Goldberg and Guthrie

I am of two minds about the decision to allow Michael Moore to sit near President Carter at the convention.

On one hand, it makes me seriously question the wisdom and judgment of John Kerry and every single person at the DNC who is serious about electing John Kerry president. This is a deeply divisive figure, with a history of distorting the truth who, as I have previously argued, is in no small part responsible for Bush winning in 2000. It seems not all that dissimilar to the RNC allowing Ann Coulter to give lap dances to Gerald Ford during Nancy Reagan's speech. (Or, more accurately, to the RNC placing Rush or Hannity or Coulter in any sort of prominent position at their convention.)

On the other hand, it at least shows some sort of attempt to reach out to a large, disaffected part of the Democratic base - some of whom have never forgiven the Democrats for the rightward march of the Clinton administration and some of whom have not forgiven Kerry for beating Howard Dean.

(Does anyone care at all that Nader is highly likely to tip a key swing state or two - again? No? Just me?) (Of course the Democratic party's very liberal response is to try to keep him off of ballots - that's a great message to your base - we won't give you what you want, but we will try to make it so our candidate is the slightly least crappy one available - oh, and here's Michael Moore sitting next to Jimmy Carter... enjoy!)

I am busy and this makes no sense. I actually did enjoy the convention last night - but I still believe there is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with the Democratic party. Why do we worship the man who is MOST responsible for Democrats losing control of Congress and the courts after thirty years? Because he can talk well? Why do we worship the man whose face fucking made it possible for George W. Bush to come into the White House after 8 years of peace and prosperity? (There's a better answer to that... because of the 8 years of peace and prosperity.)

I should be a team player like Dean. Sorry. Go Kerry.

I have seen this discussed in the past, but I guess it never dawned on me how weird it was: John Kerry voted against the first Gulf War. Here's his speech defending that vote. What happened in the intervening 15 years that made him change his mind? September 11? Can't be - the Dem's primary argument against the war in Iraq is that it had nothing to do with September 11. WMDs? No - we already knew Saddam had those back then - he used them against the Kurds in the 1980s. (And, the goal of the first Gulf War was never to take Saddam out of power anyway.) I suppose in the speech he indicates that the public support wasn't there the first time - but that's sure not how I remember it and, besides, the reason the public support was so strong this time was that no important figures in the Democratic party (save one) spoke up against the war while it was popular. (I take that back - two did: Howard Dean and Al Gore.) I guess one preposterous theory is that he knew he was running for President the second time around. (By the way, Howard Dean did support the first Gulf War.)

Maybe he just changed his mind.

This shocking development in the Illinois Senate race, from an otherwise flattering article about Obama:

Democratic leaders say this law school professor has botched little in his professional and political life. But in his personal life, Obama — whose Kenyan father and American mother divorced when he was young — acknowledges an adolescence of rebellion, which included focusing on sports more than school and experimenting with drugs.

(emphasis added)

I, for one, cannot believe that Illinois was this close to electing a Senator who once focused on sports more than school. Thank God Obama has at least had the decency to confess this shortcoming, and we can now beg Jack Ryan to get back into this race and give us the Senator we deserve.

I have been reading a lot about this story in recent days, and I think today's Daily Howler summarizes the situation as we understand it. The big Republican "victory" in the Joe Wilson case is that, it turns out, Bush just didn't know whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger: and, apparently, it's OK to state such a fact when trying to convince people that allowing their sons and daughters to die is a good idea as long as you add the caveat "The British government has learned..."

Having said that, there's plenty of blame on the other side. Here's what the Howler has to say:

Over the last year, Wilson’s presentations have foundered on a simple fact—a fact he has never seemed able to grasp. Here it is: Joe Wilson doesn’t know if Iraq sought uranium in Africa. Two weeks ago, Lord Butler looked at the British intelligence, and he said that the intel was good on this point. What was Wilson supposed to say? He doesn’t even know what is in it!

Furious partisans will shake their fists and insist that none of this really matters. But it does really matter, in one key way. Wilson has overstated so many things that the Republican Party’s current attacks have a measure of truth to them. For example, he has persistently called Bush’s statement a “lie,” although he doesn’t know if the statement is true or false. He seemed to acknowledge that fact in his original piece, but slowly slid into overstatement.

Bush didn’t know if Iraq sought uranium. For that reason, he shouldn’t have said that he did, and he took a load of heat for his 16-word statement. But Wilson doesn’t know if Iraq sought uranium either. He is now starting to take some heat for acting as if he did.

Furious partisans will shake their fists and insist that none of this really matters. And of course, it doesn’t matter—unless you care about the truth, and unless you want Kerry to win.

This is what I love about Republicans now. When Clinton tried to cover up an affair by totally and completely honestly asking what the word "is" meant in a question (and, by the way, the meaning of the word "is" in that question was not at all clear), Republicans acted like the world had come to an end with his parsing of the English language. When Bush left himself linguistic outs as he tried to convince the country to go to war, it's fine.

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. 

I'm not sure, but I think Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto is arguing that we should start beheading people.

From one of the Fox News memos...

For everyone's information, the hotel where our Baghdad bureau is housed was hit by some kind of explosive device overnight. ALL FOX PERSONNEL ARE OK. The incident is a reminder of the danger our colleagues in Baghdad face, day in and day out. Please offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don't shine).

Go read this: Wonkette has some of the infamous Foxnews memos.

I don't think the most egregious quotes are the ones making the rounds on the blogs... go read them all for yourself. I wonder, seriously, if Foxnews will make good on its promise to produce similar memos from CNN and MSNBC.

What a fucking idiot. I do not like him. Of course, this is being blown out of proportion by Drudge, but Kerry needs to think before he speaks.

Goldberg indicated below that he looked forward to my comments on the death of Marlon Brando. Here they are.

1.) First of all, this is the least surprising news since the Bob Huggins heart attack. I note that they can't seem to get the cause of death of right. I have a suggestion - the cause of death should be listed as: "being Marlon Brando."

2.) He really was the greatest actor we will ever see. In his prime, and for brief periods later in his career, he reached a level of pure and raw emotion that was unparalleled before and unmatched today. Many actors achieved a far greater command of their craft, none could even approach the level of talent that he possessed. It simply wasn't that hard for him. This talent was wasted and destroyed - and that's one of the great tragedies of the day. He sort of lived like a rock star - but an actor shouldn't do that. I am sure Goldberg can comment on this - but there is something about rock and roll and music that makes it an art of the young, and so many of the great musicians created something beautiful and either died or faded away. That's not what an actor should do. Brando should have kept getting better - he should have been playing Lear and the like right now. Instead, he faded into a fat joke, and all we have are a few films that capture what he used to be.

From the Newsweek obituary, that I read on the plane home:

In her 2001 biography, Patricia Bosworth quotes an ex-girlfriend who was watching TV with the actor when they came across "Streetcar." "Marlon told me, 'Turn it off,' but I said, 'Please let me watch.' So we did for a while, and then Marlon groaned, "Oh, God, I was beautiful then." Was he ever.