In April 1961, John Glenn famously said:<\/p>\n
“They just beat the pants off us, that’s all, and there’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”<\/i><\/p>\n
TG and I listened to the main speeches at the Republican convention on NPR tonight.McCain had a brilliant speech, delivered somewhat flatly until the end, when the punch line “…We fight for love of freedom and justice–a love that is invincible. Keep that faith! Keep your courage! Stick together! Stay strong! Do not yield! Do not flinch! Stand up! Stand up with our President and fight! We’re Americans! We’re Americans and we’ll never surrender! They will<\/b>!” was delivered with what sounded like real passion.<\/p>\n
Then Giuliani came on. I’ve never heard him speak; just a few sound bites from press conferences seen in airport lounges and hotels. He’s the street version of Mario Cuomo; they both have the knack for being both oratorical and personal. Giuliani gave a major speech as though he was having a conversation with a friend.<\/p>\n
TG is a committed Democrat; she adores Edwards (as do I), sees gay marriage as the #1 issue and doesn’t share my misgivings about Kerry’s foreign policy. But she was rattled by the speeches tonight, and the clear line they seemed to draw between Kerry’s policies and Bush’s.<\/p>\n
So I surf over to the left blogs – to TAPPED<\/a> and TalkLeft<\/a> and read – carping. <\/p>\n “GIULIANI’S SPEECH, 11:20 P.M.: This is unbelievably long.<\/p>\n –Sam Rosenfeld”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sam, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not how it’s going to read in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n If anyone is the personification of the opposite of freedom, it’s former federal prosecutor and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Herr Giuliani is a more apt name for him. How could anyone just not want to retch listening to Giuliani tonight as he tried to sell himself and the Republicans as the party that would bring freedom to the world.<\/p>\n Giuliani cleaned up the streets in New York by arresting the poor, the homeless, the squeegee cleaners, the mentally ill and the addicted. Yes, New York became cleaner, but at what price? At the price of freedom….which he now fraudulently pretends to champion. Sickening.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jeralyn, I don’t think that that’s what is going to help swing votes in Columbus.<\/p>\n Look, I assume that I’m not the only one who would like there to be an election contest here. And what needs to happen if that’s going to be the case is pretty simple isn’t handwaving and denial.<\/p>\n One can only hope that’s not what’s happening behind the doors in the Kerry campaign. We didn’t get to the moon first by denegrating the Soviet space program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In April 1961, John Glenn famously said: “They just beat the pants off us, that’s all, and there’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.” TG and I listened to the main speeches at the Republican convention on NPR […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}