Shell Falls.

In the Bighorn National Forest:





(That's the fisheye lens on both photos, the second of which was taken by Meade.)

Wyoming prepares for a post-America future.

Just in case!

Frankly, I think all the states should have made plans like this a long time ago. Given the possibility of nuclear war, a large asteroid, or — Wyoming, I'm looking at you — the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, the states ought to be ready to operate independently. I recommend, as part of the plan, ultimate reunion of the states — those that survive with intact state government — under the U.S. Constitution.

Wyomans? Wyomeroonies? Wymerrhymerbingbangs?

Cheneys?

You decide!

"Wyomans."

“The dictionary-approved term is ‘Wyomingite,’ which is also the name of a type of lava, see Webster’s New International Dictionary 2961 (2d ed. 1957). I believe the people of Wyoming deserve better.”

A Scalia footnote.

Obama wins the Wyoming caucuses.

It's the smallest state, but there was a big turnout, and it looks like Obama won by a lot.

Romney wins!

In Wyoming. 12 delegates. Coming in second: Duncan Hunter.

Do you feel a little sorry for Wyoming? It tried to get attention by going early, but it still didn't get attention. It's just really small — in population. Beautiful place, though. I've been there. See?



Hard to find voters.

"Hnh, Biden stomps some dirt on Robert Bork's grave."

"He wants SCOTUS judges who've lived life, not who 'want an intellectual feast.'"

Writes Dave Wiegel, live-blogging the debate last night at 9:56.

Biden was alluding to what turned out to be the worst answer Robert Bork gave at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee (which Joe Biden chaired at the time, 20 years ago):

ALAN K. SIMPSON, Republican of Wyoming: And now I have one final question. Why do you want to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court?

BORK: Senator, I guess the answer to that is that I have spent my life in the intellectual pursuits in the law. And since I've been a judge, I particularly like the courtroom. I like the courtroom as an advocate and I like the courtroom as a judge. And I enjoy the give-and-take and the intellectual effort involved. It is just a life and that's of course the Court that has the most interesting cases and issues and I think it would be an intellectual feast just to be there and to read the briefs and discuss things with counsel and discuss things with my colleagues. That's the first answer.

The second answer is, I would like to leave a reputation as a judge who understood constitutional governance and contributed his bit to maintaining it in the ways I have described before this committee. Our constitutional structure is the most important thing this nation has and I would like to help maintain it and to be remembered for that.

It was 20 years ago, that Biden led the fight that defeated Robert Bork. I note that, last night, Biden railed against law professors:

I have taken on those justices who, in fact, show no balance — they are ideologues. We have enough ideologues. We have enough professors on the bench. I want someone who ran for dog catcher. I want someone — literally, not a joke. When Hillary's husband asked me for his advice when he was appointing people, I wanted to go to people and so did he — we couldn't. Four people turned it down. We wanted to get someone who, in fact, knew what it was to live life.

So... we got stuck with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Who are the 4 people who turned it down? According to Jeffrey Toobin's "The Nine," Mario Cuomo, George Mitchell, Richard Riley, Bruce Babbitt all said no, and Clinton finally — on the suggestion of Attorney General Janet Reno — turned to Ginsburg.

Someone ought to ask Joe Biden if he meant to say that Ginsburg and Breyer don't know knew what it is to live life. And why is he so sure that politicians like Mario Cuomo, George Mitchell, Richard Riley, Bruce Babbitt do? Because he's one?

Now, it may be a perfectly good idea to put a great lawyer with political experience on the Supreme Court, but Biden goes beyond that and disrespects two fine Supreme Court justices — Ginsburg and Breyer.

I'm off to quickly have my fill of the northwestern Wyoming scenery.

I'll return -- unless I'm terribly unlucky -- with pictures. Meanwhile, you can use this post to talk about whatever comes up today.

Unwinding.

Here's the lobby of my hotel. Does it look familiar? Have you been here?



There's a nice fire over there in the fireplace. Isn't that what you want, a roaring fire on the last day of July?

I drove the Great Basin Highway today. I'd never been in Idaho before, and now I've crossed over into Wyoming.

The West is absorbing me, it seems, as I started lingering on the XM radio channel called America, where I felt utterly charmed by Willie Nelson singing "Don't Fence Me In" followed by Johnny Cash singing (talking) "Ragged Old Flag," a song I'm sure I and everyone I knew mocked when it came out. Further on down the road, I was on the channel Frank's Place, and I laughed at Frank Sinatra singing "Gentle on My Mind" -- because who can picture Sinatra in a sleeping bag or in a train yard or with his "beard a roughning coal pile" or with a "dirty hat pulled low across my face" and his hands cupped around a tin can full of soup? In the thin drizzle, the brilliant talk-singing of Fred Astaire made a lot more sense -- "Isn't This a Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain?" -- and it moved me to tears.

UPDATE: There's a 3-year-old boy here with his parents, and the guitarist goes and sits with him and engages him with "The People on the Bus." The boy is laughing with delight.

How political is that "gay cowboy movie"?

"Brokeback Mountain," the high-class film everyone thinks must be called the "gay cowboy movie," is doing extremely well in the few theaters where it has opened -- in NYC, LA, and San Francisco. The question is whether Middle America is in the mood for this sort of thing. Here's how Frank Rich analyzes it (TimesSelect link):

The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.

Got that? We're sick of this damned President, so we want to see cowboys make love. I don't like the constitutional amendment and related political pandering, but I can't imagine how being tired of all that would make me more likely to go see a big outdoorsy melodrama with the selling point that the lovers are both men. In fact, the notion that to go to this movie is a political statement makes me less likely to go see it. The movie purports to be high art, not some tedious demonstration of good politics.

A serious movie about a gay love relationship may very well make a more effective political argument than a movie that presents itself as political argument. But writers must write, and they will spell out the political argument that the movie only implies, thus making it harder for the film's unarticulated, inherent argument to influence people. But the political baggage is not accumulating as fast as it might have. Rich notes:

As far as I can tell, the only blowhard in the country to turn up on television to declare culture war on "Brokeback Mountain" also has an affiliation with the American Family Association. By contrast, as Salon reported last week, other family-values ayatollahs have made a conscious decision to ignore the movie, lest they drum up ticket sales by turning it into a SpongeBob SquarePants cause célèbre. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America imagined that the film might just go away if he and his peers stayed mum. Audiences "don't want to see two guys going at it," he told Salon. "It's that simple."

Oh, no! Those social conservatives are supposed to be backward louts! Have they learned the elite technique of restraint? Damn! They were supposed to be ayatollahs. How am I going to crank out these columns now?

Only now am I realizing that I'm writing about a TimesSelect article. Too bad it will be hard for you to read the whole thing. Well, elsewhere in the freely accessible parts of today's NYT there are other insights into the "gay cowboy movie." (Really, the guys are shepherds, but there's no shepherd movie genre, no iconic character The Shepherd to play off of by changing some key element.)

First, there's Manola Darhgas:

Less than two weeks after its release, "Brokeback Mountain" is already on the verge of being embalmed in importance. A lightning rod for attention even before it opened, the film has earned plaudits from critics' groups along with predictable sneers, and provoked argument over its gay bona fides. That "Brokeback" is a landmark is a matter of empiricism; its merits as a work of art are a matter of taste. What has gone missing is that this is also that rare American film that seamlessly breaches the divide between the political and the personal, the past and the present. Here, against the backdrop of the great American West, that mythic territory of rugged individualism and the Marlboro Man, is a quietly devastating look at masculinity and its discontents.

Then, there's this piece by Guy Trebay in the Styles section:

But to gay men trying to forge lives in a world where the shape of masculinity is narrow, and where the "liberated" antics of the homosexual minstrels so often depicted on television can seem far off, the emotional privation and brutal violence of "Brokeback Mountain" seems like documentary.

"That could have been my life," Derrick Glover said one bitter cold afternoon last week, referring to the film, which he had seen at a special screening a week before in Jackson, Wyo. A 33-year-old rancher, Mr. Glover comes from a family that has worked the land around Lusk for generations. His father still runs 300 head of cattle....

"They always define it as coming out of the closet, but I don't consider myself to be out of the closet," Mr. Glover explained. There is a reason for that, he said. "Where I live, you can't really go out and be yourself. You couldn't go out together, two guys, as a couple and ever be accepted. It wasn't accepted in the past, it's still not, and I don't think it ever will be."

This is really the most interesting of the three articles I'm linking in this post. Trebay goes to Wyoming, where the story in the movie takes place and where Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998, and interviews some gay men about what life is like for them:

The experience was "extremely, extremely lonely," [rancher Ben] Clark said, leaving him feeling so isolated that he more than once contemplated suicide. "I could not accept being gay because of the stereotypes that were drilled into me," he explained. "Gay men are emotionally weak. They are not real men. They are like women."

Like Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the film, Mr. Clark dated women for a time, bowing to the pressure to be "normal" although, unlike them, he never married and led a double life. There's a joke out here about how one goes about finding a gay man on the frontier. The punch line is deadpan: "Look for the wife and kids."

Fortunately, Mr. Clark said, "I never did get married, because I never wanted to hurt a woman like that."

I've made fun of the Oscar ads for the movie, because of the way they emphasize the relationship between the men and their wives. This ad campaign is laughable for intentionally hiding the nature of the central love story. Nevertheless, the story of the wives interests me greatly. And the political argument inherent in this part of the story is, I think, especially strong. Those who would try to prevent or inhibit men from forming lifetime bonds with each other ought to give more thought to what happens to the women they marry. Those who think a man should struggle against his sexual orientation and find a way to form the classic marriage relationship with a woman ought to think about what they are advocating for the woman: a lifetime relationship with a man who has only feigned sexual attraction to her.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of interesting discussion. I especially like the part where Palladian says: "Geez, all you straight people can think about is sex, sex, sex. Here we are having a conversation about love and art and all you can think to add is some base, puerile and off-putting remarks about genitalia 'fitting' together, as if it were some sort of dirty Lego set."

Alito and the Family and Medical Leave Act -- Part 5.

Harvard lawprof Laurence Tribe on the FMLA case:

YOU CAN'T help doing a double-take when you read Judge Samuel Alito's opinion holding Congress powerless to compel states to provide family medical leave to their employees. It was a position the Supreme Court rejected in a nearly identical case when it held three years later that the 14th Amendment confers such power by authorizing Congress to enforce each state's duty to accord ''equal protection of the laws."

The evidence and legal arguments hadn't changed when Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the 6-3 majority, saw what Congress had seen: that women and men are unequally protected in a world still shaped by the ''pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women's work." The court accordingly held Congress empowered to ''dismantle persisting gender-based barriers to . . . women in the workplace." Why, then, did the deliberately deferential Alito, after reading the same text, history, precedents, and factual data, see no gender discrimination for Congress to dismantle?

Talk about doing a double take! Is this really by Larry Tribe?

The "nearly identical" Chittister case didn't involve caring for a family member. It involved self-care. Tell me, Professor Tribe, when men are sick, don't they stay home? I'm really having a hard time seeing what gender discrimination Congress is dismantling there.

The Supreme Court's case (Hibbs) was about caring for a family member, but even there, as I've written here too many times already, the Court was changing the way it applied its own test, a test that Alito was bound by when he decided his case. The Fourteenth Amendment law in question requires that Congress be providing a "congruent and proportional" remedy for the states' violation of Fourteenth Amendment rights. It was actually extremely hard to portray the states as violating Equal Protection in a way that went with the leave benefit, as Justice Kennedy -- no conservative firebrand -- explained in his dissent.

Anyway, I'll give Tribe credit for not saying that Alito found the Family and Medical Leave Act unconstitutional, though he's hiding the ball by not admitting that the commerce power supports it, and that Alito's case was only about whether an individual could sue the state for retrospective relief. Under Alito's opinion, states are still bound by the FMLA and their employees can sue to get their jobs back if the states don't follow these requirements.

Tribe's eagerness to slam Judge Alito shows.

UPDATE: There are two post-Hibbs court of appeals cases that say the self-care provision doesn't fit the Fourteenth Amendment -- that is, the result in Chittister is still correct.

MARY TOUVELL v. OHIO DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL RETARDATION AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES, 422 F.3d 392 (6th Cir. 2005):

[W]hile Hibbs found that Congress had adduced sufficient concrete evidence of discrimination by the states regarding the availability and consequences of family-care leave, there is no equivalent evidence that the self-care provision of the FMLA was intended to, or did, target similar discrimination. On the contrary, the self-care provision appears to have been social legislation designed to protect the seriously ill and their families regardless of gender. While this may be an admirable goal, it is not one that permits Congress to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity of the states from private suit for damages.

KATHLEEN BROCKMAN v. WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY SERVICES, 342 F.3d 1159 (10th Cir. 2003):

Because the Supreme Court's analysis in Hibbs turned on the gender-based aspects of the FMLA's § 2612(a)(1)(C), the self-care provision in subsection (D) is not implicated by that decision. The legislative history accompanying the passage of the FMLA reveals two motivations for the inclusion of the self-care provision. First, Congress was attempting to alleviate the economic burdens to both the employee and to his or her family of illness-related job-loss. See S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 11 (1993), reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3, 13-14; H.R. Rep. No. 101-28(I), at 23 (1990). Second, Congress was attempting to prevent those with serious health problems from being discriminated against by their employers. See S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 12; H.R. Rep. 101-28(I), at 23. The legislative history does not, however, identify as the basis for subsection (D) a link between these two motivations and any pattern of discriminatory stereotyping on the part of the states as employers.

Should we screen out mean?

The fuss over the Bolton nomination leads to a more general examination of the phenomenon of mean people in politics. Apparently, there have been plenty of people with various nasty character traits who attained high positions of power. How can you disqualify someone for something that could be said about all the various people named in this article (including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as well as many, many senators)?

Well, it worked against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork:

"Bork is the classic modern instance of someone who made it easy for his opponents, in part because of his demeanor," he added. "I don't think he ever cracked a smile."

For former Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, the personal criticism of Mr. Bork reached absurd heights. "They turned him into a gargoyle," he said.

And Bork had that beard, remember. Is it any surprise people keep zeroing in on Bolton's mustache?

Inauguration events.

I neglected to set the TiVo to record the inauguration events, but when I came home at lunchtime, I started recording the CNN coverage, which stretches the whole length of the day. I'm hoping to see a repeat of the swearing in and inaugural speech eventually. I heard some discussion of it on NPR as I was driving home: a commentator thought Bush had delivered a crushing blow to Saudi Arabia, and there was chatter about how much he said the word "freedom" and how many times he referred to God. I'd like to hear this for myself. For now, I'm reviewing what the TiVo caught.



So, first up for me is the luncheon in Statuary Hall. Trent Lott describes a lot of the fancy trappings in the room, like a painting of a sunrise in Wyoming, two crystal hurricane lanterns (gifts from Congress to Bush), and a 100-year-old eagle-shaped lectern (which Lott calls a "podium"). Bush stands to give a little speech in which he thanks "distinguished members of the Congress and" -- Reaganesque sideways head flick -- "some who aren't quite so distinguished." Snicker. He says he was touched that Chief Justice Rehnquist made it to deliver the oath and there is much warm applause. Bush is "lookin' forward to puttin' my heart and soul into this job for four more years." Laura Bush is wearing a blindingly white suit. Lynne Cheney is wearing a light blue suit with a gray fur neck ruff. Closeup of Bill Clinton during the benediction: he's looking very grand. Now people are leaving the room. We see Bush give his mom a nice kiss on the cheek. Voiceover commentary from David Gergen, who says he's not picking up the the same "sense of hope" that there was at Bush's last inauguration. Apparently, everyone was feeling good about "coming together" back then, but they aren't now. They're itching for a fight. Even the Republicans are "restive." I'm hearing this theme in a lot of the commentary today: Bush is not trying to reach out to the other side, not showing a desire to bring people together. "The divisions are so deep here in the country, and the divisions with other nations are very deep."



Now Bush, Cheney, and their respective wives are walking down the Capitol steps. Hey, the Cheneys are getting ahead. The steps are miked so we hear the footsteps, including the click of the ladies' high heels. The men can't go downstairs at a manly pace, because the women have to step carefully in those heels. They stop halfway down for a military marching band playing a medley of all the songs you might predict they would play. There are some fabulous dress uniforms here, some in the Revolutionary War style, which look especially great. I wish the commentators would tell us what we're seeing, but they are yapping generically about pageantry.



The Bushes get into a spiffy Cadillac limo, and the commentators have plenty to say about the car. Now the car is rolling along toward the White House. Secret Service agents trot alongside it. Wolf Blitzer voices over that the "white stuff by the side the road" is snow. What would we do without the commentary? My God, there's some white stuff by the side of the road? Is that bioterrorism? Now, steam is coming out of a grate in the street, and Blitzer says, "Now, that looks like they're having a little smoke coming out of something." The commentators decide it must be steam, since the Secret Service men are not reacting to it. Well, at least he recognized snow right off the bat.



Now the car is passing the designated protesters' section. There's a banner that calls for impeachment and says "guilty of war crimes." A lot of people are holding up signs with a picture of Bush and the words "worst President ever." Someone is holding up a yellow frowny face. There's a lot of fist shaking. There are Bush supporters on the other side of the street, and each group is trying to out-shout the other. It's quite loud. Beyond the designated protesters' area, we see an occasional protester with his back turned on the motorcade. Two guys standing side by side hold cards that say "liar" high above their heads.



Waiting at the reviewing stand is Condoleezza Rice, wearing a sleek black fur hat. She's laughing and talking to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The President's parents and daughters are waiting at the reviewing stand. About a block from the stand, the President and First Lady get out of the car to walk the rest of the way. Bush's smile is so wide we can see his gold tooth. The commentators are quite taken by the symbolism of the President walking out in the open. It seems to say something about the success of the war on terrorism that the route can be so perfectly secured that this is possible. We see Dick and Lynne Cheney walking toward the reviewing stand. With them is Mary Cheney, whose sexuality the losing presidential candidate saw fit to intone about ominously during one of the debates, a misstep he will, I assume, regret for the rest of his life. The parade is in full force, including a big float of the unfurling Declaration of Independence.



Now, watching "The Jim Lehrer News Hour," I'm able to see the swearing in and the inaugural address. The show's editors seem to delight in displaying the gloomiest members of the audience. I'm touched by the freedom theme of the address, as Bush speaks to the people of the world and to those who oppress them:

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.



Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.



The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.



The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people, you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice and America will walk at your side.

This is a profound and beautiful vision, and I cannot imagine the Bush-haters who turned their backs on the motorcade can have any better vision for the world. But, of course, I know, they think he's lying and they think, even if he believes in those ideals, he will fail in the attempt to fulfill them. So Bush's opponents have, at best, a pragmatism, a realism, a cynicism.



What did Bush say about God? I note that he said "freedom" twenty-seven times, "liberty" fifteen times, and "God" three times. Aside from the mention of God in the quote just above and in the final "May God bless you," the reference to God is in this passage, which takes a theological position that should be remembered:

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner Freedom Now they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

Bush excluded God from his prediction that freedom will triumph. God's will cannot be known. He takes his confidence not from a belief in God's favor, but from a belief in the human love of freedom, the "hunger" and "longing of the soul." It is a belief in humanity. God is mentioned one more time in that passage. He is the "Author of Liberty," to use the phrase from the song "America," which refers to the ideas of the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal, ... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"). So Bush does not wholly present God as unknowable. Following the theory of the Declaration, he sees God as creating liberty, but his vision for the future, presented idealistically in the speech, is that the human love of freedom is what will prevail, as he promises to come to the aid of people all around the world. I'm sure Bush skeptics will see that promise as disastrously ambitious, but it is a beautiful promise, and those who hate Bush so much were once the people who themselves spoke of beautiful ideals.



Rereading this post, I acknowledge that one could see a contradiction in that last quoted paragraph from the speech. First, there is a claim that God's will is unknowable, and, later, there is a statement that history has a "direction" that is "set" by God. But I would say that the best interpretation of the statement is that God created liberty and this liberty is longed for by human beings, whose actions in pursuit of their desire cause history to have a direction.

Hawaiian Cheney-love!

My cool Hawaii contact, "Yoshio," has this report on Cheney's visit (I've boldfaced details that especially struck me):

I arrived at 6 p.m., signed in, was assigned to a team, received a volunteer tag, t-shirt (required wearing) and rally pin. We cleared security which was actually less than some airline security checks I've been through recently. At 6:30 p.m. we were briefed by a gentleman named Tom who is with the Cheney advance team in charge of the event.



Each team was assigned to a specific job and our group was designated as "Lei Greeters" which meant that we had the happy task of draping lei around the necks of the rally-goers. There were 10,000 purple orchid lei, 5,000 bento boxes (Hawaiian-style lunch boxes which consisted of a slice of fried SPAM and a breaded chicken cutlet on a bed of rice) and signs galore. The venue was decorated in a red, white & blue theme but with touches unique to Hawaii such as large neon coconut trees. There were two huge screens to ensure all who came could see all the action.



While we waited for the doors to open at 7:15 p.m. we could hear competing noise from outside the convention center. Approximately 100 protestors, most of whom were dressed in various costumes, were using bullhorns to blast obscenities about Bush and Cheney towards the people in line. The rally-goers would respond with loud chants of "Four more years." Not surprisingly these outbursts got louder whenever a camera crew happened along.



The doors finally opened and we were on. Greet with "Aloha, thank you for coming," drape the lei, kiss the cheek and say "There is bento in the back if you're hungry and don't forget to vote on Tuesday", repeat. It was really fun. There were all sorts of people, which is expected here in Hawaii with our diverse culture, but it was still wonderful to see what was really a microcosm of our population. We had everything from bleached surfer dudes to Tongan gentlemen wearing the traditional lava lava. My estimate is that we had 7,500+ people - way better than the Democrats did on Friday with a mere 1200. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports that Cheney's team estimated about 9,000 and the the Honolulu Advertiser (who has endorsed Kerry and trashed Bush at every opportunity) estimated 5,000 - 7,000.



Some standouts for me:



1) The large group of Vietnamese-Americans wearing "Vietnamese Americans for Bush" t-shirts. I spent many weeks in Vietnam in recent years and a family I count among my closest friends fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. They were rescued from a sinking boat by a U.S. Navy ship, sent to a refugee camp in Guam before going to Camp Pendleton and eventually ending up in Spokane. All of the children attended college and have gone on to become great productive citizens. The relatives who didn't get out ended up in "Re-education Camps," one for over 13 years, and though life is somewhat improved for them now there is truly no comparison. Knowing what happens to people who are abandoned by the U.S. after a promise of freedom, and knowing that John Kerry played a role, however small in the abandonment, is probably the single biggest reason I don't trust him to not do the same thing in Iraq.



2) The stylish family of four wearing sleek black t-shirts with a small white "W" emblazoned on the left breast.



3) Two very pretty girls dressed up in jeans, white shirts, boots and straw cowboy hats with large black felt "W"s glued to the front.



4) The older Filipina lady who just had to tell us that she had lectured her fellow church-goers at mass just that morning about the importance of voting your conscience and not blindly voting Democrat.



5) Another very pretty girl whom I could only conclude was a Secret Service groupie. She came in and as I gave her a lei she held up her Bush Cheney sign and asked where she could get autographs from Secret Service guys. I pointed them out to her but told her I didn't know if she'd have any luck. I saw her after the event and she had managed to get several!



6) Two Washington female staffers. When they came in they said they couldn't wear the lei but wanted to take them with them. I handed it to one of them and when she touched it, she shrieked "It's real!" We instructed her on how to store it (this particular lei is very sturdy and will last at least a couple of days) and then snickered amongst ourselves at the thought that we would hand out fake lei - as if!



The doors were supposed to remain open until 10:15 p.m. but the VP was running early so they closed the security checkpoint around 10 p.m. and herded all of us who had cleared security into the front area and blocked it off from the other part of the hall. They then let the people who were still in line (approximately 800) into the rear of the hall behind a low barricade which was patrolled by Secret Service and HPD (Honolulu Police Department). A few hecklers managed to get in during this period but they were quite trivial.



The crowd was growing restless but it wasn't long before a young Hawaiian man stepped out and blew a conch shell, then came two amazing fire dancers (I ask, how many places have fire dancers at political rallies???) and the crowd was warmed up. We all sang "The Star Spangled Banner" and the Hawaii State Song, Hawaii Pono`i, acapella. We then recited the Pledge of Allegiance with great fervor. Then came the boxing match music and the man said "Let's get ready to rumble. The main event..." and Governor Linda Lingle was introduced.



Governor Lingle spoke just a minute or two before introducing Lynne Cheney and the Vice President. Mrs. Cheney spoke for a few minutes. I'm sure the speech she gives about meeting the VP when he was 14 and chronicling the various jobs he held from ditch digger to union card carrying lineman is the same she gives at all the stops but it came across as very sincere. She introduced the VP and the crowd went wild chanting "Cheney, Cheney, Cheney..."



The VP spoke for about 20 minutes but he started off by sending his best wishes to Sen. Dan Inouye's wife, Maggie. Mrs. Inouye was just diagnosed with cancer and will undergo surgery this week. The crowd responded with lots of aloha and best wishes for her. The woman next to me turned and said "He is such a great gentleman." I asked about the Leahy swearing incident and she just sniffed and said "Sometimes a gentleman just has to put an goat in it's place." Quite right.



He covered primarily terrorism, the global war on terror and invoked the attack at Pearl Harbor. He talked about the free elections in Afghanistan (huge applause) and the upcoming elections in Iraq. He thanked the military and all who have sacrificed loved ones which brought resounding cheers. He also talked about keeping taxes low (huge applause as we are a heavily taxed state), medical malpractice and the booming economy here. We have the lowest unemployment rate in the country and people are very optimistic about the future - might be why Bush is doing well here. After delivering his standard line which refers to Kerry's positions on the war, "As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but at the end of the day, it'll still be a pig!", he said "That's my favorite line. Would you like to hear it again?" The crowd went crazy as he repeated it.



Cheney looked great. Didn't appear to be tired at all and projected a strong and confident image. I would say that this event was extremely well produced and one wouldn't have known that it was only a few days in the planning. Everything went smoothly. I'm glad I went.

May the best man of the best man win.

I'm going to simulblog the Vice Presidential Debate , so I'll number my posts, with each new number representing an update.



1. Bremer's not-enough-troops statement leads off, in a question to VP Cheney. Cheney plugs in his prepared statement about Iraq: Iraq was "the most likely nexus between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction." The war in Iraq was "exactly the right thing to do," and he'd recommend it all over again if he had the chance. Pay no attention to that Bremer behind the curtain! Cheney had nothing to say about Bremer at all.



2. Edwards, similarly, plugs in his prepared material about Iraq. (Poor Bremer is not getting the attention he might have wanted ... or not.) Edwards says lines I think I remember Kerry saying last week. "We lost more troops in September than we lost in August, we lost more troops in August than ..." The litany of defeatism. People have died, people have died. When I turn on NPR in the morning, the first thing I hear is nearly always the number of persons who just died in Iraq, almost never in a context connecting those deaths to what they fought for, just dismal, hopeless death. Edwards takes that tack. "Iraq is a mess"--the grand simplification. A mess! And McCain agrees with me--Edwards asserts. McCain's not there to protest, but Cheney will do it for him most likely. [He never does.] Edwards does have a line in there about Bremer. But most of it (as with Cheney) is the phoned-in prepared Iraq material.



3. Cheney rebuts, and the split-screen shows Edwards blinking furiously. Nervous? Or just contact lenses? Edwards then gets rebuttal time and he seems all charged up as he says there's no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, which is, again, totally phoned-in, because Cheney said nothing about the connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. Cheney spoke only about progress in Iraq (the refutation of "Iraq is a mess.")



4. Gwen Ifill--who's wearing a terrific blue jacket with dramatically curved lapels--asks Edwards--who's wearing a standard dark gray suit, red tie, and, for originality, light blue shirt--whether, if he and Kerry had been in office, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Good question, but of course he has to say no. The only interest here is in how artfully he frames his no. Like Bush last week he mixes up the names of the nemeses: "Saddam ... I mean ... uh ... Osama bin Laden ..." How did bin Laden get into the answer? He plugged in his material about botching the war in Afghanistan, which is tangentially related to refocusing attention on Iraq. But allowing the Northern Alliance to take the lead in Tora Bora was not done because of Iraq. It was simply the preferred strategy for Tora Bora (even if, in hindsight, it was bad). Edwards characterizes Iraq as a diversion, as if that is why we failed to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora. This seems to say that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, finally approaching Ifill's question. Now, he's getting all harsh on the no connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th point, but he's the one who dragged Osama bin Laden into the answer to a question that was only about Iraq. And, most importantly, he never answered Ifill's question! He never said whether he and Kerry would have left Saddam Hussein in power. He never even got in that "no" I assumed he'd have to say. He just wandered over to something else he wanted to talk about and hoped we wouldn't notice.



5. Cheney: "They are not prepared to deal with states that sponsor terror. ... A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a Presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues. And they give absolutely no indication, based on that record, of being willing to go forward and agressively pursue the war on terror ..." This is the first blow that lands in this fight, I think.



6. Ifill, showing her scripting, raises the question of Afghanistan, which Edwards just pre-answered. But this question is to Cheney, who points out that Afghanistan is four days from an election, and that two and a half years ago, Edwards announced that the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating and chaotic. So: Edwards was defeatist, calling Afghanistan a mess too soon, and (we may infer) he's prematurely giving up on Iraq. Edwards cocks his head to the side and gives a quick smile. He needs a comeback. But Edwards merely repeats the accusation that Tora Bora was handled wrong and that Iraq was a diversion. He then consumes the rest of his time defending John Kerry over the "global test" proposal made in last week's election. But I want a response that has something to do with the GOOD Dick Cheney just claimed we achieved in Afghanistan. It's as if Edwards is programmed to keep telling us that everything went bad. But is nothing good? Is it not good that there will be an election in Afghanistan and that women will vote and so forth as Cheney just said? Ah--Edwards pooh-poohs the "rosy scenario" that Cheney paints about Afghanistan (and Iraq): Afghanistan is growing 75% of the world's opium! There are warlords! Not every place is secure! Cheney slams back, comparing Afghanistan to El Salvador: we succeeded against terrorists there because people aspire to democratic self rule. Edwards responds to this by suddenly switching to the topic of Iran, and I'm thinking that Ifill is cursing Edwards to herself, as he introduces another topic that she had planned in her questions.



7. Ifill's next question, to John Edwards, is about Kerry's "global test" proposal, which Edwards has already addressed out of place in two previous questions. There really is a clear answer on the "global test" point, but Edwards is not making it crisply. Cheney is gathering steam now. His arms are crossed on the desk and his head is down and wagging from side to side as he makes each point. Some of his points are preplanned (voting for the war and against the war; wrong war, wrong place, wrong time). Now he's marking out his points, patting with his palm in spots along the surface of the desk. "There's no indication at all that John Kerry has the conviction to successfully carry through on the war on terror." Edwards rebuts: this is a "complete distortion." The proof? "The American people saw John Kerry on Thursday night." So, yes, Kerry did a good job in the debate last week, and he said strong things, which, if that was all we knew, would make us think he was going to be tough on the war on terrorism. But Cheney's point is that if you look at Kerry's long record, it doesn't back up that tough stance. Edwards is saying: ignore that record, remember how Kerry won the debate last week?



8. Would it be dangerous to have Kerry as President? Ifill asks. Cheney: he's not aggressive enough! He was against fighting Saddam Hussein in 1991. He voted against funding of the current Iraq war because he was caving in to pressure from the Dean anti-war candidacy in the primaries. If he couldn't stand up even to Dean, how can we trust him to be tough enough?



9. Is it believable that Kerry can bring together a coalition of foreign nations at this late point in the war? Ifill asks Edwards. His answer is scattered. How can it not be? Who believes there is anything that Kerry could do beginning in January that would bring in more allies? Edwards--using the politician's pointing thumb--switches to another topic. Lack of body armor! Cheney: "It's hard, after John Kerry referred to our allies as 'a coalition of the coerced and the bribed' to go out and persuade them to send troops and participate in the process." You can't say "wrong place, wrong war, wrong time" and "oh, by the way, send troops." Of course, this is exactly what Bush said last week, but Cheney's solidity here is impressive. Now, he plays what I consider his ace: our most important ally is Allawi, and when he was here, speaking to the Congress, Kerry "demeaned him, challenged his credibility." Edwards answer is, first, about money. The first Gulf War cost five billion dollars, he says, holding up five fingers. The current war, "200 billion and counting." Second, 90 percent of the casualities are American. Cheney's answer: "He won't count the sacrifice and the contribution of our Iraqi allies." This fits with the point about Allawi: you want allies, the Iraqis are our allies! John Edwards looks upset by this response, but he does not get a rebuttal.



10. Edwards uses the next question for rebuttal of the previous question, but it is an unmemorable mix of previous points about how badly things are going in Iraq. The question on the table is about intelligence. The next question is about sanctions on Iran. I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for Edwards. Cheney is an intimidating presence, and, frankly, he's kicking Edwards's butt. Ah, the first mention of Halliburton. Cheney: Halliburton is a smokescreen. Go to Factcheck.com for the facts! [ADDED: That should be Factcheck.org.]



11. In answer to a question about Israel, Edwards tries to tell what he characterizes as a personal anecdote. It's the story of Israelis killed by a suicide bomber. Children are killed. Cheney goes back to Halliburton, but then he doesn't really. He just says Halliburton is a smokescreen (again) and Edwards has an undistinguished record as a Senator. Just forget about Ifill, why don't you? She wanted to talk about Israel, but screw it! Let's just plug in the material about all the votes Edwards missed as Senator! Cheney is in the Senate, as the President of the Senate, almost every Tuesday, and the first time he ever met Edwards is tonight! Ouch! Edwards successfully stifles any reaction. Cheney deigns to answer Ifill's question about Israel: Saddam Hussein paid Palestinian suicide bombers' families. Edwards rebuts: Cheney voted against Headstart back when he was in the House! Against Meals on Wheels! Against the Martin Luther King holiday!



12. Finally, the foreign policy section is over. And the question is: what are you going to do about Cleveland? (They are in Cleveland.) Cheney cites No Child Left Behind; education is key. Edwards subtly scoffs at Cheney for talking about education when the question was really jobs and poverty. Of course, Cheney probably really does think education is the right approach to the problem, but Edwards is somewhat successful at making the education strategy seem cold and heartless. Edwards asserts that the administration is "for outsourcing jobs." They think it's good! Cheney's rebuttal praises tax cuts. Edwards rebuts bringing Iraq back into the picture to fit with a planned punchline: "I don't think the country can take four more years." He leans over toward Cheney with an insouciant smile on his face. Cheney glances back and gives him the stink eye.



13. Taxes. The usual positions are taken.



14. Same sex "unions." Cheney: traditionally it's been an issue for the states, but Massachusetts has acted, and the President thinks it's the "wrong way to go, and I support the President." Edwards has a great opening here, but he loses momentum by going back to tax policy, which was (I think) dully batted around on the last question. Now, Edwards goes on about Cheney loving his gay daughter and Cheney looks like he might lean over and take a bite out of Edwards. Finally, Edwards gets to the best point: we shouldn't amend the Constitution to exclude people from equal treatment! Ifill wisely comes in with the next question challenging Edwards (and Kerry) about their opposition to gay marriage. Edwards now has to say "marriage is between a man and a woman," and the distance between him and Cheney dwindles into a technicality. Now, the constitutional amendment is no longer actively offensive, it's just "unnecessary" (the theory being that one state's recognition of gay marriage is not going to exert any pressure on the other states and that there is no concern that courts might force other states to recognize that first state's marriages). And let's talk about health care and Iraq!! Cheney's "rebuttal" is just to thank Edwards for his kind words about his daughter.



15. Medical malpractice. Cheney tries to shock us with the fact that a doctor in Wyoming must pay $100,000 a year for malpractice insurance. Somehow, I don't find that number shocking. Edwards agrees that there should be fewer lawsuits and recommends an independent review of malpractice cases before they can be filed. He's against frivolous lawsuits too. This is an area where Edwards might be attacked or might also do well, but it comes off as a fairly technical issue and I don't think either man makes any headway over the other.



16. AIDS. This is a subject that does not allow either man to make much headway. Both express concern; Edwards tries to broaden the question to be more generally about the need for healthcare.



17. Ifill asks Edwards how, given his inexperience, he has the qualifications to handle the Presidency. What can Edwards do here but babble about good judgment? When it's Cheney's turn, he says, do you want me to talk about his qualifications, and he can barely suppress a grin. It's the happiest we see Cheney all night. He says, I know I was chosen because of my experience and my ability and that it had nothing to do with political ambition.



18. Why is Dick Cheney like John Edwards? That's the question now. Cheney refers to his humble beginnings. Edwards is writing a lot during this answer. At one point, he noisily rips a sheet of paper off his pad. This question seems a bit weird and pointless. A ground rule of the question is don't say the name of your running mate: Edwards breaks the rule twice. But who cares? The question seems nonexistent. Cheney doesn't even want his rebuttal time!



19. What's wrong with "a little flip-flop now and then"? This is another bad question that Edwards uses to throw out a variety of statements that he might have said at any point. Cheney, naturally, uses it to list all the inconsistent things Kerry has said and done that he can think of. Edwards might have talked about the importance of nuance and adjustment to changed conditions and new information, but he utterly ignores that opportunity, perhaps wisely.



20. How to "bridge that divide" and bring the country together? I'm getting pretty tired at this point and don't like the abstraction of this question. Nevertheless, I'm a bit irritated when Edwards says a word or two in answer to the question and then just plugs in a lot of material about health care. I've noticed Edwards has looked for as many opportunities as possible to say the words "health care."



21. Finally, closing statements! Edwards says "I have grown up in the bright light of America, but that light is flickering today" and expresses a hope of bringing that light to us all. Cheney rattles off a pre-planned speech with many references to the war on terrorism.



22. Conclusion: a clear win for Cheney.



UPDATE: Here's the full transcript of the debate.



ANOTHER UPDATE: As has been widely noted, Cheney was wrong about not having met Edwards before. Why would he say that? Even assuming for the sake of argument he's willing to lie, it's so easily shown wrong that it utterly backfires. My guess is that it wasn't a preplanned zinger, at least not a carefully preplanned zinger, and that Cheney just didn't remember meeting Edwards. Even that doesn't make that much sense. Normally, you don't assert you haven't met someone, you ask if you've ever met him or you act as though maybe you have met. This is a very common social situation: people know to be careful about assuming they haven't met someone.



YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Looking at this clip again (via "The Daily Show"), I get the impression that Cheney could be seen as saying that he never met Edwards in the context of the Senate. That is, "met" could mean "run into" as opposed to "be introduced to for the first time." Still pretty lame, but possibly defensible on a very technical level.

Day 3 of the Republican Convention.

Here I go again. As before, I'll keep all my commentary in one post and use numbered paragraphs to indicate the updates.



1. A Baptist choir sings a terrific version of the National Anthem (even if they did quite clearly sing "Whore the land of the free..."). The Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios, wearing beautiful vestments, gives a beautiful invocation. Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle gives some introductory remarks. She's wearing a lei, and Chris complains about it. I defend it as an emblem of her state. Chris rejects the defense: "Would the governor of Wisconsin wear a big cheesehead hat?"



2. Senator Rick Santorum: a boo is heard in the room here in Madison. He has a smug, wise-guy attitude, and I don't think I'm saying that solely because I disagree with his attitude about gay rights. "The torch of marriage is dying out." Do we want the federal government to pay for marriage counseling? Even if it is religious? That's a hard question. He has a good line: "[Kerry] says he is concerned about the separation of church and state. Senator Kerry should worry more about the separation of children from their fathers."



3. Wisconsin, for some reason, and I don't object, is recognized to make a motion to proclaim Dick Cheney the VP candidate by acclaimation. "And the motion is agreed to." A little "Cheney" chant breaks out.



4. I caught up to the live feed and I needed to let TiVo get back out in front of me to re-enable fast-forwarding, so I went upstairs to fold laundry, and I put on the upstairs TV--the TiVo-less Sony Wega (where the colors are always so comparatively crisp)--and I caught a little of Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruff, and Jeff Greenfield on CNN. And what were they punditizing about? It was practically word-for-word taken from this Instapundit post, from way back this morning, about manipulating the Iowa markets!



5. Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. You can tell he's from Wisconsin because he clearly pronounces Wisconsin "Wi - SCON - sin," not, as I say even after 20 years here, "Wis - CON - sin." [ADDED: They're really playing up to Wisconsin tonight, aren't they? It must be something in the polls.]



6. I think it's a good sign that there is so much amateurish material. The party really isn't that slick. So much bad music! The faux interviews with community leaders. That lame comic segment with Barney the dog (who at one point had a debate with a white French poodle puppet dog named Fifi Kerry). I think 20 years from now the political convention will be a seamlessly acted entertainment extravaganza that everyone will watch and enjoy. But right now, we still live in the real world, because everything's a little bit pathetically ragged.



7. The tribute to Reagan. Beautiful. Many beautiful images. Reagan's voice: "We got America to stand tall again."



8. Is there some rule that every woman has to wear a light blue suit?



9. Finally, Zell Miller. It seems silly to say that and an indication of how much filler we've had to put up with tonight. I like Zell Miller and think he's a good speaker. He's speaking quickly for some reason. "My family is more important than my party." Only Bush is good enough for his family, he asserts. Then he reels back to the story of his life: he's a little boy, FDR is President, there's an "overriding public danger." He brings up Wendell Wilkie, with whom he clearly identifies. He's making a plea to overcome partisanship in a time of danger. He condemns the Democrats of today for putting their partisan politics above the nation's security. His voice trembles with anger as he says: "Nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling America's troops occupiers rather than liberators! Tell that to the one half of Europe that was free because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers!" Similarly, Eisenhower and Reagan. The soldier, not the protester, has given us our freedom. Don't dare to think of being President if you don't think of our soldiers as liberators! But the leaders of the Democratic party see America as the problem! They blame America. They believed in Carter's pacifism. "And no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry!" Miller is unleashed. His opposition to his own party erupts here tonight. Kerry voted against so many arms programs, so what would he mean to be Commander in Chief of? "Spitballs?" Kerry would wait for the UN to approve of military action: "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending." He would "outsource our national security." His opposition to Kerry slams down heavily. John Kerry would give terrorists "a yes/no/maybe bowl of mush." Bush would clamp down hard and not let go! He admires that Bush believes God "is not indifferent to America." He's like an old-fashioned preacher. He speaks with straight conviction, with almost a defiant sneer on his face. It's very effective!



10. Lynn Cheney introduces her husband, who, as a teenager in Casper, Wyoming, did not, like the other kids, cruise back and forth between root beer stands. He did not do the twist. She knew he was the guy for her. Imagine Dick Cheney as the love of your life! That's the way it is for them. Who are we to question love? Now, here he is. The grinding, grim flatness of Dick Cheney is just what it is to be Dick Cheney. He is what he is. It doesn't play to the big hall terribly well, especially not after the great revivalist Miller, but what did you expect? Perhaps even less. He lays it out. And you can take it or leave it. He's not doing the twist. He's Dick Cheney.



11. "A Senator can be wrong for twenty years without consequence to the nation, but a President always casts the deciding vote." Cheney is warming up as he lays into John Kerry. He's amusing himself. He chuckles: "Senator Kerry's liveliest disagreement is with himself. ... Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual. America sees two Kerrys." A man in the audience is seen rhythmically waving two flip-flops.