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Tuesday, Aug 24, 2004
burying the leders
metaphors abound
"Now for an update on the White House's ongoing effort to kill the press corps. The White House travel office signed a contract last week with an airline called Primaris to fly the press corps to Bush events. The two-month-old company has only one airplane. True, media representatives gave their blessing to the deal. But that was before they learned that the company's president twice had his pilot's license revoked related to his flying of an "unairworthy" aircraft, that the chief executive flopped in his last attempt to start an airline and that the 15-year-old plane itself was damaged in a hailstorm a decade ago and spent most of the past two years mothballed in France."
vital statistics
back to the important story that has met fans gnashing and rending. the mets traded away there number one pitching prospect scott kazmir for another more established pitcher who is considered talented but inconsistent. the rationale given was that the mets needed to "win now" not in 3 or 4 years when the prospect might become a top line pitcher. so, in his third start the newly acquired pitcher injures his arm and is out for (at least) the rest of the season, and a week later the prospect kazmir, who started the season in A ball, wins his first major league start for his new team. this ill-advised trade has all the makings of a colossal failure on par with earlier met debacles involving tom seaver and nolan ryan. only the bushies could run an organization (or a country) into the ground which such aplomb.
punch drunk
"I think we can salvage some meaning by looking more closely not at the electoral implications of this political dogfight, but at the cultural ones. Before the Democratic Leadership Council enjoined the political assassination of Howard Dean--whose insurgency within the Party was trifling, but important on one account and that was his stated opposition to Bush's Napoleonic delusion in Iraq--there was a new energy, semi-conscious as it was, emerging inside the Party, and that energy was rooted in the mass movement that had materialized against the post-911 neocon lunacy, especially the plan to invade Iraq. Fearing a conscientized popular base every bit as much as the reptilian Karl Rove (remember Clinton's Dick Morris?), the Democrat Party bosses opted not to risk a position on the war."
war babies
Off To War. tv documentary looks at the lives of soldiers from arkansas as they prepared to go "off to war" in iraq.
oceans away
zogbys battleground states infographic
Monday, Aug 23, 2004
meet the mets
metro v retro
sad alight
"That we are still fighting about the Vietnam War is sad. Watching an old political fight (among veterans, but involving the nation) try to finish itself thirty years later in either the wreckage of the Kerry campaign or its triumph over the attempt to wreck-- that's sad. I'm with Meep , a voice at Jarvis's weblog, Buzzmachine: "Are boomers going to be eating their livers in retirement because of Vietnam? Sounds like it to me." That's a sad thing to say about boomers, and I was born near the crest of that boom.
Now if you like sad as the best mood for consuming Swift Boat stories, if you think it fitting, then pay especially close attention to what the Chicago Tribune published over the weekend: This is what I saw that day by William B. Rood, a brilliantly disciplined and moving work of first-person journalism, which is also a moral statement, for while it defends John Kerry and his military record--and thus makes news--that is not the heart of what Rood meant to say."
so much not to like
its so painfully boring to point this shit out but heres another misleading ny times headline.
"Bush Denounces Outside Groups' Influence on Campaign"
of course the key to that headline is the placement of the apostrophe. someone who is closely monitoring will immediately understand that nothing new will follow as bush will have intoned the talking points repeated ad naseum yesterday on the chat fests. when asked to condemn the ad any apparachnik will quickly move the goalposts to condemn all 527s and call for their rapid termination, but never will they denounce the swiftboat lies and fabrications. and then for good measure to put the dems on the defensive, they will call them out to condemn the nasty 527s. if you can include a dark allusion to moveon.org and george soros than you receive bonus points toward your quest for entre into republican valhalla.update:
i cant get one bit of spittle out before they go and change the headline. it now reads
"Bush Urges End to Attack Ads by Outside Groups on All Sides.'
id still like to see
"Bush Wont Denounce Dubious Swiftboat Claims"
but thats just me.
numbers game
"1+1=2. Mathematics doesn't get any more basic than this, but even 1+1 would stump the brightest minds among the Piraha tribe of the Amazon. A study appearing today in the journal Science reports that the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting."
comprehension
"Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" v. The Truth"