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There are two storms moving into hurricane force on a course from the Caribbean Sea toward the Southeastern United States right now, and two other tropical depressions with the potential for storm development in the Atlantic Ocean moving toward the Caribbean right now. It’s information that’s of extremely practical use to millions of Americans, and it comes from the government.

Over the next week, we’re going to hear a lot of smears against the American government coming from John McCain and his proxy speakers at the Republican National Convention. As we listen to those speakers, it’s worth remembering why the RNC chose to meet in Minnesota, and not New Orleans.

It’s also worth remembering that, although the political leaders in the White House have done an extremely poor job leading the government, the rank and file of government bureaucracies in the American federal government do a great job keeping our society up and running, day after day.

They give us things like the weather report. Commercial operations like the Weather Channel couldn’t do their work without the National Weather Service. When you hear about where the latest tropical storm is, and what its wind speeds are, and where it’s likely to go, that’s not information devised by the weatherman you see on your television set. It’s information from the government’s National Hurricane Center, where you can see the same kind of frequently updated information about hurricanes and tropical storms that the TV meteorologists use to make their forecasts.

There are many parts of the government that don’t work as well as they ought to - the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example. There are others, like the Department of Justice and the National Security Agency, that are run through with the corrupting shadow of excessive secrecy.

Only a pollyanna would claim that our government is exactly as it should be, but the beauty of our government is that we the people have the power to make it better. That’s a kind of accountability that just doesn’t exist in the business world. No amount of clamor for fuel efficient vehicles was able to convince Ford, General Motors or Chrysler to bring a hybrid car to market. These corporations were unaccountable to us. Our government is accountable, and we can make it better - if we as individual citizens care enough to pay attention to the details of what our government is doing, and act upon that information.

Now that the presidential and congressional elections are near, Americans need to get the straight scoop about what their government is really up to. For that reason, we citizens need to stop relying on commercial news organizations that select government information and process it according to what their reporters think it means. We need to learn to go straight to the source, watching for news from government agencies like we would watch for news from cable television channels.

When you see a story from a dot com, try going to the dot gov site to get a more full and less filtered version of events. But before you even go to a dot com, survey the dot gov sites first, to get the news of government activities that will never be reported by commercial media.

Read the government news as skeptically as you would a commercial news article. Government information is not at all raw. In many cases, it’s been cooked by political appointees working to promote the political agenda set by the White House. However, in certain cases, it’s one step closer to the day to day operations of our nation’s democratic process.

The ignorance of this information on the part of the American public is the neglect of our duty as citizens to watch our government’s activities so that we can more effectively make choices about the direction that government should take when Election Day comes around.

You know, the speeches given at the 2008 Democratic National Convention are not casual affairs. They’re not idiosyncratic expressions of individual notions. They’re read, re-read and carefully vetted by committees of Democratic Party bureaucrats to ensure that the ideas expressed in them are consistent with the message and tone the DNC wants to convey. So when we find out that the notion of God has been invoked more than fifty times by Democratic convention speakers so far, we shouldn’t assume this is a mistake. No, it is exactly what the Democratic Party has in mind. The Democratic Party wants to become the new Party of God.

That last sentence wasn’t hyperbole. Just as George W. Bush asserted that “God Speaks Through Me” in 2004, and just as Barack Obama confessed his belief that he is the instrument of God’s will earlier this month, now the Democratic Party is putting forth speakers to declare that the Democratic Party is kid-tested, mother-approved … and God-sanctioned.

Don’t believe me? Check out these words from the very first speech before the 2008 Democratic National Convention, given by former Colorado State Senator and current LARASA CEO Polly Baca:

As we embark on this historic occasion, we pray that God will guide us in our decision making…

We ask God to give us the wisdom and the strength to do God’s will…

It is with confidence and faith in the divine that we engage in this effort to meet the challenges our country faces…

God has blessed our party…

We pray for God’s guidance…

May God bless us as we assume our sacred responsibility…

And lest you forget which God they’re talking about, it ain’t Vishnu:

in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And entrepreneurial evangelical Rick Warren had the audacity to call atheists “arrogant” after his two-hour-long televised religious inquisition of the presidential candidates? Here we have a Christian claiming that the Supreme Ruler of the entire universe (containing scores of billions of galaxies each with scores of billions of stars) has taken the time and attention to bless the Democratic Party, to fill the Party with the right kind of delegates, and to guide the Party toward regaining the White House in the November elections.

Arrogant? Claiming that your political party has been picked out and blessed and guided by the Supernatural Invisible Supreme Ruler of the entire Cosmos — that’s arrogant. It’s bizarre in its disconnect with empirical, observable reality. And yet as people hear this bizarre claim, they seem to let it go in one ear and out the other with no more than a “hum dee dum dee dum” or polite applause. Certainly no news organization has reported on the Democratic Party’s odd claim to be endorsed by the Divine. They’re too busy filing reports on the color of Hillary Clinton’s pantsuit.

Somebody needs to hand a note to each speaker at the Democratic National Convention. It should read:

STOP YELLING.

On the back it should read:

Really, we mean it. Stop yelling. You probably think that by yelling you’re communicating excitement and importance and emphasis, but what you really communicate is that you are a rabid weasel. You think you’re commanding attention, but what you really see is people wincing or smiling that uncomfortable smile to mask the thought “stop.” Excitement, importance, emphasis and attention are variables. Let them vary. Accept that not every word of your speech is equally precious. Don’t shout it all out.

A shout only grabs attention if you shout occasionally in a departure from some other mode of speaking. Otherwise, people will ignore you as much as if you whispered, because, well, you’re hurting their ears, folks. Save your shoutiest shouts for the moments when you really, really have something important to say. Something that draws everything else together. Some capstone moment that you build to (see “variables”). The rest of the time, try talking. Don’t worry, everyone will hear — that’s what those microphones are for.

John McCain has a new campaign commercial on TV, featuring Debra Bartoshevich, a former delegate for the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. It’s supposed to be a powerful message to undermine Obama, but actually, Bartoshevich’s pitch runs shallow and light.

The only reasons Bartoshevich gives to vote for John McCain are:

1. McCain is a maverick. Actually, McCain is a Republican conformist and a loyal follower of George W. Bush. McCain supported almost every wacky Bush idea of the last eight years.

2. McCain is an experienced leader. Well, so what? So is Barack Obama. Everyone in the United States Senate is an experienced leader. This isn’t something that distinguishes McCain in particular.

What Debra Bartoshevich doesn’t mention is that John McCain is anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-science, pro-war, pro-deficits, pro-oil corporations, anti-environment and in bed with the most radical Republicans in America. Oopsie! However did Bartoshevich forget to talk about those issues?

This new McCain advertisement will only convince the most superficial, shallow-minded Democrats to vote for McCain. It has no substance. Only a blinking, bitter personality who obviously just doesn’t like that Barack Obama won over Hillary Clinton.

Grow up, Debra.

What the hell is wrong with the organizers of the Democratic National Convention? I’m tuning in to the convention on C-Span, and all I’m seeing are a few half-hearted speeches with content we’ve all heard many times before, a few typical political advertisements, and a lot of dead air time between them. Mostly, it’s lot of bland muzak with indecipherable lyrics just filling up air time while people back stage dither around.

What the hell is this? A freaking Jerry Lewis Telethon? A Lawrence Welk Show revival?

The Democrats have hours of prime time television tonight, and they’re filling it with boring, meaningless garbage. It’s not what I would do if I had hours of commercial-free nationally-televised screen time. I’d want to plan to use every second of that time to effectively get out a strong message to get people on their feet and ready to work to make a real change. The Democrats at the convention aren’t doing that. They’re not delivering a strong political message. They’re sleepwalking. They’re delivering the message that the convention, and the presidential campaign it’s supposed to promote, isn’t worth paying attention to.

Maybe the Democratic National Convention Committee is incompetent, and really couldn’t figure out how to schedule an event that was worth watching. Maybe, on the other hand, the Democratic Party leadership wants to to turn people away. Maybe they don’t want Americans to get involved. Maybe they’re tired of hearing about grassroots activists. Maybe they want to keep all the action for themselves and their corporate sponsors.

I’ve been dedicated to political activism for years, and as I watch this convention, all I want to do is yawn and go to bed. Is that what the Democrats in charge of the convention are aiming for? To get the grassroots to fall asleep?

I’ll try to hold out a while longer. Maybe they’ll have a clown doing balloon animals later.

Sometimes it’s useful to turn off the sound when the advertisements come on; the pictures themselves can speak volumes. When I turned off the sound on this August 2008 John McCain spot about Barack Obama, this is what the pictures told me:

I saw non-black people looking scared of Barack Obama. What do you see?

Number of delegates to the Democratic National Convention that starts tomorrow in Denver: 4,400

Number of people marching under the Recreate 68 banner in a Denver anti-war march today: 1,000

Number of news articles in the last day on the Democratic National Convention that starts tomorrow: 32,357

Number of articles in the last day on the Denver anti-war march that happened today: 1,115

A large group of nonviolent protesters in the village of Bil’in, along the wall separating Israel and Palestine, was attacked by the Israeli army, hit with concussion grenades, sprayed with strange colored water, and what local sources are calling CS gas - chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile, a kind of tear gas.

I can’t find a single American commercial news source that’s reporting on this incident.

Why?

During the Christian entrepreneurial evangelist pastor Rick Warren’s religious interrogation of John McCain on Saturday August 16, he made the following challenge (my transcription):

Rick Warren: 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. Some people who, people who believe that life begins at conception, would say that’s a Holocaust for many people. At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?

John McCain: At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate. And as President of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That’s my commitment. That’s my commitment to you.

Rick Warren: Ha ha. Okay. We don’t have to go longer on that one. Ha ha.

Warren’s relief was palpable, but ours should not be. Rick Warren was looking for an easy, simple answer, but McCain’s answer was neither easy nor simple in its implications for Americans.

Rick Warren: At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?

John McCain: At the moment of conception.

John McCain isn’t just whistling Dixie here. He’s telling you outright what his pro-life policies as president will entail. He’s telling you that as president, he will pursue policies consonant with the notion that human rights are granted at the moment of conception. Well, what are “human rights?” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted with full participation of the United States and passed by the United Nations General Assembly with the United States voting yes and only the Soviet bloc and Saudi Arabia voting against, commits member nations of the UN to:

strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the foundation of international human rights law, to which the United States is committed through a number of ratified covenants. It identifies these human rights among others:

Article 3. “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Article 6. “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

Article 7. “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.”

Article 8. “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.”

These rights are roughly paralleled in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

If these rights apply “at the moment of conception,” what does that mean?

It means that the “right to life, liberty and security of person” is violated by intra-uterine devices (IUDs), contraceptions that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. These fertilized eggs, after all, would have the “right to life, liberty and security of person”! In a John McCain presidency, IUDs would be illegal. Using an IUD would be tantamount to murder.

It means that the “right to life, liberty and security of person” is violated by use of Plan B, the morning after pill. Plan B works by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. That is a violation of human rights if human rights apply “at the moment of conception.” Clearly, John McCain intends to outlaw the morning after pill.

It means that the “right to life, liberty and security of person” is violated by use of regular birth control pills, which some doctors assert may prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs into the uterine wall. That’s murder, murder, murder if John McCain gets his way. If John McCain is president, he will outlaw the birth control pill.

In a John McCain presidency, even using the rhythm method would be against the law. As Dr. Luc Bovens points out in an article in the British Medical Journal, the rhythm method of birth control works by limiting sexual intercourse to the times when a successful pregnancy is less likely to be achieved. The reason successful pregnancies are less likely to be achieved during some of periods of the estrus cycle (periods deemed OK by proponents of the rhythm method) is that old eggs are degraded by their long trip through the fallopian tubes and therefore less likely when fertilized to implant in the uterine wall. The intentional use of the rhythm method is murder — the creation of life knowing that it will be destroyed. Since John McCain has declared such life has full human rights, and since John McCain has declared his intention to implement government policies with those new human rights in mind, we can rest assured that John McCain will make the use of the rhythm method against the law.

If John McCain is elected president, either in vitro fertility clinics will be outlawed or women will be forced into mandatory pregnancies. These clinics give otherwise infertile couples children, that is to be sure. But they do so by fertilizing multiple eggs, leading to embryos that under a McCain presidency will have human rights. Currently, in vitro fertility clinics throw those embryos away. If these embryos have human rights, then such an act will be illegal. The only acceptable actions for a President McCain who means what he says and keeps his promises will be 1) to make in vitro fertilization clinics illegal, 2) to force women to carry all of their embryos generated in in vitro fertilization to term as children, resulting in huge increases in family size, or 3) to force women to carry other women’s embryos to term as children, violating the rights of women in order to save the lives of these “babies,” these beings that John McCain has given human rights. Even the fundamentalist Christian women who say that these embryos have full human rights, who call them “babies,” are not lining up to bring them to birth using their own wombs. Expect that to change under a McCain administration. John McCain will probably have to deploy the National Guard to ensure that women fulfill their new duties as forced incubators, but hey, those embryos have human rights too.

Yes, the national guard, or perhaps police officers if most everyone just goes along quietly, will have to be deployed. Laws are laws and must be followed. And remember, human rights must be enforced through courts or other tribunals, which include the use of force to back them up.

The police or national guard will also have to be deployed to recover naturally threatened embryos. according to testimony before President Bush’s own Bioethics Panel, 60 to 80 percent of human conceptions fail to implant or otherwise fail in pregnancy, and 40 to 50 percent of those failed conceptions “did not contain defects or abnormalities, could have been born… and become babies.” They have full human rights, which include the “right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Now, there are approximately 4 million births in the United States each year. To be conservative, let’s assume that only 60 percent (not the higher 80 percent estimate) of conceptions fail to come to term. Those 4 million births therefore represent 40 percent of conceptions. That in turn means there are 6 million conceptions which fail to come to term each year. Now, to be conservative again, let’s assume that only 40 percent (not the higher 50 percent estimate) of those failed conceptions “did not contain defects or abnormalities, could have been born… and become babies.” This means that there are approximately 2,400,000 conceptions each year resulting in embryos that “could have been born… and become babies” but did not.

If you follow this logic to its end, expect John McCain to order a program of search and rescue for those 2,400,000 little embryos, embryos with full human rights deserving full protection of their government. We don’t flinch at shoveling out government resources to find missing 8 year olds lost in the Okeefenokee Swamp, do we? Then we shouldn’t flinch at shoveling out government resources to search every sexually-active woman’s body to save these little human lives, should we? A woman’s home can be searched for an endangered baby, so why not her womb? Measures must be taken: it’s a Holocaust, as Rick Warren reminds us, a Holocaust! Well, first we’ll need an accurate accounting of every woman’s sexual activity so that we know where those little lost embryos might be (the other choice is to search every American woman between the onset of puberty and the onset of menopause). Then, we’ll need to have daily blood analysis in the lab to measure changes in gonadotrophins, so that we can tell when a pregnancy begins and when a failure of that pregnancy might be commencing. Then we’ll need doctors at the ready to intervene with a thorough search of a woman’s body cavity so that the little kiddo can be found and reimplanted.

I could continue. There are census counts to be considered, for instance, and then there is the matter of giving these fertilized embryos their social security cards. Equal protection under the law, don’t you know! But I think you get the point. When John McCain says that human rights apply “at the moment of conception,” there are a number of consequences that follow… consequences that most Americans would wish to avoid. No wonder McCain’s ally Rick Warren wanted so desperately, and so quickly, to move on to the next subject.

There’s the Olympics controversy you’re likely to hear about. Some Chinese gymnasts might be too young. A young girl lip synched a song that another young girl sang. An American basketball player who immigrated to Russia played against the USA.

Then there’s the Olympics controversy you probably won’t hear about. American photojournalists Jeffrey Rae and Brian Conley have been arrested for attempting to photograph a protest, at the Olympics games, against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The reaction of the United States Department of State: “They should have known better.”

Yes, we should know better. We should know better what’s really going on in China, underneath the Olympics facade, and Jeffrey Rae and Brian Conley were working to help us know better.

Sports journalists are working to make sure that we don’t know better. They’re continuing with the coverage proclaiming that sports bring us together, and pretending that what happened to Rae and Conley. ESPN hasn’t acknowledged the incident in its broadcasts a even once. They wouldn’t want to interfere with the coverage of the volleyball game against Brazil.

Is FOX News fair and balanced? Visit the Live Desk with Martha MacCallum and Trace Gallagher to find out. This afternoon, they offer the following choice bit of reporting:

Democrats, druggies? “Mile High?” Ha, ha!

FOX News — it’s just a joke.

If there is an acronym that turns me off quicker than SEO, I can’t think of it. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and for shallow, gimmicky chasing after attention online.

The idea behind search engine optimization is that a web site won’t be regarded as worth finding in itself, and so a high ranking in search engines like Google is necessary to get people to visit. The focus of search engine optimization is the creation of a web site that is engineered to please search engines. The experience of the people who will actually visit and use the site isn’t the point of discussions of search engine optimization. Neither is the honest self-expression of the site’s creators.

The acronymization of the phrase reflects a further dilution of meaning. The fact that many people can’t even bother to take the time to say the phrase search engine optimization is an indication that they’re more interested in getting fast traffic than investing time in their creation. They’re too much in a hurry in a quest to make money to bother with unnecessary syllables.

I won’t deny that search engine optimization works, if by works, you mean getting respect from search engine algorithms. In the same way, having a font that’s pleasing to the eye can work, in the sense of grabbing a reader’s initial attention.

However, I don’t know many writers who spend much time worrying about the font in which their books will be published. Neither do I know many people working with a purpose online who bother to talk very much about SEO. They’re more interested in expressing their inspiration, or convincing people on subjects that motivate them.

So, when I happen upon a site where I see SEO being discussed, I’m not likely to stay around for long. You say SEO, and I go.

Random House had made Sherry Jones’ romance novel “The Jewel of Medina” ready for publication, and the Book of the Month Club had made it one of their picks. But as the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein reports, the Random House corporation then decided that it would rescind the book’s publication. Because the book was rotten? No. Because the book was incorrect? No, it’s fiction. Random House decided to rescind the book’s publication because it thought that some Muslims might get upset about it and blow up its corporate headquarters.

New Random House policy: we publish books so long as they don’t bother anyone.

No, no, that’s not fair, because it’s worse than that. You see, the decision is inconsistent. Random House has no problem publishing a book like Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, which delivers a harsh and direct slam on fundamentalist Christianity. But if you write a book, even fictional, that might upset some Muslim somewhere, then the book can’t be seen. It’s inappropriately cowardly: people criticize Muslims and Islam all the time and live to tell the tale.

Random House has a lot of experience in the work of physically putting a book together, but after all these years they’re having trouble finding the spine.

Truman reminds us this morning of Evan Bayh’s failure as a Senator in 2002. No, that’s not right. It was not just a passive failure, but rather an active betrayal by Evan Bayh. Bayh’s position as a Senator is a position of trust. Americans trust, among other things, that a Senator is telling the truth when he or she says that classified information exists justifying the decision to go to war. Bayh told the American people that “weapons of mass destruction and the regime of Saddam Hussein are one and indivisible” when the National Intelligence Estimate he read simply did not support that claim.

Bayh lied. Bayh voted to authorize war in Iraq on the basis of that lie. People died as a result. Hundreds of thousands of them.

But at least Evan Bayh read the National Intelligence Estimate before he voted. John Edwards, a Senator from North Carolina at the time didn’t even read the NIE before he voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Oh, Edwards had access to the NIE all right. All he had to do was to waltz into a secure room in the Senate, sit down, and read the NIE. Edwards just didn’t bother to read it before he voted to send troops into war. It wasn’t a dissertation-length document we’re talking about; it was more like a Sunday New York Times magazine article in length. But Edwards couldn’t be bothered.

John Edwards violated the trust of the American people that he would exercise oversight, exercise critical thinking… heck, that he would exercise literacy before voting to send this country into war against another country. But John Edwards cheated. He cut corners. He violated Americans’ trust. John Edwards cheated this country into war, and that’s the cheating that should have mattered. But John Edwards cheating on due diligence regarding Iraq didn’t matter. John Edwards’ political career was ended because he cheated on his wife with Rielle Hunter.

It doesn’t end there. Having failed to bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before voting to go to war against Iraq, John Edwards nevertheless felt free to appear on national television, jut out his jaw, and act as though he knew what he was talking about. John Edwards felt free to hop on over to the CNN studios, scowl his scowliest scowl, and insist to the American people that “I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country…. I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.”

John Edwards felt free, not having actually read the intelligence report available to him, to nevertheless stand before the Senate and whip up the frenzy for war, with television cameras capturing his pretty, determined-looking face for a national audience. John Edwards felt free to pretend in front of the entire country that his pro-war vote was justified by the intelligence he was pretending to have read:

Mr. President, I am here to speak in support of the resolution before us, which I cosponsored. I believe we must vote for this resolution not because we want war, but because
the national security of our country requires action. The prospect of using force to protect our security is the most difficult decision a Nation must ever make.

We all agree that this is not an easy decision. It carries many risks. If force proves necessary, it will also carry costs, certainly in resources, and perhaps in lives. After careful consideration, I believe that the risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.

Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already
used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.

Iraq has continued to seek nuclear weapons and develop its arsenal…

blah blah blah blah blah.

Bullshit. John Edwards’ speech was bullshit, and I’m not just whistling Dixie. If John Edwards had actually bothered to read the 2002 NIE, he would have encountered passages like these, casting serious doubt on the claims Edwards telegraphed with staged certainty:

But John Edwards lied to America when he made these claims with the veneer of knowing of what he spoke. He violated Americans’ trust. John Edwards cheated this country into war, and that’s cheating that should have mattered. It didn’t. John Edwards’ political career was ended because he cheated on his wife with Rielle Hunter.

The cheating doesn’t stop there. After all this, John Edwards lied some more. When campaigning to be president last year, John Edwards affirmed before a crowd that he had read the National Intelligence Estimate:

The Edwards campaign had to recant that claim. John Edwards lied about having read the NIE before voting to go to war against Iraq. He violated the trust Americans placed in him. John Edwards cheated the nation in his efforts to become president in 2008, and that’s cheating that should have mattered. It didn’t. John Edwards’ political career was ended because he cheated on his wife with Rielle Hunter.