Courage under fire, that’s what he has, and his current open letter to George Bush is a red flag that’s needs to be waved in as public a way as possible. It Takes Real Courage to Desert Your Post and Then Attack a Wounded Vet. The truth hurts. But not as much as shrapnel.
Over at the War Prayer weblog, b!X dissects yestedays RNC, including:
In the midst of all of this, McCain also took a moment to take on Michael Moore, calling him “a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace” — something Moore in fact did not do. Fair is fair, of course. No reason the GOP shouldn’t get in some digs against Moore, and I noticed on OPB that after cutting to Cheney’s smirking reaction to this, they cut to Moore himself, who is at the convention on behalf of USA Today, clearly enjoying the barb. In fact, when McCain decided that “this line was so good I’ll use it again,” Moore proceeded to applaud.
Earlier in his speech, McCain said: “Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture…liberty.” Later, he added this: “What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.”
Which is the main problem. No terrorist attack against the United States has damaged our liberty, but our responses to such attacks most certainly have. On some levels we have, in fact, surrendered “the very essence of our culture.”
And in the limited land of email, myrln vents his frustration:
Thanks to the Republicans for making clear with the Saturday Night Live takeoff to open their convention just how trivial and meaningless conventions are. And how much they respect the political process and the American people.
Thanks to John McCain for his zombiesque speech which stripped him of all respect and credibility. Perhaps he’s a Secretary-of-State-to-be? Or National Security Advisor?
Thanks to Rudy Giuliani for reminding us that, except for his stepping up immediately after 9/11, he’s still the asshole he always has been.
Thanks to both for illustrating that either they or I live in an alternative universe by their insistence that we can “live freely, travel freely” while you can’t get on a plane without getting strip-searched or having our privacy invaded illegally or live without the govt. periodically fabricating possible terrorist attacks to keep Americans distracted from the real problem of an inept and dangerous administration or have a convention in NYC without a police force in the thousands surrounding central Manhattan and shutting down the same area. What in the name of Christ (or Allah or Buddha or whatever deity) is free about that? I’ve said it before and say it again: the greatest terrorists in the world are those currently in the White House.
Me? I’m not watching the convention. I have a weak stomach.
Hey P. Diddy — you stole b!X’s Vote or Die slogan, which b!X put out there, t-shirts and all, in 1999. And I like b!X’s design better. If you’re going to buy a Vote or Die shirt, buy b!X’s!!!
My Dad has been dead for more than 20 years, now. But while he was alive, he was a dedicated Republican. But not the kind of Republicans that run our country now. Oh no. Were he alive today, he would be agreeing with what Garrison Keillor has written at Truthout, which begins:
Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned – and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk? Keillor asks.
I think part of the answer is that too many Republicans like my Dad and Dwight Eisenhower are dead. And with them were buried the values and ideals of a Republican party that upheld the Constitution. And so, as Keillor goes on to describe:
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.
As my father got older, he got interested in the “Gray Panther” movement, got on the city’s Housing Commissioner and worked for decent housing for low-income and senior residents. He frequently talked about the value of a “socialist democracy.” My father was a Republican in his heyday. But he would be embarrassed to be one today. And I’m sure that he would not vote to continue into four more years of this tragic failure of American leadership.
It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile, and it’s not my father’s Republican Party.
Wherein he returns to the commentary scene of the most important election of his lifetime.
Who he? He’s The One True b!X, who has set up a “One True b!X’s War Prayer” weblog because, years ago, he was moved and inspired by Mark Twain’s “War Prayer” and set up a site to publish a readable version of that document. And now, he says:
…as we enter the final two months of what is the most important election of my lifetime (in addition to entering the week of the Republican National Convention), it’s time to take some of the energy I spend screaming at the television, ranting on the telephone, or posting comments on other people’s sites and just say whatever I have to say right here.
He takes on the skewed local reporting of the anti-Bush demonstrations in NYC here.
There is sure to be more good ranting to come.
Over at Pressthink, Jan Rosen reports:
Bush will speak from a theatre in the round, addressing the nation by standing among citizens. It’s a switch to a more vertical image of authority. CNN announced a similar move. They will speak from a diner. MSNBC will come to us from Herald Square. Why?
I’ll tell you why. It’s just more manipulation of the public with show rather than substance. I can’t help thinking of the circus barker, out there working the crowd. Theater-in-the-round is tricky. It’s a lot harder to pull off than the traditional “up there on the stage” approach. The GOP is using it as a metaphor, and it is a good metaphor for speaking “with” an audience instead of “to” it, of getting on the same level with the people you want to reach with your words. It can also distract from the words — make the audience focus on show rather than substance. I have a feeling that not only is Bush going to affirm his lack of talents as a facile extemporaneous showman; he’s going to wind up showing, from all sides this time, just how lacking in substantial truth his words really are.
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she’s losing. time. all the time. never knows. she just had it in her hand — the pills, the bill, that pair of scissors, the pink comb. she leaves the bag of frozen pierogi on the counter, wonders what’s dripping all over the floor. always turns on the wrong stove burner.
in the car on the way back from visiting her son — my brother — her talk gets smaller and smaller:
She: why do they build houses so close to the highway.
me: those houses were there before the road was put in, ma.
She: look at all those different kinds of cars on the road.
me: yup.
She: what are those yellow “P” letters on all those cars.
me: they’re not ‘”P”s ma, they’re magnetic yellow ribbons and they mean “support our troops.”
She: that sign says it’s 90 miles to Buffalo.
me: no, ma. It says that this is Interstate 90 and it leads to Buffalo.
She: look at all those trees. all different kinds of trees. who planted all those trees.
me: [silence]
She: people are using Polish words when they talk English. that man on the radio just said “Jak tam….”
me: i don’t think so, ma. you must have heard it wrong.
She: there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. you’re all trying to make me believe that i’m crazy. i can hear just fine.
me: [silence}
She: look at those birds. you can learn a lot from birds.
me: yup.
She: when your father was alive………
and as she loses herself in time, i succumb to the hum of the open road, wish for wings, for the blessings of solitude and silence.
From The Nation, through Common Dreams an editorial begins:
As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of moderation calculated to help the President win another four-year term. But the hard truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while attempting to impose an extremist right-wing agenda on this country and the world, has compiled a record of staggering failure.
.. and ends
But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn’t think of one.
If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of the American people can only rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to ignore the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in modern history on November 2.
Take the time to read it all here.
why write, i ask myself, when there’s so much else. moving and shaking and making sure she takes all of her medications. out in the park, two pairs of egrets, a lone white duck. cat litter to clean. who has enough time empty of necessity to follow the call of words. hurry up, please. it’s time. i dream of good-byes. wait for rain. time. the toothy smile of a toddler who remembers.