Dog Days Blog Flogging
I've been asked to have the header of this blog reflect the content. No, I say. Bloggers must blog wild. Bloggers must blog free!
On second thought.... oh why not?.
The hottest parts of summer are called "Dog Days," supposedly because the ancients thought heat waves were caused by Sirius, the dog star. (The ancients sure were stupid, huh?)
I live in the Sunset District of San Francisco, where you can't even see the sun for most of the summer, much less the heavens. The unrelenting fog and damp get to you after awhile. It's kind of the reverse of the Santa Ana winds effect, which allegedly causes short tempers, and even murder (if Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" is to believed).
No, the Fog Days lead to a kind of malaise and bland confusion. Is it noon? Is it midnight? Who knows? Do I care?
I even slog through the news with a kind of disinterest, leavened by rage, of course. There was an editorial in today's Chronicle, for instance, that perfectly captured the new conservative point of view. It was about John Kerry's war record, which seemed pretty stellar to me - medals, heroism, wounds. But then the Hannitys and the Limbaughs of the right (not Republican leadership of course, just their lap/attack dog acolytes) started "floating" the idea that Kerry lied in order to get his Bronze Star and Purple Heart. They didn't endorse the idea, just put it out there, in that disingenuous yet belligerent way they have.
Then a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made a television ad, which used testimonials by men who supposedly served with Kerry, calling him dishonest and a liar. John McCain has called the ad despicable.
Me, I think if he earned the medals dishonestly, doesn't that mean that the whole chain of command is dishonest? Are the armed forces in the habit of tossing out medals like Mardi Gras beads?
Anyway, the editorial was by a woman from Stanford University, who weighed in on this controversy. She wrote, "Critics charge... that the ad is in bad taste is irrelevant to what his election is all about. These critics are both right and wrong. They are right that what someone did or didn't do during a four-month period in a war more than 30 years ago tells us little if anything about what kind of president that person will be."
She insisted "...it is Kerry, not his critics, who has made his Vietnam service the central issue of his candidacy...."
And she finally concluded, "...if he chooses to base his candidacy on his performance in Vietnam, fellow veterans who knew him and served with him have a right, and perhaps even a duty, to comment on that record."
In other words, if he'd just pretend his Vietnam experience hadn't happened, maybe the right wing disinformation commandos would shut up. Fat chance.
In other news, I read that White House officials, in their zeal to counter the notion that the latest terror alerts are based on pre-9/11 information, leaked the name of an al Qaeda informant, thus making his further usefulness moot. Granted, I'm a liberal, but I am totally mystified as to why anybody would support or vote for anybody in this gang of incompetent, vicious, deceptive, evil clowns.
Oh, Duck's Breath has a DVD in the works. It is politics-free, except for the bit where we put Dick Cheney in a bunny suit, and make him read HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES aloud at a Mormon day care center.
Wait. Do Mormons have day care centers? That's another mystery for another time.
See you at the prayer meeting!
On second thought.... oh why not?.
The hottest parts of summer are called "Dog Days," supposedly because the ancients thought heat waves were caused by Sirius, the dog star. (The ancients sure were stupid, huh?)
I live in the Sunset District of San Francisco, where you can't even see the sun for most of the summer, much less the heavens. The unrelenting fog and damp get to you after awhile. It's kind of the reverse of the Santa Ana winds effect, which allegedly causes short tempers, and even murder (if Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" is to believed).
No, the Fog Days lead to a kind of malaise and bland confusion. Is it noon? Is it midnight? Who knows? Do I care?
I even slog through the news with a kind of disinterest, leavened by rage, of course. There was an editorial in today's Chronicle, for instance, that perfectly captured the new conservative point of view. It was about John Kerry's war record, which seemed pretty stellar to me - medals, heroism, wounds. But then the Hannitys and the Limbaughs of the right (not Republican leadership of course, just their lap/attack dog acolytes) started "floating" the idea that Kerry lied in order to get his Bronze Star and Purple Heart. They didn't endorse the idea, just put it out there, in that disingenuous yet belligerent way they have.
Then a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made a television ad, which used testimonials by men who supposedly served with Kerry, calling him dishonest and a liar. John McCain has called the ad despicable.
Me, I think if he earned the medals dishonestly, doesn't that mean that the whole chain of command is dishonest? Are the armed forces in the habit of tossing out medals like Mardi Gras beads?
Anyway, the editorial was by a woman from Stanford University, who weighed in on this controversy. She wrote, "Critics charge... that the ad is in bad taste is irrelevant to what his election is all about. These critics are both right and wrong. They are right that what someone did or didn't do during a four-month period in a war more than 30 years ago tells us little if anything about what kind of president that person will be."
She insisted "...it is Kerry, not his critics, who has made his Vietnam service the central issue of his candidacy...."
And she finally concluded, "...if he chooses to base his candidacy on his performance in Vietnam, fellow veterans who knew him and served with him have a right, and perhaps even a duty, to comment on that record."
In other words, if he'd just pretend his Vietnam experience hadn't happened, maybe the right wing disinformation commandos would shut up. Fat chance.
In other news, I read that White House officials, in their zeal to counter the notion that the latest terror alerts are based on pre-9/11 information, leaked the name of an al Qaeda informant, thus making his further usefulness moot. Granted, I'm a liberal, but I am totally mystified as to why anybody would support or vote for anybody in this gang of incompetent, vicious, deceptive, evil clowns.
Oh, Duck's Breath has a DVD in the works. It is politics-free, except for the bit where we put Dick Cheney in a bunny suit, and make him read HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES aloud at a Mormon day care center.
Wait. Do Mormons have day care centers? That's another mystery for another time.
See you at the prayer meeting!
posted by Merle Kessler at 3:11 PM
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