So there I was, minding my own business by making calls on behalf of President Bush at the Cambridge Republican Party Headquarters today when a curious thing happened. The word passed around that the Bush campaign was looking for attendees to show up at a Cheney rally today in Zanesville. Well, as enthused as I was to make calls to people who may or may not have wanted to talk to me about supporting President Bush, I decided to join the expedition to the next county west.

Unlike the outdoor rally held by President Bush in Cambridge this summer, this rally was smaller, seemed to have less security and was held indoors. Also, we didn't wait nearly as long, only about an hour as opposed to three for the President. The Muskingum Valley Victory Center was a large venue, and newspaper accounts place the attendance at the rally at 500.

Cheney delivered his standard stump speech to a hugely sympathetic crowd. The masses were fired up, ready and willing to sacrifice their political allegiances to Bush Cheney ‘04. Clearly, Cheney was speaking to the choir- and the choir was eager to hear the same talking points yet again.

The gist of his speech was clear enough. The Bush administration had nothing to run from. Despite the way the Iraq has been portrayed as a failure in the popular press and a lackluster yet hardly ailing economy, Cheney was giving no quarter to his critics on the left. Even the recent videotape of a freshly made up Usama Bin Laden garnered nothing more than a general comment about how we will not let our enemies determine to the course of our political process. This is one of the few spots of common ground on which both campaigns will agree on and admit to in public.

I left the event feeling energized and ready for action. I plan on making more calls on behalf of the President on Monday. Hopefully that will help to shore up his already huge base here in rural Ohio and give him the numbers to overcome a probable Kerry surge in the metros like Columbus and Cleveland.

Godspeed Mr President. . .

On November 2, I go above and beyond the call of civic duty. I'm working as a precinct manager in Cambridge 1B. I don't anticipate any major problems, since we seem to be far enough from the major population centers of Columbus and Cleveland to avoid the problems brought on by high new voter registration and challenges by the Republican Party.

Initially I was reluctant to work at this election due to some of the lawsuits and legal haggling here in Ohio. Then I realized I was better off doing this, even if there are problems, than some ailing senior citizen who could be easily confused. That's how I justified it anyway.

In any case, I'll be at the polls for about 13 hours Tuesday. Pray for me. . .

How many of you read the New York Times? A show of hands please. OK. Now, how many of you who raised their hands are journalists? Uh huh. I thought so. Just about all of you did. I'm guessing that journalists, be it print or broadcast, read the Times like Christian fundamentalists read the Bible.

I object to this. In my opinion, the Times can no longer righteously be called the "paper of record." There have been positive changes at the Times as a result of the Jayson Blair fiasco. But the real changes must be made in the way the paper is perceived by its readers. If scandals like this teach us nothing else, it should make clear the need to get our news from multiple sources. Putting your information eggs in any one basket makes no sense in the age of the internet. Why continue to put the Times up on a pedestal, gauging the newsworthiness of any story by whether or not it appears there? Some broadcast news and probably some print outlets continue to do this. I would like to think its influence in cyberspace is more restrained, but who knows?

Don't misunderstand me. The Times is a great paper. Columnists such as Thomas Friedman, William Safire and even the occasionally shrill Maureen Dowd alone make the paper worth reading. But it shouldn't be the barometer of news.

The Blair fiasco could've happened anytime, anywhere at any news organization. This Slate article runs down the major problems other papers have had with bad journalism. The key to its prevention- and insulation from its consequences- is exposure to a wide swath of press, television, and internet sources. Not soley the New York Times.

My quest to find broadband internet service continues. I tire of crawling along the www at 28.8kbps speed, due to these junky phone lines. Be it DSL or Cable, I don't care, and make it quick. There's only so much torture a man can take. . .

I called Adelphia yesterday and asked them for service. They said that they'd send a technician to survey my residence and get back to me within 10 days. I had heard this before, seeing as how I called them two months ago. Within a few days a woman had left a message on my answering machine saying I was essentially screwed- that the company refused to cross over the hill to my house from the other side of the street. This is something like a 1000ft or so. Not much in my opinion, but a deal breaker in their minds.

I called their competitor a few months a ago too, Cebridge. If the reports on the 'net are to be believed, these guys run their company like a room full of monkeys high on acid and alcohol. I don't care. If these people can get me out of dial-up hell I will put up with anything. When I get jaded by the broadband experience, THEN I can start bitching about service issues. Cebridge basically said, we don't service you. Try Adelphia.

The bottom line is, I will bug both of these companies until I get satisfaction. Anything less would be a disservice to me and low bandwidth sufferers everywhere. Broadband or death!

There's a column that appears in my local paper that is written by a local woman. The focus of the column is the various Christian-based adventures of the author and a character named Martha Jane. A short scan of the column turns up ominous words and phrases: "with help from above", "the grace of the lord", etc. That's enough for me to think twice about reading the entire article. I'm a purely secular person, and I believe this stuff should be kept out of sight and in the privacy of homes and special houses, a la prostitution.

Ah, kidding.

It makes perfect sense to write this kind of stuff in our local paper. After all, there is a strong undercurrent of Christian sentiment and morality that runs through this area. So upon some reflection of the situation this "Martha Jane" column is a logical series to run here.

But that won't stop me from reserving the right to make fun of it at any time.

This is just a short entry to let you know there are more posts in the pipeline. Lately I've been more focused on writing about what's happening here in the real world than what's occurring online. Too many bloggers are going that route and doing a far better job of it than I ever could.

I'm back on the nightshift at my convenience store job, and so it means new writings with an air of unreality are soon to surface.

Stay tuned true believers.

Here's a letter to the editor I wrote that was published by my local paper this last week. No big deal, since they'd probably print a communist manifesto if I sent it to them.

I address this letter to those who have not decided who they will vote for in the Presidential election this November 2. The choice may seem difficult due to the murky waters of pundits, commercials and political gossip, but I hope this can make the decision more clear.
Are we safer now than we were four years ago? My feeling is yes, because I would much rather see our troops fighting the war on terror overseas in places like Iraq and Afghanistan than here on our soil. Some people believe the action in Iraq was unjustified and unnecessary. I don't. Even if Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, he would've rolled out the welcome mat for Al Qaida sooner or later. Why wait to deal with him? 12 years of evading UN rules and sanctions was long enough.
As for jobs, I recently came back to work after a long streak of unemployment. In the frustration of not being able to find work, it is tempting to blame the President for bad circumstances. But every day I see new ads in this newspaper, and in other local papers, for new and higher-paying jobs. A few weeks ago, story here in the Jeff suggested that Detroit Diesel could be adding new positions in the coming year. The signs of economic progress are there for people who are willing to see them.
Some people believe our President is as out of touch as his father was. I have to disagree again, since I have never seen any public speaker connect with his audience as well as Bush did during his stump speech here in Cambridge this summer. His speech reminded me of why I'd voted for him in 2000 and why I support him this year. Our concerns are his concerns. Our priorities are his priorities. Our values are his values.
The Kerry campaign is advancing a complex and convoluted message that boils down to, ‘I'll do a better job doing the exact same things George Bush will do, only I'll do it better because I'm not George Bush.' That is simply not good enough. In these times, with a war being waged overseas and an economy coming back to life, now is not the time to change leadership.
I hope this letter has made things more clear. However you decide, remember to vote on November 2.

Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles Vol 1 is already out. I bought a copy from Amazon.com and should see it in my hands by the weekend. If the book is as good as the liner notes for his Biograph box set, then we're in for a hell of a ride. Media coverage has been hard and unrelenting, a publicist's grand slam.

Excerpt from Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6099172/site/newsweek/

Reviews from:
The New York Times
http://nytimes.com/2004/10/05/books/05masl.html

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20041005/d_cover05_dom.art.htm

I walked in to work today, took a good look at the schedule and flinched. Next week, I must struggle through another five days of midnight shift on the gas end.

Damnation.

I am not looking forward to this. I always used to say I wouldn't mind working on third shift, but it would have to be on a permanent basis. That was before I remembered what havoc they can wreak on your life even if you somehow manage to get enough sleep during the day to make it through the night. If you've read some past posts of this blog then you know just what kind of altered state a third shift can give you. Hopefully a few diplomatic words to my boss will get me off the graveyard shift.

However, on the positive side, I've written some good posts when I should have been cleaning something during the wee hours. In any case, I'll work the week I'm scheduled, but if I see some more thirds scheduled in the future I will NOT be a happy camper.