Debate

Bush seemed inarticulate, overly prepared, and especially at the beginning, bored. Kerry seemed strong, consistent, and rational. (OK, I'm hardly impartial.)

How long until Bush is declared the winner?

Not just a flip flop ...

... but a flat out lie.

Found this on Salon today:

In a question-and-answer session in December 2001 -- just three months after the attack -- Bush remembered watching the first plane hit the World Trade Center while he was waiting to enter that classroom in Florida. "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on," Bush said. "And I used to fly, myself, and I said, 'Well, there's one terrible pilot.' I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'" Bush repeated the story at another event in January 2002.

The only problem is, it never happened. The first attack wasn't broadcast live -- who would have known to show it? -- and videotape of it wasn't available until much later. Bush may believe the words he says, but there's no way he saw what he said he saw.

-- Fact-checking Bush

Don't blame me for your hangover

Tomorrow night, we will have the first of three Presidential debates. I use the term loosely, because they are orchestrated from start to finish to actually prevent any actual debating from going on. Candidates will actually be prohibited from asking each other questions. So this will be less of a give-and-take of ideas, and more of a joint press conference with preprepared speeches.

In that vein, I give you the Presidential Debate Drinking Game:

• Whenever "terrorism" or "terror" is mentioned, drink.

No, strike that. We don't want any alcoholic comas. Start over.

• If the War in Iraq is conflated with the "War on Terror," drink.
• If Saddam Hussein is mentioned, drink.
• If Saddam Hussein is refered to as a "dictator," "terrorist," or we are told America is safer without him in power, drink twice.
• If Bush implies that 9/11 is related to Iraq, drink three times.
• Someone remembers that Afghanistan exists, drink.
• Either candidate avoids directly answering the question, drink.
• Bush mispronouces "nuclear," drink.
• Kerry gets longwinded, drink.
• FOX annouces Bush as the winner before the night is over, finish your drink.

That's all I can think of right now.

This debate is about foreign policy and international issues, which means it will be wholly about Iraq. Not about Afghanistan, which basically did attack us, but Iraq. That worries me. Paul Krugman wrote an editorial in the NYT not long ago talking about a book that suggested people are unwilling to believe a wartime leader is weak, regardless of what the facts say. (I have had a blog entry on this topic forming in my head for some time now. I'll get around to it eventually.) And that's what worries me. If he's right , I'm not sure Bush really can "lose" this debate. He will just have to act tough, mouth some strong-sounding platitudes and he's got it made. Unless Kerry has photographs of Bush, himself, sodmomizing prisoners in Abu Ghraib or maybe Cheney accepting envelopes of money from someone in a Halliburton T-shirt, I think Bush has this one already wrapped up.

Stupid fucking Republicans

Atrios pointed out recently a comment by Andrew Sullivan made shortly after Sept. 11:

The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

I won't even comment on Sullivan's hawkishness and his claims that people against Gulf War II were "objectively pro-Saddam." But when he said "decadent Left" my irony meter went into the red zone and started shaking and spewing smoke. I'm sorry Andrew, but you don't get to get caught in an HIV+ barebacking scandal and still get to insult anyone by calling them "decadent."

The moral high ground called. It wants you to stop tracking mud everywhere.

... so shall ye reap

This is roaring over the blogosphere as we speak, and he is supposed to address the issue tonight at 7, but it looks like Alan Keyes's daughter is an out lesbian.

Yes, the very same Alan Keyes that claimed Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist," like all homosexuals. This is because gays can't have children (*cough* adoption *cough*), and are therefore "impossible of seeking any higher good than orgasms," to quote Ms. Keyes.

This was discovered through her own blog. Apparently, as this is becoming more well-known, she is taking down parts of the blog, but Chillinois has archived some of her posts. Let's just say it doesn't paint such a rosy picture of the Keyes family.

Go Satan!

OK, I guess my encounter with evangelists this week could have been much more annoying that it was. Now I'm real glad I don't live in Chicago. She gets around a lot, it seems.

Aboutablog

Greetings, fellow Electablog sycophants! (Why do you all seem to use Macs?) In my defense, I wasn't amazed by his cuteness, just thought it was an added bonus. It's the smart and funny parts that are the most important. And the talented writing. He should consider doing it profesionally or something.

Note to Mrs. Electablog: I'm not trying to steal your man, even if he did play on my team. It was just an observation.

Little green books from Mars

I just had to walk a couple of buildings over to the electrical engineering's storeroom to pick up a spool of wire. On my way back, I was accosted by one of the several well-dressed evangelists currently prowling the Engineering Quad. I didn't even let him finish his sentence, so I don't know if the little green book he was trying to foist on to me was the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, whatever the Jehovah's Witnesses use, or what.

What with Jimmy Swaggart's recent vileness , I'm just fuming. I'm at work. OK, maybe I do work at a public university which probably has lots of drinking, dancing, partying, and otherwise Hell-bound students, but I shouldn't have to put up with self-righteous, holier-than-thou evangelists trying to convert me over to the One True Religion®.

Just go away and feed and clothe the poor, and keep your religion to yourself, thank you very much.

Not exactly a subtle hint

This was posted on rec.humor.funny today:

Governor Jeb Bush
700 North Adams St.
Tallahassee, Florida 32303

Dear Mr. Bush,

We aren't going to have a presidential election with the problems that we had in 2000, are we? Frankly, I don't care who your brother and father are -- don't make me send any more hurricanes.

God

CSI minus one

I like CSI, because it's a bit of a geeky show. Marg Helgenberger is a hoot to watch, George Eads is hot, Eric Szmanda is hot in his own little nerdy way, and even William L. Petersen is fun to watch playing Grissom's quirkyness. CSI: Miami, however, is dreck. I watched the few episodes because I'd enjoyed the original CSI, and rather regretted it. I still tune in now and then because I have no life and it's something to do. The writers for this show have so little originality they even reused the boss-has-a-thing-for-a-coworker subplot from the original. It doesn't help that David Caruso has a single facial expression: constipated.

CBS has been hyping the hell out of the season premiere because one of the characters is going to die in this ep. Gee, CBS, thanks for ruining what could have been a dramatic moment. I'll probably tune in just to find out who it was. [1] I warn you though, the only reasons left to sit through this show are because Rory Cochrane is cute in an odd sort of way, and to hear Emily Proctor talk. She was fun on the West Wing, and is one of the few good points of the show. Kill everybody else off, you'd be doing us all a favor.

[1] And, crap, now that I've looked up the show in IMDB, I think I know who it is. Listing an actor as "(2002-2004)" pretty much gives it away.

Polls

From Reuters: Poll Finds Bush Lead Surging Among Likely Voters

From Salon: Bush's dead cat bounce ... [A] new poll shows that the battle for the White House is once again deadlocked.

Make up your freaking minds, people!

In the mail today

I got an invitation to join the Black Expressions book club. Someone needs to refine his mailing list. I'm about as likely to watch BET as the Playboy channel.

ALFIL 2: Casting

David wants to know who should be cast in the movie version of Almost Like Falling in Love.

Like I said, Fried Green Tomatoes was written with a similar device, and they managed to turn it into a reasonably good movie. The key, I think, is to stay true to the story, but you have to abandon the literary device the book can use. As for who to cast it, I'm not sure. I'm never any good at those things. I'd be concerned that they'd probably cast hot late-twenty-somethings to play the characters in high school, and early-thirty-somethings to play them later in life.

Craig needs to be someone that you can believe was a jock in high school, and is now a lawyer. Buff and fills out a suit real well. Jeremy Piven? He's just about the right age and height as well. Travis is the nerdier/obsessive compulsive one, which in Hollywood terms means he's buff and wears glasses. He's especially quirky, and Johnny Depp could pull that off beautifully. But maybe he just springs to mind because I recently saw Secret Window.

Most importantly, they need to have a great and believable chemistry together. That's not the easist thing in the world to achieve, and I doubt Depp and Piven would have it.

As for Clayton, I'd go for John Corbett. Then again, I'm in the midst of season four of Sex and the City, where he plays a sensitive yet butch carpenter, much like Clay.

Just please, God, no Rupert Everett.

Music

I'm starting a list of music lyrics I find particularly compelling and evocative. Probably an ongoing sort of thing.

"What once was Emerald City is now a crystal town."
Scissor Sisters, Return to Oz

This is the song that spawned this idea for this post. I can't really explain why, but I just love this lyric. The whole song is a wonderful metaphor for lost innocence, and the fact that it uses a children's story makes it all the more poingant. The song also has a shout-out to The Dark Crystal, continuing to draw imagery from children's literature.

"...the vows we made weigh like a stone in my heart.../
I'm not saying I'm replacing love for some other word/
to describe the sacred tie that bound me to you
10,000 Maniacs, Jezebel

There is just something about this song that makes me visualize a woman sitting in the dark looking at her sleeping husband regretting some of the choices she made in her life. Note that the singer specifically doesn't want a divorce; she seems to be asking for forgiveness more than anything else.

Suggestions for additons are always welcome and appreciated.

It's good to be The Man

60 Minutes had an interview this evening with Ben Barnes, who pulled political strings to get Dubya into the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. It's nothing particularly surprising, but I think this is just another example of how Dubya has gotten ahead in this world due to his family's money, power, and prestige, and not necessarily because of any particular talent of his own.

To be honest, I have a hard time relating to Vietnam. It's just something that's so very far out of my experience I think I have a hard time imagining what it must have been like to live in this country when so many men and women were dying overseas. It's even harder to imagine living through WWII, when there was actually rationing. Think about going to your grocery store to find that, no, they didn't have any butter that week, but here's your half loaf of bread. Then think about what it must have been like in London during the Blitz, when bombs fell in one part of the city or another every night for 57 consecutive days.

We have just passed the one thousandth fatality in the entire second Iraq war. This was reported by the national press as a significant milestone. Just to put this in perspective, in the same month that George W. Bush got into the Texas Air National Guard, two thousand Americans died in Vietnam.

ALBIL

David loaned me Steve Kluger's Almost Like Being in Love this weekend. I find myself having a hard time putting it down, I'm enjoying it so much. I was having to supress fits of giggles reading it on the bus this afternoon. It's like the gay Bridget Jones's Diary. (And if you know me, you know that's high praise, indeed.)

I have a feeling that it's about to take a turn for the serious soon, though. And it's the sort of book that I enjoy as I read it but feel bad when I stop, because I've never had a boyfriend like that and probably never will. (Same reason I gave up renting romantic comedies.)

So far, I think it would make a really good movie, if they correctly adapted the book's device of telling the story in memos and journal entries. Since Fried Green Tomatoes managed to do it, I can only hope this one would, too.

Poke!

I'm embarassed to say I was watching ESPN this evening. I feel so ... heterosexual. I hope I will be redeemed by the fact that it was the 2004 World Poker Championship. This is *so* much more cutthroat than Celebrity Poker Challenge. It's also a bit harder to follow since there are 2,500 players instead of 5.

It's amusing that the primary sponsor seems to be Milwaukee's Best Light. As we're reminded at every commercial break, that's Milwaukee's Best Light: Brewed for a Man's Taste. They never specify which part of the man it's supposed to taste like, though. The fact, however, that sponsor that always follows MBL is Levitra, makes the mind boggle. Milwaukee's Best Light: Brewed For the Man That Can't Get It Up. Or maybe one is just supposed to drink so many that one can't properly function anymore, and that's what the Levitra is for.

[I wrote this a few days ago and accidentally saved it as a draft, rather than posting it.]