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this is stuff i collected intending to write about, but i just got busy, so sue me. still i want to put these links/ideas out there....

(points to hit)

- Safire's editorial: The Glue of In-ism:
"With dissent suppressed, we can expect a well-behaved convention. With "values" rhetorically devalued, no speech will be permitted without the words "strong" and "respect." You can tune in with your children; there will be no breast-baring or breast-beating or frenzied Bush-bashing. Why? Because the angry Outs have been seized by In-ism."

- Real hacks their AAC DRM'ed format to play on iPods (supposedly), Apple's stock price goes up

- JK Rowling: Arthur Weasely will not be minister of magic, Voldie/Riddle is not the HBP, "half-blood" as defined by DE's is as defined by Nazi's, HBP not introduced in book 2 as a character, instead is built upon a lesson Harry learns in 2. curiouser and curiouser....

-Slate: (big day for slate)

• The CopyCat Convention (see the Safire editorial)
  This election, however, has turned out to be the opposite. It's a referendum on the challenger. Kerry probably isn't responsible for this turn of events, but he's benefiting from it: The referendum on the incumbent is over. President Bush already lost it. This presidential campaign isn't about whether the current president deserves a second term. It's about whether the challenger is a worthy replacement.
  


• Loose the Stalinist Slogan, Kerry ("Let America Be America Again")
  The poem has only one meaning: America's golden promise is hooey. It's hooey for blacks, it's hooey for the farmer, it's hooey for the Native Americans. It's hooey for the entire proletariat. Time to seize the means of production! Please, Sen. Kerry, Chatterbox begs of you: Do not incorporate the phrase, "Let America be America again" into your acceptance speech this Thursday. The New York Times is onto this. The Washington Post can't be far behind.
  
  (from the Times's Political Points: On Even of Convention, a Quiz )
  
  6. Mr. Kerry's favorite line in recent speeches has been "Let America be America again," the title and refrain of a 1938 poem by Langston Hughes. Identify three objections that have been raised by critics:
  
  a) Hughes was a Stalinist in the 1930's.
  b) Hughes was a Republican in the 1930's.
  c) In later life, Hughes said he didn't have "the faintest idea" what the line meant and dismissed it as "some pseudo-existentialist garbage I was using to impress a girl in Paris."
  d) Hughes's seemingly nostalgic line was actually an angry bit of sarcasm in a poem attacking America for never being fair to its citizens.
  e) In the 1930's, there was not much in American history to induce nostalgia in an African-American like Hughes.
  f) In focus groups in battleground states, two-thirds of swing voters say they are not aware America ever became another nation.
  

- MoveOn spam. i signed a petition for gay marriage and i get a barrage of "vote for kerry" "bush is the devil" spam. while i occasionally have the same opinion as you on a policy basis, stop forcing your rehtoric down my throat. it's not helping you. take me off your email lists.

- 9-11 Commission Hearings Free Download on iTMS

- more iChat Smileys!

- more iChat fun!

- thanks andy!