Already doing the right thing

     Can a Web site change a nation? Of course not. But it can start to change some minds, win over dissenters, and pull people together toward common goals.

     Barack Obama and Joe Biden have launched change.gov -- and the site's inclusiveness follows through on Obama's election night pledge to listen to everyone, especially those who disagree with him, and to be a President for all Americans. It invites visitors to share their ideas and their stories, and to participate in government. It is comprehensive and beautifully designed and right on time.

     I am so down with these guys. I know they're going to make mistakes, but man are they good.

     

Did Bush bust my artistic ability?

     Blogging over at the excellent Ward Six, author J. Robert Lennon considers the positive effect of an Obama presidency on his own ability to write fiction. JRL's startling observation is that for the last eight years, Americans -- and American artists -- have toiled and ultimately faltered under the weight of a political ideology that displays roiling contempt for the very people it purportedly serves. 

     I've always been well aware how deliberately the Bush administration has run counter to my personal morality, and have indeed been steeping in an ugly brew of anger. I have considered the corrosive effect the Bush/Rove contempt has had on the constituency as a whole (the national mood). For some reason, I have never applied it to my personal psyche. I don't know that I feel as directly affected as JRL seems to feel, but I think he has a point: if there's been a collective impact, it has to have been borne by individuals. And it's going to show up in art, and perhaps in the creative impulse, or lack thereof.

     At the least, JRL has raised the possibility for me to blame any troubles I've had writing in the last few years squarely on the sloping shoulders of George W. Bush.

     Will writing fiction become less burdensome for me under Obama? I don't know; I guess it depends on whether I find greater motivation in repression or liberation. I think this blog proves I'm pretty damned motivated by my anger. The word "spew" springs to mind. And apart from the current whackjobs in the White House, I have plenty of things to fear and doubt. 

     Sure, I hope writing gets easier for me. If it doesn't, though, no matter; I'll take Obama's promise of hope and optimism and sure-footed leadership, for my little daughter's sake. For the first time since I became a mother five years ago, I feel I am no longer inadvertently imperiling my (Chinese-born) child by raising her in a careening, rudderless nation. That's worth all the stories I can write in a lifetime.

Frayed nerves

     Jumping out of my skin today.

     You?

Pulling my hair out

     Figuratively, literally. 

     I'm going to miss the first hour or so of the debate tonight due to novel workshop. My money is on McCain raising the Ayers thing, using the same transparently flawed logic he has brazenly tried to advance for the last ten days: he'll claim he doesn't care about some "washed up old domestic terrorist" or Obama's gay Connecticut marriage to Ayers, blessed by that scary Rev. Wright who hates America, but that the American people of whom Obama is not one deserve to hear the truth and that it's a question of truthfulness and truthiness and truishness, which ryhmes with Jewishness, which reminds him, did you see that the socialist Obama's own Negro supporter, Jesse Jackson, is warning that the terrorist Obama administration will abolish Israel from the face of the earth, and every grandma and grandpa in the Sunshine State had better run for their lives? I'm just sayin.

     Elsewhere, from atop my head, my hair continues to flee. Trying as desperately as my man Joe Biden to sidestep the combover. I've asked M to let me know when it's too sketchy to ignore -- when the part is a bit too wide, too white -- so I can avoid embarrassing myself and everyone else and put a hat on already.

     Was all weepy and hurty yesterday. I think it must have something to do with the decimated blood cells... I felt tres fragile all day, and fussy last night. Keeping up with economic and campaign news didn't help, but I'm a junkie. Today's better, me-wise; the economy persists in sucking out loud.

     And the infant mortality rate is, shamefully, higher than that of 28 other countries.

     And the Dow is down 735 points.

     And we'll all be eating beanie-weenies and bark inside a month.

     But, yeah, come on, McCain. Tell me all about Bill Ayers.

Are we done now?

     Newsflash: Sarah Palin abused her power and is in violation of Alaska state law. Essentially, Troopergate is a mini-scandal about unethical behavior. Unethical behavior from Sarah Palin. Could we not have dispensed with this nitwit Jerry Springer episode before it was thrust onto the world stage? We could have. But we were being mavericky in our selection of an unknown as a running mate, and we were too giddy with our silly surprising selves to save The Country We Love Above Ourselves the embarrassment of the Palin Posse even though we knew -- or pretended we knew -- about this investigation before naming her and her dipshit husband and her nineteen children or grandchildren or auxiliary children or whoever they are to the ticket. 

     Newsflash: (Didn't we already do one of these?) John McCain makes an attempt, at last, albeit halfassed, after weeks of stoking the flames, to tamp down the seething mass of ignorant hysteria that is his base by refuting that Barack Obama is -- what could be worse? -- an Arab. "He is a decent family man, a citizen." 'Cause, you know, there are no Arabs who are decent, who have families, who are men, who are citizens of the United States or elsewhere. So refuckinglax, everybody, even though you have John McCain's personal permission to be as angry as the six-headed beast that you are. Go ahead, get furiouser and furiouser, work yourselves into a frenzy, imply that Obama is a treasonous terrorist liar, but for God's sake, keep your collective voice down to a low roar and do it respectfully. And whatever you do, don't call him an Arab.

     Newsflash: And yet they're still at it. SaPa is still urging crowds to "connect the dots" between Obama and "his associations" and that insufferable nugget Tucker Bounds is blaming the lynch mob venom at GOP rallies on Obama's economic policies and the current fiscal crisis. WTF? Obama is, as always, gracious and calm. (Warning re: the ABC blog link -- the dingbats come out of the woodwork to comment; brace yourself for stupidity on parade.)

     News Summary: Why can't we skip the voting part and declare this thing over already?

My life as a vampire

     The blood-taking went well today. I've had transfusions before, but always in concert with surgery or hospitalization, meaning I recall very little of them. Today I was wide awake (for the most part) and a little queasy considering those crimson bags hanging above my head, their bloody tails snaking into my chest catheter. It's ghoulish, no doubt, but I'm thankful there are people willing to donate. It took about six hours. Afterwards, M and I stopped for fried chicken ("chicken on the bone," A calls it) and came home and watched the stock market crash. Then I slept for three hours. 

     The theory is that I will feel -- what? perky? -- by tomorrow. Chemo's on for Friday. Yeehaw.

     My sister is on her way over to watch the Town Hall Debate, a genteel euphemism considering how thuggish the McPalin campaign has become over the last few days. Inciting violence now, they are -- openly, it would seem -- against anyone and everyone who doesn't favor their flavor of Kool-Aid. Obama. Biden. Journalists. Democrats. People with brains. Sarah Palin is a pig. McCain is a hypocrite (he voted for the bear DNA project he derided as pork in the first debate; that's the least of it) and a caricature of himself; a man who has sold his soul. I can't imagine his first act every morning isn't throwing up in shame. 

     Hopie's here -- showtime.

Staggering incoherence

A blurb in the NYT, which SaPa claims to read "my copy of," features this actual string of words from the actual mouth of the actual woman John McCain would seek to install up there in Warshin'ton should, God forbid, they be blessed with the awesome blessing of service in this great state of Alaska and, also, America:

"If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us."

Pop a Pepcid and read all about it.

In the tank

     Well, I have nothing much to say about the VP debate that hasn't been said better by smart people all over the Interwebs. The dum-dums weren't listening last night, they were cooing; I have no use for them. Call me in the tank for Obama, if you must -- the genesis of that suddenly ubiquitous phrase is a mystery to me --  but at least I'm swimming with funny, bright people. 

     M offered to forward to me a Time snippet about why "women dislike Sarah" -- including fallacies such as "she's too pretty," "they're afraid she'll make them look bad," etc. Infuckingfuriating. I can't stand Sarah Palin for the same reason I turned against Susan Allen, long-suffering wife of Republican legislative delegate turned governor turned congressman turned senator turned "rising star" on the national stage who shot himself out of a canon and landed in Macacaland just a couple of years ago. Anyway, as a journalist twenty years ago, I covered his hijinx and caught on but quick that not only is he inauthentic in presenting himself as an "aw, shucks" tobacco-spitting, cowboy hat-wearing Southerner (???), but his wife is equally inauthentic in presenting herself as a button-nosed cutesy nitwit who defers to dumb men. (Not even smart men; dumb men.) It turns my stomach, the winking, the gee-whizzing, the flirting. It turns my stomach because, as a baby reporter with zero experience and blonde hair, I used those same tactics to try to get dumb men -- in my case, the peabrains in the police and sheriff's offices in Chattanooga, TN in 1984 -- to give me the information I needed to file stories. I wasn't asking for scoops; I just wanted the same access the boy reporters got. And every time I ran up against a brick wall, which was daily, sometimes hourly, I resorted to the only thing I knew how to do: I smiled, I flirted, I ingratiated myself. Sometimes it worked, mostly it didn't. I got pulled off "general assignment reporting" and promoted to anchoring (this was at a piss-poor CBS-affiliate TV station; I was 22; it did not escape my understanding that they'd have pulled a monkey off the street to anchor those newscasts, so low were the pay and the expectations). I hated myself for playing the game. I had slimed myself; had betrayed my gender and my mother's example and feminism and was caving to the most insidious kind of sexism. I may as well have slept with the fuckers in return for basic facts of a crime or court case. And now, I feel a twisting deep in my gut -- that old familiar, visceral stomach-turning -- every time I see The Two Faces of Sarah. Tough and confident? You betcha. Fine. Pandering and flirtatious? Wink! "Gee willikers, can ya help me out here? I just don't understand you big strong men from Warshin'ton, DeeCee!" Wink!

     Puke.

     An apt segue to what happened at the infusion center today, or didn't happen. No chemotherapy for me, so in the tank are my red blood cells and platelets. Fuck. First time I've ever been turned away. I have to have a blood transfusion. They scheduled it for Tuesday. I feel like poo.

     And I'm scared I'm not going to be able to tolerate Topo Gigio, and then what?

     Maybe I can summon that witch doctor dude from up there in Alaska to come pray over me.

Foundationally I'm just ill about it

     It is a terrible thing to lose one's words -- or not to have a word.

     I guess in that case, one must invent a word.

     In the course of the last couple of horrifying/screamingly funny Katie Couric convos, SaPa has thrust into the lexicon  foundationally, which, near as I can tell, means something akin to fundamentally, though in the non-context of her word salad could also mean basically; theoretically; in my pretend fairy-world; or they told me not to say fundamentally because it'll remind people I'm a batshit fundamentalist extremist, so I'm gonna throw out something that starts with an 'f' and no one will notice, especially if I wrinkle my nose.

     I just want to mention a couple of things I'll be looking for tonight. First, everyone is counseling Joe Biden to hold the hell off lest he appear to be condescending to or, God forbid, attacking his delicate female opponent. I think this counsel is patently sexist, especially considering the McCain goons have been instructed to "let 'er loose" and are, at this very moment, creekside in Sedona feeding her red moose meat and blasting the Rocky anthem. So, um. How come she gets to chew Biden't ankles with her wolverine teeth, but he's not allowed to respond in kind? She's allowed -- expected -- to use wise-ass sarcasm, but he's not? Yes, I want to see him be respectful; I expect that from her, too. No, he does NOT have to be, for Christ's sake, deferential, or worse, reverential, as some pundits have suggested. (I assume they know what the word means, since they're on the teevee.) Reverent because she's a she? Respectful because she's a mother? Polite because she can't take it, or because it would be ungallant of him not to roll over and let the little lady scratch him to pieces? Sexist sexist sexist.

     Second, the format heavily accommodates SaPa's perceived strength -- that ability to say shit without saying anything at all. (Why is that valued, again? I always forget.) "In our great nation of America" is her new "um," replacing the "here in Alaska" phrase she repeated so frequently in her gubernatorial debates as a placeholder while she gathers her... her thoughts? Whatev. Anyway, my understanding is that there is no room for Ifill to ask follow-up questions of the type our Gotcha Gal Couric asked, which exposed Palin for the shallow, incurious, ill informed beauty pageant contestant she is. Over and over and over again (thanks, CBS!). 

     The anti-intellectuals will say she slammed it home. They'll say she's just like them. I say they're exactly right. Which makes my argument that the uneducated stupidshit should be nowhere near the Oval Office. 

     Heaven forbid we elect an educated, intelligent person who's actually been paying attention.

     Loaded for bear. I got your loaded for bear right here, cretins.

     UPDATE: Meanwhile, McCain seems to have foundationally misplaced his entire brain. On MSNBC this morning, McCain foundationally forgets that he foundationally voted FOR the bill he now says foundationally puts us on the brink of economic disaster, foundationally speaking. Call me crazy, but I suspect this is new GOP strategery: forget the multiple crises we face, focus on driving thinking people criminally insane with mindbending doublespeak. 

Paul Newman and yard signs

     We're getting a short reprieve after two days of rain, so M and A took her new magnifying glass and a sketch pad out to the park to see what they might see. I'm reading about the passing of Paul Newman, as elegant and graceful a person as has ever been put on earth. I admire his life for a great many reasons, primarily his determination to just do what he did, all self-deprecating and careful to resist the ego trappings inherent in movie acting. I admire his long marriage to a woman who was clearly his equal in every way. I admire his charity work -- Newman's Own, according the the New York Times, has donated over $175 million to charitable causes, and his foundation for pediatric cancer camps has blossomed into a global effort. 

     What I admire most about him, I think, is his devotion to authenticity. There does not exist an interview in which he seems to be trying to impress. He is so completely unselfconscious that he can tell a reporter that, with age, he has *not* become what (we presume he and) the rest of us aspire to: less angry, less judgmental, etc. Certainly other people have observed -- my father among them -- that getting older not only illuminates more of our flaws, but actually exacerbates them. I know I am becoming more myself the older I get: more outspoken about what I dislike and disagree with, crankier, shorter-tempered, less willing to put up with shit. Less able to rein it in. I guess in my interior life I am becoming more authentic, but I still will say "yes" because I think it's what others want to hear, or hold my tongue in the interest of being polite when what the situation really calls for is for me to call someone on their assumptions or ugliness. A skirmish.

     All this to say, my friend Amy and I are kind of despairing of the lack of yard signs in our city this election season, and I believe I know what's going on. On the Democratic ticket we have an African American man; on the GOP, a white woman and a flailing old crank. Of the four candidates, it is considered impolite to talk about their defining characteristics, for fear of entering inadvertently into a conversation about racism, sexism, or ageism. (Or anti-intellectualism, aka stupid-as-fuckism, or religious extremism, or poor taste in hair, woops, that's sexist, God, the shit really piles up when considering SaPa). So. We know not where our neighbors stand on these candidates, because to expose our preferences in our yards is to literally stake out a dare. I dare you to tell my what you don't like about Obama. I dare you to insinuate McCain is too old. I dare you to speak the truth about Palin, a painful truth I already know, which need not be aired in polite company: that she is an embarrassment to all serious, thinking people. 

     If the tickets comprised Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, and Joe Biden, this town would be yard signed and bumper stickered to comic effect. We're used to talking about that kind of candidate, the one who's so familiar to us personally that it forces us to talk about the issues (but not abortion, still off-limits). 

     There seems to me a reticence in my little corner of the world to wear your politics on your sleeve this election year. It's too personally revealing, like dropping trou and flashing the neighbors, then daring them to admit they saw you do it by flashing you right back.

     It would feel really good to put up a sign. Not just supportive of my candidates, but a gesture of personal integrity. Authenticity.

     I bet Paul Newman didn't worry about yard signs. I bet he just wore a hat.

Train wreck

     I cannot bring myself to look away... The colossal spectacle up the road in Warshin'ton, as SaPa calls it, is stunning and, if it lacked the potential to put us all in the poorhouse, might actually be anthropologically fascinating. 

     Palin was less articulate than a seventh grader in her responses to Katie Couric. She is an insult to small town America, not a reflection of it. As a person who grew up in a rural town of fewer than 300 people (artists, writers, policy wonks, thinkers -- some Democrats, some Republicans -- all engaged) in an area of the South that was (and is) peppered with such hamlets, I take personal umbrage, because I can do that, at the notion that Sarah Palin is remotely representative of Tiny Town USA. She is a fool. If that makes me a condescending elitist, I'll take up that mantle with glee. 

     What's happening on Capitol Hill tonight, after McCain mucked up the works, is too grotesque to ponder. That doesn't stop me from hitting refresh four times an hour at HuffPo, Wonkette, Politico, Washington Post, and NYT. The only possible good I can see coming of any of this is that President Obama will be in the White House to truncate our depression, and our Depression.

     Chemo #2 tomorrow morning. I'm hydrating. 

     Note to self: this weekend, some thoughts on what I have faith in, including people and books, because it feels important at this moment in history to be really clear about that.

If all politics are local...

     M is on a business trip (being the business man he is!) and so A and I will go quite unescorted this evening to a reception a friend is holding for a woman running for school board. I had a mild panic attack about this in the shower this morning. First, I am an introvert to the point of social incapacitation; I stopped answering the telephone about eight years ago, so scrambled am I by the expectation of reciprocal conversation. Cocktail parties, well, you can imagine. At a Christmas open house several years ago, I introduced myself to the same woman twice within five minutes of arriving... and she explained (again!) that we had met several times before. She was kind of mean about it. But that's not the source of my discomfort tonight (my sister will be there, and I know the hostess well, and A is always a perfect diversion). 

     No, what's put the fear into me is that I, mother of a public school kindergartner, have no idea what the issues are, nor any clue what they ought to be. Um... should I complain to this woman about the kindergarten supply list? Seems a little micro, no? What about all the crap they send home jammed in A's gi-normous My Little Pony backpack? (My Little Pony? Or is it Hello Kitty? Dora? Whatever, it's pink.) Can I complain about A having to memorize a whole new lunch code for this year? Does she expect complaints? Suggestions? As a parent, shouldn't I be following budgets and curriculum proposals and Virginia's aptly abbreviated SOL (standards of learning) program and application of No Child Left Behind bullshit?

     So essentially, I'm bugging over impressing someone whose job it is tonight to impress me. Sounds like a crap date. 

     I know which lies SaPa and the McCainerator repeated about my candidates an hour ago, but I have nothing intelligent to say about my child's education. Nor anything unintelligent. I got nothin'.

Adoption, children, and Cindy McCain

     I was going to step back. Focus on writing fiction. But I am compelled to write the truth here.

     Cindy McCain, in introducing her husband tonight in the final night of the RNC, said the adoption of the McCains' daughter from Bangladesh was a mercy mission.

     I cannot think of a worse reason to adopt a child (other than a determination to abuse the child). 

     M and I adopted our fabulous daughter for the same reason that we would have given birth; for the same reason other parents choose to become parents -- because we wanted a family. We wanted a baby. We wanted to be parents. 

     NOT because we were "saving" a child.

     It's the most important distinction. 

     Can you imagine growing up in a household that presented itself as your savior? Poor little child, you would have perished had it not been for us, our generosity, our sympathy. We didn't want a family, we wanted a cause. Congratulations, you're it! 

     I can't think of anything more demeaning than growing up thinking you owe not only your existence but your survival, your food, your clothes, your fortune (literally, in the case of the McCains) to two mortals who plucked you from the brink of desperation.

     Children deserve to feel unconditional love; they thrive on it. They need to feel that the reason they are in this world, in this home, in this family, is because they -- they -- are wanted for who they are. 

     Imagine anyone congratulating Cindy's humanitarianism for getting pregnant. "Oh, you've done such a generous thing." What?

     As a grownup with occasional outward signs of illness, I cannot abide pity or condescension. I appreciate when people make allowances for my infrequent limitations, but I would not hesitate to deck someone who kept company with me because it made him feel superior.

     Cindy McCain's attitude toward her beautiful daughter is shameful, elitist, and damaging. She would have done better to stroke a big fat check to Mother Teresa's orphanage and make way for people who want children because they actually want children. 

     John McCain is lauding her right now for "her concern for people less fortunate than we are," and intimated their daughter is among them. I count their daughter among those people, too. Poor, poor precious little girl.

From small minds come breathtaking lies

     M and I were destined to despise everything about Palin -- including her bizarre, grating accent -- and so we pat ourselves on the backs this morning for fulfilling our destiny. The condescension oozing from this self-righteous, small-minded fundamentalist was outdone only by her unearned swagger. The Mayor of Munchkin City actually asserted she possessed more "executive experience" and "actual responsibilities" than the Obamas (yes, both of them) when they worked as community organizers in Chicago lifting up poor, disenfranchised people whom the U.S. government had left for dead. 

     How fucking dare she.

     Do they think that saying a lie makes it true? No. They think that saying it makes us believe it.     

     Did we know, for instance, that she has "lots" of foreign policy experience because Russia and Canada are just, you know, right over there? 

     Did we know that candidates' children are off limits, except when it's politically expedient to flaunt them and promise policy around them, as she did with her youngest son? Or hold up their service to America as a personal qualification, as she did with her oldest son? 

     Did she know we could hear her when she disparaged Obama's and Biden's legitimate, honorable service to the country, but held up McCain's equally honorable military service as an ultimate qualification? 

     Did she realize she had an audience of people, apart from the frenzied masses before her, capable of discerning bullshit when she claimed that Obama will raise taxes, forfeit Iraq, negotiate with terrorists and leave us more vulnerable than George Bush?

     Did Rudith Giuliani, as an exhausted Andrea Mitchell called him, know the microphones were on and the cameras rolling when he claimed, in a laugh-out-loud moment, that the 20-month governor/Queen for a Day has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined? Because she got a road paved?

     Do the McCain mouthpieces realize they are talking to live human adults when they claim that Sarah Palin is a friend to the environment and champion of alternative energy?

     Do the rightwing airbags know we can see their lips moving when they tell us this anti-choice, gun-toting mommie dearest is a feminist?

     How can they square all this? They can't. So they lie, and hope we bite. They are despicable. 

     As is her taste in eyewear.

     Even Peggy Noonan is losing her shit.

Travel, pain, Palin and babies

     Wow -- that was some trip. Eight hours in the car with a five-year-old who is *hopped up* on the prospect of changing a newborn's diaper, starting kindergarten, and eating Swedish fish. I worked on my first poetry submission for workshop, but scrapped the whole thing by the time we pulled into town. It was about a guy who is struggling to say something to his friends, who are gathered and partying in his kitchen. In other words, crap. Guess what I wrote about instead.

     The baby rocks the projects, of course, and A was a good little cousin, for the most part. Neither the new mama nor I had any clue that a big spankin' lump can form under a baby's chest when he's processing all those birth hormones; we found out by calling the emergency pediatrician. Man, the tales Old Wives never got around to telling... Anyway, he's perfect and beautiful and damn near edible.

     On Palin: call me predestined to hate her pious guts, but that pride she feels that her daughter "decided to have her baby" followed by the unmistakable nudge of a double-barrel to the ribs the boy must have felt when the world was informed his girlfriend intended to make a child-groom of him -- well, they're all smiling just a bit too hard. They say she's a feminist who would strike Roe v. Wade from existence in a sweep so broad even rape and incest victims would be forced to carry pregnancies to term. A feminist, you say? I'm supposed to like her because she has a million children? A job? A vagina? What the fuck? I pray (yes, Ms. Palin, I do) that voters will see this for what it is: the most cynical VP nomination imaginable. 

     In other news, the coverage of and response to Gustaf was breathtaking. Everybody pat everybody on the back. Over and over. In fact, let's raise money for all the victims of the relatively victimless non-event. We're all Americans today. Tomorrow we can go back to forgetting what a great job Brownie did. Today's a day for prayer and overreaction. Houma needs some help, for sure. So do the gazillion families who remain displaced, struggling, perhaps nearly destitute after the bumbling three years ago. But yeah, you boys were Johnny on the spot with this little gust called Gustaf. Unfurl the flags! Revise the McCain Web site! (Maybe if they can figure out how to raise money online for hurricane relief, they'll be able to translate this new concept into campaign fundraising... and change the face of politics in the twenty-first century!) Last thing about Palin: John McCain, when asked why he chose her, said she would "change America." How's that?

     M and I, impersonating a family of pack-mules, got A off to Kindergarten this morning. I cried, just like I did on the first day of preschool last year. I felt then like I might be on the upswing; skinny, hairless, gasping but glowing with promise that I felt better, was getting stronger. Today I'm thirty pounds heavier, can walk three miles, and know I have this thing inside me that sooner or later we're going to have to address. I'm a bit uncomfortable, physically, and I did eat some hydrocodone on the trip to take the edge off. I slept a lot. Now I have to go write a novel. 

What the hill dillio? And good stuff on VQR

     She did it. Hillary did what she needed to do for the party, for the ticket, for her die-hard supporters (except the freakishly obtuse PUMAs), for herself, and apparently for her marriage -- did you see Bill gettin' all gooey eyed while she talked? I think I lip-read him murmuring "I love you" several times. Sweet but icky. The impish Wonkette has this demure play-by-play.

     It may just be enough to eradicate from memory that haunting image of Sen. Mark Warner free-falling, in slow motion, from a player on the national stage to a second-rate pol who missed the opportunity to connect on the biggest stage he'll ever have. 

     Rob Saldin is blogging the convention for VQR and has some pithy first person perspective. I can't stomach attending writers' conferences, never mind national political rallies, so it's nice to be able to follow vicariously the intrepid into the fray through the system of tubes that is the Interwebs. Yay, VQR.

     Also at VQR is a spectacularly intimate, candid series of conversations with women soldiers, done by my friend Laura Browder. Together, the interviews (to me) present a first-hand skewering of this failed administration and its contempt for the lives, the toll on real human beings, of its draconian ideology.

     So, the score:

     Hillary - fabulous

     Warner - deflating

     Wonkette - so ladylike

     The DNC - turning it around

     VQR - substantial content

     Women vets - heroes

     Bush - perpetually SNAFU

I'd be embarrassed, but instead I'm just bored

     Mark Warner fan here. Did a ton for the Old Dominion, is charismatic (really!) in person and at moderate-sized rallies. 

     But I sense his limitations, and I've been shaking my head over the DNC's decision to have him give the keynote. After all, he's a "coalition" guy. King of compromise. Everyone settle down, play nice.

     Last thing the convention needs is Mr. Niceguy. And my God did he bomb tonight. 

     I mean, what the hell? Did no one tell him it's a Democratic gathering? Whose purpose is not to hypnotize but rather galvanize the base? 

     Why is he so tentatively toeing the middle? Do they not realize that the Appalachian "country folk" (invariably a pejorative uttered by pundits) aren't tuned in to this fucking snoozefest?

     No passion. No frenzy. No climax. 

     No way we're going to win over voters if we can't even keep ourselves awake and attentive.

     Come on, Hillary. Come on, Joe. Inject some juice into this thing. 

     M says he wants to see Bobby Kennedy, piss and vinegar, a real fight. It's not here. Not yet. 

     Come one, Hill. Come on, Joe. Come on, Barack. Earn it! 

     Chelsea 2020.