She leaves for Camp Casey this weekend, where Sheehan and supporters wait for President Bush to speak with her and other bereaved parents.

The Society promotes Science Fiction and Fantasy by and about people of color.

They would like help setting up:

• Membership registration
• A bibliographic database
• A weblog/lightweight CMS

If you’re interested and available, please contact Victor Raymond, vraymond@iastate.edu

Technorati: wiscon

I’d like to respond to the person who sent a terse email to complain about a post from earlier this year where I argued against table-based-layouts.

And I want to connect the dots between friends who have been thinking about closures.

But I’ve been busy.

If you’re a US Citizen, a fan of Buffy and Joss Whedon, and you want to help elect John Kerry as our next president, then keep the night of Monday the 18^th open, okay?

More on this Wednesday.

She sent this from the floor:

Today was the first official day of the convention and I’ve only been on the floor for about an hour. Imagine a huge arena with vast numbers of people moving all the time. There is a din from hundreds of people talking while the speaker gives the ‘official’ speech. Right now the speaker is the Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino. As the night goes on the speakers will get more famous.

This afternoon I went to a luncheon in honor of our Senator, Diane Feinstein, hosted by Disney. The speakers included Vice President Mondale, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Jane Harman, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and, of course Senator Feinstein. The attendees read like a who’s who of California Politics from San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales to CA Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohen and Congresswomen Ellen Taucher.

After the political speeches were done the actors from Lion King (the play) sang four songs. That’s just an appetite whetter. We’ll see the play on Wednesday. The DNCC treats us well.

While being a Delegate is fun, it’s entirely non-stop. I’ve been going since 7 AM and there will be no rest until late tonight. There are endless events going on at the same time. If only I had a cloning device and a transporter. The later would be particularly important because the events are all over Boston.

Alyson posted delegate experience to her Live Journal.

Correction: DU columnist The Plaid Adder is not at the DNC.

So, I was happy when I heard Kerry’s selected Edwards as his Vice Presidential Candidate.

Maybe we’ll see Joel become Kerry’s Secretary of Labor.

I’m agnostic. From what I understand from biology, physics and math, I don’t see a compelling argument for God as a how. [note]

However what I learned from the exchanges, to paraphrase Teresa Nielsen Hayden, was:

I deeply regret how the Conservative movement has made me react to any person of faith as if they were a nutbar.

Everytime I read or hear someone on the Right invoke God to justify behaving heiniously, I’m going to have to count to ten and remember that my friends such as Bernie or Teresa wouldn’t categorize what was said as Christian. Even my brother, who is a Conservative and a Christian, would probably dismiss the remarks made on The Corner.

[note] As for Intelligent Design. I don’t think it’s a religious reaction to science, it strikes me as a reactionary response to modern science in religious drag. It’s George Lakoff’s strict father ethical model at work.

Molly Ivins paraphrasing Emma Goldman: “You gotta have fun while you’re fightin’ for freedom.” Pee Wee Herman: “I meant to do that.” See also: Last Night’s Top Ten on Letterman.

Update: bloody hell, I broke my Atom and RSS feeds because I didn’t catch the ‘smart’ quotes (why do they call these smart quotes?) when pasting that line from PNH’s blog.

Not a home run, but a good natured gag. [ QuickTime, Real, That Other Format ]

Their genius plan: register multiple addresses and vote for Reverend Sharpton. Well, it says a great deal about Freepers if they think voting for a black man is embarassing.

The econony needs to to improve so all those unemployed reactionaries can engage in productive work instead of spending the day watching Fox, and posting trolls on liberal weblogs.

There’s a discussion in Nathan’s comments about how to prevent these sorts of hijinks on either side. After all, I’d expect someone from Democratic Underground to propose nominating Pinochet in an online Republican straw poll. Nathan thinks the solution is a nominal fee to join MoveOn. My gut reaction was “blah blah blah chomian identities blah blah crypto blah blah zero knowledge blah blah,” but Nathan pointed out that having people pay a fee to join a political club means that they’ve raised money, and that the club has a onus to follow the lead of them that brought them.

An underground public relations campaign has begun to introduce patriotic language into left-leaning groups, said George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley linguistics professor and author of “Moral Politics.” Conservatives have “pretty much commandeered patriotic language,” said Lakoff, who has been working with peace activists and others to craft a new strategy for progressives.

I’ve mentioned Lakoff, whose work I was introduced to via Doc Searls, in this weblog: on the nation as family metaphor, and metaphor and war.

Update: See Shelley Powers’ Burningbird for a discussion of the “metaphor and war” article. Several people were disappointed that it did not propose a concrete program for ‘reframing” debate on US policy, it would appear that the Chronicle article notes that such a program would be underway.

Edwards was a Republican, and an FBI agent, but switched parties and ran for Congress in San Jose back in 1962. Once in Congress, Edwards defended our civil rights, helped sponsor the Voting Rights Act, inspired a generation of South Bay politicos, and worked on environmental legislation.

The Democrats did not warm to him immediately. During the 1962 primaries, someone was stealing his campaign signs. Edwards did some detective work and learned who was doing it: a local Labor leader. In a bit of ‘social engineering’, Edwards called the home of the thief, and introduced himself as a San Jose police officer investigating the theft of the signs. The thief relented, and 41 years later, he was on stage presenting a citiation to Edwards on behalf of labor in the South Bay.

On the occassion of the American Bar Association giving him the Thurgood Marshall Award last summer, Nat Hentoff wrote about Edwards for the Village Voice.

In the article, Hentoff also reports on Tom Daschle’s disgraceful refusal to allow debate or amendment to the so-called USA PATRIOT act, and his confrontation with Russ Feingold (D, WI) over it.

Link