~ john kerry needs to knock off that salute schtick right now. for one thing, it is against military protocol for any civilian – even the president – to salute active duty officers and enlisted men; this is not the primary reason he should cut it out of his campaign speeches, however. kerry seems to have gotten a big kick over how well that tacky ‘reporting for duty’ gimmick went over at the beginning of his nomination acceptance speech. since that time, we’ve seen numerous images of him repeating the move whenever he makes an appearance on his bus/train tour. the kerry talking points are that bush didn’t go to vietnam, and kerry volunteered to fight in vietnam; okay, that lesson has been learned by anyone who plans to vote this november. nevertheless, many of kerry’s ‘supporters’ are still sore over how the democratic party administration swindled the anti-war dean out of the nomination; also note the only other candidate who received delegate votes is the only other anti-war candidate, the honorable dennis kucinich. the new lesson is that the continued conjuring of militaristic imagery and sloganeering by the democratic candidate whose vague hints about his strategy for iraq suggest that his plan is indistinguishable from bush’s plan is a turn off for the idealistic supporters of the progressive former candidates whose tenuous loyalty to kerry is one of convenience, not affinity.

even the pedants at the angry red planet, recently troubled by the bedfellows whom ralph nader has chosen in his efforts to have his name on the ballots in certain states, from whom he has chosen to accept money, and who he has chosen to publish his latest book, hesitantly considered a concession that kerry is the last best hope for the united states. however, a bitter attack upon the angry red planet by fellow liberals and/or progressives over our announcement that we believe that dekalb county/metro atlanta would better be served by cathy woolard than by cynthia mckinney brought us to reevaluate the value of doctrine and our place within its confines; the result of this examination has been a new lease on the life of our nader votes. as far as john kerry goes, though, he still looks like a jackass to everyone who isn’t gung ho about the fiasco in iraq or in vietnam every time he salutes other civilians.

~ after five good years of eudora [w], we have made the switch to thunderbird [w]. we’ve only had it open for a day, and though it seems slow in sending mail – this perception is probably due to the progress window that pops up instead of running the background – thunderbird’s handling of multiple email accounts and identities is far superior to eudora’s abilities, which is why we made the switch in the first place. even so, we would like to see all the email accounts place the incoming mail in the same inbox whilst still using imap.

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