Arnold Schwarzennegar comes out. He’s standing in front of a screen with a deco-image of the American flag. He puts in several catch phrases: “economic girlie man”, “Terminate this”, “Jingle all the way”, whatever.

Kill me.

He has a number of applause lines, where the Republican delegates get an opportunity to chant… “U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!”

Kill me.

We learn that he became a Republican because of… Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon.

The Bush daughters come out. They’re there to introduce Georgie who’ll be on the screen to introduce Laura. There really is no other way I can put this, after hearing the Bush daughters give their self-aware jab at their general bubble-headedness.:

KILL ME. KILL ME NOW.

If you still can’t think of a reason to vote for John Kerry, I present tonight’s primetime scheduled Republican National Convention show as an exhibit of at least a reason to kick out Bush Asshole.

Face it. The Republican Convention speakers all, by and large stink.

John McCain, the most popular politician in America, gave a lack-luster sing-songy speech. He must of known he wasn’t delivering anything, which would expalin the otherwise unexplainable matter of why he decided to give Michael Moore the attention.

Dick Cheney is scary, and will thus be given the task of delivering a non-scary speech. Arnold Schwarzeggar will have his action-movie catch-phrases handy, but isn’t a paradigm of virtue. I suppose we can start assembling George Bush’s speech from what’s on his stump right now — dust out the old Bush State of the Union drinking game. I have every confidence that Zell Miller will fail torise to the same heights of rhetorical flourishing as his DNC counterpart, Barack Obama did.

Nobody will say interesting at all. Nor will they say something in an impressive manner. I get the sense that Rudy Guiliani was the high-point of rhetoric at this convention.

So, with that mind, we’ll just have to go back in time to when someone said something interesting at an RNC Convention. Here’s Pat Buchannan.

Like many of you last month, I watched that giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden–where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists–in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.

For some unknowable reason, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was given a second speech, previously unscheduled, during primetime last night.

He’s the guy who became Speaker of the House after Newt Gingrich bailed out due to the 1998 elections and after their first choice was discovered to have had sex once.

Mr. Hastert’s speech paid homily to the presidents Lincoln and Reagan.

George W. Bush shares the hopeful vision of Lincoln and Reagan. He believes in peace through strength. He believes that the economy grows when the private sector grows, not when the government grows.

Lincoln, who did more than anyone to centralize and consolidate the power of the federal government. And Reagan…

Both President Lincoln and President Reagan understood that in order to be respected around the world, you have to have the courage to stand up for America.

Europe, more or less, just hedged their bets toward whoever they perceived to be winning for trading purposes. I doubt they’d care if the South had won.

George W. Bush is a strong leader with the right vision for America.

It is the Lincoln vision. It is the Reagan vision. And it is the American vision.

Yes, but is it the Garfield vision? Is it the Taft vision? Is it the Harding vision?

The Landon vision?

Do the Democrats currently have the vision that guided Georges McGovern and Wallace?

Maybe their foreign policy is based on the straight run-way path that ties together 3-time nominee William Jenning Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, George McGovern, Scoop Jackson, and Bill Clinton.

Later, Hastert would suggest that Kerry was against throwing tea into the Boston Harbor. I support Kerry’s prinipled stand there, by the way. Very environmentally concious.

The PBS talking heads are having a difficult time filling space.

The Republican National Committee shows on their screen a one minute or thereabouts montage of Gerald Ford. The film is trippy, jigsaw images jumping up and down and all over the place — has this odd just post-psychedelic quality to it. The University fo Michigan fight song is playing underneath it. I think it’s an appropriate sideshow befitting the president who served two years, had no political mandate, and fulfilled that mandate perfectly.

The talking heads — a couple historians, Jim Lehrer, the moderate Establishment Liberal Mark Shields and the moderate Establishment Conservative David Brooks, then go on to pontificate on the legacy of Gerald Ford on the party and on the nation… for what seems like the next fifteen minutes. Nothing interesting is scheduled on the floor, after all.

On the convention floor, there were people who probably took a potty break and came back, missing Gerald Ford and not missing a beat.

……….

I have no doubt that the right wing echo chamber of right wing talk radio and Scaife and Murdoch outlets are all abuzz about Tom Daschle’s advertisement. Why? Because it’s spotlighted on Drudge.

The great question of Tom Daschle: why is the leader of the Senate Democrats a senator from a heavily Republican state? It doesn’t do well to advance an agenda of some sort when the loyal opposition’s leader is so politically vulnerable. It sort of hampers the partisan (or political) fights.

You will notice that Nancy Pelosi is generally the point-person in attacking Bush’s foreign affairs, and Daschle tends to try economic affairs in a generic “centrist populist” mode.

Bush defeated Gore 60.3% to 37.6%.

Roll back the clock on Daschle’s election fights. He’s lucky to be in the cycle that he is in: 1998 was a good Democratic year; 1992 was a good Democratic year; 1986 was a good Democratic year.

If a re-election had found its way in 1994, he would be dead… even as his rise to the top of the heep is a direct result of the 1994 election.

Still, in the cynical purpose of a political party: to funnel money around so as to elect people to do political figures, he’s not useless. Note that the states of North Dakota and South Dakota have a congressional delegation composed of 4 Democratic senators, 2 Democratic Representatives, and zero Republicans. Some better than others, but there they are.

Thank you, Tom Daschle. You dragged Tim Johnson to a 500 vote victory in 2002… and you’re gearing up for another 500 vote victory for yourownself.

In the less cynical purpose of a political party, he’s hampered… he’s situated right in the middle in the right-left dichotemy of the Democratic caucuss — from Paul Wellstone to Zell Miller until Wellstone died and Miller became pointless to Russ Feingold to Evan Bayh– managing a split party without any real ability to advance or defend any kind of agenda.

Which brings us one of the great ironies of this election for the Democratic Party. The burgeoning grassroots networks that are helping funnel money into the Democratic Party races — spurred on by Moveon.org and Howard Dean and a large number of blogs — are composed of people generally to the left of the Democratic National Committee, which would help elect people, most visibly into the Senate, who are to the right of the Democratic National Committee.

The close Senate races are in the Red states. In the case of the southern states, the retiring conservative Democrats from another era are giving way to a new breed of conservative Democrats. In the case of Oklahoma and Alaska, some inherent weaknesses with the Republican candidate are giving an opening for “acceptable” Democratic candidates…

… who, if pressed, would vote in favour of various cultural wedge issues… the gay marriage ban amendment, for instance.

At least they don’t want to press some of these issues.

I’m looking back at what usenet users thought of Zell Miller through the past fifteen years, and what news articles they deemed relevant.

Start with a 1992 Political Profile of Georgia politics, which Zell Miller dominates.

Jump to Zell Miller’s 1992 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech. Keep this in hand when he makes his 2004 Republican National Convention Keynote Speech — the most conservative speaker in primetime.

And An Analysis of how he won re-election in the uber- Republican year of 1994.

Any signs of Democratic discontent toward him? Republicans embracing him? Unexplainable flip flops? Democrats loving him? Republicans hating him? And… why is he so thin-skinned about his southernness?

Leave aside the fury that greeted him after signing into law what now looks incredibly anachronistic, from 1996: a bill that would bar a person from linking websites without permission, and require your email address have your name in it. For the curious, my name really is Dhowiec Andisestablish.

His great contribution, and his legislative legacy that Bill Clinton ran with, is “The Hope Scholarship”. Beyond that, he expanded pre-kindergarten education in Georgia and brought in the Lottery to pay for education.

He defended Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes A Village. ““They (the Republicans) see no shame in criticizing movies they have not seen, songs they have not heard, books they have not read.” I await his apology to Kid Rock at the RNC Convention — unless you want to go with the other, more recent hypocrisy there, in which case I await his berating of Kid Rock at the RNC Convention.

1992-03-01 On the CBS news program “Face the Nation,” Georgia Gov. Zell Miller said the average voter worries about being able to send his children to college, having health insurance and paying for a nursing home for his parents, rather than whether Democratic candidate Bill Clinton avoided the draft 30 years ago or not. He now defends the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying they have a right to be heard.

The singular issue over the years from the Usenet threads is the controversy over the Georgian flag. 1997/07/11 It is interesting to note that while lieutenant governor in 1987, Miller opposed such a change saying he did not think the flag was racist any more than the playing of Dixie was. I’m guessing this is the influence from being Lestor Maddux’s protege. But, the nickname “Zig-Zag Zell” exists for a reason. 1992-05-29 “What we fly today is not an enduring symbol of our heritage, but the fighting flag of those who wanted to preserve a segregated South in the face of the civil rights movement,” he said. “It is time we shake completely free of that era.” I cannot ascertain the degree to which this change of opinion comes from personal courage and conviction, finding himself in the National Democratic Party, or wanting to improve Georgia’s reputation as the world spotlighted Atlanta in the 1996 Olympic Games. Whatever is the case, 1996/06/28
Miller retreated from that noble stand
and hasn’t said boo about the flag since. For a flavour of the kind of opposition he met, well…

Caller: Yes, Mr. Grant, as a Yankee American I am outraged that there is an effort to remove the Georgia state flag because it has the Confederate battle flag on it. I think it’s an outrage. It’s a part of Georgia history, and it belongs there.

Grant: I’ve never heard of William Pierce, but, Dino, okay. He hung up after he delivered his message. I’m surprised young guys don’t just ride around in open cars with megaphones.

The NRA members are well over the map on him. July 1992 example: Georgia is a pretty good state for firearms owners. […] Our biggest problem now is Gov. Zell Miller who, as you saw at the DNC, thinks he is a Kennedy-in-waiting. But, he seemed to later regain their trust…

I have every confidence that he voted “yah” on the Gay Marriage Abolishment Amendment. To wit, compare and contrast from April 23, 1994. Gov. Zell Miller, who is seeking re-election, has said he doesn’t plan to “get in to lifestyles” in his campaign. His campaign manager, Jim Andrews, said Friday, “The Republicans can debate this issue if they want. We want to improve people’s lives.”

And, while we’re on the topic of scary homos:

June 10, 1999 brings us:

He attempted to incite local rage and terror about AIDS when he noted that Georgia Gov. Zell Miller’s invitation to hold the Gay Games in Atlanta “threatens the health, safety and welfare of the community.” (In a characteristically malicious jocular aside, Wysong added: “It is mind-boggling to imagine what activities constitute ‘gay games.'”) He exploited the combined homophobia and patriotic fervor of Cobb County’s conserva…

I think the new version of Zell Miller would consider gays as one of the extreme special interest groups that has hi-jacked his beloved Democratic Party.

Law And Order, Law and Order, Law and Order. He was at the forefront of the “3 Strikes and you’re out” craze, had a mandatory boot camp program (citing his experience in boot camp as putting him on the straight and narrow in his youth), (this ain’t impartial poster), and then there’s…

July 23, 1994 Most wanted posters for Georgia’s “10 top deadbeat parents” have been arriving by the hundreds this week at state office buildings. Already, a second printing of 1,000 posters is under way. And hundreds of women wanting to nominate their ex-husbands have called child support enforcement offices since Gov. Zell Miller announced the program last month.

Zell Miller played a key role in writing the Democratic Party’s warm milk platform in 1996. And he saideth:
“Republicans see America’s greatness through a rear view mirror,” said Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, co-chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee leading off platform speeches. ”Democrats see America’s greatness on the horizon just ahead.” (Along with repeating his barb against Dole on the topic of It Takes a Village.)

Like so. We Democrats are proud of our platform, and the Republicans are justified in being ashamed of theirs. They talk a lot about shame, the Republicans. Yet they see no shame in criticizing movies they have not seen, songs they have not heard, books they have not read, and a first family they cannot match — all in the name of a platform they will not even admit they’ve read,” said Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia.

AND “They want to abolish the Department of Education,” Miller shouted. “They bash schoolteachers and want to cut student loans. Abolish, bash and cut – those are the Republican ABCs for education.”

Apparently Zell Miller once took a more liberal stance toward sex ed. March 3, 1997
Ga. Gov. Miller stupidly says teens are going to fornicate (Jesus and Paul said fornication is sin, are not vulgar) anyway so help, encourage them.

If you look over his senate website, you’ll find that Zell Miller is quite proud of his pre-natal Music Appreciation Program.
from 1998
Gov. Zell Miller proposed Tuesday the state issue tapes or compact discs of classical music to parents of every newborn in Georgia as a way to help boost the baby’s intelligence later in life. “I propose that the parents of every baby born in Georgia — over 100,000 a year — be given a cassette or CD of music to be played often in the baby’s presence,” said Miller. “Research shows that reading to an infant, talking with an infant and especially having that infant listen to soothing music helps those trillions of brain connections to develop,
especially the ones related to math.” The governor’s $105,000 allocation for the free music was part of the $12.5 billion budget proposal he presented to the state General Assembly. Miller, who cited the study of classical music helping to increase IQ scores for college students as the reason for the allocation, said he asked the Atlanta Symphony conductor to help select music for recordings.

I recall Rush Limbaugh bashing this as big gummint gone amok.

Restoring the honor of Georgia against Jane Fonda. Later, he’d go after the cartoonists behind Snuffy Sniff. And, though I must agree here, the reality program based on The Beverly Hill-billies.

He probably now has enough wiggle room to claim that he wanted Bill Clinton to resign. Speaking out for the first time Monday, Democratic Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia called Mr. Clinton’s actions “shameful,” saying that he has “debased himself … and diminished the presidency. He has shattered his credibility,” said Mr. Miller, who refused to say whether he thinks the president should resign.

According to this, and comments I vaguely recall him making, “9/11 changed everything.” Which wouldn’t explain why he’s been a loyal Bush backer from Day 1 of the Bush Administration, backing every major policy proposal — he co-sponsored the Bush tax cuts. He was ever-so-eager to confirm John Ashcroft, early bi-partisan facade that the right wing used as ammuniation.

You know the rest, I think, by now. The New Republic picked up on the Zell Miller Effect early on in 2001.

Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder’s “Majority Report” is probably my favourite Air America radio program, due to the fact that it’s a little more independant from mainline DNC than the others.

I was surprised by something said by Rush Limbaugh’s guest host today.

Whenever Janeanse and Sam get on the topic of “black box voting”, or computerized voting, they insist, somewhat humourously, that their callers call into right-wing radio hosts and discuss the possibility that hackers might want to hi-jack the election, and perhaps hackers would tend to be liberal (instead of a coordinated assualt from Republicans, as they tend to suggest by quoting the Diebold official, and his ties with the Republican Party).

(My guess is that hackers would change the election to a Kevin Mitnik / Bill Gates ticket, but nevermind…)

So, what does the Limbaugh replacement say?

He goes off on the ways that the Democrats are thinking of stealing the election. They seem to have a problem with the idea of ex-felons voting (the back-drop explanation for Jeb Bush’s pre-2000 and pre-2004 antics on the subject). And “foreigners monitoring the election.”

But, he said it, in a list of ways the Democrats are scheming to steal the election. “Eleven year olds hacking into the computer – voting equipment…”

A positive, more than likely, on the road to bi-partisan understanding of the trouble with computerized voting equipment.

………….

On the same show, an ignorant lady called in about the Liberal Media and their mischaracterization of the situation in Iraq. “Heck! It took us what — 60 years to get move out of Germany, and back after the war, the Liberal Media were painting the same bleak image of post-war Germany.”

She was, as far as I can tell, referring to this chain email. (Who writes these things, anyways?)

But, more perplexing than simply being taken in by disinformation designed to fit your own pre-conceptions and prejudices, is the call at against the “Liberal Media.” The isolationists, to the degree that they weren’t drowned out by World War II and weren’t completely knocked off by the Republican decision to nominate Willkie in 1940, were in the conservative camp. (Hence the current distinction between “paleo” and “neo” conservativism.)

The “Liberal Media” would not be trying to knock away Harry Truman.

Sayseth Bush: “They’ve seen me make decisions, they’ve seen me under trying times, they’ve seen me weep, they’ve seen me laugh, they’ve seen me hug,”

Interesting.

The internals of all the polls, the ones that show Bush with a 39% or thereabouts job approval rating as well as a slim within-the-margin of error lead over John Kerry, have Bush ahead in two categories, and two categories only.

“Handling of War on Terror”, nebulous and fuzzy as that be. (Divorced from this is “Handling on Iraq”; the average Fox News viewer would be outraged at the pollsters separation of questions. Notice that Bush now says that he thinks the American public will vote him in, “even if they disagree with the war”, because of some, quote – in – quote “steady leadership” and the idea that “I’m not going to shift principles or shift positions”* )

The second “issue” that Bush has a decided advantage over Bush is the matter of… “Likeability”, nebulous and fuzzy as that be.

To work on this “strength” and gain a few important photo-ops, this is the reason that he is going to give his speech in the middle of the crowd.

We’ve seen him weep. We’ve seen him laugh. We’ve seen him hug.

Don’t you want to see him weep, laugh, and hug for four more years?

* The incongruity index spikes up a bit, as The New York Times interview feature has him saying thiseth, “I don’t think you give timelines to dictators.”

We know that New York City Mayor Bloomberg is offering visiting protesters tot he RNC Convention swathy perks such as discounted tickets to Broadway shows, and free food from participating restaurants.

It’s no fun to protest on an empty stomach.

The price is that you need to play by their rules… all their rules, and you have this pin of some sort. It’s state-sanctioned protest vs. state-discouraged protest, befitting the attitude “This is a privilege” that the state grants the people, you see.

I don’t think the “Black Blocks” — the “Anarchists” — the “Radical Feeders” — are going to cash in on this. I’ll have to check NYC’s indymedia page at the time to see if anyone posts reviews of Rent amongs the sea of scary robo-cop photographs.

I’m curious, though. Could somebody go to NYC, get the stupid pin, and use that to get free food and discounted broadway shows? Or do you actually have to attend a goddamned protest?