Here’s my quick reaction to Kerry’s speech …

It was good, not great. He talked too fast, didn’t allow the crowd the chance to connect with him or with his message, and he sweating like Frosty on an August afternoon. I don’t think he understood the point of this speech — show the undecided voters that he’s the real deal, that his party loves him, and that he’s got some real ideas to lead the country.

Instead, we heard a speech that was 5 miles wide and an inch deep. He covered a lot of ground but didn’t spend much time explaining how what he’ll DO is different than Bush. Sure, he’s NOTHING like Bush in terms of the OUTCOMES he’d like to achieve, but how will he do it?

How will he get those 40,000 additional troops he plans on using to shore up our overextended military? Not a draft, I suppose. How will he pay for the socialized health care he’s asking for? Not by raising taxes, he claims. How will he balance a budget and repair the economy? Not by getting his pals in Congress — Ted Kennedy, ahem — to cut spending. How will be run a positive campaign against Bush? Not by showing some restraint and avoiding personal attacks on Bush and Cheney.

The thing about Bush, love him or hate him, is that he tossed some ideas out on the table in 2000 — school vouchers, privatized social security, boosting defense spending, tax cuts. Did he get them all done? No, but he showed how he would be different than his opponent. Kerry makes a lot of grand claims, but only backs it up with slogans.

When the debates roll around and this campaign really gets going, Kerry will be pressed to explain how he’ll fight the war on terror, how he will boost the economy, and how he will fix health care.

I also didn’t hear anything about gay marriage, abortion, gun control, or any of those other niche issues that may well decide this race.

He did all right, but he needed to do better. It was also tough closing out a week of great speakers like Clinton, Obama, and even Edwards.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one knocking this speech.

This is the latest piece of merchandise from Planned Parenthood. Just $15.

This is why the abortion debate in America is such a mess. I find it really hard to digest the whole “right to choose” argument, when it’s so obvious that Planned Parenthood isn’t really about choice. They are about profit.

I think most Americans would agree that America is a better place when we have fewer abortions. Even my pro-choice friends agree that regardless of the legal status of abortion, when a women chooses to have an abortion, it’s not something to celebrate. It’s a hard choice usually made in a hard situation. It’s often seen as being the best of several alternatives. In an ideal world, no matter what your stance is on Roe v. Wade, woman wouldn’t feel like they have to choose to have an abortion.

I don’t think Planned Parenthood feels this way. They exist to promote abortion because it benefits them. I don’t think they can participate in this debate in good faith when they have ulterior motives for supporting the pro-choice movement.

I think we need leaders who can stop looking at abortion as a legal debate and instead focus on it as a health and human services debate. Is there a way to preserve a woman’s right to choose while decreasing the number of abortions performed in this country? That’s where the work begins.

With the DNC convention all but finished in Boston, I think America has gotten a pretty accurrate picture of what the Democrats are fielding this year.

The biggest problem I’ve seen is simply this — they’ve offered no real solutions. Nowhere in all the flowery happy talk of Barak Obama, the hatchet job of Jimmy Carter, or the rantings of Ted Kennedy has there been anything that even resembles an original idea. Instead, we’ve heard from dozens of Democrats who have realized that they can’t win with the “anybody but Bush” strategy. They’ve got John Kerry, so they have to support him. The liability of supporting Kerry is that he’s presented nothing even resembling a real plan for correcting the perceived (or real) mistakes of the Bush administration.

We’ve heard nothing about a plan for the Middle East, except that the Bush plan is fatally flawed. Nothing about the economy, except that rich people don’t deserve tax breaks. No alternative to Bush’s plan on gay marriage. Nothing about homeland security, except that the Patriot Act is a violation of civil rights.

It’s great to put on a smile and talk about uniting America, but at the end of the day, this campaign is about real issues. If you think the Bush foreign policy is so bad, then tell us how to fix it. How do you plan on building bridges? How do you plan on repairing America’s reputation in the world?

How would John Kerry work with a Congress that will likely be at least partially controlled by the GOP? How would he work with Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, Trent Lott, and Bill Frist? I don’t hear any of this.

I know the convention is an infomercial, but I’d at least like to know what I’m getting for mt 3 easy payments of $19.99. Tell me that it slices and dices. Give me something to compare Bush to.

Jeff Maurone blogs his dinner with Bill Gates. Truly a behind the scenes glimpse at an enigmatic man.

The prominence of Obama last night serves to highlight how pathetic the Illinois GOP has been in naming an opponent for him. The longer the GOP goes without a nominee, the more I think that Jack Ryan should get back in this race. He’s the legally chosen Republican candidate. He has the support of the national party. He doesn’t need the state party. He’s a sympathetic figure now, so I think he would be able to garner the popular support of voters.

To that end, Republican Young Professionals in Illinois are raising the call to “Bring Back Jack” by encouraging voters to sign a petition here.

I watched a few more minutes of the convention last night than the night before. You’d think that with all backlash Democrats are getting for the lack of substance at this convention, there would be some effort within the party to make things more interesting. I know that the whole point is to provide an infomercial for the party and the candidate, but if no one is watching because it’s so uninteresting, can it be that effective an infomercial? This is especially true in a year when everyone agrees that the critical task for both Democrats and Republicans is to grab the attention of swing voters. But I can promise you that swing voters are NOT watching this. They might watch if they knew they’d see something worthwhile.

Last night was certainly a picture of the past and the future of the party. Ted Kennedy, of course, represents the past. While not the Senate’s only functional alcoholic but perhaps its most prominent, Kennedy unleashed one of the most absurd statements of his long career of absurdity:

The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George W. Bush.

Really? That’s all we have to fear? Seriously? Do you and your party really believe that Americans should have no other legitimate fears besides George Bush? Tell that to the families of the victims of 9/11. Tell that to the innocent citizens throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East who have all suffered greatly at the hands of radical, fundamentalist Islamist terrorists who would like nothing better than to turn every large American city into a ground zero. How can the Democrats be serious about fighting a war on terrorism and then give Ted Kennedy the chance to say things like this?

On the flip side, Barak Obama gave a great speech with his first appearance on the national stage. I don’t think it was the grand slam that everyone is touting today. It was good, and he certainly has a lot of appeal — he’s young, he’s attractive, he’s black, he’s eloquent. These are all things Ted Kennedy is not.

What bothered me about Obama’s speech is that his theme of “one America” seems to contradict John Edwards’ theme of “two Americas”. I don’t know how a party can say out of one side of its mouth that America is one people, and say out of the other side that American is really all about the poor vs. the rich. The speech was solid, and I think Obama will be this party’s nominee in the near future. But I think he’s a little ahead of his time.

Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, Obama has joined John Edwards and Baltimore’s Martin O’Malley as the young lions of the party.

I won’t point out how old Jimmy Carter looked last night, since I know the GOP will roll Gerald Ford out of cold storage next month for his appearance at the convention. I will point out how funny it was to hear Jimmy Carter lecture the Bush administration on foreign policy:

After 9/11, America stood proud, wounded but determined and united. A cowardly attack on innocent civilians brought us an unprecedented level of cooperation and understanding around the world. But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this goodwill has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations. Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism.

Hmmm … Here are some gems of foreign policy that have come from Carter in the past:

Carter said of Kim Il Sung, a brutal Stalinist dictator, “I found him to be vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues and in charge of the decisions about this country.” As for the North Koreans, Muravchik wrote, Carter said the “people were very friendly and open.” The capital, Pyongyang, is a “bustling city,” where customers “pack the department stores,” which looked like “Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia.”

Carter noted that Yugoslavia’s Marshall Tito was also “a man who believes in human rights.” Carter saluted the dictator as “a great and courageous leader” who “has led his people and protected their freedom almost for the last 40 years.” He publicly told Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, “Our goals are the same. … We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people.”

He told Haitian dictator Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras he was “ashamed of what my country has done to your country.” He’s praised the mass-murdering leaders of Syria and Ethiopia. He endorsed Yasser Arafat’s sham election and grumbled about the legitimate vote that ousted Sandanista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

Two interesting articles via the Religion News Blog.

First, a great article on the rise of house churches in America:

But the bottom line is that for many Americans, worship is no longer centered exclusively under a steeple. In an era of long commutes, overloaded schedules, and made-to-order spirituality, religious experience increasingly means venturing into someone’s home for refreshments and a taste of God on far more personal terms.

Churches need to begin rethinking the wisdom of spending millions of dollars, in some cases, on building projects when those buildings stand empty five days a week and don’t generate much sense of community when they are full. Seems like another case of ancient-future faith being worked out.

Second, a new survey finds that fewer Americans identify themselves as Protestant:

Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

I think it’ should be no surprise that the label Protestant isn’t sticking. It’s never been a coherent movement, like Roman Catholicism, and has increasingly become polarized with liberals and evangelicals battling over centry-old turf. Few evangelicals would describe themselves as Protestant, opting instead to call themselves simply Christian. Again, I think we’re seeing an ancient-future faith principle played out here, as believers are increasingly less concerned about denominational labels and more concerened about community. The fact that this survey lumps everything from Epicopalians to Southern Baptists to Mormons into the same category really shows how flawed the terminology really is.

This piece is classic:

As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle.

Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the phrases “unethical for certain,” “crude oil spurtin’,” and “like Halliburton.”

If only this were true, perhaps we’d see programming like “Yo! C-SPAN Raps”.

Talk about a backwards way of using technology that actually saves money. I guess this says a lot about how cheap telecomm technology is getting:

Pull off Interstate 55 near Cape Girardeau, Mo., and into the drive-through lane of a McDonald’s next to the highway and you’ll get fast, friendly service, even though the person taking your order is not in the restaurant - or even in Missouri.

The order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, more than 900 miles away, connected to the customer and to the workers preparing the food by high-speed data lines. Even some restaurant jobs, it seems, are not immune to outsourcing.

This is pretty cool. It’s a nice history of American politics through the lens of campaign ads. I especially like this quote from Adlai Stevenson:

“The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.”
-Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, 1956

(via BoingBoing)

With a few weeks to go, security for the DNCC doesn’t look good (via Scripting News):

[Here are] some seriously easy ones, that can be verified without mulling around, and can be seen by the layman.

There are jersey barriers in front of the O’Neil building, but none of them are staked down, none of them are connected together, and none of them have interlocking cables of any sort. The same barriers are not installed properly with some of them either teetering across the curb, or or spaced so far apart so as to allow a vehicle to access the front of the building(s).

The temporary communications trailer (Verizon) has been installed right at the edge of the street and is a plywood trailer with a fiberglass/sheet metal shell. Easy to destroy/damage, also easy to take out from a considerable distance with a rifle. I actually walked through the Verizon trailer yesterday (unescorted, and uninvited) and through a fist full of red and black poker chips behind the switching cabinet.

Ditto for the two large HVAC/Gensets at the outer corners of the pavilion. Easy access, easy to sabotage, fully accessible even now (I opened the service panel of both and mulled around for a few minutes before departing).