* heres a good article on the cancelling of the election http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/nyti-j20.shtml

* peggynoonan "Hand it to Mr. Bush: He's got guts. And whatever happens in the coming election, his administration will be remembered as one of the most consequential in modern political history. He did things, and they were all big and meaningful, and they will have implications for decades.... History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe. fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting. And my general sense of Americans is that we like things to be boring." http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005288

vs davidbrooks "I didn't realize how much this campaign would feel like George Bush's run for a third term. So much stuff has happened over the past four years, he's already built up two terms' worth of animosity among his foes and two terms' worth of exhaustion in his friends.... I didn't realize that tediousness is John Kerry's greatest trait. I didn't realize that a country barraged by a decade of Gingrich, impeachment, hanging chads and war may actually be looking for a Brezhnev to give it a break." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/opinion/27broo.html

both are off the same page - which is very interesting (from these 2 freaks). the msg seems to be 'bush is too exciting - praps americans want kerry cos they are fatigued'. i dont know what it means.

* "A leading nuclear expert has pointed out a technical error in the Butler report on WMD intelligence in Iraq, and criticised the committee's finding that intelligence on Saddam Hussein seeking uranium from Africa was "credible"." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=544436
im still trying to work out how on earth, and why, this stupid uranium story was included in the butler report. who paid for it and how much?

* could florida be more fubar? " Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near. The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?ei=1&en=6cffb7fd8dd10fcb&ex=1091987168&pagewanted=all&position= "Florida is headed toward being the next Florida" lol.
and heres krug http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/opinion/27krug.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position
this is why we keep getting told about the 'extremely close race' and and the stoopid 'divided nation' rhetoric - we have heard the same thing for over a year. the famed swing voter exists for the same reason. the media has been talking about a 15point bounce for the dems cos of the conference - but i can guarantee that theres not a snowflakes chance in DC that therell be any such bounce and the dems will look to have failed. and as long as the pollsters cant distort bushs numbers any more, they just fill up the Undecided or Nader bucket so that kerry and bush are 'extremely close'. who's gonna doubt a close election if that is exactly what was predicted?
fwiw tradesports.com has bush tanking in the last month http://tradesports.com/jsp/graph/con_11738_lifelarge.gif?1091005857
the important thing to remember about the dnc is that 100 days is a long long time.

* heres another re florida "New citizens in Florida are automatically registered as Republicans" http://www.unknownnews.net/040727comvot.html

* the good news is that there are patriot missiles in athens. theres no way they'd put them there if there was a chance of a missile attack - it would be such an embarrassing advertisement when the patriot failed, not to mention taking out an athens suburb or two. i hope they beef up security from now - and while the streets are manned with riot police, i hope someone remembers to check to see that no bombs were planted during construction - chechnya style.

* speaking of taking out a suburb or two, does any remember that odd jumbo crash in nyc after 911? did that slurp down the memory hole?

* speaking of plane crashes, there was another incident at sydney airport yesterday - something like the 4th security breach in a couple of months. ua flight syd-lax had to turn around from above some ocean or other cos some intrepid flight attendent noticed a sickbag with 'bob' written on it. im not kidding. i spose u saw the hysterical story about the syrian band - its all so disgusting http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/25/wfly25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/25/ixworld.html


*xymphora on madrid again "Were I Spanish I'd probably be equally as concerned about the fact that the Spanish police and intelligence services participated in the murder of Spanish citizens for extreme right-wing neo-fascist political purposes, and the fact that they are clearly such a bunch of incompetent boobs."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004/07/further-adventures-of-spanish-police.html

* i was the algorator was president. i dont wanna comment too much on the convention to avoid the temptation of slipping into the faux-democracy debate, but... despite the headlines being the gore and kennedy and dean et al were quite tame, its interesting to see how close the word 'fascism' is to everyones lips - even if it doesnt quite slip out. 'dissent' is obviously the codeword. who'd have imagined 4 years ago that we'd be talking about dissent - whether fear of, supression of, or patriotism of? and teresa was stunning - especially the 'opinionated' thing. unfortunately the language will soften a lot from here.

* iraq is such a mess

* tomorrow ill have lots of good things to say