On the Fourth of July, I choose to commemorate the holiday with the words of one of the very first Harvard intellectual leftists, a moonbat and a traitor if there ever was one; a man whose reputation among the ruling classes was far worse than any Moore or Chomsky. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the most important men of the American Revolution, the loud-mouthed angry revolutionary, Samuel Adams. ...
Game quotes are a key part of the Ambercon experience. Thusly, my jotted notes from the weekend. They’re all funny from my perspective, and probably from the perspective of those who were in the games. Maybe not so much for others. Also my note-taking is terrible and unreliable.
I’m not so sure about this new Democrat talking point (original). “The Republican National Convention is going to feature at least three guys who aren’t exactly in lock-step with the Bushies. John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rudolph Giuliani are all set to get a prime time speaking slot. That’s John McCain who opposed Bush’s tax cut and has been critical on the administration’s disastrous record in Iraq, and the pro-choice Arnold and Rudy.” ...
Once again, it turns out that newly discovered WMD aren’t actually WMD after all. However, Poland and the US agree that the chaos in Iraq has resulted in a great opportunity for Al Qaeda to get access to previously unavailable Iraqi scientists with WMD know-how. Well, OK, they don’t put it precisely like that. Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them. ...
Ouch.
The saga of the anonymous CIA author continues. According to the Boston Phoenix, Michael Scheuer is compelled to publish anonymously because of CIA restrictions. He’d rather let his name out, but can’t. This means I was more or less wrong in my fevered speculations a couple of weeks ago. He’s pissed off, but he’s not a kamikaze. Although I suppose if he gets fired in the next couple of months, there’s something to be said for the notion that he’s too angry to care about his career.
Nader is cozying up with the far right, yes. He’s cutting into Kerry’s support, yes. It is still wrong to play legalistic games (original) in order to keep him off the ballot (original). I don’t doubt that Nader may have violated the letter of the law in Arizona, and maybe he doesn’t yet qualify for the Florida ballot on a technicality. Great. Does that mean it’s morally right to control ballot access? Fuck no. Controlling ballot access is a method of controlling who can be elected, pure and simple. It is a way to say “minority opinions of a certain size don’t count.” I dislike Nader vastly, but let the hypocritical bastard run.
The Nation provides a hypothetical article (original) on the Bush/career civil servant battles. I say hypothetical because Greider is just guessing, no matter how good the guesses might sound to my conspiratorial nature. It’s a fun hypothesis, though.
Bush’s new campaign video (original), “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed,” will certainly inspire his base. It’s a miscalculation nonetheless. The video opens with Gore asking how we can possibly drag the good name of America through Saddam’s torture prison. This keeps the Abu Ghraib scandal prominent. That’s not so good for Bush; it doesn’t poll well at all. Then you get the cheesy Nazi images which won’t hurt Bush, although their use here implies that Abu Ghraib wasn’t so bad — which, again, people will disagree with. ...
Kerry grandstands a little and visits the Senate to vote on an amendment which provides more veteran benefits. The Republicans use various procedural tactics to make sure he can’t vote on the bill, delaying it until the next day. Kerry heads back to keep on campaigning. The Republicans vote the bill down. Of course Kerry was playing political games and manuvering to make himself look good. But it worked. Maybe Bush doesn’t want the military vote (original).