donnybrook - Word for the Day, Tuesday 12 October 2004

donnybrook · 'dä-nE-"brük · noun

1 : free-for-all, brawl
2 : a usually public quarrel or dispute

Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: Donnybrook Fair, annual Irish event known for its brawls

Right Wing Broadcaster to force propaganda film to air

On the announced intention by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a publicly-traded company with direct control over the programming of 62 TV stations around the country, to order its TV outlets to run an anti-Kerry piece of propaganda on the public’s television airwaves in the days leading up to the election, I directed the comment below to their website's comment link. Anyone wishing to add 2 cents to this argument may wish to post an e-mail to the same link.

As The Leftcoaster reports:

The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group ... is ordering its 62 TV stations to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry — a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester — of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

My e-mail:

To Sinclair Broadcast Group:

I am writing to object to the planned forced broadcast of "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal."

It is highly inappropriate, and indeed, very probably actionable as grounds for revocation of licenses for failure to comply with the public interest mandates of the Communications Act of 1933 and its subsequent regulatory implementation, for SBGI to order its stations to air this film. It is clear that this film is not news or public affairs, but propaganda intended to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

It is not any individual decision to air the film, but the use of the monopoly power of the organization to compel its brodcast by member stations, which I believe to be in violation of both the spirit and the letter of the law.

I hope you will reconsider this very ill-advised move. It shows disrespect for the diversity of opinion in this nation, and reflects a desire to use the public trust of license to operate broadcast stations on the publicly-owned airwaves in a mannner entirely inconsistent with the required dedication to service to the public, which applies to all of the public, not only the supporters of the current administration.

Thank you.
David Studhalter

Kerry electoral vote West Coast + Northeast/Midwest

The current projected electoral vote is more than ever geographically lopsided, with the Northeast and Midwest all Kerry or tied (Except for Indiana and Missouri), along with the West Coast (including Nevada). This comes to 280, a winning margin. The rest of the country is Bush.

Dirty Tricks on the way

I repeat this from Josh Marshall's Talkingpointsmemo. He also has an interesting piece on Republican dirty tricks in the 2000 election in New Hampshire.

Karl Rove tells Sean Hannity about 'October Surprise' he's working on. "We've got a couple of surprises that we intend to spring," says Rove

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ping - Word for the Day, Monday 11 October 2004

ping · 'pi[ng] · noun

: a sharp, high-pitched sound such as that of a striking bullet on metal

- transitive verb [Telecommunications]

: to send a signal along a circuit for purposes of testing connectivity

- intransitive verb

: to make a pinging sound

Etymology: imitative

Ping · geographical name

:river, 579 kilometers, originating in W Thailand flowing SSE to join Nan River forming the Chao Phraya

Unspun take on debate

I have refrained from reading a lot of spin span spun stuff about tonight's debate. Anyone who knows me or who's read much of this site already knows I'm a leftish Democrat, so obviously Kerry's positions were much more palatable to me.

On the question of debating effectiveness, I think you have to acknowledge that Bush did quite a bit better in this appearance than in the first one. He had his usual swaggery personality and simplistic, nattering slogans, but his "base" loves that shit, and probably ate it all up. I'm sure the GOP bloggers are saying he wiped the floor with Kerry.

Kerry was articulate, clear, and presidential. Any thoughtful person, who cares anything at all about the dignity of the office, would have to prefer the more serious, thougthful, analytical style and substance of Kerry's presentation, irrespective of the actual views expressed.

I hope that more undecided voters, not already enamored of Bush's phoney folksiness, will be more impressed with Kerry's clear command of the issues and obviously more thought-out plan for actually governing the country.

All in all, it was not as clear a win for Kerry as the first debate, but I think Bush only managed to help himself with his base of support, whereas Kerry may have furthered, if only a little, his momentum with swing voters.

Bush wired during first debate?

Salon.com features a photo of what is rumored to have been a receiver for a secret earpiece, giving Bush prompts during the first debate. Personally, I'm a bit skeptical.

Manchester Union Leader: John Eisenhower endorses Kerry

A colleague sent me this:

Why I Will Vote for John Kerry for President
By John Eisenhower
The Manchester Union Leader
Tuesday 28 September 2004

The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3* years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we "always have." We remained loyal to party labels.

We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them. As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican.

For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today's "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word"Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility," which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, "If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both." I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished
that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation's financial structure sound.

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today's Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country.

I will vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one's parents or of our own ingrained habits.

John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing "The White House Years," his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.

Horserace, Kerry momentum

The MSNBC "horserace map" shows 121 tossup votes, with Bush and Kerry roughly at partity otherwise. Tossups once again include Ohio, PA, Michigan, and Florida. I'd say Kerry MUST build momentum in the next two weeks, and if he does, he has a solid chance of winning.

See also electoral-vote.com, which once again (for the first time in weeks) shows Kerry winning.

Copse - Word for the Day, Thursday, 7 October, 2004

copse · KOPS · noun

:a thicket or grove of small trees.

A lit window shone from between the trees below them, then vanished again as the car dipped over a ditch and passed through a copse.
--Kate Bingham, Mummy's Legs

Among the mountains, hills, streams, waterfalls, and little
copses, the child rejoiced in "savouring the delights of
freedom" that stimulated his boyish dreams and reveries.
--Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and
Poet

They sang freely in the copses and thickets round Bohain,
and in the ruins of the mediaeval castle where he played as
a boy.
--Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse

_________________________________________________________

Copse derives from Old French copeiz, "a thicket for cutting," from coper, couper, "to cut." It is related to coupon, at root "the part that is cut off."

Cheney not Satan

Noam Scheiber's article in The New Republic* starts out with this:

There were two key factors at work in the vice-presidential debate last night. The first was expectations. Going into the debate, both candidates probably had low expectations working in their favor--John Edwards because of his reputation as a lightweight, Dick Cheney because of his reputation for being Satan. But Cheney's expectations were far easier to exceed. All he had to do was come off as, well, not Satan, and he'd do wonders for his public image.

*Unfortunately, subscription only.

sere - Word for the Day, Wednesday, 6 October 2004

sere, also sear · SiiR · adjective

:dry; withered.

. . . a country that has been transformed from a place of
lush abundance to a sere, mutilated, inhospitable land.
--Zofia Smardz, "A Nice Place for Extinction," New York
Times, June 15, 1997

Recent rains have done little to relieve the sere
conditions.
--Thomas Omestad, "The struggle over water," U.S. News
and World Report, April 10, 2000

Mr. Campbell, a biologist, spent three seasons in the
Antarctic and returned with eerily clear perceptions of
that sere and uninhabitable place.
--Review of The Crystal Desert, by David G. Campbell; New
York Times, December 5, 1993

There was a lavatory at the end of the garden beyond a
scraggy clump of Michaelmas daisies that never looked well
in themselves, always sere, never blooming, the perennial
ghosts of themselves, as if ill-nourished by an exhausted
soil.
--Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg

_________________________________________________________
Sere comes from Old English sear, "dry."

Edwards winner

The consensus seems already to be that Edwards scored an advantage for the Democratic campaign. He remained on message and made appeals to what matters to most people, whereas Cheney stuck to a message of fear and tried to play games with numbers to make Edwards seem like a liar, and it just didn't work. Cheney looked tired and, although he is obviously quicker and better able to match wits than W., he failed to advance the desired impression of "strength."

Some impressions:

Cheney was unconvincing in making the case that Iraq is "progressing." Edwards's point that the war is being badly managed came across relatively well.

Cheney had no real answers for Edwards's domestic points; just to deny that the Bush administration is cutting programs and failing to create jobs or do anything about declining health coverage and real wages.

I think people are tired of being told that they should vote on the basis of fear. They want to hear what will be done for them, not that they "better vote for us, or bad things might happen." Cheney seemed testy, and even a little bit disengaged, which creates a quite negative impression.

At worst, this debate will not help Bush and will not hurt Kerry.

George Soros: We must not re-elect Bush

Please see George Soros's speech on why we must not re-elect Bush.

What if the whole world could vote in the U.S. Election?

A colleague sent me this obviously unscientific polling site, that asks this question. Nonetheless...

Not only European countries (where Kerry's 9 to 1 preference has been reported before), but almost all countries seem to prefer Kerry by a large margin. Notice the overall figures: Kerry: 87%, Bush: 12%.

Surely this should tell us something about America's standing in the World. Only the most craven troglodytes care nothing that we are more hated than ever before.

I notice that the Færoe Islands prefer Dubya 2 to 1. Maybe we could offer him to them (... it's a little cold there). I'd go along with an appropriation to pay his moving costs.

machicolation - Word for the Day, Tuesday 5 October 2004

machicolation · m&-"chi-k&-'lEI-sh&n · noun

1 a : an opening between the corbels of a projecting parapet or in the floor of a gallery or roof of a portal for discharging missiles upon assailants below – compare battlement
b : a gallery or parapet containing such openings

2 : construction imitating medieval machicolation-

machicolated · m&-'chi-k&-"lEI-t&d · adjective

Etymology: Medieval Latin machicolare to furnish with machicolations, from Middle French machicoller, from machicoleis machicolation, from macher to crush + col neck, from Latin collum – compare collar

See Bush Debate. See Him Squirm.

From "Not So Neutral Corner" by Ciro Scotti in Business Week.

He looked like a hapless teen called on the carpet as Kerry channeled Poppy and termed the Iraq invasion a "colossal error"

Watching George W. Bush on the hot seat is painful. When he gets that fawn-in-the-deerjacker's-light look, you feel for the guy.

Publicly at least, he's not a mean-spirited man. Near the end of Thursday's debate when he was asked if he had any reservations about John Kerry's character, he was gracious, momentarily generous, and generated the evening's only human moment. And not just because his opponent is a fellow Skull & Bones man (see BW Online, 10/1/04, "Republicrat vs. Democan"). That's usually the way Bush comes across -- a likable Joe, sincere in his beliefs, and comfortable in his own skin.


DEBATING POPPY. Besides that, he's the President and has led the nation at a time of enormous peril and uncertainty (some of it, arguably, of his own making). Love him or detest him, he sits at the desk where the buck makes its last stop.

But in Coral Gables, Fla., last night, Bush looked -- at least for the first half of the debate -- like Elmer Befuddled, a commander-in-chief not in command.

Perhaps what was so unnerving was that Bush found himself in a foreign-policy debate with a seasoned politician who was espousing the same sort of measured, internationalist approach to a dangerous world that was the hallmark of his father's Presidency. Debating the security and future of the nation on live national television isn't easy -- but debating your Dad is downright scary.

FACING THE MUSIC. Of course, the differences between Kerry and George H.W. Bush are legion. But there's that War Hero Thing. That Air-of-the-Patrician Thing. That Tall-and-Gangly Thing. That Awkwardness-with-Other-People Thing. And Kerry in his embarrassing windsurfing togs was reminiscent of Poppy Bush in his geeky skydiving suit.

Kerry even brought up Bush the elder when he said the President's father did not continue into Iraq after driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War because he knew "there was no exit strategy" and feared that American soldiers would face a hostile populace (see BW Online, 10/1/04, "Kerry Lands the First Punch").

When Kerry, methodically making his case like the prosecutor he once was, said, "This President has made a colossal error of judgment" by invading Iraq, Bush looked like a 1960s teenager called on the carpet for cracking up the family Oldsmobile. At that moment, it was hard not to get the impression that young George wanted to be anyplace but where he found himself.

SPUTTERING SCREWUP. The poignancy of a man ill-prepared for and overwhelmed by his job was never more apparent than when Bush said, "I never wanted to commit troops. When we were debating in 2000, I never dreamed I'd have to do that."

The message that Kerry hammered home was that, in fact, Bush did not have to "do that," did not have to send our soldiers -- at least not to Iraq.

But Bush, the onetime black sheep of his family, wanted to wipe away the "wimp factor" stain that his old man had left on the Bush clan. And so he rebelled against the family mantra of prudence in all things. Last night, he looked for all the world like a sputtering screwup -- again.

Wolcott: Tweet Smell of Success

I love this... an excerpt from Tweet Smell of Success on James Wolcott's website. (Wolcott is author of Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants : The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror).

Only a few weeks ago, things looked grim. Bleak. Even posters on the liberal blogsites seemed to be sitting on the suicide ledge peering past the slough of despond into the abyss below. That infamous Gallup Poll which had the race Bush 104, Kerry -6 had many of us rattled. A statistically impossible 110 point deficit seemed a mite difficult to overcome.

But that was before John Kerry grape-stomped Bush into a sullen mash.

In birding, those fanatical about building up the life lists of species are known as "twitchers." But there was no bigger twitcher last night than the bird-hating Bush, who once ignorantly shot a killdeer during a photo op thinking it was a dove, according to Karen Hughes' merde-eating memoir. Bush's face suffered a silent outbreak of Tourette's Syndrome; he grimaced, smirked, sniffed, rolled his eyes, and did some weird thing with his mouth that as yet has no diagnostic name. He was President Twitchy, giving a performance that critics hailed as "peevish" and "petulant."

We've seen President Twitchy before. When Helen Thomas persisted in asking Bush why he was trying to tear down the walls between church and state, and wouldn't be sluffed off with one of his standard nonanswers, Bush, as I wrote in Attack Poodles, went through a battery of irked expressions that ended with him imitating Tony Perkins in the final shot of Psycho, looking as if he had a fly on his nose.

Since then Bush has been wheeled out into forums where no one can dare question or contradict his majesty, where he can lean forward and repeat ad nauseam his patented soundbites. Last night I believe we saw the ugly comeback of the private face of Bush--the irritable expressions he flashes subordinates when he's presented with information he doesn't like or feels someone's taken up too much of his time or is pressed to explain himself to people he shouldn't have to explain himself to because he's the president and fuck you. The notion that Bush is "likeable" has always been laughable. It takes a Washington pundit to be that dumb. He's an angry, spoiled, resentful little big man--I use "little big man" in the Reichian sense of a small personality who puffs himself up to look big through bluster and swagger but remains a scheming coward inside--and next to a genuinely big man like Kerry, shrunk before the camera's eyes.

Extent of Right Wing Nonsense

I came across a link on a bulletin board to this inane little observation on one of the Bushies' BBSs.

Of Bush, Kerry, and Bush's NecktieMy fevered brow 10-01-2004 By Laz
Posted on 10/01/2004 11:59:30 AM PDT by Lazamataz
I noticed something last night.
G.W. Bush's necktie was askew. It looked unprofessional. I wondered HOW in the heck that could have happened.
Then during the replay, I saw how it happened. When Kerry greeted Bush, Kerry held on to Bush's hand as Bush was walking away. Bush was forced to awkwardly stretch his torso, dislodging the correct placement of the tie.
I initially thought it was all happenstance. But on further review, I saw that Kerry made a point of adjusting his tie after the handshake, just in case the manuever dislodged his too.
Maybe it was an accident, maybe not. I think not. If anyone has contacts to Bush, please advise them of this possible purposeful action, or at the very least, MAKE SURE BUSH'S TIE IS STRAIGHT. I was focused on the tie, it looked so sloppy.

Fox News Fabricates Kerry Quotes

In one of the weirder post-"debate" whirligigs, Josh Marshall's Talkingpointsmemo reports that Fox News completely fabricated deprecatory quotes attributed to Kerry... and got caught red-handed doing it.