csua.org/u/8jv -> www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2004_08_08.html#001687
press release on their quietly-organized month of training us to focus on our mortal danger. While the timing is almost certainly coincidental, nothing else about this exercise seems to be.
summary of what it was like to be a blogger at the Democratic convention. Me, I only took part in one interview, with the New York Times, and that was only to set the record straight on this site's often-overlooked but rather crucial role in Trent Lott's downfall. On my first or second day in Boston, I read a feature story in the Boston Globe about some kids who had been credentialed to cover the convention for the Weekly Reader, and it suddenly hit me--that's what the bloggers were. If there had been a talking dog at the convention (outside of last week's TMW, I mean), or maybe a horse that could do arithmetic, we would have all been lumped into the same category. as it turns out, I've got some fairly non-negotiable obligations which are going to make it extremely difficult for me to get away from home that week. So chances are, I'll be watching the convention on television--which, as I noted in a previous post, has its own advantages. What I'm mostly going to miss out on, I think, is the action outside the convention center--so I'm putting out an open invitation to those of you who will be on the ground. Send in your updates, your eyewitness reports, and I'll try to post them here. I'd like to post your photos as well, but I'm bumping up against my server's bandwidth limits lately, so I'm not sure about that.
Bob Harris) As long as we're re-examining the 1960s, looking for signs of character, trying to decide if a man who volunteered for combat and was decorated five times was more or less courageous than a guy who didn't even show up for his own medical exam... here's George W Bush during his college days, hitting a fellow sportsman in the face.
It's not in the Times' online version, and the rest of the country should see it, I think. Incidentally, while rugby is a contact sport, every player knows that tackling above the shoulders is a foul. Either of these is serious enough that the other team is immediately awarded a penalty kick, often directly resulting in points for the other team. So even without throwing a punch, Bush is already well outside fair play. Grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face is beyond the pale -- I've watched rugby avidly for years, and I've never seen it during an open-field tackle like this, honest -- and will typically result in a player being immediately sent off. I'm sure by next week Karl Rove will have a collection of rugby players claiming that John Kerry was even worse... UPDATE: Had a delightful email exchange with Jim Sleeper, the Yale political science lecturer who wrote the LA Times piece and recently found the above photo in his own Yale class of '69 yearbook. Several other newspapers will apparently be running the photo and story in their print editions in the next few days. As to why nobody seems to have noticed this photo before, Jim thinks it's because Bush had already graduated a year earlier, and so nobody looked past the '68 book for Bush stuff. Strange, then, that this photo would be in the '69 book -- unless Bush was well-known as a thug, and thus it wasn't considered out of bounds to print such a thing about a guy who wasn't there anymore. I've heard from a few rugby players who conjecture that what we're seeing, while unsportsmanlike and a clear foul (Bush has left his feet and made contact above the shoulders), might be the moment immediately after a incompentently-made dirty tackle, with the arm coming down, instead of the moment before an incompetently-thrown dirty punch, with the arm coming up. But I've also heard from a few who think it's exactly what Yale's yearbook staff said it was. FURTHER UPDATE: This has generated more email than anything else I've ever posted, scrutinized as if it's the Zapruder film of men in knickers.
Bush is in the back row, center, two guys down from a fellow who seems to have undergone some sort of Manchurian Candidate surgery. Of course, rugby truly can be considered a form of trepanation by other means... Finally, no, of course this isn't supposed to be more important than other issues like the War On Tara, "voting" machines which are anything but, the slow Guantanamization of American life, or the rest of our impending doom during the incompetent reign of a corrupt alcoholic chimpanzee who thinks he talks to God. September, as described below, is National Frighten The Children Just Before The Election month. That alone is way more a part of our future than whether or not Bush slugged a guy, drove drunk, dodged Vietnam, profited from insider trades, took sadistic delight in executing people, or ignored repeated warnings about Al-Qaeda until it was too goddam late. I again applaud Jim Sleeper for surfacing this tiny bit of it.
page flatly states that Tom Ridge will make the official announcement on September 9th. That's awfully late, if it's supposed to be the entire month. My guess, thinking like Karl Rove: this year's 9/11 anniversary falls on a Saturday, so an announcement on the date or even Friday would only get a burst of free media on a weekend.
And they're plugging the GOP's key issue on the opening day of the convention, probably with a cover story, free of charge... Tie the concept of Bush's only winning issue to family and children. Unspoken, deniable implication: "vote for Bush if you want your kids to live." On the 7th, there's another newspaper supplement, then -- yep, the official announcement on the 9th. Look for Tom Ridge, possibly flanked by tremulous herds of frightened waifs, sometime around noon EST. On 9/11 itself, there's a "NASCAR race in Richmond" listed. This would be the "Chevy Rock 'N' Roll 400" at the Richmond International Raceway. Obviously, a NASCAR race has nothing -- nothing -- whatsoever to do homeland security. It is, however, a GOP-friendly event in Virginia, a battleground state where Bush's lead is within the margin of error. There are two other NASCAR races in September: one in New Hampshire, the other in Delaware. Apparently non-swing state voters just don't need to be quite so, ahem, "prepared." If we don't see "preparedness" rallies at the other two races -- and they ain't scheduled, folks -- that certainly suggests Bush et al are using fear as a political tool. This is transparently a continuation of the Bush campaign by other means, financed with everyone's tax dollars, out of funds that could be used, say, to hire more actual first-responders, Pushtun translators, or troops to replace the exhausted guardsmen. Bush should be called out on this, and now, by journalists, by the Kerry campaign, and by everyone who prefers actual security over campaign propaganda. Our tipster said something I want to share: Those of us who actually work on this sort of thing, in addition to wondering what the other 35 months since 9/11 have been, are of course not thrilled that this is so obviously being politicized. It's three years after 9/11, and less than three months before an election, and now we get a National Preparedness Month. And yes, let's ask Bush and Tom Ridge the simple question: what the hell do these people think the previous 35 months were?
falsehood that Iraq kicked out UN weapons inspectors in 1998 (they were withdrawn after a phone call from the US rep to the UN, in advance of a US attack). UPDATE: less than 48 hours after this post went up, the Dept.
press release announcing September as National Preparedness Month. As far as this being a partisan enterprise, targeting the self-avowedly pro-Christian, pro-family, pro-business GOP base: the groups they've signed up to participate are really quite telling. You'll find the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, something called "The National Fatherhood Initiative" (which, one presumes, is courageously taking on the powerful anti-fatherhood lobby), the American Legion, the VFW, the USO, the Points of Light Foundation, and a whole slew of various military, religious, law enforcement, and business lobbying organizations. Aside from the obvious incl...
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