@messaging.sprintpcs.comOn board plane. [Yawn.]

@messaging.sprintpcs.comI’m at the airport… and all the freakin’ shops and restaurants are CLOSED! It’s only 9PM, people!! And I’m hungry!!!

New Jersey, a battleground state? (Again?) It’s Kerry 45%, Bush 43% in the 15-electoral-vote, should-be-blue state, according to a new poll. Enter Nader, and it’s even closer: Kerry 42%, Bush 41%, Nader 6%.

On a brighter note, Kerry is now winning West Virginia for the first time since mid-June, according to a new poll there.

Becky has posted her thoughts on John Kerry’s speech, which she says “was like a self-indulgent film with scenes that only a director can love”:

[T]he speech was boring. Political pundits and party stalwarts no doubt hung on his every word, salivating for the next sentence for further gratification. Everyone else wondered if SpongeBob Squarepants was playing reruns on Nickelodeon.

I basically agree, as I’ve already said. I wasn’t expecting rhetorical brilliance from Kerry, but I was expecting him to rise to the occasion and give at least an above-average speech; instead, it was average at best.

Substance-wise, I was very disappointed in the terrorism section of his speech. Andrew Sullivan pretty well expressed what I feel:

There was…no firm commitment to seeing the war through in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is obviously what worried me the most. His goal in Iraq is to bring the troops home. Three words: not good enough. Here’s the passage about the war:

I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Here is the reality: that won’t happen until we have a president who restores America’s respect and leadership — so we don’t have to go it alone in the world.
And we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us.

I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.

No mention of democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan. No mention of the terrorist forces that are amassed there. No reference to the elections scheduled for January. No mention of Iran. And the whole point is about process - about how to wage a war, not whether it should be waged. This is a man who clearly wants the U.S. out of the region where our future is at stake, and who believes that simply by taking office, other powers can somehow pick up the slack. Memo to Kerry: no other powers can pick up the slack. They don’t have the troops or the technology or the will. His strategy is pure defense. This sentence is his strongest threat: “Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” So let’s wait, shall we?

As Sullivan added later, “Biden and Lieberman and Edwards and even Obama were more ressuring on the war than Kerry was.” Indeed. I wish — I really wish — that the foreign policy portion of Kerry’s speech had sounded like Biden’s speech. This line, especially, would have been good to hear from the candidate instead of one of his surrogates: “When John Kerry is president, military preemption will remain — as it has always been — an option, when we face a genuine, imminent threat. But… [blah blah blah].” It would also have been nice to hear Kerry invoke, as Biden did, the “death-struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism,” and pledge that “just as Joshua’s trumpets brought down the walls of Jericho — just as American values brought down the Berlin Wall — so will radical fundamentalism fall to the terrible, swift power of our ideas as well as our swords.” Even Edwards’s “you cannot run, you cannot hide, we will destroy you” would have reassured me a lot more had it come from the presidential candidate instead of the veep.

I believe that the Bush Doctrine goes too far, taking something that has always, as Biden says, been a last-resort option, and turning it into a too-easily-invoked formalized policy. But, alas, Kerry’s “swift and certain response” is the opposite extreme: it doesn’t go far enough. If this is Kerry’s real position, I will find myself forced to choose between two options that I believe would both fail to make America safer.

Oh, where have you gone, Senator Joe? :(

On a side note, I find it ironic and even slightly bizarre that a party which devoted so much energy to demanding that “every vote be counted” in Florida and elsewhere this time around, doesn’t seem to have the heart to endorse democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan. Memo to the Dems: favoring “stability” over democracy and human rights is not a liberal value.

The Brendan Loy Kerry Curse continues: just as I go east, the Kerry-Edwards ticket is going west.

The Nominees John made their stop in Newburgh, NY today — visiting a Wendy’s to celebrate the Edwardses’ anniversary — and are now rolling through Pennsylvania on their campaign bus. A campaign press release states: “This weekend, Kerry and Edwards will continue heading through Pennsylvania and into West Virginia and Ohio.”

Well, drat.

The candidates’ “Believe in America” tour “will take Kerry and Edwards and their families on an historic journey from coast-to-coast… [that] will trace this country’s Westward expansion, highlighting the optimistic American spirit that is at the heart of the Kerry-Edwards plan to build a stronger America.” So now I’m hoping their, uh, trail of optimism won’t reach Arizona till I get back here. Somehow, though, I doubt I’ll be so lucky, given my track record…

Incidentally, the reason I’m blogging now is that Becky and I decided to come home for a few hours instead of seeing The Village this evening as previously planned. Becky had a stomach ache, plus I wanted to see the animals one more time before my trip home. :)

The two-year-old Florida Primary unused voting-audit data, reported recently to have been erased in two server crashes (”Millions of Ballots! THROWN OUT!!!” :), has turned up on a CD in the County Elections Office.

Implacable elections-administration critics, who had condemned the loss of this archived historical information as evidence that Florida votes still do not Count, are now expected to blast its retrieval as absolute Proof that Florida elections are corrupt exercises run by incompetent idiots.

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In more significant news: an elderly retired Connecticut State Employee has caught a new state record Channel Catfish.

The be-barbeled Ictalurus punctatus was a rare albino of the species; and even more surpringly to me, was taken on an artifical bait — albeit a soft-plastic imitation of one of Old Mister Whiskers’ favorite forages, the noble Worm. In my vast experience :), Cats seldom hit artificials of any kind. The guy was angling for Bass. Imagine his Surprise!

Reasonable critics of the CT DEP Fisheries Division are expected to Question the alleged Record, in light of the suspicious facts that (a) the purported fish supposedly died under mysterious circumstances in a farm pond far from its Habitat the very next day, and (b) the elderly retired state worker supposedly Landing the questionable whopper was Not Me. :)

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Re this last item, I have tried to comply with Brendan’s Guestbloggers’ Rule #8, entitled “Think before you Rant”, by — most uncharacteristically — trying to actually Learn something about the subject prior to Posting on it. But all my Googling has been in vain.

Therefore: can somebody who may have been Watching during the time-block indicated below, please tell me whether the Democratic National Convention did in fact on Thursday evening Nominate a Candidate for Vice President of the United States – as had been placed on (hastily shoehorned into??? :) the Official Schedule reflected here? And if So, did such Nominee then Accept, as is reportedly required, for the first time, by the newly-amended Party Rules?

The relevent Schedule excerpt: within the Thursday 4 pm to 7 pm time period:

“Vice Presidential Nomination Process

The Honorable Raul Grijalva
U.S. House of Representatives, Arizona
Moves for Acclimation and Calls for Vote”

They did it, right? (Right?? :)

UPDATE: See the Comments hereto – wherein Brendan, the Witch-King of the Googlesith, confirms via the Arizona Republic that Yes, Right, they Did it. / And his linked article states that the several Edwards Nomination speakers were selected last week — so, No, it wasn’t a Last-minute Scramble situation, as I so Drudgerishly implied above, even whilst covering my proverbial Posterior (or, was it the Blogmaster’s???) with assorted, and for that matter Sordid, Parentheses, Italics, and Triple Questionmarks. :) The only part I Forgot was the “Developing…”

I was going to dissect his speech line by line, but i figure all of you are pretty damn sick of it. In case you’re not and would actually like to read it, I’ve put in a link here.

But here are my two cents anyway:

What did Kerry actually tell us?

1. He is an American
2. He loves the country
3. He hates Bush and what Bush has done for the country

Yeah, that’s really about it.

I do have to say that he came through with a few good sound bytes for the evening, though. And I’m not talking about the “Help is on the Way” bullsh*t, either.

But that’s all. Just like most political speeches, he spent about an hour talking. Which is good. Don’t get me wrong. And he made promises (finally). Promises are also good. But I have to admit, I am a bit cynical.

(And I’m new at this whole blogging thing, too. Hopefully my posts will get better with time)

Last time Brendan was in the DC area, he was summarily yelled at by a Metro official for the serious crime of sitting down. This is, of course, nothing compared to being arrested for eating a candy bar. (Which I thought Brendan might find amusing.) Our local news updated the story to mention that Metro is considering being less severe with its no food or drink policy to avoid negative publicity. The next story was about Virginia becoming a battleground state. Is there a connection between overaggressive law enforcement and the possibility that the Old Dominion could go Democrat for the first time since LBJ? Or, does this just have to do with the DNC convention that just ended? We make glib remarks, you decide.

For those who may have lost track of my calendar (and really, you should be paying more attention :), today is the day I leave Phoenix and head home for a 10-day sojourn in Connecticut. I’ll return to Phoenix on Aug. 10 and spend another week here with Becky before leaving for South Bend and law school on Aug. 17.

Here is an overview of my schedule for the next 18 hours or so:

Now till 4:00 PM: Finish up at work (though really, there’s not much left to do!)

4:00 PM: Office send-off, with “casual hors d’oeuvres.” Becky is coming into the office.

5:00 PM: My tenure at Intertec Consulting officially ends.

5:45 PM: Watch M. Night Shamalyan’s The Village with Becky at Harkins Arizona Mills Luxury 24 theater.

~8:00 PM: Leave movie theater for airport.

10:45 PM MST: Depart Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on United Airways Flight 1722 (a.k.a. US Airways 148), a 4-hour, 25-minute flight to Philadelphia.

6:10 AM EDT: Arrive Philadelphia International Airport.

7:50 AM: Depart Philly on United Airways Flight 1856 (a.k.a. US Airways 504), a 1-hour, 11-minute flight to Providence, RI.

9:01 AM: Arrive Providence T.F. Green Airport. Get picked up by my parents. Go home to Newington, CT.

Okay, college football fans, it’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. ESPN has published the preseason coaches’ poll. USC dominated the pack with a whopping 449 (out of 466) first place votes for a 1,500-point first-place ranking.

Oklahoma and LSU round out the top three as the only other schools to recieve first-place votes (12 and 5 respectively).

USC’s schedule gives them a nice shot at a repeat championship, too. Only two other Pac-10 schools made it into the Top 25. The Trojans play #15 Cal (their only loss last year) at home, and #25 Oregon isn’t on their schedule this year. USC’s non-conference schedule has them playing VaTech, Notre Dame, and Colorado State, none of whom cracked the Top 25. Here’s hoping for a repeat of last season! (with USC’s only loss coming at the hands of Washington instead of Cal)

Other notable schools:
#37 (tied) Notre Dame - 25 points
#52 (tied) UCLA - 7 points
#59 (tied) Washington & UCONN - 1 point

GO HUSKIES!

In a gross miscalculation, Brendan has handed over the keys to the kingdom—to a brigand of wild literary stylists from the comment board no less. (By “literary stylists,” I mean those who tend not to fall into traps like “standardized spelling” & “ standardized grammar.”) With just the barest of “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” speeches, he has let us loose on the great blogging world—to wreak unabashed silliness, tongue-in-cheek commentary, wild banter and utter havoc upon the world that has come to expect actual journalism from this fine bedrock establishment of navel gazing!

As the Washington D.C. area correspondent, I assure you that I will not take my mission to talk about important local affairs seriously. In fact, so committed to this charge am I that I shall strive to take nothing upon which I post too seriously. Of course, such a charge would be difficult to carry out if not for one simple fact; I rarely take much of anything too seriously. Because Brendan is going out of town for a while, I shall strive to cover more comic elements while leaving the more touchy subjects to those more interested in starting flame wars. And now, there shall be more after the break… [The preceding has been approved for all audiences. The proceeding has been rated PG by me]

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…we have the potential for some truly awful explosions. In what can certainly be called a bold move, the attorneys general of eight states have decided to sue the five largest domestic emiters of carbon dioxide. This comes shortly after a report that astrophysicists have reason to believe that increased solar activity may be the cause of a substantial amount of recent global temperature increases (as discussed here at the Irish Trojan’s blog on July 19th.)

Key quote: ” ‘I would be totally amazed if the court gave this a serious response,’ Brooks [reportedly of Vermont Law School, and a specialist in the legal issues of air pollution] says. ‘This makes me imagine that this is more of a symbolic suit.’ “

Gee, you think so? Nah, Eliot Spitzer would never get involved in something like that…

In more interesting science developments, Stephen Hawking claims that he’s proven that black holes are not portals to other universes, (key quote: “I’m sorry to disappoint science-fiction fans”) though John Preskill, to whom Hawking conceded defeat in a bet on this matter is not yet convinced that Hawking has proven Preskill right and Hawking wrong; and the geological time scale has been updated with the first new stratigraphically-defined period added since 1891.

UPDATE: It’s come to my attention that those of you who aren’t on academic servers and who don’t happen to subscribe to Science can’t access the articles to which I linked. Sorry about that–since I have internet access provided by my university, I get access automatically. Thus, the gist of articles:

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The great BrendanLoy.com group-blog experiment is officially underway. The following people have been given access to guest-post to this site:

Antonia Byers (San Rafael, CA)
David Kreutz (Marysville, WA)
Kristy LaPlante (Santa Monica, CA)
Dane Lindberg (Arlington, VA)
Andrew Long (Huntington Beach, CA)
Leanna Loomer (Newington, CT / New York, NY)
Joe Loy (Newington, CT)
Arash Markazi (New York, NY*)
Jen Persaud (Wethersfield, CT)
Josh Rubin (Silver Spring, MD)
Tim Stevens (Newington, CT)
Sean Vivier (Newington, CT)
Victoria Wagner (Philadelphia, PA)
Mike Wiser (Stanford, CA)
Rebecca Zak (Mesa, AZ)

If you’re not on the list, but you’d like to be, please leave a comment on this post letting me know!

I will keep the group-blog going for at least two weeks (roughly), then reassess whether I like how it works and decide whether to continue this way as I begin law school.

In the mean time, post away, guest-bloggers!

*Arash is in the process of moving from Los Angeles to New York, where he will begin working for Sports Illustrated!

As you know, I didn’t think much of Kerry’s speech last night — for me, it was utterly unmemorable, and that’s bad for someone who is trying to captivate the public during his one big, “unfiltered” moment on stage — and plenty of people agree with me. But there are dissenting views, from some predictable and some surprising sources.

Unsurprisingly, my dad thinks Kerry did better than I think he did. “I thought it was good. … Oratorically Kerry is not a WJ Clinton… nor an Obama, an Edwards, even a Teddy back in his day. :) But — we KNEW that. Expecting him to suddenly become Ronald Reagan, stylistically, is to raise the bar too high.” [That’s true, but even an oratorical non-Clinton can give a memorable speech, and this, for me, was not one. -ed.] My dad concludes: “I think Kerry was Good Enough.”

Much more surprisingly, Mickey Kaus — who hates Kerry, who has been railing against Kerry for months, who has been my “Dem Panic” mentor — liked Kerry’s speech. He initially used the same phrase as my dad, “good enough.” But then he elaborated, and sounded more enthusiastic in doing so: “Substantive, non-cheap Bush-bashing! Populism muted-to-nonexistent! Above all, Kerry seemed less pompous, like a guy you could conceivably live with for four years… I predict a measurable bounce, if anybody was watching.”

Most surprisingly of all — stunning, really — are the results of the post-speech AOL poll, emailed to me by my dad at 11:54 PM MST last night. Experience teaches that AOL poll voters are more conservative than the public at large, generally resulting in right-leaning results, but not this time:

How would you rate Kerry’s speech?
Excellent 56%
Poor 18%
Fair 14%
Good 12%

Who would do a better job as president?
John Kerry 62%
George Bush 38%

Total Votes: 97,434

Of course, perhaps the most telling statistic there is that 74% of respondents voted either “Excellent” or “Poor”; barely a quarter chose either of the moderate middle choices, “Fair” or “Good.” (What Polarized America?)

But never mind that. The positivity toward Kerry is very telling, too, or at least I hope so! Either there were a whole lot of Kerry trolls lurking on AOL last night trying to rig the poll, or else Kerry made some serious headway with a tough crowd.

Ah, but we shall see. I’m sure there will be reams of polling data within days. Already (again via my Dad), a Zogby poll taken during the convention shows Kerry opening a 5-point lead (though his numbers were static since the previous poll; it’s Bush who lost suppost into the “Undecided” column). Rasmussen Reports shows JK opening up a three-point lead.

“I wasn’t sure how to feel without the sight of tumbling balloons to symbolize overflowing excitement,” writes Ann Althouse. “I want a President who will never ask me to sit through an hour-long speech without a plan for releasing the balloons.” Heh.

Here’s the AP story about Balloongate. The Boston Globe has a balloon story, too, making the inevitable 1980 comparison: “In what was later cited as an omen of a doomed campaign, President Jimmy Carter waited in vain for balloons to rain on him at the 1980 Democratic convention.” (My previous Balloongate posts are here and here.)

Above: Tens of thousands of balloons stuck on the ceiling!