Assistant
to the
President
under
Ronald
Reagan.
Blackwell did
not serve in the military, according to his
biography at The Leadership Institute, which he founded in 1979
and still leads..
The
Media Research Center ("Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996") is snarky
about the reaction of network correspondents to the display, even as it
reports how casual was the disrespect for the Purple Heart: CNN
and ABC Aghast Over Purple Heart Band-Aids Mocking Kerry:
(ABC's George) Stephanopoulos, on the floor with a delegate wearing a 101st
Airborne hat, with a band-aid on his face which ABC zoomed in on: "Well,
I'm gonna have Tucker Watkins explain it. He's a delegate from Virginia,
and you're wearing
this band-aid on your cheek with a little purple heart on it. Tell us what
that's about."
A playful Watkins responded: "I woke up this morning and I shaved myself
and I cut myself accidentally, and I decided since I had that little accident,
I needed a purple heart. So I wrote up a certification and awarded it to myself." ...
...(ABC anchor) Peter Jennings turned to Newt Gingrich: "Did you squirm
a little when you saw the guy wearing the purple heart." Gingrich wasn't
so appalled: "No.
I think it's funny..."
Clyde Haberman, writing in the New York Times last week (Duty
Done, Medals
Won, War Rages On), notes,
...There has been a lot of talk about medals and who did what long ago
in Vietnam, notably John F. Kerry, who also once put himself in harm's way.
It is perhaps worth noting that some scheduled convention speakers and other
leading Republicans were of draft age during that war, men like Tom DeLay,
J. Dennis Hastert, Rudolph W. Giuliani, George E. Pataki, Trent Lott and
Newt Gingrich, to name a few. Theorists like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle
and William J. Bennett may be in New York, too.
One way or another, all avoided military service when it was their turn....
The New York Daily News reports,
GOP bigwigs put the screws on a Virginia delegate mocking John Kerry's war
record last night after Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat, blew up at the Republican
convention and demanded that President Bush put a stop to the attacks....
National GOP leaders first said they knew nothing of the bandages, which
popped up on the arms and faces of delegates at the convention last night.
Rangel, at the convention for a TV appearance, called an impromptu press
conference with frowning Republicans around him, said Democratic National
Committee spokesman Matt Bennett. "He demanded that President Bush put
a stop to this outrageous and disgraceful behavior," said Bennett.
GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie later said he spoke to Blackwell and no more bandages
would be handed out.
These aren't protesters in the streets, "anarchists": These are official
delegates and GOP party leaders, during their televised pitch to the nation
to continue their control of the
White
House
and Congress, making fun of awards for wounds incurred by
our troops.
Delegates like Pat Peale may be the only purple-heart wearers in history to
display the award in advance of shooting themselves in the foot.
In the midst of a scripted convention during an unpopular war that has officially
claimed 974 American lives and resulted in some 3,700 purple hearts being awarded
to its wounded, this Mad Magazine gigglefest by GOP leaders recalls nothing
so much as the John
Lennon line,
"But
the one
thing
you can't hide
is
when you're
crippled
inside."
Related: Ex-Viet Cong Soldier Recalls Swift Boats
Link
to this item | Comment
 |
Fundraiser
for change: Duke
Robillard leads
an all-star blues band last night at the Hi-Hat in Providence as Mark
Voigt and Chris Marco of Providence swing dance. In the photo below,
Voigt, left, sits with
fellow dancers Christine Clarion of Charlestown, Marco, and Brian
Hull, also of Providence. Despite a suggested donation of $20 and competition
from the GOP convention and Monday Night Football, the event drew around
200
people
and raised
$4,000
for America
Coming Together, the same organization that will benefit from the
Bruce Springsteen Vote for Change tour. Pianist Mark Taber organized
the musicians for the benefit.
|
|
As
I entered the Hi-Hat, camera in hand, I introduced myself as a Journal
reporter, and Leila Seneca, of Fall River, Mass.,
at right, overheard me and
introduced herself with, "I read your blog every day!"
It's more
than nice to meet a reader, to put a face on the email.
|
 |
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NPR:
All Songs Considered: Political
Satire and Song. Hear the show, and/or scroll down the page to hear
some songs.
August 30, 2004, 6:32 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Two convention questions: Why are Rudolph Giuliani
and John McCain scheduled to speak tonight opposite Monday Night Football?
Thursday, the Jacksonville Jaguars
play the New England Patriots on Fox at 6:45 (Ch. 11 here), which
will probably end -- barring overtime -- just before George Bush's acceptance
speech.
Will John Kerry attend the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War "Vigil
for the Fallen" Thursday in Union Square Park in NYC?
The Vigil will take place from dawn to dusk with the display of the Iraq Memorial
Wall and part of the Eyes Wide Open boots exhibit in remembrance of those killed
in the current conflict as well as the Stonewalk memorial for unknown civilian
casualties of war.
There will be speakers and musical performances at 12 Noon and 5 PM with
a reading of the names throughout the day.
Quote: Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, writing at
MSNBC'S Hardblogger (with
Joe Trippi, David Shuster, Ron Reagan, et al)
New York is an armed camp. Street closures change by the minute. But inside
the hermetically sealed convention, you'd never know what is happening on the
streets.
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RNC
Diary of a Strip-Club Waitress: The Village Voice hosts a unique
convention blogger:
I work as a clothed cocktail waitress at a strip club on Manhattan's far
West Side. I can't reveal the name of the club, or its exact location,
because I don't want to get fired, so let's just say it's one of several
upscale topless venues that have sprung up in recent years along Eleventh
and Twelfth avenues. It's not far from Madison Square Garden and, this
week, the GOP convention.
Nothing too racy today, but there's no way to know where she's going with
this, so let's call it NSFW. (Not Safe For Work).
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Voices from the march to nowhere: Tom Engelhardt covered yesterday's
demonstration for
Asia Times and for
his own blog. After an introductory top, he writes,
. In the course of perhaps six hours on my feet (from the first gathering
moments downtown until I peeled off at 34th street and Broadway and headed
for Central Park), I did my best to talk to as many people as possibly in a
crowd that, though predominantly white and young, was nothing if not varied.
Since articles on demonstrations, whether in the mainstream or the alternate
press, tend to be short on the voices of the actual demonstrators -- and since
almost to a person those I talked to were thoughtful and articulate about their
decisions to demonstrate -- I thought I might offer their voices as best I
could catch them, perhaps a tad telescoped by my limited ability to scribble
stenographically.
What follows is the companion to the images of the C-Span coverage: The voices
of those who marched: The Republican, high-school student, bank audit manager,
marshalmarshal, north dakota for peace, puppeteer, designer family, problem
solvers, labradoodle, anesthesiologist, vet, lawyer, defense-industry worker,
woman of justice, Sister of Charity, outreach worker.
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Hurricane Frances: This is depressing. An Atlantic hurricane roars
slowly
toward Florida. Ot it could turn right and come this way.
Scary
5-day forecast map is from Weather Underground.
We empty store shelves of bread and milk at the first hint of a storm, but
I learned something new about hurricane preparations from Florida bloggers
after Charley hit:
Get cash
before
the ATMs
run out of
money.
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Manifesto: "Last Thursday, my organization, People Reluctant To Kill for an
Abstraction, orchestrated an overwhelming show of force around the globe.
"At precisely 9 in the morning, working with focus and stealth, our entire
membership succeeded in simultaneously beheading no one...."
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The
Incredible String Band reunion tour: "Seminal UK avant-folk group
the Incredible String Band is preparing to tour the US for the first time
in three
decades.
The group
melds sitars, guitars, banjos, and ouds with bluegrass, Celtic melodies, and
classic 1960s psychedelia."
Takes me back to 1968, a bottle of Vin Rouge Superior and The
Hangman's Beautiful Daughter.
The closest they'll
come is Northampton, Mass.
Thanks to David Pescovitz at BoingBoing for the news.
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1:43 p.m. First report: Bored GOP convention blogger
heads for
the streets:
Ben
Domenech, 22, a speechwriter and Bush supporter from McLean, Va. blogs
at RedState.org ("A community
activism Web log for Republicans and conservative."). Here's his
report on this
morning:
As has also been noted, the news value of the average convention is about
that of a middle school play. First half of the first day is definitely living
down to that expectation. We had our "official" RNC bloggers' breakfast,
where we all gathered together to hear from Matthew Dowd (President Bush's
chief campaign strategist). Which, I must admit, was more informative than
I expected, even if we did get some of the
standard-issue
play-the-media spiel (really, we expect very little post-RNC bounce for the
President!). Still, he had me up until the point where he announced: "The
President is conservative -- even he says it." Well. I'm convinced.
Then there are the standard-issue lists of minor celebrities encountered:
for me,
G. Gordon Liddy, Christine Todd Whitman, Dennis Hastert, Alan Keyes, and
-- my cup runneth over -- Ed Koch, who blogged at my table on the importance
of
the Bush doctrine. Which is to say, he had another blogger type in the words, "the
Bush doctrine is important." More or less....
Oh, and the RNC bloggers' station? No live internet coming through the LAN
for the first few hours. Cripes.
No, this isn't terribly interesting.
So what are we going to do about it? For my part, I'm ditching this scene
for the afternoon and heading down to 8th Avenue for the purported major
protest march happening there. Up until the President strides to the podium
on Thursday night, that's where this story is going to be -- in the streets.
Time to head out there -- where the Kerry voters will be.
More continually at Conventionbloggers.com.
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C-Span is covering the convention
in its entirety, without talking heads or commercials. (C-span is a nonprofit
corporatioin funded by monthly fees from the cable systems that show it.)
Streaming
demonstration: You can watch all four hours, 47 minutes of C-Span's
coverage of yesterday's protest march online. (If that direct link to the RealMedia
file doesn't work, try clicking the link on C--Span's homepage.)
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Bill Maher's latest New Rule: "You
can't claim you are for peace unless
you are willing to disturb it." (The link is to 3 minutes, 8 seconds
of
RealVideo from Friday night's SBO show, for which there's no transcript yet.)
The
"anarchists"
who
set
the
dragon
on
fire
seem to have heard him
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Useful links from last week:
Convention coverage, street reporting and R.I.'s "Blues
Vote"concert: Permalink
to this coverage
Blues bash for Kerry Monday night: America
Coming Together -- the same "527" group that's getting the proceeds
from Bruce Springsteen's Vote
For Change tour -- will be the beneficiary of a Night of Blues,
a fundraiser to elect John Kerry, at the Hi Hat, in Davol Square, Providence,
Monday from 7 to 10 p.m.
The musicians are the cream of the blues players in the state: Duke
Robillard, Carl Querfurth, Doug James, Barry Fleischer, Jack Moore, Tom
Ferraro, Roger Ceresi, Dave Howard, Mark Taber, Marty Ballou, Lois Greco,
Joe Grove, Dick Souza, Chad Souza, Keith Munslow and Diane Blue. Rudy
Cheeks will host.
Suggested donation is $20. |
AP
|
| Setting the
stage at the GOP convention, which opens Monday. |
Conventionbloggers.com is a rolling log of posts from "sites written by people
who
are actually covering the RNC from inside the convention." On the left, links
to those blogs.
Mainstream media politics coverage: ABC, CBS, (MS)NBC,
CNN, FOX, NPR Newspapers
everywhere: newslink.org.
Unconventional TV: Manhattan
Neighborhood Network streams (RealVideo) this coverage nightly (courtesy
of Free
Speech TV)
by more than 100
independent filmmakers roaming the city., a collaboration of The Independent
Media Center, Paper Tiger, Deep Dish TV and other media collectives.
Sunday, 10-11 on Ch. 34 (streamed at the MNN link); Tues-Fri, 9-10 p.m. It's
also live
nationally on FSTV (not here, though), Dish Network Channel 9415.
NYC IndyMedia: a
blog, and stories, pictures, and video, from wherever the street reporter may
be.
AP / Diane Bondareff
|
| Eva Ruse, 2, left,
and her sister Hope, of Brooklyn, wait to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
today as part of a protest
organized by the group "Mothers Opposing Bush. |
Republican
convention photo feed at Yahoo News
Convention
protest photo feed at Yahoo News.
Protest events: CounterConvention.
The Convention Kicker at NY
Metro.
Gotham
Gazette's metabloggers include a Republican delegate and a volunteer,
a protester, and more.
The Gothamist's convention coverage includes Jen Chung
wrapping Local media's convention coverage:
- New York magazine's convention
guide hit the stands and will be publishing daily updates...we are
so loving their photographs of Bloomberg and the elephant (right).
- Village Voice's
convention guide; the Voice reports on fear that protesters acting
out will only help the Republican effort.
- NY1's
Convention Survival Guide; LIRR commuters are being told they should take
the subways when commuting into the city and you can see
anti-war posters at a Chelsea gallery
- Newsday's convention
guide; we like the story about the expensive
fundraising events,
like the $30,000 ticket for "Martinis in Manhattan." Even at the
expensive price of $15 for a high-end martini, that means some people
are drinking 2000 martinis, which means a messy messy hotel bathroom in
the morning. And the poor volunteers whose Social Security numbers,
amongst other info, was emailed
out.
- NY
Times Convention 2004; there's an article about how Pataki
will be center stage today and about yesterday's article on Lynyrd
Skynyrd performing and how the celebrities for this convention are deliciously
B- and C-list (hello, Stephen Baldwin).
- The Observer published its convention
issue; in a page 1
story, this line - "What’s
interesting is that the delegates come from the same places we do, the
places we left to move here, and so we are—more than we care to
admit—like them" - rings true until Gothamist remembers that we live here
everyday now.
- Convention coverage from ABC
7, CBS 2, and NBC
4.
Finally, here it from the horse's mouth: The GOP's Republican National Convention site. And if you get tired of that, here's the Democratic National Commmittee's site.
Posted by Jen Chung in
News: NYC
Special
RNC coverage from the editors at CityGuide New York.
The
GOP convention bloggers (again, to keep all this together.)
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August 26, 2004, 6:55 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Short blog today. I'm working on some other projects here, and have some
half-finished ideas in the hopper. Tomorrow, I hope, they'll be fully baked.
Added: a QuickTime
link to Tuesday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart and John Kerry.
The
GOP convention bloggers: The Wall Street Journal again profiles the
bloggers chosen by the party for its convention. The GOP invited 15. All
white, all
but one
male.
Exactly a month ago, they profiled the DNC bloggers.
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