Andrew Golis

Continuing on the theme of liberals learning to play dirty, bomb throwing politics, Michael Moore has been preparing for the release of Fahrenheit 911 by having the entire film fact-checked by professionals and lawyers, having those lawyers prepare the proper documentation to support every claim he makes, and developing a war room headed up by the vicious Chris Lehane (who is widely credited with tearing down the reputation of many a politician, and I think is suspected to have started the “Kerry has an intern” story when he worked for Wes Clark). First of all, I’m sure this movie is going to be textbook ridiculous liberal stuff, half of which I will love and agree with and half of which I will hate and believe to be semi-dishonest. Who cares though? Thems is the breaks.

That being said, good for Michael Moore. He seems to have woken up to the fact that he is a lightening rod for conservative media, and that his problem with the truth doesn’t do much good for his own causes because it discredits what is often an important and valid, as well as funny, point that is being made (in Bowling for Columbine, for instance). Rather than having that happen again and creating a problem for liberals instead of for President Bush, Moore has decided to grow up a little bit and do this right.

I at first was skeptical that this movie would really have an impact on the election. However, then I saw the preview (which can be seen here) . In it, there are two clips of George W. that they will not be happy about. One of them has him speaking to a black tie audience at what looks like a White House dinner:

“Quite an impressive crowd here tonight. The haves, and the have-mores. (laughter) Some call you the elite. I call you my base.

While of course it’s a joke, it will not sit well with any independent minded middle-Americans who have been fooled into thinking that George W. really is some sort of normal folksy guy. Gotta run and do work, but I’ll post more on this later.

Suprise suprise, ladies and gentlemen, Ralph Nader’s candidacy is being propped up by republican activists! That’s right, they’ve decided that since no one new will vote for their candidate, they’ll simply get a lot of people to not vote for their opponent. Now wonder my generation is cynical about politics. According to the DailyKos, a bias but fairly trustworthy source, over 90% of the signatures that he recieved to get on to the Arizona ballot were from registered Republicans. My guess would be that those people won’t end up voting for him:

The petition collectors were working for a GOP outfit, and were collecting signatures for two high-profile ballot initiatives. One is the “Protect Arizona Now” initiative, which is an anti-immigrant effort. The other is an attempt to repeal Arizona’s landmark Clean Elections Bill which provides for public financing of political campaigns.

The actual Nader petition did its best to fudge its purpose. The petitioners only said they were collecting signatures for an “independent candidate”. The words “RALPH NADER” were buried in the petition page in 9pt font.

So to make this perfectly clear — Nader’s petition effort piggybacked on both a xenophobic anti-immigrant effort, and an effort to roll back the state’s public financing of elections. This is how low Nader has sunk. Is it any wonder his negatives are in the 70s and 80s?

This says two things to me: the Republicans continue to be brilliantly strategic and absolutely without scrupples. The question is: how do you beat someone like that and stay within the rules? Can you? It’s like how Dean described his reasoning for opting out of public finance (this is the quote to the best of my memory):

How can you walk into a boxing ring ready to fit if the other guys got a machine gun?

How indeed.

Apparently because of the fact that he is semi-retired, Newt Gingrich is developing a second career as a book reviewer. That’s right, Newt is 488th on Amazon.com Top 500 Reviewers, having reviewed a whopping total of 137 books! As the Weekly Standard notes:

Gingrich shares the rank of Amazon reviewer #488 with “boudica” who describes herself as “Witch and Editor of the ZodiacBistro.com and a free lance reviewer.” She’s also a “Craft teacher with the CroneSpeak.com group” who has “recently published article in the Llewellyn Wicca Almanac.”

Well done Newt!

EXTRA!! EXTRA!! Read all about it!

According to this article in Pitchfork magazine, Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer and song writer for Weezer, will be returning to Harvard this fall to finish his last semester. All I can say is that I would LOVE to be in a class with him. This would be way cooler than being in a class with Natalie Portman or the Prince of Spain (or whatever his royal title was). Rivers, if you’re out there we should discuss class schedules and work something out.

Ok, so the 911 commission has now reported that Vice President Cheney gave the order to shoot down the planes on 9-11. The President was out of the White House, and apparently he gave Cheney the order over the phone and Cheney delivered it to the situation room.

Here’s the problem: no one other than Cheney or Bush can confirm that that order from Bush to Cheney ever happened or even that the phone call between the two of them on this issue ever occured. As 911 Commissioner Benviniste said on Meet the Press, other conversations and materials where written down at the time, but this wasn’t.

To add to that, both Bush and Cheney refused to be under oath when they told the 911 Commission of this conversation (and everything else they were asked about). Call me cynical, but this looks to me like a case of President Cheney.

Here is an article from the current issue of Time that explains the phenomenon that is blogging.

will be Barack Obama. Don’t believe me? Meet him.

Let me know what you think.

little help? anyone? 

Alright, this article made me really happy. I know that activists all over the country have be preparing for the orgy of protests that will be the Republican Convention in New York. I was, let’s say “concerned”, that being our angry selves, we liberal activisty people would make a mess of the city and simply prove to the world that we’re a bunch of anarchist freaks and that it would back fire and make, as this article describes it, the Republicans look like the reasonable ones. Luckily, I wasn’t the only person who had this concern and, while I’m still skeptical, it looks like the forces and going to try to avoid this with preparation and “trainings.”

If you combine this with what many have described as the strategic nomination of Kerry (“we don’t like him, but swing voters will!”), you start to get a picture of a democratic party that is, GASP, deciding that it wants to win! While sure, this is a dangerous tendency in many ways (“who needs principles? We’re in power!”), we could probably use a dose of it, and none too soon.

Alright, so I’ve been collecting articles and profound thoughts and experiences over the last few days, and I’m finally prepared to share them with you (whoever you might be… ok, so I’m sharing them with myself).

Be prepared for a flurry of information!