I couldn’t avoid watching Kerry’s speech. I switched to Fox to watch a Simpsons rerun, but it was on every channel.
It was mostly platitudes, as expected. My summary of Kerry’s foreign policy (which, assuming that the economy continues to improve, will be the main campaign issue): We will go to all lengths to avoid war, and we will only do so if we can get the French on board.
My recommendation for Karl Rove: We will go to all lengths to avoid another September 11th.
From Lileks–too spot on to not quote a large section of:
I was at both conventions in 1992, and the GOP version was a dispirited affair. Clinton had sparkle, the big mo, and a foundering economy to hammer; Bush was your father
…this story isn’t good news for John Kerry:
Despite weeks of bad war news
Well, actually not. This, if true, seems perfectly in character:
“Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns.”
Orrin Judd has a little snippet that shows just how out of touch some people are:
Liev Schreiber is filming a book called Everything is Illuminated and went out of his way to hire an aspiring Iraqi filmmaker who he’d seen on MTV’s True Life:
“We felt really guilty about what our country had done to his country,” says producer Peter Saraf. “And then, of course, he gets here, and it never occurred to me that he would say something like ‘But I love George Bush–he changed my life!'”
Well, at least is shows that these people are sincere in their apparent belief that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam. While there are certainly Iraqis unhappy that we removed him from power (they blew up seventy of their compatriots just a few hours ago, after all), to just what kind of mindset would it never occur that there might be some who are grateful?
Of course, if the Republicans take my suggestion, we can be sure that it will just be dismissed as right-wing propaganda, and the Iraqi patriots will be derided and vilified as quislings.
I wonder if NPR host Scott Simon has just cut himself out of the fashionable cocktail circuit?
Alan Colmes just announced that “…in a moment Barak Osama is going to speak.”
[Update a minute later]
He just corrected himself. Doubtless someone told him what he’s done in the bug in his ear.
If Karl Rove is smart, the Republican convention will feature some grateful Iraqis in prime time, just as a reminder.
Ann Coulter provides the actual editorial comments from the clueless USA Today editor who spiked her column.
Al Gore’s going to speak at the convention tonight. Extrapolating from his most recent rants and ravings, I think that there’s a good possibility that we’ll get to watch his head actually explode, live on national television.