watching the Convention.

I’m splitting for parts further north and east. For my Annual Training, I’m headed to be an exercise observer in Norway. I’ll be seeing Bergen and Stavanger, and won’t be back stateside until around the 17th. Although from what I hear, I should never be out of connection.

The cheapo digital camera is going with me, along with the 35 mm. My personal highlight is that I’m taking the 4 weight fly rod – maybe I can turn into a poacher in another country. In any case, sleep easy for the next couple of weeks – Billy is out working closely with our allies.

I plan on subsisting only on Swedish Fish while I’m over there. Either that, or finding some single guy who needs help cutting hay. I’d also like to pop Hamlet jokes, but it’s the wrong country, and it’s been a while since I read it.

Mmmmm- watermelon. Not much better at the end of summer (‘cept for my favorite – corn on the cob dripping with real butter and large grained salt). We tried some newfangled mini-watermelon last week. It was about the size of a cantaloupe, and had a really thin skin:

Laura Bush responded to a reporter’s question asking if the SBVfT ads were unfair to John Kerry by saying “Not really. There have been millions of terrible ads against my husband.”

Kerry’s campaign responded that this, obviously, was Mrs. Bush’s tacit admission that Karl Rove was indeed pulling the SBVfT strings: “Mrs. Bush’s statement in support of the swift boat smear ads is more sad evidence that these attacks have been coordinated from the top down at the White House” said a Kerry talking head.

But we all know that they criticize her because they don’t have anything else to hang it on

We hashed this out with the $87 million, but Senator Kerry is claiming “I voted for it before I voted against it” on the Helms-Burton Act which governs sanctions on Cuba: (R)eaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: “And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.’‘… There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it. … Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form — and voted for it months earlier.

I’ll be called Machiavellian again, but in government, especially, it’s results, not intentions that matter. Kerry could, indeed, be a supporter in heart, but in fact he voted against Helms-Burton.

GSBTB has finally been updated with pictures from our trip to New York in May….

Five Hold ‘Em tournaments and seven live limit Hold ‘Em games and I think I’m hooked. I cashed in a total of $300 and cashed out a total of about $100, but in my last tournament with about 65 players I placed 6th. (It was a no limit game that paid out the top seven players.)

Becky will have to keep me out of the casinos if she knows what’s good for me!

No more games for me. I leave bright and early in the a.m.

Kerry may be cooked. The second item on johnkerry.com is Check out the web of connections between the Bush campaign and SBVfT.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t this like the pot calling the kettle black? Kerry’s gone to moveon.org events, swapped staffers, etc. At best he can expect to get away with “Well, Bush is MORE dirty than we are.” At worst, a direct connection between Kerry’s campaign and the DNC 527’s will be revealed. But if there is any journalistic integrity left in the world, there will be as much scrutiny of Kerry’s campaign as their will be of their allegations against the Bush campaign.

In what may be a completely cynical take, I think that this new course of action will actually lose Kerry swing voters. I think that Kerry is misunderestimating the intelligence of the American voter by thinking he can convince us that his campaign is less dirty than W’s. The sad truth is that most Americans view the truthfulness of politicians from both parties as somewhere between that of a used car salesman and a guy at 1 AM trying to hit on the last attractive drunk woman in a bar. Absent actual legal charges, I don’t think this is going to help Kerry at all. If anything, it’s going to insult voters and lose some swing voters who otherwise would have gone for F.

(But it’s all moot since Kerry’s entire job in this election is to take a bullet for his fellow Bonesman)

(Reeder, skip this one)

Boston Globe’s biography of Sen. Kerry is pretty comprehensive. I’m sure we’ll all read this different ways, but apparently Kerry thinks that the VRWC was behind the sinking of his 1972 Congressional campaign:

“For two solid weeks, they called me un-American, New Left antiwar agitator, unpatriotic, and labeled me every other `un-’ and `anti-’ that they could find,” Kerry wrote. “It’s hard to believe that one newspaper could be so powerful, but they were.” … To this day, despite the absence of persuasive evidence, Kerry is convinced political operatives of President Nixon were also working to sandbag his candidacy.

One of the benefits of being programmed to wake up early is catching On the Media every Saturday morning, either while sitting on the porch waiting for the rest of the clan to shake the bonds of sleep. IMO, they spend too much time focusing on Fox and the “conservative media”, but hey – they’re NPR, and they’re out of New York.

I mention them because this week’s show has two great bits. The first is a long-overdue bit on interpreting polls (Real Audio link). My guess is that it’s running now to buck up Kerry supporters now that Bush is picking up steam, even before the convention, but it’s a good statistics refresher.

The second is Pledge This! Pretty funny satire on running a public radio station.

The last reason to love “On The Media” is that they leave their shows available as downloadable .mp3 files. Perfect for putting on the iPod for long flights.

Sorry, JRO & K-Pho. I just don’t get it. Neither does this guy…

Chances are small that anyone of substance in the RNC will stop by this little backwater blog, but if they do and are feeling a bit of malaise at the vituperative attacks besmircing their selected parties hompage and they feel about as comitted to W as I feel to F, then I have a simple revolutionary solution for your upcoming week of festivities.

Nominate John McCain.

He’d win in a landslide.

Becky and I have set up temporary residence in the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas. She’s working her booth by day while I gamble. I expect to try my first hand (pun, intended) at casino poker room poker in about an hour. So, my posting and commenting may be light through the weekend.

I may not have to see unfiltered sunlight until we leave. The Luxor is a total service hotel with pool, spa, complete gambling facilities, a mall (that stretches over to the Excalibur), a video game room, arguably the best show in town plus if you happen to have a nic fit while your sitting on the porcelain bus there are seated-level ashtrays for your convenience.

So the Post has a ground-breaking article in the Real Estate section today. Apparently, MOST WOMEN CARE ABOUT INTERIOR DECORATING MORE THAN MOST MEN.

Something is obvs very wrong. I think I agree with Trent Lott!!!

in the New Scientist

From where I stood I could see a huge beam of projected light flooding up into infinity from the reactor. It was like a laser light, caused by the ionisation of the air. It was light-bluish, and it was very beautiful. I watched it for several seconds. If I’d stood there for just a few minutes I would probably have died on the spot because of gamma rays and neutrons and everything else that was spewing out. … What do you think about nuclear power? I’m fine about it, as long as safety is put head and shoulders above any other concern, financial or whatever. If you keep safety as your number one priority at all stages of planning and running a plant, it should be OK.

(the commentary in Slashdot has some quality comments, too)