There’s nothing like coming back from a short trip and looking at the number of unread items in your aggregator … I used to think going through email after a trip was bad.

Juan Cole today explained exactly why I’ve been publishing a weblog for these past few years:

As for me, I’m just trying to understand our world. If the understanding I attain is found useful by others, I am gratified, and I think understanding is a prerequisite for making good policy.

Substitute “decisions” for “policy” in that quote. I doubt anyone who makes policies reads this site.

I’m going on a short trip and probably won’t be posting anything until Wednesday, September 8.

One thing I’ve tried to studiously avoid at this site is analysis of election strategy. I’m not suited to it because I have no idea what convinces “swing voters” of anything. However, I can’t resist talking a bit about Kerry’s speech last night, in which he came out swinging and took on the lies and deceptions that have been heaped upon him for months head on, and clouted the administration over its own record as well. Will it work? Like I said, I have no idea. What I wonder about is whether it was the product of genius or desperation.

Half of me says it was desperation. For weeks, Democrats have been begging for red meat. Pundits have been beseeching Kerry to come out strong against the Bush administration — to start the negative campaign in earnest. There have been rumors that Kerry’s campaign staff is in disarray, that changes were coming, and that the wheels are coming off completely. The conventional wisdom is that Kerry, who seemed content to let his name be trashed by a host of second rate hatchet men, was so offended by his treatment at the hands of the Republicans at this week’s convention that he finally had to come out and challenge them. Or maybe it’s that he is too much of a wimp to go negative but seeing the wheels fall off, he realized he had no other choice. That things are just that desperate.

Maybe that’s what has happened. I’m not a Kerry insider, so I have no idea. Or maybe Kerry is smarter than people are willing to give him credit for. Maybe Kerry knows that trashing the President, the Commander in Chief, and the in some ways symbolic representation of our country when we’re at war is a dangerous move. Maybe he had well founded fears that people would see that as undermining the country when it needs to be as strong as possible. Everybody knew that Kerry was going to get hammered at the Republican National Convention — the Republicans said as much in the run up to the convention.

Or is it that given that we have two months of campaigning still remaining, Kerry was a genius to let the Republicans sink as low as they could, to take their absurd caricature of him as far as possible. At this point, Kerry can say almost anything and still not seem as negative as the Bush campaign, and who but the most bitter Republican partisan wouldn’t understand? They’ve defamed everything he’s done in his life, and now he has two months to hit back. Look at Bush’s record, Kerry has enough material to bury Bush without leaving the context of his term as President. And he has free rein to do so because of the way he’s been treated.

So has Kerry sunken as far as you can sink before starting to climb back up, or has worked the “rope a dope” to perfection? Will he lose anyway? Beats the Hell out of me.

Ed Felten did a bit of fact checking on Wikipedia, and found that while most of the articles he checked were accurate, the Microsoft antitrust case page has problems.

I made a big mistake last night and watched some TV coverage of the RNC. I tuned in to watch John Kerry’s speech in Columbus, Ohio, and wound up watching a couple of panel discussions hosted by Chris Matthews. (I also watched a panel earlier in the evening where Pat Buchanan said he found Zell Miller’s speech very entertaining, and Laura Ingraham said there was much female support for Miller because ladies love a man who shows strength.) The obvious question is what use these panels had in informing voters about anything.

I don’t know why they have show after show on television that just lets people on both sides parrot the talking points. (I hope I’m not exposing horrible bias by saying Republican seem worse about this than Democrats.) I saw former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts on television several times, and every time he said that this election is about the future, and Kerry only talks about the past. I mean, obviously, this is a lie. Take a look at Kerry’s web site or read any of his speeches and you’ll see that he’s made a number of concrete proposals that discuss how he’ll address problems with health insurance, offshoring jobs, and so forth. You may not agree with them, but they’re there. Why lie?

I’m not smart enough to tell you what the big problem is here, but the way these shows are structured and are conducted, they squander any potential they might have to help people make an informed decision about who to vote for. That’s a shame.

Ken Layne lays down the most devestating barrage on the President that I’ve read anywhere, from a sort of moderate/libertarian perspective.

Update: Molly Ivins does her usual yeoman’s work in blasting Bush from the tried and true progressive perspective.

I confess to having only watched the synication wars (between the 83 distinct flavors of RSS and Atom) with bemusement. Today, James Robertson argues that it’s time to throw in the towel on Atom, because people are already deploying Atom 0.3 feeds and the 1.0 spec will be irrelevant by the time it’s published.

Rather than getting frustrated by the fact that the Republicans are standing up every night and telling an endless stream of lies about John Kerry, I’m going to assume it’s the best admission yet that Bush has no record to run on and that they’re growing increasingly desperate. I’m not saying their tactics won’t work, but they’re certainly a sure sign of bankruptcy.

If you live in America, you must read John Cassidy’s New Yorker article on Bush’s plan for the ownership society. You should really ask yourself if America will be a better place if this vision is achieved. On the other hand, if you’re prone to fits of depression, you may be better off not reading it. Between this article and the Republican vision for further screwing up health insurance, I find myself taking a look at a world map and trying to figure out where I’d prefer to live.

Update: Daniel Gross explains how expanding government and personal debt confounds the idea of moving toward the “ownership society.”