Midsummer Classic?

You’re already in his camp; therefore, it doesn’t matter that you found the speech moving and wonderful and just what you wanted to hear. What’s important to Kerry and his campaign staff is, what does someone like me, an undecided conservative voter in New Hampshire, think about his speech?

those who are not connected, who haven’t inherited fortunes, who live by our paychecks and our efforts and our optimism that our country is, indeed, the land of opportunity, need people on the inside. I believe that the words I’ve heard from these people come from their heads and their hearts without code or artifice and that’s why I’m voting for the Democrats in November. Sorry, Ralph.

All week long–with a pre-prime time digression from Rev. Sharpton–the Dem speakers who would normally be expected to pillar the prez kept the anti-BUSH rhetoric in check. That was allegedly the script. Don’t be negative. Stay on message. Even Edwards, who in the traditional role of VP nominee should have been serving up the red meat so that Kerry could appear relatively “presidential,” came across like an alterboy. By the end of the week, the delegates’ underlying rage and their frustration at not having been given a meaningful outlet for it was palpable. Then along came Kerry to tell them what they wanted to hear all along and their raucous reaction made his heavily partisan remarks come across as more a sincere expression of what needed to be said … And it made Kerry appear to be the only one in all of Beantown with the courage to note that the emperor has no clothes, just what a northeastern liberal needed to do to undermine the stereotype.

His budgetary agenda can be lumped into three broad categories and one of them has to give: (1) raise taxes on corporations and the rich while cutting taxes on the middle class; (2) implement or increase funding for a plethora of social programs; and (3) implement pay-as-you-go spending limits to halve the deficit. There isn’t a deep enough well of tax increases for the rich and corporations, without bringing down growth, to pay both for middle class tax cuts and the long list of social programs, so one of these three has to give in order to have the other two. Kerry has left the door as wide open to criticism on this score as Bush has on foreign policy.This combination of economic and social platforms reads like old-school, big-government Democrat platforms from way back before Clinton pulled the party more to the center. No Democratic presidential candidate has won with this kind of agenda since Johnson…

After going four days with every speaker trying to avoid mentioning Republicans leaders by name, the Democrats practically fell over themselves trying to imitate them.

The most obvious thing they did was write out for John Kerry a call and response thing that copied Dick Cheney’s speech at the GOP convention four years ago. “Help is on the way,” Cheney told a military community supposedly neglected by Bill Clinton’s Democrats…More than the rhetoric of some convention speakers (I can just imagine some terrorist watching John Edwards say “we will destroy you” and thinking to himself “How about this? I’m having my life threatened by Richie Cunningham”) all the flags and the veterans in full and partial uniform don’t just visually resemble the images of the last several Republican conventions. The images send a message about Democratic values aimed at obscuring the message sent by Democratic positions on issues.

It occurs to me as I watch Edwards come out to a big ovation that he faces two daunting challenges. First, tonight’s theme centers around defense and homeland security and these are not supposed to be his strong points. Second, Edwards has to play against his natural strength – his charisma – and must figure out the exact extent which to do so.

“I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina. My father worked in a mill all his life, and I will never forget the men and women who worked with him. They had lint in their hair and grease on their faces.” (and i said - this sucks. i want a desk job in an air conditioned office)…

“We shouldn’t have 2 public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else.” (wait! i meant to say public schools are just fine - there’s no problem. did i just lose the NEA endorsement? i’m still against vouchers, you know. come back …)

very affected in a way that may even surpass the fabled emotive abilities of Bill Clinton, which were most recently on dispay in his Monday night convention speech…For better or worse, such affectation has become a mainstay as presidents have to be excellent salesmen because politics is all about persuasion, a skill that Edwards has honed through years of practice. He empathizes with people, and conveys a winsome personality to win others over to his causes, first in the courtroom and now in the court of public opinion.

Throughout the speech, he struck the right tone in an upbeat way, with emphasis on the economy, values, family, and responsibility. The Democrats must emphasize these issues because they cannot win on national security or as the protest vote of those disenchanted with Iraq…

John Kerry has it in his hands to shape the world from this night; if he has the force in his heart to make it so. We shall see if inspiration has found it’s way into the text that I do not doubt he is speaking this very minute into a mirror or a digicam.

We shall see if inspiration has found its way into John Kerry so that the words will leap rather from his heart than from the paper or the memory. Let us hope that the words have been shaped as near to the core of Kerry as they might come, so that he, as himself, can light the room and inspire so many who wait now in trepidation on uncertain ground.

I do not think there is a more important speech to be given. Aside from the debates, which will have many a hidden control, this is it. This is ‘showtime’. The speech is important not just for the Democrats and for those whose hopes are of a kind. It is important to the whole world. It is important to everyone who knows where we may find ourselves otherwise and wishes not to go.

I hate the whole damn convention. I watch a lot of it because of the Pavlovian bell that sounds every four years. It’s a habit born of youth. Conventions used to be unrehearsed, less controlled, sometimes dramatic, and often wackily entertaining. Not any more. When the sea of “Hope Is on the Way” signs emerged mid-speech, right after Edwards begin his own Hope Is on the Way litany, I wanted to puke.

the speakers barely mentioned the war. Ok, the WARs, if you prefer to regard Iraq as a separate matter from the war against al Qaeda and Islamist extremism. Even in the somber 9/11 tribute at 10:00 PM, no one bothered to mention that these people were murdered or that this was the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Bush’s record is fair game and a comparison approach valid. It is just not what we were told was going to occur. …

I honestly believe they just can’t help it—the animosity runs too deep. The interesting thing is that by and large the media seem to be buying that this is a positive message. Their definitions must be a little different from mine.

I grew up in a place where you didn’t order a “venti Colombian half-caf”, you ordered a “lahge coffee.” You didn’t go to Krispy Kreme or a specialty bakery for your breakfast pastry, you went to Dunkin Donuts for a chocolate honey-dipped. You went to the places your father went to, did the things your father did, and took comfort in the continuity of life.

it was the Seattle of the 1970s when it came to rock music. Aerosmith, the J. Geils Band, the Cars, and of course Tom Scholz’s band named for the city itself; all left an indelible mark that can still be heard on Boston’s classic rock radio stations.

The Cheney rumour refuses to die completely, perhaps because it is a way of talking around the real issue: Cheney is a terrible VP, but it is impossible for him to be dropped …With a VP like McCain or Powell (the latter possibility is as cracked as any given conspiracy theory), Bush would be adrift in a sea of vague justifications for a presidency that has stumbled from one disaster to another. Like Castor and Pollux, the twins of Gemini, Bush and Cheney may rule alternately from Olympus and Hades, but they will at least rule together.

Then there’s the scene where Spiderman is forced to take an elevator to the top of building since his webs aren’t working. He must share the elevator with none other than the actor (Hal Sparks) from Queer as Folk who plays a gay comic book writer, who has a best selling queer comic that is being made into a Hollywood film …

And when he comments on Spiderman’s costume (“It looks uncomfortable”), Spiderman deadpans “I made it myself. It rides up in the crotch a little.”

I am not suggesting that Spiderman two is “a gay film.” I mean, there is nothing gay about swinging through the city in a lycra bodysuit by shooting sticky webs, is there? There is nothing gay about refusing the affections of a beautiful woman because you have another identity. There is nothing gay about being who you are destined to be, regardless of whatever the tabloids have to say about your behavior.

Well, on second thought, Spiderman2 is NOT a gay film. But there is definitely something queer going on.

as Harry Truman said in an insightful observation that should always be paired with his “buck stops here” approach, the President can easily presume that when he says, do this or do that, it will be done. But alas, more often than not, he finds out a month later that it has not been done. Federal bureaucracies—not least of which are the intelligence, military, foreign affairs and homeland security bureaucracies—pretty much run on auto-pilot. However much attention or “wisdom” the President may give to an issue, carrying out the overall policies he sets is a matter for tens of thousands or other people and how they are recruited, organized, managed, paid and held accountable matters a great deal. As a supposed expert on “war,” Kaplan should at least know that the President, whoever he or she may be, can decide, “Let’s invade Northwest Europe at the earliest possible date,” or “Let’s invade Afghanistan quickly” and then becomes as much a prisoner of the military’s actual capabilities as the rest of us. Even if President Kerry spends all his waking hours in the situation room managing counter-terror efforts personally, he and his wisdom will remain captive to IV, Pentagon and other capabilities (and he won’t get anything else done in the process).

Paradoxical as it may seem, the intention of federalism is not for the national government to overrun the states. Rather it advocates multiple layers of government controlling the same land and citizens. Not only states but also city, county, and other local forms of government come into play. The idea is that the smaller political units surrender some of their political power to the larger ones— ultimately culminating at the national level—and relying on them to act for the common good. That is why the word “federal” comes from the Latin fidere, meaning “to trust.”