I don't misspell words, and I didn't misspell either one in my title.
Iff. If and only if.
If and only if George W. Bush gave two wrinkly dumps about anyone but him and his, today's theme would not be a lament of loss but a celebration of survival.
If and only if John McCain cared about something more than personal ambition, which he is somehow assuring by picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee, today would rightly be given to remembering those we lost, not pretending this man has honor remaining in any ... oh, wait. We're not allowed to criticize him. He was a POW.
More on what he was, and much more on what else was, below the fold.
For compassion, Katrina, catastrophe and coping, which combined in cataclysmic ways three years ago today.
Somewhere within the Prince Caspian-like existence of John McCain is the fundamental realization that everything his campaign has been since he realized he'd have to embrace the politics used against him in 2000 has been a discredit and a dishonor to him.
Or maybe it happened before 2000. Maybe something will turn up in the Eldon Smith investigation some Kossacks are investigating. Maybe he took his time as a POW (which I respect more than I disapprove of his campaign's tactics) and decided that was his test, that was his crucible, and that the presidency then awaited him.
I would have voted for John McCain in 2000, and I ended up late to the polls (intending to vote for my mother). But in 2008?
Not on your life. Not on his, not on anyone's. The man John McCain once was has been replaced, at least for this election cycle, by a man who will, to borrow from Dick Cheney (who didn't mean it), say and do anything to win. At once, with John McCain, Washington is broken, the country is hurting economically, and the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
Anyone who says those things, the second and the third irreconcilable, will say anything. And anyone who will say anything will say anything for the highest bidder.
For a man who enacted campaign finance reform and is supposedly a maverick for the benefit of you and me, that's a fairly damning branding.
I wrote most of this diary before Sen. and presidential nominee Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Mile High (Invesco-what?). And while the bulk of it is meant as a getaway from the news of the last few days, I want to point out two things that struck me, an hour and a half after the fact, about Obama's speech that nobody else has talked about.
- We have, in John McCain, a man most people will tell you has campaigned against wasteful spending, whether pork or just stupid (or beloved by Democrats and hated by Republicans).
Republicans love to talk about how Democrats tax and spend, tax and spend.
Barack Obama tonight said he'd pay for his government initiatives by trimming the federal budget of ... wasteful spending.
Obama just hit McCain on the latter's big economic selling point. And he hit him hard. He was going after not just random items that show up in spending bills but entrenched programs. And if an entrenched program isn't justifying its bill, Obama will take money from it and put it to better use.
How could fiscal conservatives not be at least casually drawn to that? That is, to me, something most pundits will or would represent as fundamentally Republican, but it strikes me as fundamentally logical. If something (abstinence-only education) isn't working, you ... stop doing it.
Would John McCain do that? Will he try to grab the mantle, a la "Oh YEAH? Well, I'll take programs that work and make them even more efficient by telling those government workers I bet they can do the same job with less money!"?
Depends on how well he thinks it will play politically -- not how sound an idea he thinks it is but how many votes it will get.
- Also apparently lost amid the 56 other stupendous things that happened last night was this hand-holding arrangement:
Michelle Obama-Barack Obama-Jill Biden-Joe Biden.
A married white woman holding hands with a married black man.
Emmett Till was murdered for less. Rubin Stacy was lynched for less.
This, juxtaposed against the Obama/Hilton-Spears ad, was likely a deliberate "screw you and your whispered racism" shot. (Everything in campaigns these days is coordinated.)
We have gone from not allowing a black man and a white woman to marry to having our black presidential nominee hold hands with the wife of his white vice presidential nominee.
Just ... add that to the mosaic of "In my lifetime."
But enough about politics for these next several minutes. Enough about John McCain, whose answer to every criticism these days is "I was a POW." (If he were president, would he maintain this line of reasoning? "Your health care sucks? Yeah, well, I was a POW.") And since apparently today is more important as John McCain's day than as New Orleans' day, enough of Hurricane Katrina remembrance, because obviously the Republican Party is of far more note than the millions of lives disrupted three years ago today, forever.
So instead, here are other events today might be known for if not for corruption, lack of compassion and other things I'd rather not think about:
Forty-two years ago today, we said goodbye, though many of us didn't know it, to The Beatles in live, paid concert. I wrote some about The Beatles in a previous diary, and I will not rehash that here. I will simply report that nobody on this site has bad taste in music (or is willing to cop to it).
One hundred ninety-nine years ago today was born a man whose son is far more famous than he is. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was born on Aug. 29, 1809, and while he is known as a poet and a physician, and a generally learned man, of particular saliance given the recent passing of the 88th anniversary of finally recognizing the validity of female voices in the electorate is Holmes' scholarship and writing on puerperal fever, which I hope to all things holy you never get or have the chance to experience firsthand.
Mary Shelley's mother died from it. To hear my Fem. Lit professor tell it, in her dying days, Wollstonecraft was reduced to screaming because the pain was so severe.
Why such severe pain given the seemingly innocent name puerperal fever? Because this fever leads to septic shock ...
Septic shock is caused by cytokines (substances made by the immune system to fight an infection (see Biology of the Immune System: Cytokines) and by the toxins produced by some bacteria. These substances cause the blood vessels to widen (dilate), which results in a drop in blood pressure. Consequently, blood flow to vital organs—particularly the kidneys and brain—is reduced. This reduction in blood flow occurs despite the body's attempts to compensate by increasing both the heart rate and the volume of blood pumped. Eventually, the toxins and the increased work of pumping weaken the heart, resulting in a decreased output of blood and even poorer blood flow to vital organs. The walls of the blood vessels may leak, allowing fluid to escape from the bloodstream into tissues and causing swelling. Leakage and swelling can develop in the lungs, causing difficulty breathing (respiratory distress).
(Incidentally, if there are any PUMAs reading this, know this: One of the best ways to increase the rate of women contracting puerperal fever is to criminalize abortion, which will cause shitty conditions for abortions. Shitty conditions lead to shitty sanitation, and improved sanitation singlehandedly crushed this incredibly fatal infection: "As sterile techniques and antibiotic treatment became standard, morbidity and mortality from this disease declined markedly; by the early 1980s only small, sporadic epidemics were reported." So sure, vote for McCain if you want the women in your life to suffer. We're sure they'll appreciate that.)
You do not want this to happen to you or anyone you know. It is very, very good at killing people from the inside if they will only be lazy. Or if their medical practitioners will only be lazy. (And, once upon a time, if their medical practitioners will only be thorough. True story, and one I wish I could find again to link for you: Apparently, back in the days before handwashing was seen as useful rather than unnecessary or even low, prostitutes got puerperal fever less because they were less thoroughly examined, if they were examined at all, by physicians. Get touched with fewer hands that have been in other women's vaginas and birth canals, run a lower risk of contracting an often-fatal disease. One of the few perks, if I may be so glib, of being a prostitute in the 19th century.)
Ironic, huh? A man who is trying to sell himself to the people who want women to be lipstick-wearing uteruses was born on the same day as a man who was concerned with women's health back before much of anyone else was.
God, this shit is depressing. Have some music courtesy of Charlie Parker, who was born on Aug. 29, 1920.
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie
Lots more linked there, too. I hope jazz is your thing.
If jazz isn't your thing, this might be. It's from Dinah Washington (not her birth name), who, like Parker, died young. She was born on Aug. 29, 1924.
Dinah Washington - What a difference a day makes
He didn't die young, and he wasn't much for music, but Bob Beamon, born on Aug. 29, 1946, did make his mark in another way.
Legends & Legacies: Bob Beamon
I don't want this to be a candidate/VP diary any more than it has been, and at the same time, I want to provide a refuge for people who want a break from the natural Katrina focus, the post-convention buzz and the inevitable McCain talk. So in a comment to this diary, feel free to post something of historical significance -- or not -- that happened on Aug. 29 of any year or that has an Aug. 29 connection. I may even snatch some comments and include them (attributed, natch) in my diary:)
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