constant narrator

“The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election Day — especially a presidential election — is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.”

— HST
November 2004 Rolling Stone

To the world beyond America, I would like to offer my apologies and sympathies on today, the day of the American election. While this election may very well affect you in both large and small ways, you can do nothing but watch and wait. It is in the hands of an often hysterical, under-educated, xenophonic and manipulated American voting public. We have no idea which way it will go. I understand this stress and strain, and I’m sorry. We can only hope it will turn out for the best. Good luck and god bless.

From the L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-intel17jun17,1,126799.story?coll=la-home-headlines

‘U.S. analysts also erred in their analysis of high-altitude satellite photos, repeatedly confusing Scud missile storage places with the short, half-cylindrical sheds typically used to house poultry in Iraq. As a result, as the war neared, two teams of U.N. weapons experts acting on U.S. intelligence scrambled to search chicken coops for missiles that were not there.

“We inspected a lot of chicken farms,” said a former inspector who asked not to be identified because he now works with U.S. intelligence. His U.N. team printed “Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team” on 20 gray T-shirts to mark the futile hunt.’

Dean & Political Junkie/Dork on Bus

Monday night started at Ruta Maya coffeehouse, where I went to the sign in table and told the table fellow my situation and he grinned and gave me a bus number and name tag and let me in the back door. I arrived late and Dean was already on stage, hollerin’ at the ~500 hot and sweaty cheering Austinites inside and pouring out the doors. His stump speech had evolved since I saw him a couple of months ago at Saltillo Plaza. He made jokes about how he could sound like this now but if he won the nomination in eight months, he’d “have to sound more presidential”. He’s gotten better at working with his audience and joking around. Once he was finished, folks headed for the buses that were lined up outside. I was on bus B, the bus that was going to get Dean half way to San Antonio after he had glad-handed on bus A. I sat behind a news crew for 60 minutes (see the I’m A National News Corp Junkie post to come…) and in front of some college democrats who had been working on the Dean campaign all summer.

Dean came on the bus. The film crews were filming with their bright lights and trying to film past each other’s enormous cameras. Dean was mostly hidden. A supporter up front, knowing of his musical inclinations, handed him a harmonica. Dean was game and even though the harp was in a different key than the G he claimed to usually play, managed to get out a Bob Dylan tune, With God on Our Side. He shook hands with a few people (thought not all) and stopped to talk to a woman who turned out to be a teacher sitting across the aisle from me. He was amazingly fit, muscled, even. He could be called stout but that isn’t quite right, he too agile - he’s bundled. (Later on a couple of women commented on his nice butt.) I was shocked that people weren’t really trying to talk to him. They all seemed shy or in awe or candidate-got-their-tongue. I felt like saying, “Come ON people, this is your ONE CHANCE! This guy may be President someday, talk to the man! This is a democracy, go for it!”

As he passed by I asked him if I could take a picture with him and he said yes and I climbed over the poor boy in the seat next to me: (see bad photographic evidence). A woman sitting behind me took our picture with my camera and at that moment I realized there were three giant TV cameras and 3 zoom-lensed cameras from the press focusing on us, lights ablaze. It was enough to fray the political junkie nerve a bit. I introduced myself and thanked him for coming to Texas and then told him that when he was elected I encouraged and supported him to do his proposed study on the death penalty and its use in the country AND impose a moratorium. He looked at me for a split second as if thinking ‘who is this woman?’ and then said, very easily, that he had had several supporters ask the same of him. Then, in a fit of non-groupie madness, I said (pinching my fingers close together) “You’re this close to being perfect!” There was a slightly horrified silence from the other supporters around me, as in - “DEAN, NOT PERFECT?” Perhaps I made a faux pax? He laughed and said, “You will be happy to know that I plan to sign Senator Leahy’s Innocence Protection Act“. I said, “That’s a great first step and I encourage you to do that.” I got a pat on the back and there was good luck wishes all around and then I climbed back over the boy between me and my seat.

At that point all of the cameras got off me and I felt like I might throw up. But I didn’t! The kid next to me was sort of staring at me. I felt good at having spoken up, and I felt good about Dean’s response and general ability to handle issue disagreements, but I also felt like I had just gotten off stage after the semi-final round of competitive karaoke, slightly drunk.

All in all, a smashing success, making me like Dean even more.

DeanBlog Photos from the Trip: http://photos.deanforamerica.com/gallery/19255 (bus, harmonica photos from my bus)

NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/politics/campaigns/26CND-DEAN.html
(w/ harmonica photo from my bus)

Austin-American Statesman (good, short article abt Dean’s stump in Austin): http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/metro_state_f3b45089d416100100e6.html

San Antonio Express-News (positive coverage, highlighting different parts of the stump speech): http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=1045321

USA Today (surprisingly long for the fluff paper): http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2003-08-25-dean-usat_x.htm

Washington Post (from Saturday, overview of the Dean campaign): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34389-2003Aug22.html

Buried in Bruce Sterling’s latest Viridian email is a link to a handy little web site put together by Rep. Henry Waxman. It documents many of the ways the Bush administration has thwarted, mishandled and sidetracked science in the name of bolstering and legislating a socially conservation political viewpoint. Topics include such winners as removing any measure of students’ pregnancy rates after receiving abstinence-based sex education, releasing only pro-industry, misleading “highlights” of a study that found allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers (a relatively new phenomenon) actually confused patients instead of educating them, and re-writes of EPA global warming documents.

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/

Here’s a nice gem:
“Interference with Scientific Research

Federal funding for research and development totals over $100 billion dollars. The public expects that this research will be conducted independently and objectively. Yet the Bush Administration has:
•  obstructed ongoing research by threatening political scrutiny of projects that concern social conservatives;
•  obstructed agency research when the results might conflict with the Administration’s agenda;
•  undermined outcome assessment, both by creating easy-to-reach performance measures for politically favored programs and by eliminating programs that identify effective initiatives that conflict with the Administration’s ideological agenda;
•  blocked publication of research that may upset an affected industry.”

Whee!