Changing All Those Changes

The pieces begin coming together as transition gradually becomes improvement. A few items to note, done in the hope of making it easier to post comments:

• Posting comments will no longer require that irritating word verification. (That's the 60's-acid-flashback lettering you have to input to prove you're not a computer sending out spam.) Thanks to Cathy for a great suggestion on that.
• I've opened up the ability to comment to anyone, anywhere, who has a computer. Since hardly anyone has a computer and the widespread use of the Internet is still years away, I'm figuring it's safe to do that.
• Since, in the time it took to type the previous bullet-item another 600,000 sociopaths, miscreants, and other people with IQ's that would embarrass a slug have made their way onto the Internet anonymously, comments will be subject to review by the moderator before appearing on the site. Not to worry - the moderator's a reasonable guy, and he's looking only to filter out the spam that the first two bullet-items subject the site and its valued readers to. It is not intended to filter out dissenting opinions, though I can't imagine there could be any anyway.
• The above notwithstanding, the moderator's tolerance for anonymous letters (which are permitted by the system when it's opened up to everyone) is very low, so you won't be suffering through a lot of those either.

And there you have it for now!

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

This will be but a brief test to make sure I can post to the new site.

I'm looking forward to posting new content soon and, since (if I've got this right) folks from any ISP will be able to view the site and post comments, expanding to heretofore unexplored corners of the globe.

So what do you all think?

Observing

As I enter the beginning hours of the Yom Kippur fast (only 20 hours and 48 minutes of air diet to go!), thoughts of trying to atone for past sins lead naturally to the current campaign for president. It's the magical season when Americans of all viewpoints come together in a common celebration of what joins us as one nation; specifically, the willingness to forget for a few weeks that they're all liars and crooks.

Presidential debate II has come and gone, and the most striking thing to come out of it was that for the second time in a row, the two men who think they can lead the free world got beaten in the ratings by their vice-presidents. (Maybe people thought Biden was debating Tina Fey.) Although the debate did put Obama and McCain one step closer to coming to blows, which you have to admit would be kind of exciting, I thought they stayed pretty even throughout. The pundits tell us this is not good news for McCain, though it seems to me it's still far too early for anyone to think Obama has this won. Republicans have repeatedly shown themselves to be effective campaigners who can take full advantage of the first mistake the Democrats might make in the remaining weeks. Look who they got elected the last two times around.

It's still not clear if Palin was a profitable choice for McCain. She's enormously popular among many hard-core Republicans, but so is Bush, so how much is that really saying? For the rest of us, the jury on her may still be out, but they're keeping themselves amused heating up the tar and plucking the chickens. I'm starting to think McCain's numbers might have gotten a bigger boost had he picked Cloris Leachman as his running mate.

I saw a poll question the other day: aside from McCain and Obama, who would you like to see running for president? I haven't come up with anyone yet, but it did get me thinking I'd like to see Dan Quayle running for vice-president. Think about it - how wickedly delicious would it be watching him and Sarah Palin debating one another? People would think they were watching a Saturday Night Live sketch. My other thought was that the guy who's judgement I'm seriously questioning at this point isn't even John McCain; it's Palin's husband, Todd. Seriously - after hearing her interviews and the debate, can you imaging living with this woman?

On more important topics, I've received tonight an e-mail from AOL regarding the transferring of journal content to another system. After I go over it, I'll post the information about where things that are better left unsaid will soon be found. Your visits to this site, wherever it resides, are appreciated.

 

I'll Give Up My Journal When They Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers...

...and maybe not then either. I'll see how I feel.

The late-night e-mail from AOL said that as of October 31, they will be shutting down all journals. They don't give a reason, but they didn't need to: it's a transparent attempt by the Bush administration to silence me. An effort by a failing president to still the voice of change and create the illusion of relevance so desperate that they've forced AOL to shut down everyone else's journal just to eliminate this one.

Well, it's not going to work.

According to the letter, AOL is putting together some kind of journal bail-out package that will transfer journal content to another provider. We'll see. Just to be safe, I'm going to contact my congressmen and tell them to stop wasting time with small things like rampant bank failures and people's life savings, and focus on important matters like my journal.

More to come, dear readers. I'll keep you informed.

 

 

 

   

Dueling Bracelets

The DAR ladies will be downstairs shortly for a meeting. I figure I should hide up here in my office or they'll eat me. This turns out to be a good thing since it gives me a chance to write and, just as important, they usually leave good snacks after they're done.

With McCain having decided that it might be a good idea after all for the president to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, the first debate of the election season is now in the record books. Everybody's offering post-debate analysis, so here's mine.

First, as with so many debates in recent years, the first thing we seem to obsess over is, "who won?" I've never understood that. It's political punditry for people with MTV attention spans, focusing on some imaginary number of points scored while forgetting all about the details of everything that was said.

Last night's debate was a good one for both candidates, though I doubt anything said changed anyone's mind. Obama and McCain were both solid, and the points, counter-points and fact-twisting seemed evenly divided. Both candidates pointed out they were wearing bracelets in honor of a fallen soldier, proving the line between compassion and demagoguery can be a thin one indeed. Kudos to Jim Lehrer for repeating questions when they weren't answered the first time, something most political reporters seem unwilling to do.

Thursday's vice-presidential debate should be as cynically entertaining as it will be informative. It will be the longest Gov. Palin has been exposed to those pesky questions without her script. After her less-than-impressive (a nicer phrase than "occasionally insipid") performance in her interview with Katie Couric, it should be interesting to see how she manages against the formidable debating skills of Sen. Biden. (My son's recent comment on the previous post said it better than I could ever hope to. I'd written at first about Palin that only time would tell if she would stand up under closer scrutiny. His elegantly concise response: "Time told. :-(" )If nothing else, we can keep ourselves amused by counting how many times she says you can see Russia from Alaska while claiming to have opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere." At first I had thought her candidacy would, if nothing else, give credibility to wearing glasses, the way Ronald Reagan once made it fashionable to wear brown suits in the business environment. Now that we're getting to know more about her, even that's not working out.

A final thought as we prepare to watch the remaining debates. Around this time of the election season, we frequently hear how most people who watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates on television said that Kennedy won, and that most who listened to it on the radio said that Nixon won. I wasn't there, or at least wasn't listening at the tender age of 1, but I can accept it as probably true. What I don't accept is the point people usually are trying to make when they bring it up, that Kennedy's "win" was due primarily to his good looks. I don't know about you, but when I'm hiring someone for an important job, I don't just want to hear what he's saying. I think it's just as important to see his eyes when he's saying it. Think of serving on a jury and only hearing what a witness is saying. Now think of how much more you have to work with if you get to see him saying it. I don't expect this will put that Kennedy-Nixon thing to rest because people seem to like it too much. It's just something we may want to consider as we make an important decision we're going to have to live with for a long time.

Just a Regular Hockey Mom who Shoots Bears from Airplanes

Thanks for your patience with the time between posts, folks. I could say I'm going to make sure I do better in the future, but we all know better than that.

I love this time of every four years. It's the time when people of all political persuasions get whooped up about one vice-presidential candidate or another, in preparation for forgetting they exist after the election. (Ok, Dick "five draft deferments" Cheney has achieved the same infamy as his boss, which itself is no mean feat, but that's the exception.)

There's Sarah Palin, of course (more on her in a moment), but before that was the selection of Joe Biden and the criticism from the right that his selection signals a lack of self-confidence in Obama. That criticism - which, like most extreme criticism by either side, gets the partisans energized but ultimately falls apart after, say, five seconds of thought - appears to suggest some kind of new business model: show how confident you are in your leadership abilities by bringing only unqualified yes-men into your organization. After eight years of that very thing, you'd think they'd have learned by now. Who was Obama supposed to pick, a latter-day Dan Quayle?

Palin herself is an interesting choice for McCain. A great public speaker - Obama's good, but so far Palin looks like the best of the four - with a zip and charm ideal for the age of sound bite logic. (The two biggest applause points in John McCain's nomination acceptance speech were his first mention of Sarah Palin, and when she came out at the end. What are we saying here?) Will she hold up under scrutiny? Time will tell, and we'll learn more about her and the others as the campaign rolls on. Handlers are already moaning that she's the only one not getting privileged treatment from the media. Perhaps what Phil Gramm meant to say a few weeks ago was "we've become a party of whiners." I'm not sure it would have gotten him into any less trouble, but at least it would have addressed this point.

My take to date on Palin is this: she's presents herself well, is not afraid to make decisions, and has packed a lot of executive experience into a fairly short time. Plus, she's a woman, as the photo-ops with Mrs. Bush and Mrs. McCain remind us. And remind us. And let's not forget this one: frame it how you will, all these admirable personal attributes have been, and will continue to be, used to push the same old mean-spirited right-wing agenda that has been such a big part of getting us into the current mess. A colorful personality doesn't change that. She was suggested to McCain by Newt Gingrich, for heaven's sake. What does that tell you?

Yes, I know. Palin-McCain, sorry, I meant McCain-Palin, say they're about change. But - campaign-season emotions notwithstanding - hasn't experience taught us that "change" would just be code for a new, slightly modified mean-spirited right wing agenda? Sometimes we get so enamored with someone's plain talking style that we forget to pay attention to what they're saying.

It's ironic, then, that I'm not convinced any of this really matters. History has shown us that at the final moment people vote for a presidential candidate, not for a running-mate. Everyone remembers Lloyd Bentson leaving Dan Quayle speechless with his "You're no John Kennedy" punch, arguably still the most famous remark made in any debate, ever. (I didn't say most important. I said most famous.) It was strong stuff. And come election day, the ticket Quayle was on won, and the ticket Bentson was on was never seen or heard from again.

Olympic Thoughts

Please understand: I'm not real big on the Olympics. I don't dislike them. I just don't get all worked up about them. Still, even we casual watch-as-you-walk-past-the-tv types pick up on certain things.

I have to begin with the men's swimming, especially that 400 meter swimming relay a few days ago. That's the one the American team won after the French team said they came to the Olympics to, and I quote, "crush" the Americans. Now, I'm a New York sports fan, and trash talk is certainly nothing new here, but it still seems out of place for what the Olympics are supposed to represent. More important, though, is that it may be a good time for someone to give Pepe Le Pew a refresher course in manners, starting with the fact that if it weren't for the Americans, he'd be swimming for the German team.

Did a small animal die on Bob Costas' head, or does he just need someone to be really honest with him about toupees? It's hard to tell.

Seeing that between-the-events report the other day about the Chinese street-food-on-a-stick delicacies of scorpions, starfish, silkworms, political dissidents, and heaven only knows what else was like watching a bloody scene in a slasher movie, the ones that make you shut your eyes and turn away while listening for something to indicate when it's over. Not like the normal treats I grew up eating in Jewish delis, things like beef tongue and kishke. (The first is just what it sounds like, sliced thin and served warm on rye with a good deli mustard. The second - trust me, you don't want to know.) In any case, I really didn't need that close-up of the guy shoving a scorpion-pop into his mouth. And, so help me, I'll smack the first one of them who ever says anything again about what's in hot dogs.

Don't you love sportscasters who say that an athlete "settled" for a bronze medal? There are 6,000,000,000 people in the world. To get a bronze medal, you have to outscore all but two. I'd "settle" for that.

Explain it to me again: how exactly did beach volleyball become an Olympic sport?
 
Many Americans expressed disapproval of Bush's decision to go to Beijing to attend the opening ceremonies. Not me. I thought it was the right thing to do. My main disappointment was his decision to come back.

That little gymnast on the Chinese women's team is absolutely adorable, and an amazing athlete. So well preserved, too, for 16. You'd think she was ten or 11 at most. Must be the scorpion pops.