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Cleaning Up the Nation
Austin Bay:
If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at
Rank Materialism
Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some
Fallujah Fonda
Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:
Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.
Acros
John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism
In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:
Bottoms Up
So I guess Dick Cheney won tonight's vice presidential debate. Some are saying that John Edwards won the second half, which dealt with domestic issues, and I wouldn't argue with that. 'Round the third time Medicare came up I started to zone out, so it was a good thing I was watching on a TiVo delay and could skip ahead in 30-second bursts. There are plenty of voters for whom that was the most important part of the debate, but I'm not one of them. I might save those parts and use them as a sleep aid.
Cheney had some great lines, like if they can't stand up to Howard Dean, how are they going to stand up to Al Qaeda, or something like that.
As expected, Edwards did the Halliburton thing, Halliburton apparently being the Death Star to Cheney's Vader. It's become a matter of faith on the left that Halliburton, an oil services company (and which is a customer of my employer), is evil. No blood for oil rig inspection. Cheney referred viewers to a website, a response that could have been stronger.
Edward's explanation of Kerry's "global test" remark was evasive, just as it has been from the rest of the Kerry campaign. He also avoided telling us how a President Kerry would get France and Germany to help in Iraq, even after he was directly asked by moderator Gwen Ifill.
The main thing that I took away from the debate was Edward's slick lawyerliness. Right from the beginning, during the introductions, Edward's patronizing, sacharine grin had me laughing with derision. It was particularly egregious when compared to Cheney's curt nod.
When Edwards asked Ifill what was the question- was it about poverty?, in order to subtly point out that Cheney, in Edward's view, had just evaded the question, I thought that was too slick by half. "The jury will please disregard counsel's remarks."
And that would have been wise advice. I don't see that this debate is going to have any effect on the race. Maybe, just maybe, it will apply some brakes to Bush's decline in numbers since Thursday's presidential debate, but I suspect that that dip had already bottomed out.
Friday night will see another debate between Bush and Kerry, this one in the godawful town hall format. I don't really want to hear questions from a bunch of screened "representatives" of the American people. Hey, neither of these guys is Bill Clinton- shouldn't they have chucked that format this year?
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© 2002-2006
Brian O'Connell.


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