Although I started this blog about 15 months ago, it was last year, August 1st, that I last missed a day of blogging–which makes today the 366th consecutive day of blogging for me.

The blog will hopefully get cleaned up a little during my August break (working at a university has its perks, long vacations being one of them). Other BfAD news: while the four-month increase in viewership (which peaked in June) has slowed, the number of visitors is still growing and is now nearly double what it was in February. July had roughly 10,300 different people visit the blog (as the IP counts), with an average of 680 daily visitors downloading almost 7 GB of data.

The blog successfully made the transition from Myacen to Surpass Hosting without any hitches (despite a short outage a few weeks ago), and Surpass is so far doing OK. You have to stay with a host for 6 months to a year before you can really gauge their effectiveness, so we’ll see.

Otherwise, we’ve survived a barrage of blog comment spam and referral spam without yet resorting to requiring registration for commenting, and although “eyelid twitching” is still the most-searched-for term, the category “Reasons to Vote for Kerry” is right up there near the top, which means that people are looking at Kerry more–and “Bush” is not anywhere near the top of the search terms, despite the fact that I mention him almost every other entry. “Air America” fills out the top of the search list, as befits their good performance in the radio ratings.

Google sent 3,910 people to this blog this month, followed by Yahoo with 2,048, and MSN with 1,361. Among the more exotic locales from which visitors came are Latvia, Syria, Niue (huh? Oh, it’s in Polynesia), Lebanon, Belize, and the Cocos Islands.

Now for year two.

Kudos once again to Mark at VuDeja for a brilliant heads-up:

The DNC Speeches are available as audio books, for free, downloadable from the Apple Store. Way Cool. At this moment, only the first two days’ speeches are there; expect the third and fourth to appear soon.

You have to have an account at the store, which means you need a credit card with a U.S. (or European now, I suppose) billing address. There’s no cost to sign up, you just have to register the credit card number. Then you can download the volumes for free. Apple also gives away one free track of music each week, BTW.

Finally John Kerry had his day before the nation, and finally America saw him for what he really is, not for what his opponents have tried to paint him as. The long introduction up to Kerry’s speech was spectacular, and showed the real heart and soul of the candidate and the campaign. From the hilarious-but-true hamster-rescue story to the stunning realization that this man truly put his life on the line for his comrades in arms, from the loving introduction from his daughters to the stirring endorsement from his shipmates and from a true patriot, a true American, Max Cleland, America finally saw the man John Kerry is and the president he will make.

Almost everything went perfectly that night, save for the CNN “screw-up” of putting on the air someone who should never have been put on the air (thank God in Heaven that the press mostly ignored it!–more on CNN’s “mistake” later). But the majority of America was focused on Kerry, riveted to the endorsements of real Americans, real patriots, real men who fought and risked their lives and truly gave to their country, for one of their comrades who did the same. They saw a beautifully produced film that gave us a real sense of who this man is (excellent choices using Spielberg and especially Morgan Freeman, and I swear that’s John Williams’ music, a variation of Jurassic Park).

But most of all, everyone got to hear John Kerry himself. Though not as smooth an orator as Bill Clinton or even Barak Obama, he got the message across. He portrayed himself as the son of a test pilot and diplomat, growing up seeing America and her allies standing strong in Berlin, deciding to serve in wartime, fighting for the disenfranchised as a prosecutor, serving as a Senator, and wishing to serve again as president. He brought home the importance of his military service, not just the three purple hearts as a campaign tactic, but that with his experience, with his understanding of serving in combat rather than in a champagne unit of the National Guard, that:

“As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: “I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm’s way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent.” So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.

And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.”

Kerry outlined his stark differences from the occupant of the White House, outlined his plans: enact the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and do what Bush has abysmally failed to do, that is, actually fund homeland defense! Take seriously the threats of terrorists instead of simply taking advantage of fear to accomplish a political agenda. Of acting out values instead of just mouthing them, using them as props. Funding education. Protecting Social Security. Strengthening health care. Putting more police on the streets and opening fire stations instead of firing cops and closing firehouses like Bush has been doing. Protecting jobs at home instead of giving tax breaks for companies to ship them overseas. Cleaner air. Cleaner water. Better jobs. Protecting the tax cuts for the middle class while taking away the obscene tax giveaways to the rich. And telling how he’s going to do them–and it’s not news, these plans have been public for a long time on John Kerry’s web site.

Bush has had four years. He’s an abysmal failure. He lied. He stole. He’s been corrupt. He’s made Bill Clinton look like a boy scout. Democrats have always grown the economy far better than Republicans. There are two, perhaps three Supreme Court positions that will open in the next four years, which Bush would use to fill the Court with young, far-right-wing judges that would leave the court stacked for as long as the next half-century if not longer.

We can’t afford four more years of this. We need someone who will be able to govern responsibly. Someone who will bring America back to a place of respect in the world. Someone who can create real economic growth and give Americans jobs that mean something, not burger-flipping minimum-wage jobs–and at such a pathetic minimum wage at that. Who will go to war only when necessary, not just because he wants to. Who will really fight the war on terror, not just use it as an excuse to get his agenda passed.

Someone who, if the Republicans give him even one-tenth of the chance that Democrats have given Bush, will in fact unite us, will in fact bring prosperity, will in fact make us safer, and will in fact execute the duties of the office that will make us proud and capable once more.

Vote for John Kerry.

I have had several requests for finding the speeches at the Democratic National Convention. The best place I know is at the Convention web site. The speeches are available in Quicktime and Windows (both streaming), with a live streaming feed as well. I am using that live feed right now because Typhoon #10 has just knocked out my cable service, as storms do all too often around here. As it happened, the cable service crapped out right in the middle of Edwards’ speech. Thank goodness for the Internet!

The first day of the Democratic National Convention was very good–we heard good speeches from Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, excellent speeches from Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Rousing speeches, filled with a great deal of what needs to be heard, that Democrats have proven they can do it right, that Bush has proven that he cannot. But Tuesday, that would be the day to be in the crowd.

Ted Kennedy was, well, Ted Kennedy, doing perhaps better than I would expect, despite his voice cracking now and again. Howard Dean did less well than I expected he would–he was too quiet, maybe affected by the reaction to The Scream, but it really seemed like after the long, well-deserved standing ovation, that someone shot him with a tranquilizer dart. He just wasn’t what I hoped for there.

Ron reagan Jr. did very well, on the other hand; he did not overpoliticize, instead he described the hope for stem cell research in a way very easy to understand, in a manner very convincing and bound to find sympathetic ears beyond the liberal delegates, beyond the Democratic Party. And the final speaker of the evening, Teresa Heinz Kerry, reached just as far, if not farther, in showing people who she is and who she can be. Long painted by the right-wing smear machine as a rich elitist, more recently with a foul mouth (as if saying “shove it” to a trash journalist is something most of us wouldn’t long to do), she showed the strength of character that, as her son pointed out in his introduction, prompted prominent Republicans to ask her to run as a Republican for the Senate.

Teresa started off strong–“And by now, I hope it will come as no surprise that I have something to say.” That drew cheers from the crowd. And then she showed her linguistic talents, and then her oratorical talents. Despite being a scripted speech, her personality shone through, and throughout you saw the warm, radiant, smart, quietly humorous woman, and understood immediately what John Kerry sees in her.

She reached out, pointing out that she came to this country from a dictatorship and understood as well as anyone how precious and important freedom is. And that freedom must apply to everyone. Here is an excerpt:

I have a very personal feeling about how special America is, and I know how precious freedom is. It is a sacred gift, sanctified by those who have lived it and those who have died defending it.

My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called “opinionated”… is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish. And my only hope is that one day soon, My only hope is that, one day soon, women, who have all earned their right to their opinions… instead of being labeled opinionated will be called smart and well informed, just like men.

Tonight I want to remember my mother’s warmth, generosity, wisdom and hopefulness, and thank her for all the sacrifices she made on our behalf, like so many other mothers. And this evening, I want to acknowledge and honor the women of this world whose wise voices for much too long have been excluded and discounted.

It is time — it is time for the world to hear women’s voices in full and at last.

And the crowd, quieter than before, was moved by her words, showing the same reaction one can only hope some Americans will see despite the truncated network broadcasts (what a year, with such great speeches, for the acronyms to cut back!). People who saw that speech will not now be able to buy into the smears heaped on her from the right. She made the end of the evening.

But then. Oh boy, and then. Barak Obama. Speaking before Teresa, for the keynote. Nobody’s gonna make fun of his name from now, much less forget it. He gave the best speech of the convention so far. He gave a real barnburner, a speech to remember, one that roused the crowd, got everyone on their feet and cheering (as you can see at right, with our Democrats Abroad Japan representatives Terri and Lauren caught in the crowd on CNN). He said what everybody was waiting for, the words not just echoing people’s beliefs that there is something terribly wrong and that Kerry is the one to make it right. He gave a message of inspiring optimism, of real inclusiveness, of heartfelt Americanism, and man, can he speak the words. If you can, watch the speech in Real player here. You need to listen and watch to get the full impact. And yet, even the written form is inspiring, and though I do not often have quotes this long, this one is worth it. Read on.

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.

My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.

While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas.

Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty, joined Patton’s army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA, and moved west, all the way to Hawaii, in search of opportunity.

And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream, born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

They’re both passed away now. And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with pride.

And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters.

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted — or at least, most of the time.

This year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.

And fellow Americans — Democrats, Republicans, Independents — I say to you tonight: we have more work to do. More work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour. More to do for the father I met who was losing his job and choking back tears, wondering how he would pay $4,500 a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on. More to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.

Now don’t get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to.

Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon.

Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

In this election, we offer that choice. Our party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.

John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service, because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service in Vietnam to his years as prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he has devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available. His values and his record affirm what is best in us.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded. So instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he’ll offer them to companies creating jobs here at home.

John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.

John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.

John Kerry believes in the constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.

And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world, war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.

You know, a while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, 6-2 or 6-3, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week.

And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?

I thought of the 900 men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who will not be returning to their hometowns. I thought of families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists.

When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are all connected as one people.

If there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child.

If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent.

If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief — it is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.

It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America — there is the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism here-the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it.

That’s not what I’m talking [about]. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope.

In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; a belief in things not seen; a belief that there are better days ahead.

I believe we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs, and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.

America, tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do, if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as president. And John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president. And this country will reclaim its promise. And out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. Thank you.

George W. Bush has claimed to be a uniter, not a divider, trying to follow the “big tent” concept that the Republican party has tried to engender for so long. Inclusiveness, bipartisanship, and unity. The problem is, as with so much that Bush has promised, he says one thing but does another.

But Bush has managed to split the nation more deeply than before. He made withering claims of bipartisanship, but soon after taking office with control of both houses of Congress, he dismissed not only the Democrats, but even the moderate wing of his own party. His policies and practices were so divisive that he even repelled one of his own Senators, Jim Jeffords, into leaving the party and temporarily placing the Democrats in control. After the contested 2000 election, the Democrats called for, and practiced, bipartisan unity; after 9/11, the Democrats again called for, and again practiced bipartisan unity. And both times Bush took advantage of that Democratic spirit of unity, ramrodded his highly partisan and often extreme agenda through Congress, and just as he squandered the sympathy and unity of the world, he drove most of half the nation far against him in anger and disgust.

Bush claimed that the Democrats have practiced “class warfare,” but under Democrats everyone prospered–the rich got richer, and so did the poor. All boats rose with the Democratic tide. But under Bush and the Republicans, the rich are given the deepest tax cuts while the middle class has their modest cut negated by poorer wages, higher fuel costs, slashed services and benefits, higher local taxes, and a plethora of other hidden costs that cost them more than Bush bribed them with. Bush has been against a decent minimum wage and social welfare, yet for corporate welfare and letting the wealthy avoid paying their fair share. And to counter the outrage, he accuses anyone who points these truths out to be waging “class warfare.”

Bush and the GOP have been trying to appeal to minorities to vote for their party, and put on a good show at their convention–but when you look carefully, you’ll see the color on the stage, but almost no color at all in the audience. Bush went before the National Urban League (after shunning the NAACP), and lectured, “I know plenty of politicians assume they have your vote. But did they earn it, and, do they deserve it? … Have the traditional solutions of the Democratic Party truly served the African-American people?” As if he has done anything for African Americans, as if he has even come close to earning their vote. The fact is, under Clinton, minorities did far better, with rising pay, falling crime, and better opportunities, while under Bush, the exact reverse has been true.

Even under Clinton, when the country divided, it was not because Clinton drove them there but because the Republicans knew they could gain power through divisiveness and so sought to turn as many in the nation against him. And even then, Clinton remained more popular than even Reagan had been, gaining more bipartisan support from the people, if not the Republican core.

We need to bring the country back together, and it has been made incredibly clear over the past four and twelve years that the GOP is not interested, whatever their claim might be. There is still the peril that, if John Kerry wins, even if the Democrats gain control of one or both houses in Congress, even with no more independent prosecutor law, the Republicans will fall back on their most effective way to gain power: to do everything within their abilities to divide, falsely accuse, and smear.

The Democrats gave Bush not one, but two major chances to embrace bipartisanship, offering cooperation and unity to the point where they angered their base, and remained cooperative until Bush threw it back in their face and abused their trust, later even using it as a weapon against them. When Kerry takes office, let’s see if the Republicans can offer true bipartisanship and unity, even once, even for a small while. I doubt that will happen to the point of utter disbelief, but I can only hope it will happen nevertheless.

The first day of the Democratic convention was startlingly effective, with fantastic speeches that energized the crowd and helped define the essence of the Democratic party, with speakers Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Hillary and Bill Clinton making memorable, pointed remarks that would have a great impact on the American public.

If they ever get to see them–after all, there turn out to be even more incredible and earth-shaking stories out there: Teresa Heinz Kerry told a reporter to “shove it” and John Kerry wore a clean-room suit.

I mean, come on.

The Teresa Kerry matter was baldly misrepresented in the press. In the reports I’ve seen, they showed Teresa making a statement about needing “to turn back some of the creeping un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics.” That followed by a reporter asking her about the meaning of the word “un-American,” followed by her coming back later and telling him to “shove it.” Posed that way, it made Teresa look bad, especially when they pointed out that she had just “criticized the tenor of modern political campaigns.”

But the reports were edited. They did not tell us the fact that the reporter, Colin McNickle, was a far-right-wing opinion columnist and editor for a staunchly conservative newspaper owned by right-wing hatchet man Richard Scaife, and had been hassling Kerry–they took the few moments of the conflict completely out of context. They did not show McNickle claiming that Heinz-Kerry had said “un-American activities,” a misquote with McCarthyist connotations. Teresa did goof–instead of saying, “I did not say ‘un-American activities,” she said, “I did not say activity or un-American.” In fact, she did say “un-American.” But McNickle also did misquote her, giving her words a McCarthyist spin. And Teresa did say something that she shouldn’t have.

However, she was justified–she had been misquoted, and goaded, by an antagonistic reporter. But the press ignored all that, edited and colored the episode to make her look bad, supposedly because it was a lot flashier to focus on a potential first lady saying “shove it” on TV.

And then John Kerry, at the Florida Space Center, visited one of the shuttles, and like everyone else, put on a clean suit. Yes, he looked a bit funny. But a “Michael Dukakis moment,” as one CNN reporter put it? Give me a break. It was a clean suit, they all look like that, he would have been irresponsible to refuse to wear it, and while funky, it was not ridiculous.

But Kerry in the clean suit and Teresa saying “shove it” were the big stories. All over the place. Top coverage.

The speeches by senior statesmen, former presidents, important people, which pointed out that the country is on the wrong track and needs to be corrected? That the economy has to be reversed, good jobs have to be created, real attention paid to education and health care reform, those and so many other points that make up the Democratic message? The message that the press puzzles as to why it isn’t being heard? Well, put on page two, boys, we can show pictures of Kerry in a clean suit and call him “Bubble Boy“!!

Not that this is new. The CNN lead after Al Gore’s speech showed him in a photo-frozen pose looking stupid. As evidenced below that image, see other recent CNN photos of Gore:

Certainly not complimentary.

And Bush? Here are similar recent images:

Not exactly the same, are they?

Damn that liberal media! They always make the Democrats look so good, and never give Bush a break!

I mean, Bush fell off his bicycle–again!–just today, and not a word of it reaches the front pages. A president who can’t even ride a bike, and Kerry wearing a clean suit beats that out? That’s not equal reporting–if you’re going to report trivial crapola mocking one candidate, then you do it for both. I wouldn’t like to think about where my blood pressure would be if I had to endure FOX News, instead of just the moderately-right-wing CNN.

And while I’m at it, let’s look at the press perpetuating lies and repeating bush talking points. The media outlets that did carry the Bush-bike story tended to explain it by saying that Bush rides his bike “hard,” like he’s a tough guy, not an uncoordinated weenie. They write gushingly that Bush “rides with abandon… takes on dangerous sections that would give veterans pause.” And when speaking of his falling off his bike the last time, they repeat, as if it were fact, the assertion that Bush slipped on “soil loosened by rainfall,” when in fact it had not rained there for more than a week.

Please. Just change your name to “Bush Campaign Headquarters” and be done with it.

Just in over at Box Office Mojo. In fact, Mojo was a bit late with Saturday’s numbers–those and Sunday’s appeared roughly at the same time. Saturday’s total was $101.6 million, and Sunday’s grand total was $103.4 million. The film still stands to gross several millions per week for some time still–perhaps right up to the DVD sale in October (maybe September, but with the box office going like this, I doubt they’ll rush the DVD sales too fast). DVD sales will also likely go through the roof, perhaps even outselling the theater revenues. Even for a regular motion picture, this box office milestone would be an achievement–for a documentary, it is historic.

Having seen the film, I would say that it is without question Oscar material–better than his Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine. But here’s the thing: will he get an Oscar nod for this one?

From an artistic and/or technical standpoint, absolutely. But will politics interfere? Will everyone remember how the right wing exaggerated the booing from only a few audience members, and pilloried Moore because of it? Will the Academy chicken out and go the “safe” route? If Moore wins, will he be warned to not speak about politics, even though that’s what the film is about, and a reference to it would be completely legitimate?

And here’s one for thought: if Bush loses by only a few hundred, or even a few thousand votes, there will be little doubt that the film will have played a huge part in the election, as it would be safe to guess that at least that many people, out of the millions who will have seen the film, changed their vote due to watching it. Could the Academy deny an award to a documentary that not only deserves an Oscar solely on the basis of art, but also because it changes the course of history?

Yesterday, CNN Presents did a hack report on John Kerry–hardly more than a one-hour political attack ad. There was some positive content on Kerry, but most was negative, and each portion of the show was commented on by Republicans, who further attacked Kerry. Every aspect of Kerry’s life was represented in a shady, selfish or just plain negative manner.

I do not recall any program about Bush being anywhere near as negative; they are usually love tomes, and I greatly suspect that if CNN Presents does a show on Bush on the eve of the Republican convention, it will not be nearly so critical, nor would it have Al Gore, Joe Conason and other liberal voices getting to dig in to Bush on every point. We’ll see, but I’d be willing to bet quite a bit on the prediction.

A report on CNN News earlier today just outright lied: it said that Kerry was enacting “a shift away from” negative attack ads on Bush, and towards more positive, optimistic advertising. First of all, since Kerry started his national campaign, his advertising has been 73% positive, while Bush’s has been 75% negative. That makes the reporter’s claim an outright lie.

But more damaging is the insinuation: that Kerry has been negative, that it hasn’t worked against Bush, that Kerry is changing strategies, a sign of weakness–and the story completely left out how negative Bush has been, and that he is not getting any more positive.

It is bitterly ironic that most popular press coverage is like this–slapping down Kerry and aggrandizing Bush–and then the press wonders aloud, “why is Bush staying so high in the polls, and Kerry can’t seem to get ahead?”

Update: CNN finally provided a transcript of the report. The line in question is: “The upbeat tone, part of the ongoing shift away from criticizing Bush administration policies and toward a more optimistic message on the stump, leading up to the Democratic National Convention.”

No evidence whatsoever is given to support this statement; as far as anyone can tell, this reporter simply pulled it out of his hiney.

At the time of this update, CNN Presents still has no transcript of their slime job on Kerry.

Every year they have a fireworks display on the Tama River at Chofu; I can see it OK from my building, but as you can see in the first shot, zoom photography is needed from this far away, and the quality suffers. So I made it down to the river for the last part of the show, and saw some very nice hanabi, as they’re called in Japan. Here are some of the shots that I took of the show.

From the top of my apartment building

Kind of a palm-tree effect here; people were watching from all over, including the bridge at bottom.

Here you can see people set out on the riverbed. The best seats, closer to the show, are not free–in fact, the best seats, at tables, go for about $50 a pop.

And there’s always a big ending, shown here as an AVI file (5.5 MB).

It looks like all the news broadcasts of the DAJ press screening for Fahrenheit 9/11 have aired. You can find the CNN and NTV broadcasts hosted here, in Quicktime MOV format (thanks to Mark for the larger version of the CNN segment). The TBS broadcast is available only via their web site, on streaming video, in Real Player or WMP formats.

Darn CNN, they didn’t show a moment of the 4 or 5 minutes they spent interviewing me! I did get on screen for a moment, though, signing the donation form for the event as I arrived (I think I was the first one to do that, I got ticket #110 of 110). But the interviews they did show were good, and I would have probably looked like a goofball anyway.

The CNN report also talked the the Republicans Abroad person, who just smugly announced they were already uncorking champagne for their November 3rd celebrations. Republicans Abroad, by the way, is only a fundraising and voter registration organization–unlike Democrats Abroad, the GOP does not recognize Republicans living outside the U.S. except by absentee ballot only.

Mark and Vincentvds alerted me that the CNN story on us is airing today. Atika Schubert said our segment would be on Friday, but it seems to have been kicked back to today. It has aired a few times already, and will probably air more. It is appearing on World News, which will be on again at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, and 8:00pm. I don’t know if the segment will air each time, some of the times, or not at all again today, but I have the feeling it will.

I will also try to transfer this and what I have of the NTV report to digital video and host them on my site–I’ll let you know when I can do that.

So I’ve been getting blog referral spam lately. Spammers fake a link from their page to my site so as to get listed in my referral statistics, so that in turn their page will be listed higher in the search engines.

Well, I just got a new one: a total of 1556 hits from a new page, all generated within the last 24 hours, as if a link on that page sent 1556 people to my own web site. One would think that this was a classic referral spam attack.

Except the hits are coming from the web site of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). I checked out their site, there’s no link to mine.

What the heck is that about?!?

When I look at the stats for any occurrence of the number “1556,” I find that one web host/ISP, ool-18b8e8a7.dyn.optonline.net, is listed with this exact number of hits. Sure enough, it’s a commercial site–but it is a legitimate ISP, a Cablevision site in the New York area (where the IAEA is located). Not your usual spammer. So probably they are not the culprits. Optonline.net gets no referral link, and I seriously doubt that the IAEA is spamming me.

This seems to make no sense. Does anyone have any ideas?

Update: I’ve found out a bit more about it now. Seems to be a malicious email-address-harvesting spambot. Swell. Apparently it’s been terrorizing sites for over a year now. Obviously it spoofs the referrer, and it seems that the hacker who wrote it has either a weird sense of humor or a grudge against the IAEA.

See this page about how to block this bot and others like it.

So I saw the film on Tuesday at the Democrats Abroad Japan-sponsored press screening at the Toho Cinemas in Roppongi Hills, with a crowd of about 150, 110 of them guests of the DAJ. It was enjoyable just to be going to an event like that, but I appreciated much more being able to see the film before mid-August. And to see the film without commercials was even better.

Like most people, I had preconceptions about what the film was going to be like. We’ve seen the trailers and commercials showing some of Dubya’s less-than-elegant moments. I expected a lot of funny moments, many I’ve which I’d already seen elsewhere, and a lot of biting, humorous commentary. I’d heard the reviews which talked about Lila Lipscomb, and her being the emotional heart of the film. But just by hearing about these things, you can’t really even begin to get a sense of what you’ll experience when watching this film.

Moore begins with the 2000 election in Florida. Even with a two-hour-long film, he has to gloss over quite a but: he doesn’t explain that the angry mobs of “Floridians” at the recount are really Washington D.C. staffers for the GOP bussed in to shut down the vote count. He doesn’t have time to cover the absentee-ballot fraud in Seminole and Broward counties, or how African-Americans were intimidated by the police presence on election day. He does mention how Harris got tend of thousands of legitimate voters, mostly Democrats, kicked off the voter rolls as “felons,” and quickly mentions how the Supreme Court got Bush into office.

But he doesn’t have to cover these too much in detail; he knows that many Americans are familiar with that territory, and wanted to show us some things most of us did not know–a style that he follows for the rest of the film. Much of what we see in Fahrenheit are things we never saw or heard or read about before, and that’s a big part of what makes the film important. There are things the media doesn’t tell us. Whether you agree with Moore’s conclusions or not, it is fully worth seeing this movie just to see all the things that have been happening which you were not aware of.

For example, he shows us the joint session of the House and Senate meeting, and African-American House members, one after the other, raising objections to the certification of the election results. Each one calls into question the validity of the election–and each one is told to sit down, by none other than Al Gore (as President of the Senate), because none of the objections has been signed by the single required Senator in order to make the objection valid. The entire proceeding reeks of irony–the winner of the election certifying the loser as president, the Bush victory declared valid while the objections of those who represent the unjustly disenfranchised being told they had no voice. “The Senate is missing.”

Moore continues the prologue with Bush’s swearing in an subsequent fall in the polls, and then his long vacations–42% of his first nine months. The credits roll as Bush and his staff are dolled up for the cameras: it’s showtime. And then he comes to 9/11. Artfully, he never shows us a plane hitting a building or a tower collapsing. He blacks out the film and gives us audio only, making the experience far more intense–and when he does show us the aftermath, he shows us only the faces of the witnesses, and the paper and other debris roiling in the clouds of smoke.

I was hoping to see the entire 7 minutes of video showing Bush sitting in the Florida classroom, having the minutes tick by as Moore commented on what was going on, perhaps even split-screen. Moore was much more merciful than that, instead flashing through the time with a clock showing at the bottom of the screen, then launching into how the Saudis–among them the bin Ladens, who despite their claims did indeed still have ties with their errant sibling.

Moore brings their departure–without the kind of interviews and screening that would have been mandatory in a case of far lesser impact–and uses it to introduce the Bush family history: Bush’s ties with James R. Bath, a connection to the Saudis and bin Ladens, who financed Bush’s early companies, which led to the Carlyle Group, which had strong ties with Bush Sr. and the Saudis, and so forth and so on. The ties are labyrinthine and damning, and you wonder how people could excuse the obvious influence. During the Clinton-Gore years, the GOP railed about the administration ties to the Chinese, which were almost completely fictional–and yet here we are in a War on Terror™, covering for the Saudis who finance and support those out to kill us, and no one has a problem with the president having the Saudis, and even the bin Ladens, as his financial backers throughout his career?

Surprising also is what you hear from Bush’s own mouth: “When you’re the president’s son, and you got unlimited access, combined with some credentials from a prior campaign, in Washington D.C., people tend to respect that. Access is power. And I can find my dad and talk to him any time of the day.” There he is, talking about abusing his family position to buy influence and power, as if this were appropriate.

You have to pay close attention during this sequence, because Moore moves back and forth between the pre- and post-9/11 days–perhaps intentionally blurring the lines to show us the relationships. Whether that was intentional, it works; we see the ties with Saudis and the censored 28 pages of the report; we see “Bandar Bush” and we see the secret service guarding the Saudi embassy. The 15 Saudi hijackers and Bush and Bandar dining as the Pentagon burned in the distance. Even without the juxtaposition, it would be hard to miss the connections, reeking of corruption.

And despite the necessity of going to war with Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda, Moore makes clear the ulterior motives behind the war there–Bush’s prior meetings with Taliban officials and Unocal to build a pipeline through the country–and point out that the legitimate goals were never achieved while Bush’s backdoor dealings were. This is perhaps the weakest assertion in the film, and yet it is still strongly supported, albeit circumstantially. After taking over Afghanistan, Bush put into power Hamid Karzai–a former Unocal advisor–as president, and appointed Zalmay Khalilzad, former chief consultant to Unocal, as the United State’s special envoy to Afghanistan.

Within a few months of the invasion, Karzai signed an agreement to build the pipeline that Unocal wanted. Bush achieved that much. But the Taliban mostly got away (they are presently fighting back and taking territory) and Osama bin Laden and most of al Qaeda, its ranks swelling with new volunteers, also slipped the dragnet (Bush: “I don’t know where [bin Laden] is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.”). So why did we invade Afghanistan? If it was to disable the Taliban and capture Osama and al Qaeda, Bush failed miserably. If it was to take effective control of the country, secure a military presence and build a pipeline, then mission accomplished. But that’s not supposed to be why we went.

Moore also spends time on how the Bush administration uses the War on Terror™to frighten the public–something that most Americans discount or refuse to believe. After all, who would want to say that they could be frightened into toeing the line? But it is a strongly valid point, a technique used by oppressive governments throughout history, and Moore does an excellent job of showing how Bush gets the job done.

End of Part I of the review. Part II coming soon.

A Michigan Republican, John Pappageorge, stated recently in a print article that “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.” Detroit is 83% African-American. It is doubtless that in Florida, Jeb Bush is calling him and saying, “Shh! You’re not supposed to tell anyone!”

Pappageorge later confirmed that it was crucial to get “the vote down in Detroit,” but that it would be done by delivering a “good message.” Right. I’d love to see how a “good message” can “suppress” and “get down” a city’s vote. Not a very good job of covering up there.

While watching the press screening of Fahrenheit 9/11, we were being filmed–a lot of photographers and camerapeople, interviewers with big ol’ microphones (macrophones?), and even filming done during the screening–which is how I got on NTV yesterday, at least for a moment, as they showed the crowd watching the film (I’m just left of center, in black with glasses, in the photo at right). I didn’t get interviewed by them, mostly because by the time I got to their position, they had Dave Spector, a long-time foreign “talento” in Japan and commentator on just about everything, and they stayed with him for quite a while.

I did, however, get nabbed by CNN and got interviewed by the Tokyo Bureau Chief Atika Schubert. I forgot to ask at the time when the segment might be filmed, but later contacted the CNN office, who said that the press screening story would be edited early Friday (Japan time), and if it gets aired, might be on American Morning, on Friday evening in Japan, Friday morning in the U.S., and possibly the rest of the day as a filler piece for the straight news shows on CNN. No guarantee I’ll be in it, but if you see an overweight, long-haired goofball dressed in black, you’ll know who it is.

By the way, F-9/11 is set to break the $100 million mark by Friday….

Many of you Photoshoppers likely know about this already, but many perhaps do not–I did not, until many years into playing around with the premier photo-editing program. It’s already fun to play with just as it is, but a lot of people have put a lot of work into creating special effects which you can enjoy for free. Just go to Adobe’s home page and head over the the Adobe Studio Exchange. There are tons of freeware effects for a variety of Adobe software; below are some examples of “styles” for Photoshop I’ve been sampling. Some very cool stuff there. Again, it’s free, but you have to register before you can download anything–but once you get started, it’s hard to stop!

FYI, after you download a style resource (with the filename extension “.asl”), to install it, you first open Photoshop, bring up the “Styles” palette, click on the arrow menu in the upper right corner of the palette, and choose “Load Styles…”. Then navigate to the .asl file you downloaded, and click “Load.” The new style(s) in that package will appear at the bottom of the styles list. You can apply a style to an object in a layer above the background layer (such as a shape, filled outline, or text). Just select the target layer and then click on the desired style. If you want to get rid of a style you don’t like, then just right-click (or control-click for one-button-mouse Mac users) on the style button and choose “delete style.” The above sampler shows a different style for each letter.

My apologies for not getting the Fahrenheit 9/11 review up yet; that will (hopefully) be up by tomorrow sometime. This semester, Tuesday through Thursday is where my work is concentrated, and I have the least free time.

I’m on the subway now, heading back home just a little after midnight. I just got out from seeing a special press screening of Michael Moore’s movie at the Roppongi Hills cinema complex. That’s the event that I’ve been hinting about for the past week or so, one that’s been in the works a while at Democrats Abroad Japan. After attending the Democratic caucus earlier this year, I paid more attention to the DAJ, getting on the mailing list and sometimes contributing to the blog. That’s how I found out that they were sponsoring a special press screening of the film tonight.

The film was more than I thought it was going to be. I had expected really not much more than a funny, biting polemic with a point of view, and certainly it was that. But it was more than I’d expected. Though I’d heard people talk about the film’s emotional impact, I wasn’t ready for what hit me. Yes, there are a lot of funny, sometimes hilarious bits with Bush and his staff, along with a variety of other politicians from both parties. There is irony and juxtaposition and a few good laughs. There are moments when you just roll your eyes or shake your head in exasperation at the outrageousness of what’s being laid out in front of you.

But this film, while funny, biting, and full of information, has an intensely stirring force to it, a jolt to the system that can be as hard to take as it is intensely necessary to receive. There is a great deal about this film that deals with the high and mighty, the forces and nations, the numbers and statistics, but where Moore is most effective is at the individual level, where you see the impact that the past four years has had on the lives of so many. Moore knows that to express the pain and devastation of so many people, it’s best to focus on one individual and see the full force of trauma on that person, at a level you can understand and empathize with. And then you realize that you have to amplify that feeling a thousand times and more, and then you get close to understanding what has been happening here.

Reading about all those people who had seen the film before as it opened in other countries, I’d heard of the standing ovations the film had gotten. And here we had this one viewing, filled with members and associates of Democrats Abroad. But this was no war-whooping crowd, and there was no standing ovation at the end. And it didn’t seem strange. Not because the film was not appreciated–it was, more than you could know from reading this. And maybe it was not even because the film ended just shy of midnight, after a full work day on the hottest, most oppressive day of the year so far. It was partially because this particular crowd was so jaded, so familiar with the territory–and it had just been presented to us in a new way, one that made the entire thing so much more human, so much more frightening and so much more real. It was not a moment where anyone felt like cheering, it was a sobering feeling, like waking up even more. We weren’t a crowd of film enthusiasts cheering the art, and we weren’t a bunch of rabble rousers cheering a hatchet job. We were a group of serious people who just got the emotional wind knocked out of us, and felt more than ever the motivation to fight this fight, to change this unreal reality.

More later. I’m going to have to review the film’s content more, explain a lot about what I’ve seen. More tomorrow, it’s late.

But not too late.

It’s 38 degrees C (100 F) out there, but it feels even hotter. If you’re out in the sun, then just forget about it. A breeze doesn’t help much, it’s just a blast of hot wind.

This is the kind of day I thank goodness we have air conditioners. Sorry if that’s not too environmental, but this heat is downright oppressive…

A man in Soka City, Saitama Prefecture rushed to a police koban (a mini-police station) for help, but was tackled by three yakuza (gangsters) in front of the police box as the policeman on watch stood by. One of the men said, “This is our own matter. It’s got nothing to do with police.” The policeman was urged to “Do something!” by a rescue worker at the scene to help a different injured person. The officer reportedly walked towards them as the three gangsters dragged the man off, dumped him into a car and drove off. The man was later found severely beaten, with “broken arms and legs.” The policeman’s excuse? “He didn’t enter the police box and didn’t request help.”

I don’t really think anyone can count on Japanese police in a serious situation. Even in minor situations, they are not effective. They consistently stop regular scooter and motorcycle drivers for doing things like making a right turn at an intersection with three lanes as opposed to two lanes, or for crossing lanes over a yellow line even when there is no other traffic on the road–but they do not lift a finger to stop or penalize bosozoku bikers (ill-mannered biker thugs who ignore pretty much all traffic and safety laws, and adjust their bikes so as to make them as noisy as possible) as they brazenly scream through residential areas at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Police in Japan have a good reputation because of high arrest and conviction rates, but that is due more to sleight of hand than real police work. Police here will usually refuse to file reports on crimes that likely cannot be solved; many victims of muggings, assault, robbery and molestation are told to simply forget the whole situation, especially when they cannot describe the attacker. Convictions are high because judges here usually take a prosecutor’s decision to charge someone as evidence of proof of wrongdoing; additionally, police here can hold a suspect for 23 days without a charge or access to an attorney (or for multiples of 23 days, by “releasing” then re-arresting them), and have been known to sometimes apply beatings or other methods of intimidation or torture, in order to force a confession.

Please don’t get me wrong, I love Japan, and it really is a safe place. But not because of the police.