I just found this link in todays Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/05/23/ny_vows_no_major_closings_for_rnc/
This relates to a big story in Boston over the last few days, where security issues linked to the Democratic National Convention have resulted in plans to close major parts of the highway and road grid serving Boston, and most of the public transit system in the city, for much of the convention. There are also supposed to be street closings in the convention area, and elimination of on-street parking for half a mile or more around the site of the convention.
Reports as to where these plans come from are a little unclear to me. Some seem to come from the office of the mayor. Some are blamed on security consultants associated with the DNC. Some even were associated with the Secret Service.
What I don't understand at all is why this event is being set up to shut down most of the city of Boston for a week, while the RNC event in New York is projected to have little or no impact on that city.
Any ideas?
One of the worst parts of this situation was listening to the Resident last week, on the anniversary of his "Mission Accomplished" speech.
I've never had a good opinion of him. Or of his handlers. Even given that, I thought they'd started going for a new low by having him say, in the same speech, how wonderful it was that Iraq was free of Saddam Hussein and his death squads and torture chambers, and how awful it was that Americans were torturing prisoners.
Is the entire administration that stupid?
(Even the standard broadcast media are now mentioning that the CACI and other nonmilitary inerrogators over there are outside any chain of command or threat of prosecution. Gee, isn't it a surprise that I've yet to hear anyone in the White House, or anyone in the majority party in Congress, who is talking about changing the laws that now protect these "contract specialists." )
I listened to parts of the performance on the radio. What got me was that, especially after listening to the weasel-speak cited above, the commentator (on NP*bleeping*R!) observed that the Resident "had been resolute in refusing to admit that he had made mistakes." What the devil is the length of the tape delay they were using? It sounded to me as though he was floundering and had no clue how to give a rational reply to what should have been a straightforward question.
What sort of handlers does this guy have, that he hadn't been drilled repeatedly in how to either answer exactly that question, or duck it without sounding like an embarassed seventh-grader?
This is one Dean supporter who will vote for almost anyone over the Shrub, though I'll admit that I'd have to think hard about the question if it were a choice between him and Michael Jackson....
But I will be voting in November.
Come on guys. Even if pinned down with incontrovertible proof of his no-show status for however long, Bush's response will be the same as it was for the proof of his insider trading when he was still with the oil-company job his daddy got him. "So what? That's all in the past."
Isn't it nice that the proof of the trading disappeared until right after the statute of limitations expired? (And it's all a coincidence that daddy was the vice president and president in those years.)
Bush's pattern in those and other matters (drunken driving, alcohol abuse, executive capacity as evidenced by his business record and his time in the Texas executive mansion) has been to say "doesn't matter--that was before."
For some reason he says that and the media says "Oh, well, that's okay then." And they used to call Reagan the Teflon president.
No doubt about it. The simple, pat labels are easy to apply, but are often only a tiny part of the picture. Before November 2000 I often referred to the Shrub as a chuckleheaded idiot, and hoped that we could all survive a possible presidency. Now I'd modify the evaluation to say that he projects the chuckleheaded good-ol'-boy idiot image, behind which lurks a venial, willfully ignorant, sociopathic coward.
All the Democratic Party candidates have many aspects to their character. I've tried to look at what they've been doing, especially in the last four years, while considering my vote in the NH primary. The only person on the Democratic ballot up here whom I wouldn't automatically vote for in a contest with Bush is LaRouche. All the others have a mix of things I like and things I don't. I've had to pick and choose.
One thing that has irritated me in the media this week has been all the play about the "Dean howl." I sent off this letter, or something similar, to a number of papers on Friday. Yes, this conversation really happened, and it happened to me, in my living room.
To the editor,
I live in New Hampshire. An hour ago I was talking about the debate with the man who had just returned my vacuum cleaner after it was fixed. He told me that he had been undecided about the primary until Monday night. He watched Howard Dean, tired and fighting a cold, offering comfort and a new sense of excitement to a crowd of discouraged volunteers. That "howl" wasn't a sound of rage or pain--it was excitement and joy! And it convinced that man that Dean was the one he was going to vote for.
Too many of the candidates are polished and primped, and you can't tell whether they have any true emotions in them. Their messages are also polished, and they begin to sound too much like the same things we hear from Washington all the time. Dean is talking straight, and what he says makes sense. We all need to get involved in running the country. Voting for Dean is only a start. We need to pay attention to what all our Congressional delegations are saying, and to what they're really doing, and take appropriate action. And what Howard Dean is showing us is that it shouldn't be scary. We should be excited and joyful at the chance to get involved in making America great again.
(End letter)
okay, sorry if that was too hokey, but that part of Dean's message needs to picked up and carried forward by the winner of the primary campaign. Everyone in the country needs to wake up, get involved, get excited, and do something.
And we have to make sure that the people in office know they're accountable. (Bush doesn't act as though he's aware of that. Maybe because he wasn't elected?)
First step? Look behind the labels and the sterotypes. Vote for something you believe in. Don't let inertia and fatalism lead us into a continuation of the status quo.
Thanks for posting the link to the Katz material. I had the pleasure of doing a proof read on Clinton & Me, and it was a really fun project.
I think the columnist missed the subtext. Okay, a million Mogadishus would mean 18 million dead US soldiers. And how many hundreds of millions of dead locals?
From the rest of the tone of the guy's column, he should have been asking to pin a medal on the prof's chest. Or promote him to senior advisor to Rumsfeld.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 8 |
| 2003 | 1 |
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