The DNC: Clinton calls supporters to vote Obama

Hilary Clinton has called on her supporters, at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, to cast their presidential votes for Barrack Obama. However, the move was met with negative publicity.

There were concerns that Clinton’s past criticisms of Obama would come back to hurt the Democrats. The day she addressed the convention, McCain’s 3AM ad aired showing Clinton as saying: “I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And, Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.” The context in which she made those comments about Obama were different, and now that he is no longer her competition she is within her rights to support him without being judged a hypocrite.

There were also rumours before the speech that Hilary Clinton would not endorse Barack Obama, and that one of her top aides was “trash-talking Obama to other reporters”. A Mother Jones blog commented on this, and suggested that reporters will be looking for any signs that the Clintons are “not doing everything possible” to see Obama become president. However, there was no resentment or reluctance in her speech and she passionately displayed her full support for Obama, emphasising his concern for the people and his vision for the future.

“Barrack Obama began his career fighting for workers displaced by the global economy… He knows government must be about ‘We the people’ not ‘We the favoured few’.”

No amount of bad publicity beforehand could tarnish the fervour of her message: Vote Obama for a better future.

Hillary Clinton has a law degree from Yale Law School and worked for many years as a corporate lawyer, representing major corporate clients such as Wal-Mart. Surely she is familar with the “canons of construction,” especially ejusdem generis. Yes, the canon of construction in which when a general term introduces a list, “the general term embraces only things that are similar to those specifically enumerated.”

“In the opposite situation, where specific words follow general ones, ejusdem generis is also applied; again, the general term embraces only things that are similar to those specifically enumerated.”

So when she shockingly remarks, “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again” she should know what her statement is implying using common sense and the canons of construction (after all she and her husband are the types to argue over and parse what the “meaning of the word is” is). By ejusdem generis, her statement is read thus: “working, hard-working” are very general terms which can be applied to anyone in America, relative to the term “white Americans” which constitutes a specific racial class…thus by ejusdem generis “working” and “hard working” only apply to “white Americans,” with the implication that only white Americans work and are hard working. By omission…that leads us to another canon of construction Hillary is surely aware of: expressio unius est exclusio alterius.

“Another maxim of statutory construction is expressio unius est exclusio alterius. Roughly translated, this phrase means that whatever is omitted is understood to be excluded.”

In the context of her competition for the Democratic presidential nomination versus Barack Obama and her specific use of the term “white Americans,” obviously missing from her statement about “working, hard-working Americans” is “black Americans.” That’s a clear subtext. If Obama’s support is not weakening among black Americans…and if black Americans are “working, hard-working Americans”…then overall is Obama’s support really waning among “working, hard-working Americans”? I.e., is Obama’s support among hard-working white Americans weakening enough to overpower his support among hard-working black Americans so that his net percentage of support among hard-working white and black Americans combined is weakening–what percentage point slip in support from hard-working whites would that require, and does Hillary Clinton have the exact statistics for us on that matter?

If she don’t have the statistics for us on that, then Hillary is flat out wrong-headed to preface her statement about Obama facing weaking support among white Americans by using the terms “working, hard-working Americans.” Without clear statistics, for her to preface “white Americans” with “working, hard-working Americans,” by common sense and by expressio unius est exclusio alterius she is excluding black Americans from the category of “working, hard-working Americans.” The omission her is obvious and entirely unnecessary to the point of being suspicious, potentially intentionally malicious, thinly veiled doublespeak or a quite revealing sort of verbal slipup.

Now, let’s be clear, this is not Hillary Clinton’s first egregious and questionable omission of blacks which is particularly susceptible to use of common sense and the canon of construction expressio unius est exclusio alterius: please recall the 3AM phone call ads. The commercial features shot after shot of the sweet children of America sleeping peacefully in their beds, and Hillary watching over them all ready to protect and advocate for them…oh, wait, it’s not all of the sweet children of America in the ad, its only the sweet white children of America.

A national ad about protecting America, the children America, in their comfortable suburban homes…and not one non-white face in the entire ad? Hmm, not one black American child or adult in sight in the entire commercial? This is like harkening back to Birth of a Nation days. ANYONE in advertising and PR and the media knows that to advertise a wholesome image of America that will appeal to the nation as a whole you need to project images of inclusion and diversity…ANYONE…watch any corporate ad these days, carefully constructed by Masters and PhDs in marketing, linguistics, psychology, ads from McDonalds, Ford, Honda, Target, etc…and OBVIOUSLY there will be a mix of whites, hispanics, African-Americans, projecting a harmonious, healthful, diverse image.

You’re telling me with all of the highly paid, highly educated PR and advertising and strategy and linguistics and psychology and economics advisors advising the Clinton campaign, no one thought about the effects of having a white-only cast in the 3AM phone call ad? Or is it more likely that they realized the semiotics and the undertones and liked what they saw, even if “only” to the extent that they were trying to leverage support from white voters and were willing to live with any subtly (or not so subtly) divisive and exclusionary subtexts in the ad?

With people as politically savvy and well educated as Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and their campaign staff and advisors, it’s time for the people of America to learn about semiotics and the canons of construction to more ably interpret and parse what candidates and world leaders are really saying and trying to say, through grouping, omission, implication, what is left unsaid, what is hinted at, etc. Hillary, we know you know as a lawyer of the canons of construction including ejusdem generis and expressio unius est exclusio alterius ; would you like to comment on your convenient omissions and hidden implications in both your statement “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again” and also in the 3AM ad?

References:

Listen to Hillary’s statement here on YouTube: “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”

from: Law Encyclopedia. West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. (bold emphasis added)

“Some of these canons of construction are expressed in well-known Latin phrases or maxims. Under ejusdem generis (of the same kind, class, or nature), when general words follow specific words in a statute where several items have been enumerated, the general words are construed to embrace only objects similar in nature to the objects enumerated by the preceding specific words of the statute. …In the opposite situation, where specific words follow general ones, ejusdem generis is also applied; again, the general term embraces only things that are similar to those specifically enumerated.”

“Another maxim of statutory construction is expressio unius est exclusio alterius. Roughly translated, this phrase means that whatever is omitted is understood to be excluded. ….”

Semiotics: excerpted from Wikipedia

“Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.”

Update: see the post on Hillary Clinton’s new Robert Kennedy assassination comment…

Many weeks ago, a week before March 4 and its elections, Hillary Clinton released an ad that has come to be known as the ‘3am ad’. It was the politics of fear at play again – something we have all come to expect from the Clinton campaign. I found it funny that prior to the ad being released, she was in her crazy-loco mode and was calling for Obama to debate her on the issues, and was saying that Obama was a bad candidate for employing tactics that called her out on actual truths (but she said they were lies). Then she released that ad.

Out of all the ads that have been released in the campaign, that was the worst. It was just bad and pathetic.

Then the news came out: Girl seen in Clinton’s ‘3 a.m.’ ad supports Obama.

Yes, one of the little girls in the ad that Clinton is supposed to be ‘protecting’ is an active campaigner for Barack Obama. And has been for some time. Well before she was used as part of stock footage, Casey Knowles was out and about, drumming up votes for Obama, excited at the prospect of being invited to the National Convention for her efforts.

Word quickly spread, and she was on news stations, being interviewed and causing a little bit of an embarrassing problem for Clinton’s campaign team. Then the Obama team caught wind of this news and got hold of Casey to make their own ad. That was way back on March 10.

In between then and now, there were so many great parodies of the ad on YouTube. One concerned with her promise to always wear pantsuits while serving and then playing on the whole fear ad genre, another that plays on the messages that Clinton sends out (that she is like ‘the common person’, and Obama’s message is only a message, not a reality). And the comment threads were a hotbed for some good e-arguments and entertainment (much like I outlined with the Geraldine Ferraro articles).

Finally, today, Obama’s team released the ad they’d been working on. Maybe it was a little late in the scheme of things, but it doesn’t matter a whole lot. The purpose of the ad is to point out another mistake of Clinton’s – another in the long line of this primary campaign. I wasn’t at all surprised when Clinton released this type of ad after saying she was going to ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at Obama. But what I was surprised at was the way Clinton continued to lie about being a serious candidate and a candidate ‘about the issues’, not a textbook example of how to scare your way to victory.

We all know what the results were – the ad won over the Texas primary vote, and Obama had an average day March 4. A lot of pundits say that that ad was how she managed to win the Texas primary. Considering it only aired in Texas, I’d agree with that. However, the effect was short-lived. We also know that Clinton got hammered in the next 2 primaries, and has yet to cut into Obama’s delegate lead. I fully expect another fear-ad and ridiculous attack from Clinton leading into Pennsylvania. It will probably have something to do with trade and jobs, maybe the failing economy. Pennsylvania, being like Ohio (which exit polls said the economy was the biggest issue for them), will be a fight over trade and economy policies. So keep an eye out for that.

Thomas.

10:06pm – Started this blog post after commenting on one of Jim Belshaw’s posts. It took me roughly 8 minutes to think of what to write. Currently, I’m talking to a friend of mine – Chris, who lives in England and attends Birmingham City University. He is doing education, a drama and English major. I tried to meet up with him last year when I was over in England, but he was too far North in the country to get too. I do want to meet him one day, so I expect another trip to England (the 3rd) is in order. I was listening to Dance Floor Anthem by Good Charlotte. It’s the only song of their’s I like because of the ‘message’ behind it. I then decided that I would keep half-hour updates for this post this evening that contain my activities for that 30 minutes, unless something interesting happens. I’ll see how that goes, and if I need to have longer time periods between updates tomorrow.

10:36pm – Checked Ninglun’s Gateway – laughed that there is a 3rd layout for the day. Saw that I got a reference (I liked that layout Neil). I can hear my father snoring in the next room and fully expect my mother to come into the study (where I am) and kick me out so she can get some sleep on the sofa-bed. Checked for some interesting news on CNN Political Ticker to blog about- nothing since this morning. Checked Google News – nothing. Did some work on a U.S. politics post for tomorrow about ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states, and how unpredictability in voting is going to make for an interesting race come November. I had to find some stats and links for this, which got me distracted for a while. Checked my emails. Read the Sitemeter report for the week. Listened to Johnny Cash’s When The Man Comes Around a couple of times.

11:06pm – Went and got my HSTY2656 A House Divided: The American Civil War course reader and an Easter egg. I eat one of the two (you’ll never guess which one!). I’m trying to get ahead of my course readings to make assignments easier. I’m currently on the next tutorial’s readings – the Confederate Constitution (which was very interesting), 2 chapters from Southern Rights – Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism, one chapter being called Jefferson Davis and History, the other Jefferson Davis and the Writ of Habeas Corpus, and a chapter from Lincoln – The Liberal Statesman, this chapter titled The Rule of Law Under Lincoln. This last one is so dense and filled with legal references and specific knowledge that it nearly puts me to sleep. I’d already nearly finished the last reading. A total of 29 pages, and all could be blog-worthy. While reading, I checked Jim Belshaw’s blog to see if there was a reply to my comment (no), followed a link to a blog that he also talked about – The Blonde Canadian, ate 4 mini-Easter eggs, finished my conversation with Chris in England.

11:36pm – Kept reading the course reader, and finished that week’s readings. Onto the next week’s, and a collection of Civil War songs, and an article from The Journal of American History titled ‘The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900′. I do not look forward to that week’s tutorial at all. While reading, I checked Ninglun’s Gateway to see if there was a new layout again – no. Checked his blogs for updates – none. I went to Yahoo7 to check what was on television tomorrow night. Jack crap is on. I remember the days where I used to watch hours and hours of television. Now, little-to-none. I’ve stopped listening to music, as it’s too distracting for these readings.

11:40pm – Reading about a feminised Civil War was too much, and I’m headed to my room to watch some more episodes of Gilmore Girls. I’ll continue this post tomorrow, when I wake up. I’ll also be noting what I get up to once I get off the computer for an update tomorrow.

11:43pm – After getting myself a glass of Vanilla Coke, I settled in to watch some Gilmore Girls. I watched 3 episodes, which totaled 2 hours. These were some really great episodes – some laugh out loud moments. This took me to nearly2am, where I read another chapter of I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert. This chapter was a poke at Hollywood.

2:15am – Lights out, went to sleep soon after.

10:08am – Woke up, shaved, showered, and was ready for a day of not much. I sat down to finish the article about the feminised Civil War. I got through nearly 5 more pages before I gave up again. Unlocked the house, let the dog out the back and had a look around the front yard. All in order. No one else is home – they are all at work.

10:37am – Turned the computer on, sat down and started checking all the news websites: Google News, CNN Political Ticker, Yahoo News, a few political blogs and websites, polling websites for the U.S. primaries, YouTube for new videos (where I find a new idea for a post), and then finally get around to checking my emails, then to my own blog to read any new comments – which there were – and then visit the Jim’s and Neil’s blogs. All this takes roughly an hour and a half, most of it is reading news articles on websites, and then recalculating the maths involved with the U.S. primary race with the latest polls and delegate counts (sounds like a boring act, but it keeps me informed enough). Afterwards, I play some Spider Solitaire to give my brain a rest.

12:15pm – Resumed work on the ‘red/blue’ state post.

12:33pm – Gave up on the ‘red/blue’ state post. Started work an a post about a certain campaign ad.

1:15pm – Posted ‘Fear ad vs truth ad‘. Took longer than usual because of all the parodies I watched concerning the original ‘3am ad’ of Clinton’s that attacked Obama’s foreign policy experience. Now headed downstairs to get some food, as I’ve finally got hungry.

1:31pm – Finished lunch. I prepared and ate a can of Scottish sardines, 2 glasses of Vanilla Coke, a slice of chocolate cake, and now am eating an Easter egg. All this will do me over until around 8pm-ish, when I will eat the dinner that everyone else in the family has already eaten. Back at the computer, I’m now going to start reading the next readings for my other history course HSTY2614 Australian Social History. I have a tutorial paper (1,500 words) on the next week’s reading due, about the Depression in Australia. I chose it because I wanted to get it out the way, but didn’t want to do the first week’s. Thus, I chose the 2nd week’s topic. But so did quite a few other people, which will be interesting to see how tutorial discussions play out (as people writing on the week’s topic are expected to ‘lead’ the discussions).

1:38pm – Signed onto MSN Messenger. Not too many people are online (which is to be expected). Only the Pope, a cousin of mine, and some people I know from overseas. I sign out nearly straight away.

2:08pm – While I was reading, I re-checked a few blogs and pages I had checked earlier. Nothing new. I return now to reading.

2:39pm – Taking a break from reading, I sent an email to a friend I met over the Internet in South Korea. Also, I sent one of my father’s work colleagues who lives in Connecticut, by way of Alabama. Larry from Alabama is a staunch Republican, and to his credit, he gave me his personal email to ‘trade political views’ if I wanted. He also said that when I go over to the States, if I’m going to anywhere his family is, they will gladly accommodate me. I’m thinking now of trying to find my way to Kansas now, to take up this offer. Boredom sets in afterwards and I mill around the Internet, looking up rumours for the next episodes of Lost, then reading some more political opinion pieces that I wouldn’t normally waste my time with.

3:09pm – Received a phone call from Andrew. The first human contact for the day.

3:16pm – Ended phone call with Andrew. Discussion included books we ordered on Amazon, a book I already have, the resurgence of poker, him not being online over the long weekend because the Pope was playing World of Warcraft for 4 straight days, and tentative plans to do something Friday night. I told him that I didn’t have a shift – upon checking after the phone call ended, I realised I did have a shift. Sorry Andrew. I’ll get back to him with this bit of information, and probably plan something for Saturday night now.

3:33pm – Just read some of Keith Olbermann’s The Worst Person in the World. Had a good laugh at some real idiots out there. Thought about resuming any of my history readings, but couldn’t be bothered. Instead, I’m going to get another drink.

3:49pm – After walking around the house for a while, trying to think of a blog post to write, I check on some links that I discarded about Pennsylvania voter registration. I find my way to the New York Times’ report on the story, and there discover a good post. Starting work on it immediately.

4:19pm – Finished my latest post – Campaigning in Pennsylvania – A second look. I think it’s definitely better than the campaign ad that I wrote earlier today, but not one of my best posts. I realised, as I posted it, it has started to rain lightly.

4:26pm – I’m going to check the letterbox to see what catalogues we’ve received today, and maybe some mail. I don’t expect to get any mail – I rarely do.

4:28pm – Guess what? No mail for me. Some for the parents though. Bills, I expect. I’ve decided to start work on my assignment for my Civil War course. I have to write an essay proposal. 500 words I think. But first I need to choose an essay from the list of options.

4:34pm – I checked Jim Belshaw’s blog for updates, and found a monster post. I read it and am quite impressed. Following this, I head over to Ninglun’s Gateway, and see that I’ve got a second reference for the day’s entry. I followed a link to a page where I’ve got a ‘who’s who’ entry. I was impressed, all things considered.

4:40 – Have ruled down the list of possible essay questions to 3:

• Why did foreign powers fail to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy?
• Compare the exercise of political power by the Union and Confederate governments during the war.
• Discuss the way new meanings have been invested in the Civil War by analysing at least three twentiet-century depictions of the war. (n.b.: you can use novels, films, memoirs, etc. You might also choose to focus on a particular theme – say, violence, race, combat experience, the coming of the war, the war’s aftermath, etc.)

I also remembered that the lecturer said if we came up with a question of our own, we could run it by her for approval, and if it passed the grade, we could do that instead. I doubt that my invented question would pass the grade – ‘Why is Barack Obama so great?’

4:45pm – Getting another drink. This time I’m getting 2 glasses and bringing them both up to save another trip.

4:49pm – Mother is home from work. She’s excited to see the dog. I venture downstairs to say hello. All goes well.

5:00pm – I recheck all of my relied-upon news sites, like this morning.

5:21pm – As I’m reading the Wikipedia entry about the Colt Manufacturing Company, I get an SMS from St. Ives Correspondent about my ‘comment section’ being a ‘cactus’. I go to check my recent comments. I apparently give St. Ives Correspondent too much credit in terms of deduction. He hasn’t seen that this has been a progressing blog post. St. Ives: The time that precedes each paragraph in this post is when I wrote and saved the post. I would have thought that by not signing my name at the end, it would denote that the post isn’t finished. If I need to point it out, I will: The post will not be finished until 10:06pm tonight. Leave the squabbling and nit-picking to me – it’s a fine art to perfect my friend.

5:30pm – Reply to St. Ives’ comments.

5:32pm – Sign onto MSN Messenger again. Conversation immediately starts with St. Ives.

5:38pm – Start listening to music. Start with 1234 by Feist. Start my plan for the Civil War assignment I have to do. I’ve settled on the questions: Why did foreign powers fail to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy?

5:47pm – Check a few of my familiar blogs again. Bored once more. I’ve begun to think about what I’ll be doing later tonight – watching some films that a friend lent me or watching more Gilmore Girls.

5:48pm – Mother asks me about going to the doctors. I tell her that the only way I’ll go is if she makes the appointment. She says she will make it for Wednesday. By her saying that, I think that she thinks today is Monday, and has been thrown off by the public holiday. I won’t mention anything until she is heading to bed.

6:01pm – Call from my father. He needs an email from a calling card he’s left at home. He’s in Brisbane at the moment on business. I give it to him. Conversation lasts 2 minutes.

6:27pm – I’ve been reading extremely interesting essays and pieces about diplomatic relations during the Civil War. I’m glad that I’ve chosen this topic, and expect I’ll enjoy it. Diana, a woman I know from New York through the Internet, has started a conversation with me. We’re catching up on people we both know, though I haven’t heard from for some time.

6:32pm – Sister gets home from work.

6:51pm – Dinner is served up. Burritos. My mother and sister are happy to eat together downstairs, while I bring my food back up to the study to eat at the computer.

7:18pm – In between reading about foreign relations during the Civil War, I’ve been trying to find tickets to a New York Yankees match in July. The prospects don’t look too good for getting good tickets without shelling out a ridiculous amount of money. The readings about the Civil War, while good, have started to get all melded together, and I’m giving it a break. I’m now going to seriously draw up an itinerary for my July holiday and get planning on that.

7:24pm – Checked some blogs while I waited for some flight websites to load.

7:32pm – Decided that flying directly into New York, and not taking a 3 day stop-over in Los Angeles is what is best for my holiday. I’m still talking to Diana from New York about baseball. She is a Boston Red Sox fan and a New York Mets fan.

7:41pm – Started playing with a trip planner that I found on STATravel. While it was fun to begin with, it is giving me headaches now. I want to go to some ‘out of the way’ places, like Iowa and Kansas, but this thing doesn’t give you the option, or when you try and use the feature that should enable it, it crashes on me. I’ve completely stopped thinking about the Civil War or the Depression.

8:04pm – The Pope starts a conversation with me over MSN, saying that Obama should be voted in as president, Pope, and something to do with the television show The Iron Chef. Seeings I don’t watch that show (because from the whole 5 minutes I’ve seen of it, it looks stupid), I told him I support the first two propositions. We exchange our happiness that Bill Richardson has endorsed Obama, and that Nancy Pelosi will be the one to tap Hillary on the shoulder to bow out of the race. I say I hope that Pelosi does the tapping with 2×4, which has the Pope laughing.

8:15pm – I check my WordPress Dashboard (where I control the blog from) for new comments and see that Jim and Mr. Rabbit have both commented. Both were rather recent, which means I don’t have to be annoyed with myself for being late in referencing them. Jim: The Monster post was fine as it was. Mr. Rabbit: Inspired was the last word I expected you to call this – futile, ridiculous, crazy all sprang to mind before inspired.

8:33pm – I stop playing with the flight planning thing. After a little under an hour, I’m no closer to having a formed schedule of what I want. I believe I’ve narrowed down where I want to go to, but I think the next part will include me trying to get the flights locked down with either my father’s help or a travel agent’s. I am a bit wary trying to do it all alone. What is troubling me is the accommodation for all the places I plan to go. Not the price (I know that it will be expensive), rather staying in the ‘right’ place – i.e. near to the people I want to meet over there.

8:35pm – Decide I need a drink. My mother has been bringing me drinks all afternoon – she has been offering them, and I’ve taken up the offer. While I probably should do some more university work, I’ve decided that I want to do some blog-related things. I check some people’s blogs, and then go to Google News to find something to blog about. If I can’t find anything there, I’ll go to some U.S. politics websites. I don’t have high hopes of finding something to write about – the dead news hours have come around now.

8:50pm – As expected, I couldn’t find anything that took my fancy to blog about. I checked my email accounts, cleaned out my spam folders, and read some subscription emails I received through the day, though didn’t read, knowing full well that extreme boredom come post-7:30pm for me.

8:53pm – Checked my MySpace for something to do. A good waste of time because the website takes so long to load.

8:57pm – My sister and mother sound like they are having fun downstairs. I’m going to investigate what they are doing, and try to put a stop to it. And I’ll get another drink while I’m down there.

9:18pm – I’ve come back from the computer. My sister and mother were intent on showing me parts of The Footy Show from last week. As I drank my can of Pepsi, I watchd and laughed at the bits. I found out my doctors appointment is for Thursday. All the while, when I say I’m a bit peck-ish for food, my mother suggests chips, chocolate, lollies, and more sugar-laden things.

9:22pm – Check my Technorati profile and blog rating. This blog, among the registered blogs at Technorati, is now ranked 150,747. Yesterday, at around the same time, it was 135,000-something. This fall is due to the blog losing ‘authority’ – links from other blogs. It was at 55 ‘authority’ yesterday; now it’s only at 51. Out of interest, I go looking for what Ninglun’s Gateway has (962,510/ 8 ‘authority’), New Lines from a Floating Life (294,012/ 28 ‘authority’) and then Personal Reflections, Jim Belshaw’s blog, (345,597/ 24 ‘authority’). While I am surprised at some of this, I then remember that nearly everyone one of my politics posts gets picked up by those blogs out there that trawl through WordPress for recent entries by keywords, then copies the first few lines, and links to my blog, inviting the reader to ‘read the rest of this great article’. I accept that these aren’t real links to my blog, and consider my blog’s ranking and ‘authority’ inflated.

9:34pm – Someone has cooked blueberry muffins. I saw the box was out when I went down for my lunch earlier today. I just heard my sister head into her room and close the door – I assume she has retired for the night and will watch television in her room until she goes to sleep. Thus, it is my mother who made the muffins. I think I know what my late night snack will be tonight.

9:37pm – I get a message from Diana. Our conversation, which had died at 7:48pm has now resumed. Baseball season was starting today, and she was all prepared to watch the game with some friends and rink some beers. Apparently the cable channel is out, and she can’t watch the match. I’m just glad to be talking to someone, and not amusing myself with stupid things I could find on the Internet. Because I’m definitely not going to do any university readings.

9:44pm – It just started bucketing down with rain over here. I love it – the sound, the smell. I really do like the rain.

9:49pm – For some reason I start thinking about the Sailor Moon and Pokemon cartoons. I used to watch Sailor Moon religiously through primary school, then Pokemon started on Cheez TV on channel 10, and I was so hooked on that. Those were so good cartoons. Not like today’s crap. I started to think how I could turn this thinking into a post, then abandoned hope, as those shows were so many years ago I would probably just get ridiculed for writing about them. For example: Sailor Moon was an anime cartoon about 5 teenage girls who had secret identities (each a different planet or the moon) and would fight monsters and bad guys. My favourite characters were Sailor Jupiter (who appeared later in the series) and Darien (I think the only male hero in the series, who was cool because he fought in a tuxedo, had amnesia, and wore what looked like a pair of glasses frames as his only method of disguise). Now do you see the problem?

10:02pm – I find myself at EzyDVD’s website. I’m interested in two things: 1) Is Sailor Moon on DVD yet?; 2) I wonder in my pre-ordered items are in yet?

10:06pm – I’m still at EzyDVD’s website, my mother just said goodnight to me, and I’m the last one left awake.

And that is how I spent my 24 hours. This was a somewhat productive day – 2 blog posts (other than this one), did quite a bit of my university readings, and started one of my assignments. I’ve had better days for both facets of my life – more productive on the university work, more blog posts written – but I think the ‘balance’ I struck today would suffice for the week’s break I have now. When I’m back at university, and the assignments are more ‘pressing’, I’ll be more productive. But for now, I’m happy with my day’s efforts.

Thomas.

Here is her response to Obama and his minions who are freaking out about the 3am ad:

Isn’t it nice to be able to go second for a change?

One more thing: Tucsonlynn is on her way to Texas this weekend to lend a hand to Hillary’s campaign.  Send her positive thoughts and maybe she will be nice enough to update us on what she is seeing.

Oooo, Clinton is FEARMONGERING!

And Obama is running around saying this is about Iraq and his excellent judgment (that he was not expected to verify with a vote).

No, this is not about Iraq. This is about dealing with fear rationally. Bush captured the market on fearmongering but the terrorism problem hasn’t gone away. In fact Bush has made the problem worse and likely more explosive. And as Clinton has correctly pointed out before, acts of terrorism frequently occur during transitions in government. Just before or right after elections.

Now, if you feel comfortable putting a complete neophyte in the driver’s seat during a period of time when we haven’t gotten a handle on terrorism, then by all means, vote for Obama. But if you are the kind of person who keeps a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, smoke detectors in you ceilings, double locks on your doors, drives within the speed limit and has no need to panic in the event of a natural disaster because you’ve made preparations in advance, then this should be a no-brainer. Go with the person who has seen it from the inside and who has access to the best mentor in the world.

Obama has it wrong here. There are still plenty of people who are justifiably concerned about terrorism and they are not going to be comfortable with someone who doesn’t understand their concerns about the ongoing threat we face. I still get a little unnerved by the sudden and persistent whomp-whomp of low flying helicopters over my roof (it happened a lot after 9/11 so now I pay attention to the noise). I get concerned about terrorism, probably because of my location in the NYC megalopolis. But I am not panicking. And I know I will rest much easier if Hillary is in the White House because I know she’s not going to trivialize the advice of her counterterrorism experts and tell them there’s nothing to worry about.

In any case, when McCain runs scarier ads in the general, Hillary will have much better bona fides on national security than Obama. McCain will make him look like a nonchalant weakling.  Now THAT’S scary.