That was the line from Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention, completed just moments ago, that I’ll never forget. So simple, so concise, and so perfect in making its point — you can be tough and smart at the same time. Just carrying a big stick is not acceptable.

The man is simply the most brilliant speaker of our age, better even than Tony Blair. He knows how to tighten the strings and excite the crowd, like an ingenious DJ who’s totally tuned in to his dancing followers.

Everyone, absolutely everyone is raving about him, even the Fox goons. Attack his morals, criticize his policies, deconstruct his hypocrisies — it doesn’t matter. He is the best orator of our age and he accomplished his mission in spades. What a thrill. What a poignant memory of what it’s like to have a real president. What a rallying cry for Kerry (and Clinton was extremely careful to make Kerry the centerpiece of all his points).

Now Bill, go away and let things settle down so that when JFK steps up to the podium on Thursday you’re an inspiring memory. Pass the baton, and let Kerry work his own magic. Everything, absolutely everything hinges on his upcoming performance. I believe he will rise to this extraordinary occasion and electrify the party and the nation in a way we never believed he could. The world is holding its breath, and Kerry knows it. He won’t disappoint.

Last week was an odd one, even for someone accustomed to odd weeks. I was offered no fewer than three separate jobs, totally by surprise. On top of that, three other companies offered to put me on a monthly retainer to be their on-call writer. This leaves me in a unique bind: Do I give up the nerve-wracking and up-and-down life of a freelancer to live the American dream — a steady paycheck, a retirement plan, full benefits, paid vacations, and a return to the despised rat race — or do I choose to sleep as long as I want and take the gamble that I’ll get enough freelance business to be rich?

This is really tough. My present inclination is to take one of the jobs, keep doing as much of the freelance stuff that I can on the side, and after six months, when I’ve got enough money to be a bit more independent, re-evaluate the situation and maybe go back to freelancing.

I really don’t know. So whatever the first commenter says, I’ll do. (Just kidding.) I guess it’s always better to have too many options as opposed to too few. I just hate having to make momentous decisions like this, and risk looking back in dread sometime in the future. I’ll keep you posted.

So Drudge has started another of his infamous firestorms over Teresa Heinz Kerry telling a reporter to “shove it.” Learn the facts, and you’ll see that Teresa was being kind.

The “reporter” in question was Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. If you want to know why Mrs. Kerry might have a beef with Mr. McNickle, you can read part of the answer here: the Tribune-Review editorial page has been on a disgusting and dishonest jihad against the Heinz Endowments for nearly a year. He’s lucky that a fleeting tonguelashing is all he got.

Let’s hope people learn the full story before jumping to conclusions of Teresa being out of control.

If you despise Bill O’Reilly — and if you dont, you’re at the wrong blog — stop now and head over to Larry Lessig. There, you’ll find his exquisite letter blasting O’Reilly for his cruel and ongoing slander of one Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the attack on the World Trade Center. I watch this every night on Fox and I feel sick — I’ve never seen a pundit so abuse his bully pulpit. I won’t excerpt or paraphrase — all I’ll say is that Lessig’s letter is breathtaking. A masterpiece. Some fine comments, too.

This, too, is via the directory of wonderful things.

Since I’m writing about sports now, I thought I’d recommend this link to a high-action clip from the new Thai kick-boxing flick, Mach. (I’m presuming the movie’s Japanese but am not sure.)

I saw Bourne Supremacy today and loved it, but this looks way more intense.

Via BoingBoing.

Taiwan war exercises, via the Telegraph

I swore not to post about this over-blogged topic anymore, but this story about China scaring the shit out of P’eng-hu Islanders — unfortunately situated between China and Taiwan — is quite scary.

The most aggressive practice run to be staged by China for an invasion of Taiwan is terrifying the inhabitants of a tiny archipelago in the South China Sea.

The P’eng-hu Islands, which lie in crystal clear waters between Taiwan and mainland China, have been identified by Beijing as the first stepping-stone for an all-out assault on Taiwan, which governs the islands.

Last week, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) massed over the horizon to prepare a fearsome demonstration of its power – using 18,000 seaborne troops to launch a mock invasion of Communist-controlled Dongshan island, a part of China’s Fujian province, 170 miles to the south-west.

Such war games are an annual event, but this year’s exercise has a chilling intent. China’s Communist mouthpiece, the People’s Daily newspaper, declared: “This year’s military exercise is a substantial warning to Taiwan’s independence elements” – a reference to Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian, who plans constitutional changes to which China objects.

In the event of an invasion, the People’s Daily added, “the PLA would immediately take the P’eng-hu Islands, forming an outpost position to control Taiwan island”.

The P’eng-hu’s citizens are, understandably, hysterical. One woman tells the reporter, “I love this island, it’s my home, but I’m planning to leave as I have no doubt that P’eng-hu will be attacked. I have no choice but to think of the safety of my family.”

We all know there’s been a lot of back and forth about how China could or could not attack Taiwan. While I find it very unlikely, I’ve seen stranger things happen in my lifetime. It’s improbable, but appears more than possible, especially considering today’s bizarre state of international affairs (an antagonistic Chen, a xenophobic China, a preoccupied America, etc.)

A few days ago, Joseph of the Longbow Papers recommended a study by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace titled Deterring Conflict in the Taiwan Strait: The Successes and Failures of Taiwan’s Defense Reform and Modernization Program (pdf file). It’s long and detailed, and may not be for the casual reader. But it opened my eyes as to how Taiwan’s military operates and what its challenges are. And it reinforced my feelings that, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, an invasion by China is something Taiwan must seriously consider and be prepared for.

The Financial Times has picked up the dramatic story, which should help ensure its continuity.

A Chinese journalist’s eloquent protest against his newspaper’s political masters has thrown a spotlight on the Communist government’s media controls…..

Mr Lu wrote that Youth Daily staff had long taken a pragmatic view of the role of a Communist party paper, “holding their noses” when filling news pages with the activities of Youth League leaders and “transmitting lies when forced to do so by senior levels”. But a desire to be professional and objective journalists meant such accommodation had limits.

“The China Youth Daily can be a rubbish bin for the League central committee, but the paper itself must absolutely not be turned into rubbish,” he wrote. “There will certainly be people to produce a garbage paper, but it won’t be us….

The Maoist dictum that the party must control both “the barrel of the gun and the barrel of the pen” was hopelessly unsuited to modern China’s needs, he wrote, blaming a harsh editorial in the party’s People’s Daily as a factor behind the bloody end to student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.”

This guy is supernaturally brave; the article quotes sections of his letter that seethe with rage and contempt at a government that tolerates neither dissent nor idealism. So far, no punishment or repercussion.

Reading his words, I think back to my interview with the 1989 student protestor and flag bearer in Shanghai, and how he told me the Chinese people today don’t care about repression and rights and freedom of speech. Financial security is all that matters. And I know that to a large extent he’s right. But then, there’s Jiao Guobiao and Liu Di and Du Daobin and Lu Yuegang and Jiang Yanyong and those frightening study groups, so we know somebody in China sure cares about liberties. They’re mainly academics, but the schools are where the unrest that leads to change so often begins, especially in China.

The article wonders how China can reconcile its efforts to commercialize its media and attract more foreign investment, while at the same time prohibiting dissent and censoring anything it sees as “idealistic.” It’s an excellent question.

UPDATE: This is indispensable — go to CDN now for a translation of much of Lu’s letter. It’s great.

Update II: Also impressive is this translation of the entire letter.

I had no idea.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted on sports before, so this’ll be a first. A Brit is mad as hell that the head of the Federation Internationale de Football Associatio, Sepp Blatter (what a name) is trying to suck up to the Chinese by telling them they sorta kinda invented soccer. Apparently to an Englishman that’s the equivalent of high treason.

I nearly choked on my chicken chow mein. The news was devastating. Alright, I know the sun has clearly set on the British Empire — all but for the Rock of Gibraltar, that is — but now Sepp Blatter is trying to take away our last vestige of dignity.

The all-powerful president of world governing body FIFA had the nerve to say recently that the Chinese — not the English — invented soccer. The most powerful man in football, who once suggested female soccer players should wear skimpy outfits, is now pandering to the Chinese. He’s even offering so-called evidence that soccer began in the Orient and not on the lush playing fields of Merry Olde England.

Where’s Sir Alex Ferguson when you need someone to kick a soccer boot at someone?

I’m devastated. My forefathers, who once chased a pig’s inflated bladder through muddy fields from one English shire to the next, are turning over in their damp graves. “But you cannot deny the history that in China there is a recollection and evidence that they played the game a thousand years ago,” Blatter told Sky Sports this week.

“When in China, tell the Chinese they invented everything,” seems to be Blatter’s motto. After all, think of all those soccer shirts you can sell to a nation of 1.3 billion people that love David Beckham. We all know the Chinese invented gun powder, printing and fortune cookies, but nowhere in Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book did it mention anything about soccer. Come on Sepp! Are they padding your expense account in that so-called land of great Socialist equality?

I didn’t know articles on sports could be so well written. Maybe I should stop automatically tossing the sports section in the trash.

Some of us obnoxious bloggers were predicting this was going to happen well over a year ago. Alas, no one listened to us, and look at the consequences.

It seems that the exhortations of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), calling for the urgent handling of floating waste in the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze River only two months ago, has not had the desired effect. Large quantities of floating matter are now heading down the river towards the dam and reservoir and the local authorities involved say that they do not have the funds to deal with it.

Work to block the waste in the counties of Wanzhou, Fengjie and Wushan is facing complete cessation because the money to pay for the equipment and the staff has not yet arrived, according to a report in the official western Chinese news service, Zhongguo Xibu Wang (China West News).

As Interfax previously reported, SEPA issued an emergency notice in May, urging local authorities and enterprises to implement the guidelines previously set out by the State Council on the handling of waste in the river. However, SEPA has discovered that in the recent period of heavy rain, floating matter now covers the entire surface of a number of estuaries on the Yangtze, and says that it might not only affect the quality of the water in the Three Gorges, but also navigation, tourism and the Three Gorges Project itself.

According to the State Council, the Three Gorges Project Corporation (TGPC) is responsible for the floating waste in the Yangtze River, but local county governments are responsible for the tributaries. However, the TGPC “has up to now not yet started” its work, SEPA says.

There was so much evidence this was going to happen, and as I noted before, Simon Winchester saw it all coming years ago! When we look back at this ecological catastrophe ten years from now and survey all the damage it caused, what will we think? How can it be explained or justified?

Yep, they somehow weren’t really destroyed, and they just sorta “turned up.” Only problem is, they don’t tell us a damned thing. Atrios complains in a devastating little post that once more we’re given Bush records that offer not a single shred of new information on whether the preznit performed his National Guard duties in 1972. By the end of the post, he’s visibly pissed.

And, while we’re on this story, what was the reason we didn’t get to the bottom of this 4 years ago.

Oh, and one more thing.

“I continued flying with my unit for the next several years [after completing training in June 1970]”

claimed Bush in his autobiography A Charge to Keep. That, we’ve known for years, is bullshit as he stopped flying 22 months later. Tell me again why the liberal media doesn’t care that Bush lies about his military service? Tell me again why the military doesn’t care that Bush lies about his military service?

Sorry, but the man has a point. While the “liberal media” spent days poring over whether Kerry threw medals or ribbons some 30 years ago, it can’t get itself to focus on something far more important: did our president lie about his military service? I know, I know, it’s a tired issue, it was talked about 4 years ago, it’s been brought up again and again. All true. But the question has never been answered, and it’s fundamental to the Commander in Chief’s integrity. It’s not a nitpick.

Update: Here’s the DNC’s sublime reaction to the newfound material (according to Drudge):

“The supposed discovery of these records on Friday afternoon, as reporters converge on Boston to cover the Democratic National Convention, is highly questionable. If the Bush Administration continues to search, maybe they’ll find answers to the long list of unanswered questions that remain about George W. Bush’s time in the Air National Guard. Bush’s military records seem to show up as randomly as he did for duty.”

Precious.