All Those Convention Speeches

Last night Sec of Defense Leon Penetta spoke at the convention before six on KOCE.  Both he and Biden, who spoke after six, discussed Donald Trump’s erraticness and unpreparedness for assuming the Presidency.  Finally there were references to defeating ISIS, and numerous references to capturing Bin Laden.  There were a lot of chants of “USA” during both speeches.  I missed the beginning of Biden’s speech where he apparently talked about his son Bo.  After six thirty Mike Bloomberg spoke.  He doesn’t have the best speaking voice in the world.  He identified with people who didn’t have a political party.   He was supposed to speak on guns but instead really lit into Donald Trump calling him a flake and a poor example as a business man.  I would say that Biden and Penetta gave the two best speeches this night.  Mayor Bloomberg did say one thing me and the Sanders people would take issue with.  He said that turning our backs on trade deals won’t bring back jobs.  So he is at odds with what Hillary claimed to be saying now.  After seven I switched to ABC because I like George Stephanopolis.  Tim Kaine was the next speaker and he gave a major address.  He was all over the map in terms of what he talked about.  He spoke at length about his own background being born in Minisota and being raised in Kansas City and working with his father and brother in their tool and dye shop.  He was also very enthusiastic in his confidence and support of Hillary.  There was a frontal Trump assault using the Trump phrase "Believe Me" and none of the contracters or customers or employees of various projects much like the "Believe Me" remarks because they CAN'T believe Trump.  After this I went down to get my medication from Tom’s assistant.  In case I didn’t say Augustine turned off the water for the third night in a row.  I was fit to be tied because there was no warning at all of tonight’s outage and I already had soap on my hands.   It looked like a short line with just three people in it but each person took at least five minutes with this or the other specific problem.  Augustine was working in a room on the east hall and I heard a lot of rattling around of tools and later Augustine appeared and after I got my bologna sandwich I passed by there and the door was closed.  It turned out he was done for the evening and I returned as President Obama was just fielding the initial applause while taking the stage.  President Obama’s speech was filled with the usual Obama platitudes and in my opinion he gave one of the poorest speeches of the convention and the one I learned the least from.  However one phrase was useful.  "The phrase isn't "Yet He Will" but "Yes We Can".  Try that one out at a Christian evangelical rally sometime and see how far you get.  He did throw a bone to the Sanders people speaking of being outside and making your voices known and being willing to put in a lot of hard work to achieve your goals.  He got started about ten to eight and spoke all the way to twenty minutes to nine.  He decided he was through.  Although you couldn’t really tell when he was approaching the conclusion because it was just an endless spring of platitudes talking about “Yes, we can” and all of the usual hope and determination stuff.  Then I went out for a cigarette and then watched Pen and Teller.  That whole guilitine thing I didn’t get.  The program continued on past nine o clock and I watched some of it.  Pen and Teller said “It was good but it didn’t fool us”. 

[The night before] Bill Clinton began his speech at seven after seven and ended at seven minutes to eight.  It began with when Bill met Hillary at a college government class in the spring of 1971.  It continued through the seventies going from state to state such as South Carolina and Massachusetts.   Each time Hillary would discover some cause to crusade for.  I interrupted the litany of items to go down for medication from Tom and fortunately the line wasn’t too long.  The convention was still going on after eight o clock.  Finally NCIS began and I watched that program and some of the “Animals” one. 

[This was] Wednesday July 27, 2016 and Norman Goldman is on now.    Donald Trump at a news conference this morning said, “Russia, if you’re listening I hope you can find the missing thirty thousand E mails of Hillary”.   Norman says this statement is not treasonous.   Shawn Hannity was fit to be tied over the noon hour and I had him on only a short while because he began repeating himself having nothing to say in his own defense.  Howard Dean made an appearance at the democratic convention last night and began rattling off states, without the war cry at the end.  Tonight Michael Bloomberg and Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine will be speaking in addition to Biden and Obama.   There are just over four days left before I get paid.  The time is whittling down.  I have saved, as in not spent, nine dollars so far.  I just hope Sunday’s expense didn’t break the bank.  This morning I went to the office and asked about my dermatologist appointment.  Federico said that Sarah would contact me about it with me later.  John Hinkley is freed from the psycho ward because “there is no longer any medical benefit to his being locked up”.  Then maybe he should go back to serving a life sentence.  He was locked up for 34 years.  There is a long list of conditions.  Even so I am against this move.  However even before today the guy was getting furloughs all over the place, which I didn’t like.   The prosecution in the Freddy Gray case has dropped all charges against the remaining police officers in Baltimore, even the officer who got a hung jury.  He was supposed to be tried again.  All subsequent officers bypassed jury trials to get a sympathetic judge. 

As of Tuesday afternoon Hillary Clinton was the official nominee of the democratic national convention.  They held the row call vote this afternoon and it was Arizona, of all states, that put Hillary over the top.  So as of right now we have our first woman nominated by a major party.   But there were reports that Bernie Sanders moved that the vote for Hillary be made unanamus when the row call came to the state of Vermont.  This occured earlier in the afternoon before I started watching TV.  I don't like the idea of "changing a vote for show" either by congress or the delegation at a convention.  What's wrong with just admitting that for forty percent of the delegates Hillary wasn't their first choice but Sanders was.  I will say that as the week progresses the pro Bernie protesters have been drowned out by cries of either "Hil-lar-ry" or "U S A" or whatever.  

Good, But Not Excellent

Last night I caught Al Frankin the Minisota Senator with a comedian named Sarah with dialog but in general the other speakers, when they had them on KOCE weren’t that interesting.  Actually there was a whole lot of dissention in the ranks this day because of the recent news that Hillary Clinton had hired on Debby Wasserman Schultz as her campaign manager.  Thom Hartman said that was OK if she was forced to do it as the price of Debby Wasserman leaving the stage.  But if Hillary did it of her own free will, then it would be wrong.  Clearly it sends a very bad signal to Bernie’s supporters.  So naturally they were chanting things against Hillary.  Earlier in the day in another location Bernie Sanders was booed when he said he was supporting Hillary.  Some said they even heard the chant of “Lock her up!”.    I think there was a chant, “Hell no to the DNC, we’ll never vote for Hil-lar-ry.  That’s a good one.  The three main headliners came on at seven.   I had George Stephanopolis on now.  Michelle Obama it is said gave the best speech of the three because she carried on the “What about the children?” theme of this campaign.  She talked about her daughters going to school escorted by men with guns.  She expressed concern they might hear disparaging remarks about this President and were instructed to ignore them.  They she talked about the daughters on the White House lawn playing with their dog.  Then there was a reference to the notion of a Black Man living in the White House, which was built by Negro slaves.  After this I went down for medication.  Earlier the line was too long but now there were only a couple waiting for Tom to get back from wherever he was.  Then it was Elizabeth Warren.  Like Bernie Sanders, she gave a good speech but not a great speech.  Bernie and Warren gave better speeches the day that Bernie endorsed Hillary.  I was impressed with both speakers.  Tonight they both touched most of the same bases.  Bernie said this campaign was not about men, or stretegy or gossip or polls, it's about issues.  The needs of the American people.  Naturally it was pointed out how divisive the republican speeches were last week, and Trump's main appeal seems to be of division.  "We produced the most progressive platform in the history of the democratic party".   I don't think the importance of "down ticket" races can be overemphisized.  Bernie did not speaking till ten to eight or something.  Strangely I fell asleep right at the end of Bernie’s speech so I don’t know what climatic note he may have closed on.  Bernie spoke most about his supporters buttering them up because of the divisive atmosphere that existed earlier in the evening.  But he didn’t pull a Ted Cruz but did in fact endorse Hillary.

Revanchist or revanchism refer to an individual like Vladimir Putin who wants to regain his lost glory or territory.   Russia hacked the DNC E mails and Putin was behind it because he wants to see Trump elected President.  You won’t hear that on the Shawn Hannity show.  Norman Goldman revealed this key piece of information.   It would seem to me though that this is a stunt that both Bernie and Hillary supporters can agree is pretty rotten if it's proved to be in fact true.   We don't want Trump too cozy with Putin.  

 Meet the Press featured Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  There was a new DNC conspiracy uncovered yesterday by leaked E mails where there was an all out effort by the DNC to smear Bernie Sanders, among other things, by calling him an Atheist, which he is not.  After this it was Breakfast with the Beatles where they have “all your favorite songs just slightly different”.  As far as I could tell quite a number of tracks were absolutely identical to the originals.  I went out to the courtyard and had two classes of lemonade from Rico and corn bread.  It’s a little sweeter than they usually make it.   The only solo track I heard all morning was “Give Me Some Truth” which was a just slightly different recording (the drumming seemed notably different) and was un-faded.  They also played the Mc Cartney version of “Come and Get It” from Anthology.  The real lead singer was Tom Evans.

 I had “Face the Nation” on and there was political analysis of both parties and then there was a lot of President Obama.  When asking whether Obama was a good president he’s asking the wrong questions.  Yes gay people can get married now, which is nice for the fraction of the three percent of the population who are gay and who want to get married but what about the other 97% of us?  He kept “The great recession” from turning into “The second great depression”.  This is hardly cheery.  And he captured Bin Laden.  This is fine for the day in May 2011 when it actually occurred but what about the past five years?  When you look at the grand sweep of things you must ask yourself whether generally you are more optimistic or pessimistic about America now.  Here it’s a no brainer.  You have ISIS, and you have Libya in chaos and Putin more dangerous and Iraq in a mass.  Violence and crime are increased.  We have backtracked on civil rights advancement.  We have also backtracked on civil liberties advancement.    Our national debt has doubled and our trade posture is a lot worse.  

Tim Kaine Selected as Vice President

P S This is not Tim Kaine.  The following photo is from Saturday morning's rally in Miami, Florida, where they appear together for the first time since his VP selection.

Hillary Clinton tweeted out a message picking Tim Kaine as her vice presidential choice.  Some photos of Kaine are unflattering and make him look like kind of a mental patient with a giddy smile, disheveled hair and doing a fist pump.  He’s like an applicant for the cast of “One flew over the coo-coo’s nest”.  Hillary picked him because “They have good chemistry together” and “Tim Kaine has never lost an election”.   He’s on the armed services committee of the Senate and he served as governor of Virginia during the time of the Virginia Tech shooting.  But like I say he’s hopelessly pro big banks and Wall Street and pro internationalist trade deals.  In short he’s the worst pick Hillary could have made.  Because now all the Republicans have to do is to run those ads of Trump’s speech the other night talking about cracking down on Wall Street and internationalist trade deals.  Even if it isn’t true it will make a good ad.  But he does speak Spanish and Hillary wanted that.  And it’s just possible that the heavily Sanders leaning delegation of the convention (that approved the platform) will revolt against her selection.

 President Obama had Elizabeth Warren with him for the usual Saturday morning address.  That was a good idea in light of the poor selection of Tim Kaine.  Bill asked if he was Black, perhaps confusing him with Herman Kaine.  Elizabeth Warren buttressed the President in supporting the Dodd Frank bill, which wasn’t mentioned by name but only by what it accomplished, or is hoping to accomplish.  The jury is still out on that.   We had corn flakes for breakfast followed by a fried egg, toast and butter.  Rico gave me two cups of regular coffee.  Patty was going on and on for all to hear about the media and police and Judy said “Maybe when she gets her food she’ll shut up a little”.   A lot of people in the dining room had silverware shortages.

That shooting that occurred in Munich yesterday happened like this.  A lone gunman who did not have associates was an eighteen year old German Iranian, and therefore might have Islamic terrorist ties.  He shot up the Olympia shopping center near a Mc Donald’s and the shootings were captured on video.  Eight people are dead and then the shooter is believed to have committed suicide.  The media feeds us nothing but violence.  Patty Hayes went on a rant at the table this morning about how the media is ‘weakening our police force” by showing all these videos like the one with the black school teacher.  I don’t blame “the media” as part of any grand conspiracy.  They’re just in it for the money and the ratings.  But I will say that even I have to admit that perhaps we all are getting our perceptions warped by the media.  Someone referred to Trump’s acceptance speech as like the series “Gotham”.  It’s rather dark and in that series you have the son of a millionaire with some kind of a savior complex who wants to cleanse society of all evil.  But as Hillary said in her campaign speech yesterday in Tampa, Florida- - if we are going to win against all manner of evil, it will be by a collective effort of all of us.

Thom Hartman was running a poll (as some unspecified time on tape delay) asking callers in whether Trump’s performance last week and the convention in general raised or lowered Trump in the polls.  I think it’s obvious that this convention will lower Trump’s rating in the polls.  That’s the first thing that crossed my mind Monday evening.  This whole convention was an awkward disaster.   It turns out there are eight dead in a shooting rampage in Munich, Google news informs me.  Because of this Clinton will delay her announcement that she has chosen a Vice President.  It’s beginning to strike me that there are going to be fewer and fewer “normal” days from now on as the media becomes hypersensitive to all of these police shootings and such.  “Rampages” from anywhere in the world will be reported as though their directly impact our lives.  We need to pray for victims, of course.  But it seems to me it would be easy at this point to let negative news run our lives so that we have to plan our lives around it, rather than what is most expedient to our own cause.  If it’s Tim Kaine, no one may care anyhow. 

Yesterday there was another police shooting, which is the strangest of them all.  There was an adult with autism playing with a toy truck.  There was a Black caretaker with him and the caretaker was afraid the autistic guy would “do something stupid” around the cops.  As it turns out the Black caretaker was on the ground with his hands up saying “Don’t shoot” and the police officer fired anyhow and wounded the caretaker, shooting him in the leg.  When asked why the top fired he said “I don’t know”.  Later it was said that since the man with autism had a toy truck the officer thought it was a gun and he was actually was firing at patient and not the caretaker.  But Thom Hartman says PTSD could cause a person to be trigger happy out of anxiety and raised the question, and only a question, whether over-stressed combat veterans from Iraq should be immediately hired on as law enforcement.  But I wouldn’t want to unduly taint PTSD people and they probably screen for that in psychological tests anyhow,  or at least maybe they do.

This is after lunch and the computer is still on.  Nora was just in here and Bill is sleeping and the shades are drawn.  Paul knocked on the door a few lines before the completion of the last paragraph.  He told me a lot about Judy’s perils in the hospital.  She had glucose in her saline solution.  At other times they wanted her to get rid of her insulin pump.  She was given a valium tranquelizer for her nausea, which exists in the brain and not in the stomach.  All expenses so far are paid for with insurance.  But long term care will be different and Paul wasn’t sure whether a long term policy would be worth it.  Paul says Judy’s care could take months.  Paul hasn’t gone back to work yet and won’t till Monday August first.  Paul dropped off a bunch of big oranges from his tree.  They will be good for healing my lip wound cause by gashing a cold sore while I was shaving.  At least that’s the theory.  Paul wants me to see a doctor immediately and not wait a few days for the scab to heal and you can actually see what the thing looks like.  I gave back the autism book to Paul who will give it back to Mom or loan it out to someone else. 

Demas and Dario are still vying for Nicole’s affections.  Kate was told by Marlena she always picks the wrong men to partner with because deep down she believes she doesn’t deserve any better.  Teresa blew an opportunity to help track down Tate’s kidnapper because she wanted to blurt out something at exactly the wrong time from her therapy session with Marlena.  Glenda came in here to use the phone but the number didn’t work.  She was calling about Joe who was admitted to the hospital because he had a bad infection in his arm.  So many people have medical problems.

The Audacity of Mendacity

Title credit is courtessy Stephanie Miller show, least I be accused of plagurism.  

Wednesday night at the convention was “Let’s build up Donald Trump’s ego” night.  We heard from his son Eric, and also others, how Trump doesn’t “need” this job the way Hillary does.  He’s not making the run out of a need to “get what’s been coming to him” the way it is with Hillary.  He can’t be bought or pressured or bribed or any of that stuff the way Hillary has to be.  KOCE channel 50 had live coverage of the convention and I wish I’d known that the first two nights.  However they still talk to death the event with their commentators.  They feel the need to talk ten minutes for every five minutes of a speaker.  Laura Ingram was the first up and she got praise from commentators.  Newt Gingrich spoke but he was cut off by commentators.  Later on Ted Cruz spoke and he gave the best speech of the evening.  However he disparaged Trump by not mentioning him by name.  As the commentators stated “He threw a lot of red meat to the audience priming them up for the big announcement of endorsement, which never came, and the audience didn’t take kindly at all to that.  They say Heidi his wife was on the verge of being physically accosted and had to be escorted out of the arena.   I saw replays of Governor Christie's speech and he laid it out like a DA plrosecution case and asked the crowd, "Guilty or not?"  This is the first time chants of "Lock her up" occurred with the crowd, but it also occurred later with someone else.  Then on ABC they had on Eric Trump, who was the one who spoke of Trump being a good and generous man who built an ice rink in front of Trump Towers or whatever because he was tired of construction delays and cost overruns by government contractors.  So after two and a half years, he got the job completed in six months and it came in under budget.  Eric Trump didn’t speak for that long and then it was more media comentatating.  Paul Ryan introduced somebody.  Mike Pence didn’t get his speech started till a quarter to eight.  The first part of his speech was  like a rerun of last Saturday’s production.  But then he got off into new material.  He spoke of all the areas where Donald Trump would be better than Hillary such as appointing conservative Supreme Court justices.  All in all Ted Cruz delivered the best speech of the evening.   I guess thing you could say about last night was that the crowd was more “into” the festivities and were attentive.

I looked at Washington's blog.  They say that the cutting of public school funding is styfeling creativity and self expression.  There was a posting on the national debt ballooning.  We have added 1.1 trillion dollars a year to the national debt under President Obama.  That’s a whole lot more than they are admitting to with only a 400 billion dollar deficit.  However I have some reason to suspect the motives of this posting since the goal of it seemed to be "cut everything" as far as the government is concerned and like Judy used to say 'We're headed over a fiscal cliff and we have to slam on the brakes even if it causes economic chaos or even a crash, because we can't go on the way we are going.  Hence the only cure for an economic recession is to Cause an economic recession on purpose, which otherwise wouldn't occur.  

The headings are “Make America Safe Again” and then “Make America Work Again” and then “Make America First Again” and finally, “Make America One Again”.   There were a lot of empty seats and 22 republican senators boycotting the convention.  One guy said he’d rather go out and mow his lawn.  Even during prime time the delegates, rather than listening avidly to the speakers on the podium, were talking on their cell phones.  So there is a definite "enthusiasm gap" between the conventions of the two parties.

 Melonia Trump admits to deliberately plagurizing Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech.  She liked that speech and thought she’d just use it.  Her lady advisor, Marideth Mc Kiver, ghost writer for a lot of Donald Trump’s books,  offered her resignation but Trump rejected the resignation.  This means Melonia Trump lied when she claimed that she wrote most of the speech herself.  I guess you could say that Marideth whats-her-name is such a valued employee with the Trump outfit that Trump dare not fire her.  It might be hard to find another loyal stooge like her.  

SAM-E is neither a hormone nor an herb but a substance produced by the body in metabolizing B 12 and Folic Acid.  It has a lot of other uses including liver detoxification.  I finally got around to looking it up.  The article said St John’s word increases drowsiness, which I haven’t personally noticed.  I think St John’s wort just has mild relaxation qualities.  Now Thom Hartman is having his ten minute before eleven phone interview. 

According to Thom Hartman, Donald Trump sees himself as a “head of state” rather than the head of day to day government like a Prime Minister.  People are afraid he’ll let Mike Pence set day to day economic policy such as trade agreements.  Also it’s said that Trump’s family will be exerting an unhealthy influence over Trump’s policies.  I’d like to see hard evidence.  When Ted Cruz mentioned the trade deals we've made being a bad thing the crowd cheered.  However if it's really true that Mike Pence is the one who will be setting day to day policy, this is a basic fact about the Trump campaign that desperately needs to be made known.   I grew drowsy and dozed and Bill asked me what time it was and it was 10:08 already and I mussed refreshment break.  I still need to take some new photos incorporating people I haven’t photographed at all such as Linda and Patty Hayes.   Patty likes to make herself as scarce as possible anyhow.