A while back, there was a request for more posts about Britney Spears, so here goes: the pop princess’s wedding to Kevin Federline will reportedly be a Kabbalah ceremony:

It would be the first celebrity Kabbalah marriage and could take place beneath a traditional Jewish canopy known as a chuppah, with wedding vows inspired by the cult religion. The faith taken up by Miss Spears is also favoured by Madonna, Guy Ritchie and Demi Moore.

I wonder if there’s any sort of Kabbalah tradition whereby Madonna could give away the bride after an extended make-out session (videotaped by the paparazzi, of course, and coming soon to a video-rental store near you)? I guess probably not… :)

Anyway, I suppose I should probably object to the term “cult religion,” considering I’m on a Kabbalah mailing list. I’m going to unsubscribe soon, though (well, as soon as I get around to it), as I personally find all the month-by-month spiritual jargon to be a bit unbelievable. Becky seems to find some meaning in it, though, so I’m not going to diss it.

P.S. You know, re-reading that quote from the article, it’s possible to conclude that the term “cult religion” refers either to Kabbalah or to Judaism! I’m assuming they meant the former, though; the article is from a British paper, after all, not a French paper!! :)

By the beard of Zeus, Will Ferrell went to USC! (I didn’t know that.) And he’s hosting the 75th anniversary gala for the School of Cinema-Television next month! Ron Howard, George Lucas, and Robert Zemeckis will also be there. I wonder if they, like Ferrell’s Anchorman character Ron Burgundy, “love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch.”

(More memorable Anchorman quotes here. Incidentally, I give that movie 3 1/2 out of 5 golden shillelaghs. Thouroughly stupid, but very funny.)

The National Enquirer reports: Bush to dump Cheney, pick Giuliani.

Of course, the National Enquirer is somewhere on the credibility continuum between Drudge and sludge… but still, they’re occasionally right, so it will be worth watching if anything comes of this.

So much for pennies from heaven. Just four days after I discovered an “extra” $800 in spending money for my 1L year, I’ve been hit with two hefty, unanticipated, unbudgeted fees totalling $1,646.50.

The bottom-line result: instead of seeing my weekly spending-money total increase from $60 to $75, it has now decreased to $55. (It would be $50 or lower, if not for Toni’s generous offer to host BrendanLoy.com and some creative budgeting.)

Ugh.

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Dick Morris: “The master returned to center stage last night as Bill Clinton showed how to address a convention and use issues to win elections.”

Blogger Steve: “I have never been a fan of the former president… [but] the man’s speech tonight was simply brilliant. Pitch perfect. Exactly what the doctor ordered. He hit it out… of… the… park.”

Indeed. Speech excerpts here.

I’ve been disinclined to post anything about Kobe Bryant because of the whole celebrity-trial-overkill thing, but Becky has a post about the disturbing implications of the court’s recent rulings:

The one piece of admissible evidence [that] has me outraged is the nature of the relationship of the victim to outcry witnesses. An outcry witness is the first witness the victim talks to after an assault. According to the judge’s ruling, the history of any sexual relationship the victim had with these witnesses is admissible in court. WHY? The fact that she f***ed or dated one of her outcry witnesses is not relevant. It has no bearing on the facts of the case and will undoubtably be used by the defense to tarnish her character.

Becky is also disturbed by what she describes as the third prong of the defense strategy: claiming that “the victim has a psychiatric history which calls into question her judgement”:

The implications of this method of defense are simply horrible to deal with. In essence, the defense is arguing that no one who has ever been hospitalized can be raped in the eyes of the law. Any person with a psychiatric condition has no credibility on the stand. Their version of events is bogus.

To me, these are very complex issues with no easy answers, and indeed, perhaps no good answers at all. You won’t find anyone who feels more strongly than me about the heinousness of rape and the need to aggressively and successfully prosecute rapists. Yet the defendant’s right to a fair trial is fundamental to our system of government. And if an alleged crime victim has a mental condition, that may very well be quite relevant to the defense, though it depends very much on the precise facts of the case. Yet, juries being the imperfect human beings that they are, the mere introduction of the evidence may doom the prosecution’s case, regardless of the actual facts, and that does result in the deeply disturbing result that Becky postulates: “no one who has ever been hospitalized [for a mental illness] can be raped in the eyes of the law.”

Anyway, read the whole thing. And by the way, new readers and folks just passing by, be sure to check out my linked “Brendansphere” blogs, especially the Valkyrie of Discarded Thought and Tidal Moods.

Yesterday was the second-busiest traffic day in BrendanLoy.com history, with a grand total of 4,066 unique hits recorded on this site. But far more extraordinary were the hourly stats: between 6:00 and 7:00 PM — in the immediate aftermath of InstaBoost X, amid the continuing aftereffects of BoinketteBoost II, and during Jimmy Carter Hour of the DNC — we got 1,005 hits, easily a new hourly record. 768 more hits followed during Clinton Hour, between 7:00 and 8:00 PM. (The old hourly record was 587.)

Less than 20 months ago, I was holding my breath waiting to see if I’d hit 100 hits in a single day for the first time ever. Yesterday, 1,005 hits in a single hour. What a difference a few InstaBoosts make. :)

More shameless navel-gazing after the jump…

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I thought this land belonged to you and me, but apparently it belongs to a select group of copyright owners. My mistake.

Newington High School has a new principal.

Go to 4:55 of the video of Hillary’s speech, and you can see for yourself how Hillary shakes her head “no” when she proclaims: “John Kerry will give America something else, a great vice president by the name of John Edwards!”

Heh.

More speech videos here.

The convention is recessed for the evening. Here are the texts of the evening’s big speeches:

Al Gore
Jimmy Carter
Hillary Clinton

Will post (and quote from) Bill’s as soon as I can find it online.

UPDATE: Here is the text of Bill Clinton’s speech, definitely — and predictably — the rhetorical highlight of the evening. Money quote:

“Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won’t stand up to the terrorists. Don’t you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. They go hand in hand, and John Kerry has both. His first priority will be to keep America safe.”

More excerpts after the jump.

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Boy, that David Alston is something. I can’t keep up with him well enough to quote him, but he’s giving one hell of a spirited speech. (He’s a reverend who fought with Kerry in Vietnam.) Hopefully I’ll be able to find a transcript later and quote it.

The Clintons should be coming up any minute now.

UPDATE: Here comes Hillary!!

SAVE US, O WHITE KNIGHT! ANNOUNCE YOUR CANDIDACY! :)
(just kidding)

My Hillary-hating fiancée is at the dog park, so no snide comments from the peanut gallery. :)

“I am practicallly speechless,” she says. We’ll be the judge of that.

She does sort of look like Meryl Streep, doesn’t she?

“We meet at a moment of great peril, but also of great promise for the country we love.”

UMM… “I know a thing or two about health care.” Do you really want to remind us about that?

BODY LANGUAGE ALERT: Hillary was literally shaking her head “no” when she said “a great vice president by the name of John Edwards.” I’m not kidding! She was vigorously shaking her head!! What’s that about? 2008, anyone?! :)

HILLARY THE HAWK: A forceful speech. Why am I reminded of that Andrew Sullivan column from a few months back?

“We need a new commander-in-chief named John Kerry!” You could almost hear her thinking, “…named Hillary Clinton — I mean –” :)

She adds: “John Kerry is a serious man for a serious job at a serious time in our history.” If by “serious,” you mean “deadly dull”…

But, uh, yeah. Serious! And nuanced!

OH, WELL: I guess she’s really not running. No White Knight announcment. :)

Here comes Bill!

Did I just read Hillary lips saying “bastard” to Bill after their long on-stage huge? I suppose probably not, but wouldn’t that be funny?

Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow…

BUT ISN’T TOM BRADY A BUSH SUPPORTER? Clinton says Kerry is a “real New England patriot.”

He also says he, Clinton, is now just a “foot soldier in the fight for freedom.” (Hello, alliteration!)

And there was something in there about “John Adams, John Kennedy, and now, John Kerry.”

MORE CLINTON QUOTES: Not sure if I’m getting these exactly right, but…

The Democrats believe in “acting alone only when we absolutely have to.” The Republicans believe in “acting alone when we can and cooperating when we have to.”

The GOP is to the right of most Americans, so they have to portray the Democrats as “simply unacceptable.” The Republicans “need a divided America. But we don’t.”

There’s lots of good stuff here… I’ll have to find a transcript later.

WHITE KNIGHT: Forget Hillary… are we sure we can’t nominate Bill?

I MEAN, SERIOUSLY: This guy is good. I had almost forgotten.

He just alluded to his own draft-dodger status!

SEND… HIM: I’m not sure if that “send me” thing actually made sense, but whatever.

WELL, THIS IS MASSACHUSETTS: “He picked John Edwards to be his partner.” And here I just thought they were runningmates!

There’s a good line, about Kerry on terrorism: “Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.”

You tell ‘em, Bubba!

YAAAYY!!!!!! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MOR…. er, I mean… KER-RY! KER-RY! KER-RY! (sorry, thought it was ‘96 for a second there)

In the wake of InstaBoost X (welcome, new readers, by the way!), I figure I’d better keep up the live-blogging, so here goes…

Man, Stephanie Tubbs is annoying. Becky and I finally muted her because we couldn’t deal with her voice anymore. I know she’s a minority and she’s a woman and she’s from Ohio, but seriously.

On a side note, I would like to clarify my previous comments about the music at the convention. I’m not complaining about the actual full songs they’re playing, like “Johnny Be Goode” right now; those are actually quite nice. What I’m complaining about are the little instrumental (if you can even call it that), elevator-music-type interludes, 5 to 15 seconds long, that they play whenever they introduce a new speaker. Many of those have just been excruciating.

UPDATE: Bob Menendez just described “America’s providential role in the world.” That’s almost Reaganesque! Now he’s hammering away on the “war of choice” theme.

Funny, the prime-time portion of the convention this evening so far has been considerably more stridently anti-Bush than the earlier portion.

TAKE THAT, POLAND! “John Kerry will build a real coalition to win the war on terror.” –Bob Menendez

But he just mispronounced “nuclear”! He said “nukular,” like Dubya does! Heh!

“When it is needed, John Kerry will not wait, he will not waver, he will not hem or haw” when it comes to defending us from terrorists.

It’s the perfect campaign slogan! “John Kerry: Neither Hem Nor Haw!”

Now Menendez is speaking in Spanish. Dammit, why doesn’t anyone ever speak Irish Gaelic at these things? I feel underrepresented! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

NOTE TO BOB MENDENDEZ: Speaking loudly in a relentless monotone is not the same thing as speaking forcefully.

By the way, that reminds me, you know threre’s something very… um… special about John Kerry when it’s possible to hear Al Gore speaking and think, “Man, I wish this year’s candidate was as compelling a speaker as that guy!”

TELEPROMPTER FAILURE #2: Well, something went wrong, anyway, during that steel worker’s speech. “I… uh… support John Kerry… and uh… yeah. Thank you.”

I don’t know why anyone watches these things on a channel other than C-SPAN. Honestly, which is more fun: watching Wolf Blitzer or Peter Jennings prattling on about conventional wisdom that will be obsolete within a week, or watching random Democrats screw stuff up on national TV?

HEY! That’s Walter Mondale!

AGAIN WITH THE RANDOM PEOPLE MESSING UP: “This is a such a critical vote [pause] time [pause] for all of America.”

“It is critical that we support John Kerry and John Edwards for many reasons. Social Security. Thank you for you attention.”

DEAD AIR TIME: I think somebody was just telling a Polish joke. And what’s that guy yelling? Something about “unions”? And now we can hear some ditzy-sounding women saying, “Hi! How are you?” Giggling is involved.

Man, I love C-SPAN.

Over 1,000 hits between 6pm and 7pm! Wow! Thanks, Boi & Glenn!

AMAZING GRACE: No complaints about this music.

They’re doing the 9/11 tribute. Candles/cigarette lighters up. Photo of the Tribute in Light in the background. Moving.

(That’s not the picture from the DNC. I took that picture on 9/11/03.)

I think I’ll start a new post now. Scroll up.

Jimmy Carter is pulling no punches. Methinks he may have been deemed “off limits” to the Kerrymen’s editing.

No, seriously. He was funny:

I’ll be candid with you. I had hoped to be back here this week under different circumstances, running for re-election.

But you know the old saying: you win some, you lose some. And then there’s that little-known third category.

I didn’t come here tonight to talk about the past. After all, I don’t want you to think I lie awake at night counting and recounting sheep.

I prefer to focus on the future because I know from my own experience that America is a land of opportunity, where every little boy and girl has a chance to grow up and win the popular vote.

Heh.