Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

“…if one candidate’s trying to scare you, and the other one is trying to get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.”

William Jefferson Clinton
Monday, October 25, 2004

John Kerry, from today’s speach in Philadelphia:

After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this administration failed to guard those stockpiles where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive materials were being kept. Today, America has learned that those stockpiles are missing, they’re unaccounted for and they could be in the hands of terrorists.

Terrorists can use this material to blow up our airplanes, blow up our buildings, kill American troops.

Now, it’s not bad enough that it’s missing. In May of this year, the administration was warned that terrorists may be helping themselves to, quote — this was the warning — “the greatest explosives bonanza in history.”

And now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics. This is one of the great additional blunders of Iraq.

The unbelievable incompetence of this administration, step after step, has put our troops at greater and greater risk, overextended the American military, isolated the United States, put a greater financial burden on the American people. George W. Bush has failed the test of commander in chief.

And I just ask you — I want you to do exactly what President Clinton just said a moment ago.

He said his presence here may or may not change a mind, but the reasons may be able to change the minds. And I want you to think about that in the context of this administration’s choices.

They have miscalculated again and again and again with the security of our nation. Miscalculated how they chose to go to war. Miscalculated about how many troops they needed. Miscalculated about Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora and outsourcing the job to Afghan warlords, rather than doing it ourselves and using the best trained troops in the world to go up in those mountains and capture and kill Osama Bin Laden.

And then finally, you all remember how Secretary Rumsfeld just casually dismissed the looting and said, “Well, looting happens.” Now we know the impact.

Make no mistake, our troops are the best-trained, best-led forces in the world and they’ve been doing their job honorably and with courage.

But the commander in chief has failed to do his and the result is if George Bush can’t recognize his mistakes as he goes along, how’s he going to fix them?

We don’t want four more years of the same. We need a new policy, a fresh start, new credibility in order to get the job done in Iraq and get our troops home. That’s what we need to do.

“We can do better and in eight days we’re going to do better with President John Kerry”

William Jefferson Clinton
Monday, October 25, 2004

I would say enthusiasm is pretty damn high.


Update: Have a look at the photo of the event on Eschaton. Apparently the glorious Andrea Mitchel described the crowd as “hundreds” of supporters on MSNBC. Wow. You would need to find some pretty corpulent individuals to fill a space that big with a few hundred people. Way to go Andrea. Keep up the good work or whatever.

From today’s New York Times:

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Saturday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year

…

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. “This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk,” one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week.

Astonishing. What the hell were they thinking? Oh I forgot. They weren’t.

They are having a rally at JFK Plaza this morning. I wish I could go but sadly I’m quite ill and will probably just stay home and in bed. I’ll throw up some pictures later. If you do want to go, and can get out of work or school, you can print up some tickets here.

Here’s a Love Park fact for you to think about while you’re standing is security lines. Ed Bacon, father of Kevin Bacon, designed Love Park (JFK Plaza) while he was in college which is pretty impressive considering the sorts of things many of us were doing while we attended college. Anyway, he would like to see skateboarders returned to the park and the silly skateboard ban reversed. As would I.

Well, it’s late and I’m sleepy, so against my better judgment I offer you this silly little, outmoded game to waste a few minutes on. Enjoy.

This is surely one of the most wishy washy endorsements I’ve seen all year. Basicaly, we don’t think much of this Kerry guy but Bush is kind of a mess, if a resolute mess.

I wonder if endorsements really mean all that much anyway. I use them myself when considering local elections for offices like sherrif, common pleas judges and various other offices where there are no real campaigns to speak of and very litttle in the way of objective analysis. I guess I go on some sort of blind faith that the editorial board has been able to find out something about these people and their qualifications and has made a rational decision to endorse. For offices like President, Govenor, Senetor, Mayor, Congressperson or state Representative, I’ve always made my decision without regards for what any editioral board has to say as there is more that enough information to make a reasonalby informed choice. My guess is that the great majority of voters probably do the same.

The one place where it could make a difference, of course, is in the tone of the campaign narative. It would probably be pretty devistating to a chanenger if no major newspaper editorial board endorsed them, espesialy if the chalenger is a Democrat. The myth of a liberal media is alive and well after all.

Some good news. Today, while enjoying a big Styrofoam container of roast duck and lo mein over a pitcher of Yuengling at the Beer Garden in the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, I observed that nearly 50% of the patrons were wearing Kerry/Edwards buttons or tee shirts. People here are exited to vote for John Kerry on election day. I also spotted one “A Village in Texas is Missing its Idiot” shirt as well.

Why is this good news? If Pennsylvania is a swing state, Philadelphia turnout swings the state (commonwealth if you must). Philadelphia is massively Democratic and any sign of excitement is just another indication that turnout this year will be through the roof. This is certainly not the only sign I’ve seen, far from it, but combined with a roast duck lunch and a cheap pitcher of beer, I couldn’t help but feel pretty good.

I caught the infamous “puppies” ad on TV this morning. I don’t recall if it was a local station or a national broadcaster but there it was in all of its glory. Wow. Pretty silly. I’d like to meet the person or persons who would be affected by such a stupid ad. Vote for Bush or you’ll be eaten by scary puppies who lurk in the deepest darkest woods…blah blah blah. If this sort of thing is truly effective all I can say is, god help us all.

Now, I myself have an unreasonable fear of large horses(don’t ask) but not of big old puppies, so perhaps I’d be more effected by an advert full of angry Clydesdales rampaging through the streets of our cities and towns, depriving the good citizens of a decent beer, and force feeding everybody Budweiser. Oh god no! Vote for Bush because he’ll put a halt to the reign of terror brought by the Budweiser Clydesdales and free us to drink decent beers once more. Well whatever. Never mind.

Somehow I managed to finish up jury duty yesterday. The original estimate was that we would be in session until Wednesday or Thursday of next week. The actual subject of trial was quite unsettling in that it involved the alleged rape of a minor. I was a little surprised that my own reaction would be what it was, which was quite unsettled to say the least. I won’t say much more than that, however, as the people involved deserve their privacy and need to move on with there lives. Hopefully they will find some way to do that.

One thing that struck me was the quality of my fellow jurors. Each of them was quite committed to seeing the process through, regardless of time commitment, in order to reach the correct verdict. Indeed, several of the jurors did some very deep soul searching and reflection and made some very insightful observations. All in all, a very good group of people, who would rather have been doing just about anything else, but who understood the seriousness of what they were asked to do and the incredible responsibility placed on them and treated it that way. Just passing this along because it’s one of those little things that helps me keep faith in society.

The server that hosts this site was down for about 30 or 40 hours. Hurray for the server! Anyway, Most everything has been restored. If you sent me an email in the last several days I probably will not see it. Feel free to resend anything you think I may not have gotten. Sorry about the mess.

As Atrios has mentioned on a number of occasions, an Astros vs. Redsox World Series would be too much for the punditry to handle. The sheer number of baseball analogies spewing from their mouths and filling the airways might well be enough to cause a tear in the fabric of the universe.

Please St Louis Cardinals, as much as I may dislike you, do not let this happen. Our nation turns its lonely eyes you. Do not let us down. Win this one for the country and then feel free to lose every game thereafter. Your mission will complete and we will all be grateful.

Let me make this half-hearted pledge. If the Cardinals win tonight, I may even consider not booing Scott Rolen the next time he’s in town.

Speaking of bad punditry, I no longer get CNN. A real tragedy, I know. I was so looking forward to hearing conservative political analyst and American Enterprise Institute Fellow Bill Schneider’s astute analysis on Election Night. My head is still reeling from his beer county vs. wine county breakdown during the New Hampshire Primary and I was really hoping for more of the same. Oh well. My loss. Philadelphia, by the way is more of a whatever gets me drunk fastest county. I’m not so sure what he’d make of that.

Good news I guess. On Tuesday night I was at the monthly meeting of the Computer Profesionals of Center City, at the Irish Pub on Walnut Street and I met a rare species in these parts. Republicans. Two of them. They were were both wearing Republicans For Kerry buttons and were clearly pretty excited about voting for Kerry on Election Day. Pretty dull I know, but they were both from the Pennsylvania suburbs so I’ll hope that it’s a sign of good things to come.

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. My ten year long streak of never being picked to sit on a jury has come to a grinding halt so, needless to say, my mind has been on other things. I just keep thinking “civic duty..civic duty…civic duty” and that’s just about all I can say.

Anyway, its come to my attention that three of my favorite blogs have linked to me: Rittenhouse Review, Campaign Extra and Dohiyi Mir. Wow. Thanks. In reality, I wasn’t planning to promote this site until I was more comfortable with my writing. Oh well, time to put up or shut up I guess.

“The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans … who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world”

Al Gore
Monday, October 18, 2004

A little more on the Republican Party’s genuinely repugnant disenfranchisement strategy in Philadelphia. I can’t even tell you how disgusted I am. How dare an American political party attempt to suppress any vote? Any vote? How dare any Philadelphian attempt to keep his or her fellow Philadelphians from expressing their will on election day.

Our city is packed, and I mean packed, with the graves, both marked and unmarked, of people who died in order to achieve the freedom to choose one’s own leaders. My own neighborhood, Washington Square West, is named for a park that is the mass grave for thousands who were killed, or died of disease and starvation in our revolution. Who died to give us this country. Their names are unknown but their cause is not. Our buildings, the very buildings we live in, are covered with memorials to soldiers who fought and died to end slavery, our country’s greatest crime against humanity. Our most cherished historical sites house the unmarked graves of those who never escaped slavery and who never knew the simple freedoms we claim to cherish.

How can you reconcile the bile that came from the mouth of Republican ward leader Matt Robb in order to justify his party’s attempt to disenfranchise his fellow Americans? His fellow Philadelphians.

Matt Robb - “It’s predominantly, 100 percent black. I’m just not going in there to get a knife in my back.”

What sort of a person is this and what sort of party does he represent? How does anybody pretend to respect or love America when they attempt to deprive its citizens of their fundamental rights? What sort of person attempts to silence their voices simply because they disagree with his own? How dare he? How dare they?

Another question. Think back to November of 2000. What sort of presidential candidate sues to stop a vote count?

If this doesn’t make you sick I can’t imagine what’s wrong with you.

Only we can destroy America. Nobody else holds that power. It is ours and ours alone.

From the same article, an incredible question that we should never have to ask:

Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance — sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion — deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one man’s faith? What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with God — a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?