Speedkill

Watched Arnold. “Don’t be economic girlie-men?” Hi-larious. The Bush twins were painful to listen to, so I didn’t for most of it. Could they have been more stilted? I listened to some of Laura’s speech, nothing really of substance, but I wasn’t listening and I muted it eventually to listen to Led Zeppelin. Because of this I also missed the Fox after speech commentary. Then again, I think it was a better use of my time.

Oh, Fox didn’t like the twins either:

Even Conservatives Hated Them….The verdict from the Fox News crew on Jenna, Barbara, and Laura is not good.

Bill Kristol: “The last half hour did not help, as far as I can tell, Bush’s campaign for reelection.”

Mort Kondracke: “Those two girls were ditzes. I’m surprised they were allowed on the program.”

Fred Barnes: “I think she [Laura] had no place up there or the daughters either….Their mother said they’ll be pursuing their own careers. I would advise them to look in some field other than comedy.”

That’s what I want to do at the moment. How many times can Guiliani lie in one speech?

It’s infuriating.

Kristol just said Guiliani wrote his speech himself. With a large helping of Bush campaign propaganda, apparently.

Fox seems to be surprisingly free of liberal perspectives on the Republican convention. Actually, it’s really not surprising, is it?

And no I don’t know what Don King is saying. And he doesn’t seem to want to shut up as Greta tries to cut to commercials.

ZNet has a list of slogans from signs at the RNC protests. Some of the better ones:

Four More Months

George W. Bush is proof that you don’t have to grow up to be President

Texans Against Bush
He ain’t no damn Texan

Who would Jesus bomb?

Let’s not elect him this time either

This is what you get for electing a Republican mayor

One Person, One Vote*
May not apply in certain states

Abstinence in 2004: No Bush, No Dick

I wasn’t using my civil rights anyway

If you can read this, you aren’t the President

I’m marching for my grandma, and she’s pissed.

And the vitriol award goes to:

The Son of Sam did what God told him to, but he only killed 5 or 6 people

You’ve seen the video of Ben Barnes saying he got Bush into the Guard while Lt. Governor of Texas. There’s just one problem, as noted by Blogs for Bush: He was Lt. Governor in 1969, not 1968.

Does this mean he’s lying, that he didn’t get Bush into the Guard? Well, I’m inclined to think that he made a misstatement. Look at the articles from 1999, when Barnes testified under oath. From WaPo:

Barnes said in an interview this summer that when he was speaker he sometimes received requests for help in obtaining Guard slots, but never received such a call from then-Rep. Bush or anyone in the Bush family. But he declined to comment when asked if an intermediary or friend of the Bush family had ever asked him to intercede on George W. Bush’s behalf.

Barnes has refused to make any further statement. However, he has told associates in Texas that Adger once called him seeking his help for George W. Bush. Barnes then called Rose, and, the sources say, recommended young Bush in a see-what-you-can-do fashion. Rose was in charge of the state’s Air National Guard as assistant adjutant general for air.

And here:

AUSTIN, Sept. 27-Former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Ben Barnes said under oath today that he recommended George W. Bush for a pilot’s slot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War at the behest of a Houston businessman close to the Bush family.

Testifying in a deposition for a lawsuit that has stirred up allegations of preferential treatment for Bush, now the governor of Texas seeking the Republican presidential nomination, Barnes said he relayed that information to a top Bush campaign official, Don Evans, more than a year ago.

In a statement issued after his deposition, Barnes said he assured Evans that neither Bush’s father, former president George Bush, who was a Republican congressman from Houston when George W. entered the Guard in 1968, “nor any other member of the Bush family” asked Barnes for help.

Barnes was a big name in Texas politics at that time, from what I’ve read. He was certainly capable of getting Bush in as Speaker. It looks like Barnes misspoke in the video.

I saw two homeless people here in Bozeman today, which is two more than I remember seeing in the two previous years I’ve been here.

In the parts of Montana I’ve been to lately, I can’t remember seeing any Kerry, Bush, Nader, or Libertarian campaign yard signs. I have, however, seen two signs for Michael A. Peroutka, Constitution Party candidate. As an aside, I’ve seen a couple Schweitzer signs, but no Brown signs.

Here. Also linked in my reading list.

I hate viruses. And I seem to have one. It seems like the System32 virus, seeing as I have multiple iexplorer.exe processes (but no windows). Hijackthis, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Panda Online, and AVG have failed to rid me of it. I can’t think of anything else.

UPDATE: Oh! I think I got it! We’ll see. I got it once before, then it came back.

UPDATE 2: Shit, it’s back.

UPDATE 3: It’s gone again. *crosses fingers*

UPDATE 4: Still gone! Note: If I stop posting for the next several weeks it’s because whatever it is came back and I broke my computer.

Tomorrow I head back to school. Which I’m quite happy about. There’s so much more to do over there and I think my classes will be interesting this semester (International Relations saved me last semester from going completely crazy).

In other news, you may have noticed that I’m reading the NIV version of The New Testament. Hopefully not to the chagrin of anyone in my family, I’ve been writing notes in the margins and I plan on putting those up on a blog and expanding on them some. I don’t know if that would be interesting to anyone, but I’ve never read the Bible before and it seems like something useful for me (both reading the Bible and the blog). Now I just have to figure out how to make multiple blogs in WordPress (hopefully avoiding installing it twice).

There’s a speech from Laura Bush up at Shrub’s website. Some interesting parts:

I’m proud that in my husband’s administration, there are more women in senior positions than in any other previous administration. (Applause.) Dr. Condoleezza Rice advises the President on foreign policy and Margaret Spellings is in charge of domestic policy. That means in the White House, women are in charge of everything abroad and everything at home. (Applause.) That sounds about right to me. (Applause.)

Who the hell is Margaret Spellings? Chatterbox investigated a while back, apparently. It doesn’t appear she really does much.

Over one-and-a-half million new jobs have been created since last July 2003.

She did NOT just say that, did she? Holy hell.

And the President expanded the system of community health care centers so that more people can receive health care regardless of their ability to pay.

Ahem.

And because frivolous lawsuits raised the cost of health care, the President wants to reform the medical liability system. (Applause.) The growing crisis of medical liability is a particular concern to women. Obstetricians have some of the highest liability premiums of all. And as their rates go up, doctors are retiring or relocating because they can’t afford to practice medicine. Women who’ve spent years building a trusting relationship with their OB/GYN are left searching for a new doctor, sometimes while they wait for the arrival of a new baby. We need medical liability reform. (Applause.)

Ahem.