936

{ 6:54 PM }

.

Take the Cheney loyalty challenge. Heil! Holden at Atrios points out the shocking discovery that to see Dick Cheney speak at a live appearance you must first sign a loyalty oath:

Some would-be spectators hoping to attend Vice President Dick Cheney's rally in Rio Rancho [New Mexico] this weekend walked out of a Republican campaign office miffed and ticketless Thursday after getting this news:

Unless you sign an endorsement for President George W. Bush, you're not getting any passes.

The Albuquerque Bush-Cheney Victory office in charge of doling out the tickets to Saturday's event was requiring the endorsement forms from people it could not verify as supporters.

[...]

An endorsement form provided to the [Albuquerque] Journal by Random says: "I, (full name) ... do herby [sic] endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States." It later adds that, "In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush."

This loyalty maneuver sounds suspiciously like Nazi youth ceremonies.

The Republicans don't need one or two isolated MoveOn contestants to point out the Nazi parallels when their party comes up with creepy shit like this all by themselves.

{ 4:37 PM }

.

Department of Tuition Security. Tom Ridge sends an unmistakable message, notes Jeffrey Dubner of TAPPED, when he says that he needs to earn money in the private sector to put his teenage children through college despite the fact that Ridge now earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary, putting his family among the top 5 percent of household incomes.

{ 12:06 PM }

.

The utter failure of American commercial media. Why are blogs and C-Span and noncommercial media so important? Because they show politics unmediated, without the happy talk hairdos devoid of any ideas that didn't come hot off the fax machine. The expensive anchors add nothing to the process and offer not news but rather a distraction from it. And the supposedly clueless unsophisticated masses recognize what's happening because the ratings bear this out:

Over at PBS, some 7.7 million viewers tuned in during its Tuesday night coverage, a greater audience than the combined 6 million viewers watching CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen stats.

The "conventional wisdom" churned out daily by the so-called mainstream cable news media titans turns out to be peripheral. When the audiences of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined can't approach the audience drawn to PBS's broadcast of an unmediated political convention, the nature of the cable networks' position as the radical fringe of ultramediated American discourse becomes obvious.

An aside. Why I blog: Because I don't give a flying fuck about Kobe Bryant or Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson or whoever the perp du jour is. This is an attempt to retain a teacup of sanity against the tidal wave of dross known as the American media universe.

{ 9:02 AM }

.

Music critic Alex Ross's blog The Rest Is Noise is getting really interesting, especially now that he's written about his Wagnerian Bayreuth pilgrimage (July 28 and earlier). Ah, someday...

And Ross is justified in his boredom with Elvis Costello who despite his brilliance destroys everything he touches outside his pop-rock milieu, notably the career of his wife Diana Krall whose latest CD (thanks to his contributions) lays there stripped of all the sophisticated sheen she brought to her earlier recordings.

{ 4:49 PM }

.

Say yes to antipsychotics. George W. Bush is back on his powerful meds (Capital Hill Blue):

Tubb [Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician] prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Suddenly Ken Lay is in a better position than even the child-emperor he helped install into Washington.

Drugs in the White House? Drugs on hate radio? It must be peer pressure.

Weren't we supposed to say no to drugs? Nancy Reagan must be spinning in her grave.

Oh. Right.

{ 11:08 AM }

.

Is Watergate's Deep Throat dead?

{ 11:01 AM }

.

The federal court in your bedroom. Privacy in American bedrooms is unconstitutional (FindLaw):

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys in the state, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

In a 2-1 decision overturning a lower court, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state has a right to police the sale of devices that can be sexually stimulating.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented merchants and users who sued to overturn the law, asked the appeals court to rule that the Constitution included a right to sexual privacy that the ban on sex toy sales would violate. The court declined, indicating such a decision could lead down other paths.

In other news, Log Cabin Republicans commit mass suicide.

{ 10:35 AM }

.

What's worse than Florida 2000? Florida 2004 (CNN):

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A computer crash erased detailed records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, raising again the specter of election troubles in Florida, where the new technology was supposed to put an end to such problems.

The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and other elections, elections officials said Tuesday.

The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.

Yes, but what is Plan B when the Supreme Court, just like a touchscreen voting machine, malfunctions? What will the Democratic legal strategy be?

Shouldn't other countries, civilized countries like France or Germany, be called upon to supervise our elections?

{ 6:55 PM }

.

Crash course in misleadership. It's like this, you see, the presidency is all about time management:

Bush offered a glimpse of his new pastime to an Associated Press reporter Monday, roaming the dirt roads and far-flung pastures of his 1,600-acre ranch. About halfway through, he sailed over the handlebars during a dangerous descent, but dusted himself off, picked up his $3,100 bicycle and kept riding.

Bush, who was wearing a helmet and a mouth guard, escaped injury other than a small cut on his knee. But he conceded he was a little shaken up, riding tentatively as he descended the rest of the downhill.

Crashing is a routine part of mountain biking, a sport in which riders roll over loose dirt, rocks and other obstacles. Nevertheless, the president said, it's easier on his body than jogging, which was grinding his knees.

"This is like running except I don't feel bad afterward," he said Monday after burning about 1,200 calories over an 18-mile ride that lasted an hour and 20 minutes.

"You can cover a lot more, and you can go very fast on a bike," Bush said. Most important, he gets his heart rate up. "At my age, you're more concerned about the cardiovascular" benefits of a workout, the 58-year-old president said.

Would it be too much to use a stationary bike and get briefed by Condi Rice on Al Qaeda counterterrorism efforts? Oh, right...

"You can go very fast on a bike." This is an observation we can expect from My Pet Goat.

And what's all this yakking about cardiovascular benefits?

Who the fuck is he talking to? Dick Cheney?

{ 6:20 PM }

.

The Divided States of America. The two best lines from last night's oratory were both Bill Clinton's: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values," and "...our friends [the Republicans in Washington] have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values; in other words, they need a divided America. But we don't."

{ 7:46 AM }

.

As if you didn't know already. No is more common than yes. (Wordcount ranks 51:146)

{ 4:18 PM }

.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the DNC 2004 News Aggregator, a community site for bloggers participating in the DNC, July 26-29.

{ 4:09 PM }

.