Tonight's Debate- Transcript
The transcript is on CNN.
Bush looked like a victim of a stroke or Bells palsy. The corner of his lip seemed to sag deeply and unnaturally. Some people observed what appeared to be a bit of drool hanging at the same lip corner.
Both candidates wore similar ties. Even so, it was easy to tell them apart. All you needed to do was to spot the smarter one...the taller one..the one whose eyes weren't blinking at the speed of light. The one who didn't laugh like this: "Eh Eh Eh Eh Eh," while only moving the bottom of his chin, much like a marionette.
"Eh eh eh eh eh"
Bush was totally rude to CBS' Bob Schieffer by making the snide comment about the credibility of "leading news networks". (We know he meant CBS).
Bush quotes that Kerry could've had fun with:
"I was a border governor for a while... Borders are much better protected today than when I was governor of Texas".
To be continued...
10/14 UPDATE: Salon.com is now talking about the drooling and the stroked-out look on Bush's face.
Salon/Joyce McGreevey- Wednesday in the Dark With George: A theater review of the third presidential debate. "..Blinking, drooling and mugging his way in response to a query about vaccines.."
Buzzflash- Third Presidential Debate
"Bush was alternately babbling, snide, smirking, and, we think, drooling."
Jacques Derrida
Derrida and the Last Debate
"Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side."
-- Balthasar Gracian, great advice from his timeless Art of Worldly Wisdom
Tonight is the last chance for George W. Bush to try to prove that John F. Kerry is wrong. He has not had success to date. After Kerry's impressive performance in the first two debates, there are fewer and fewer voters left to convince. The two sides are firmly ensconced. There are few minds left to be changed now. Unless Bush undergoes a lobotomy or Kerry uncharacteristically comes unprepared, it's a near-certainty that Kerry will be tonight's debate victor. In most instances, Kerry sounds "right" and Kerry makes more realistic sense, no matter how many times Bush takes the opposite side for the sake of drawing stark political distinctions with meaningless rhetoric.
We lost philosopher Jacques Derrida last week. Derrida warned that compositionists should be especially wary of what he called “rhetoricism”, which is 'thinking that everything depends on rhetoric.' Certainly, rhetoric is central to almost every facet of life, but Derrida warned that we must not attribute to rhetoric more power than it has. Rhetoric is not the last word. Derrida knew the full complexity of language; its power and its limitations.
George Bush has only his rhetoric left to defend his miserable failures. If Bush is re-elected, it will only mean that Americans have bought into the powerful fantasy of his rhetoric. It's a frightening thought.
DERRIDA Obituary
AndretheGiany blog on Derrida, usury, neo-cons
-
What happened to him? His very image used to inspire respect and dignity. Now, knowing what we know, he resembles Howdy Doody.
Blair is sounding like Bush
A far more articulate Bush.
During his most recent weekly questioning period in Parliament, Tony Blair refused to accept responsibility for misleading Great Britain toward the unnecessary war in Iraq. Although he did apologize for the WMD misleading (retracting his '45 minutes' WMD claim), he said he wouldn't ever apologize for removing Saddam Hussein.
Funny, no one asked him to apologise for the idea of removing Saddam Hussein. He's beginning to sound like Bush. What disturbs Blair's fellow politicians is the wrong way he went about "protecting" his nation. At George Bush's side, he rushed to a war because of a supposed "imminent threat", and now says he's proud of changing the regime in Iraq, which was never the supposed rationale for war in the first place. He is using the recent discovery of a mass grave, found by US-led investigators, as his latest crutch to escape responsibility for his failure of leadership. There are mass graves now being required to bury innocent Iraqis caught in the middle of Bush and Blair's folly.
I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Blair say that his angry critics in Parliament were displaying an "inconsistency" in their positions on Iraq and playing politics in attacking him at this stage of the game. It's straight from the Bush administration playbook. The Big Cheese blames the underlings for his shitty decisions when it all falls apart. It's as if he and Bush are saying, "Why, oh why didn't you stop me before I led the nation to disaster?"
The war was outside the rule of international law. It was stupid, it was illegal, it was unjust, it was based on lies, it had deadly consequences for all loyal and trusting troops who were sent to Iraq. The most expert of politicians could never escape responsibility for such a dreadful move. Blair may or may not suffer political consequences in the UK. I think he should, but that's up to the citizens of the UK.
Here in the USA, I am becoming more and more confident by the day that Bush will suffer the consequences of his lies and weak, unrealistic defences for his proven lies when November 2nd rolls around.
Even though he'll never say, I know Blair will be relieved when Bush is thrown out of office by American voters. He said he would like to see the Middle East peace process revived now, but he said the reality is that it will be after the US presidential election in the next few weeks that he can make progress. We all know what that means, don't we?
TIMBER!
I predict GW Bush is going to lose in a near-landslide this November 2. During the second debate, he looked an aggressive near-maniac (with a wildly roaming eyes and a forced smile for the camera) who had to distort the truth in order to make himself look like a leader who has used good judgement. (He hasn't).
Kerry set him straight with reality at nearly every turn.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101004Z.shtml William Rivers Pitt- The Scary Little ManBush was every inch the angry man on Friday night, which is dangerous enough. But to witness anger combined with belligerent ignorance, with a willful denial of basic facts, to witness a man utterly incapable of admitting to any mistakes while his clear errors in judgment are costing his country in blood, to see that combination roiling within the man who is in charge of the most awesome military arsenal in the history of the planet, is more than dangerous.
Buzzflash- Timber! Bush Caught Lying About Lumber Business in the Second Debate.
Buzzflash- Watch Out for Those Killer Drugs from Canada, Bush Warns
Headlines
NYT/Adam Nagourney/Richard W.Stevenson- In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts
"...Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy...analysts, including some Republicans, said Mr. Bush was repeatedly taking phrases and sentences out of context, or cherry-picking votes, to provide an unfavorable case against Mr. Kerry...On foreign policy, analysts said, many of Mr. Bush's assertions fall into a gray area between opinion and distortion.."
Juan Cole- Bombs in Taba, Multan, Baghdad Signal Failure of War on Terror
"The Bush administration thinks the problem is rogue states. But the real problem is radical terrorist groups. Bush has done all too little about the latter. Most of the al-Qaeda officials captured have been taken by the Pakistani military, so that this vital task has actually been outsourced. But where the Pakistani military wants to coddle an al-Qaeda-linked group, like the Army of the Prophet's Companions, it does, and Bush seems too weak to stop it. Bush and Cheney want now to overthrow Syria and Iran, pushing them into the sort of instability we have seen in Iraq."
Informed Comment- Conditions In Iraq
"Zaid al-Ali, an Iraqi attorney who has practiced in New York and Paris, returned to his native land recently and wrote about what he saw."
Thomas Oliphant- Cheney's fading credibility
"The reason behind Cheney's dramatic misstatement of an easily verifiable fact is revealing. It helps explain why Cheney's performance overall may have been helpful to George Bush in its appeal to already rabid Republicans, but why Edwards's was more helpful to John Kerry in its stronger appeal to the undecided or still-persuadable."
NYT/Kessler- War's Rationales Are Undermined Again/Bush's Credibility Further Damaged
"One by one, official reports by government investigators, statements by former administration officials and internal CIA analyses have combined to undermine many of the central rationales of the administration's case for war with Iraq -- and its handling of the post-invasion occupation."
NYT/Goodman- The Myth of "Security Moms"
"Never mind all the anecdotes about undecided moms scared straight into the arms of the president. They are, by and large, voting for Bush because they already are Republicans. Ta da. They are more likely to align with the president on questions of faith and values than security. I never could figure why Bush would make women in particular feel safer."
LA Times/Carlson- (Flip-Flopping's a Good Thing--Who Knew?) Bush Fails to 'Flip-Flop' Despite Evidence Policies Are Failing
"Embrace Flip-Flopping, Be the Flip-Flopper....People just need to look at the carnage on the nightly news, their shrinking paychecks and their escalating doctor bills to know that Bush's steadfastness is stubbornness. His insistence that he's always right means he can't get off the wrong track."
Reuters- Turn Down Your Thermostats-Get Out the Blankets and Wool Sweaters/You're Going to Pay out The Ying-Yang for Heat This Winter
"American consumers will feel the effects of record-high crude oil prices with winter home heating oil bills jumping about 28 percent and natural gas costs rising by 15 percent, the U.S. government said on Wednesday."
American Prospect/Meyerson- "Imperfect Elections"-Blot Out the Vote-It will be difficult for many to vote in Iraq -- and, incredibly, in America.
"Yesterday the Democrats unveiled a task force that will guide the efforts of the thousands of volunteer lawyers whom the party plans to deploy at the polls and in the courts on Election Day, to ensure that the United States defends the right to vote in Cincinnati as urgently as it does in Samarra."
LA Times/Bob Drogin and Greg Miller- Bush lied, soldiers died: Iraq's illicit weapons gone since early '90s, CIA says
"Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year, according to a comprehensive CIA report released Wednesday. Hussein intended to someday reconstitute his illicit programs and rebuild at least some of his weapons if United Nations sanctions were eased and he had the opportunity, the report concluded. But the Iraqi regime had no formal, written strategy to revive the banned programs after sanctions, and no staff or infrastructure in place to do so, the investigators found. The report said that Hussein's illicit-weapons capability was "essentially destroyed" after the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and was never rebuilt. It said Hussein considered the U.N. sanctions "an economic stranglehold" that in effect curbed his ability to build or develop weapons in the ensuing 12 years."
TomPaine.com/John Brown- The Return Of The World Warriors
"As the Bush administration's purported objectives for invading Iraq turn out to be strawmen, there's been an uptick in rhetoric about the Iraq as a front in the global war on terror. And it's working. Unfortunately, few on the left or the right are willing to challenge this notion that 9/11 launched the United States into a "world war." Certainly not the current Democratic contenders. But the real intellectual heavyweights behind the "World War IV" concept come from the right. Here, Brown -- a former diplomat -- argues that the belief we're in a "world war" is not only wrong, it's dangerous."
Media Matters- FRAUD: Russert Knew Cheney Lied About Not Meeting Edwards, But Withheld the Info
"Following the October 5 vice presidential debate, NBC's Meet the Press host Tim Russert repeated without challenge Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that Cheney had never met Senator John Edwards until the debate, but Russert knew Cheney's claim was false: Cheney and Edwards appeared on the same 2001 broadcast of Meet the Press. Russert said on the October 6 edition of NBC's Today show: "I thought that John Edwards would call him [Cheney] on it right at that very moment."
CAP/Alterman and McLeary- Think Again: Torturous Logic, Media Silence
"The all-encompassing rhetoric surrounding the 'war on terror' has been used by conservatives to sell the American public everything from tax cuts to the expansion of the federal government to the invasion a country that posed no discernable threat. At the same time, these same conservatives have portrayed anyone who points out these contradictions as near treasonous, recalling George Orwell's maxim: "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." Regarding, for instance, Abu Ghraib, conservatives almost hit for the cycle, with Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly ignoring reports of torture, President Bush insisting that Americans simply do not do such things, and Rush Limbaugh claiming that the abuse was little more than frat boy-style hazing."
Alvin York and Tonight's Debate
"I don't remember whether I was working on a farm or on a road when war first broke out. But when we came in I was driving steel and blasting on the road that is now called the York Highway. I was earning a dollar and sixty cents a day. Had anybody at the time said the road was going to be named for me, I would have told him that I didn't believe it ever would."
--from Sgt. Alvin York's diary
As we draw near to the time of tonight's debate, I think about the two men who will be standing in front of America.
One is a leader who lost the popular American election, yet still got into office by a combination of luck, the Supreme Court, the electoral college, and cronyism. The worst attack on American citizens in history happened on his watch. He lied to America in order to convince its citizens to believe a war in Iraq was necessary, when we know it never was. I am so sad for our nation. I am so concerned for our fighting men and women.
The other man is a veteran of the war in Vietnam. It wasn't a war in which he wished to fight. It wasn't a war any of our soldiers wanted to fight, but John Kerry did his duty in Vietnam. He saw it through. He saved lives. He killed for his country. He saw it through.
On this day in our nation's history, Corporal Alvin C. York is credited with single-handedly killing 25 German soldiers and capturing 132 in the Argonne Forest of France. The action saved York's small detachment from annihilation by a German machine-gun nest and won the reluctant warrior, who halied from backwater Tennessee, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In 1917, two months after the United States had declared war on Germany, Alvin York received his draft notice.
Because his church opposed war, he asked for conscientious objector status, but he was denied at both the state and local level because the small Church of Christ in Christian Union was not recognized as a legitimate Christian sect. Enlisting in the 82nd Infantry Division, he was offered noncombat duty but eventually agreed to fight after being convinced by a superior that America's cause was just.
Alvin York trusted that his nation's cause was just.
What soldier can confidently say that today with a known incompetent---a known misleader--as commander in chief?
If anyone can truly say they love this great country of ours, regardless of partisanship, they need to realize that this particular leader and his administration are corrupt to the core. It will take a transcendence of ego for the right wing pundits to understand that the nation's best interests are far more important than the Republican party's interests. It will take new leadership to turn this ill course around and to regain not only the world's trust, but more importantly, America's trust.
When John Kerry steps up to speak tonight, think of Alvin York's contribution to America. York wound up to be a hero, a word that would have, no doubt, sounded absurd to him in the days leading up to that fateful day, October 8, 1918.
I see John Kerry as our generation's absurd hero. He never expected to go to Vietnam, but he served when called. Fate lead him to save the life of a brother-in-arms. Bush hovered behind in the 1960s and pulled easy duty stateside. I think John Kerry was brave. I think George Bush was not brave.
In 2002, John Kerry trusted Bush to be presidential when Kerry gave Bush the necessary authority on the Iraq decision, much as Alvin York trusted his nation's cause. Bush let us down miserably and his pride and fear of political damage will not allow him to admit his misleading or his incompetence. John Kerry is sorry he ever trusted George Bush. I'm sorry John Kerry trusted Bush. Bush wasn't trustworthy.
I believe it's John Kerry's fate to be the one to turn America in the right direction. I trust he will do it.
Blog Recommendation
"I have lived nearly sixty years with myself and my own century and am not so enamoured of either as to desire no glimpse of a world beyond them."
~C.S. Lewis, "De Audiendis Poetis", Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
I read a lovely blog today and wanted to share it with my readers. Arevanye does a great job of displaying a daily C.S. Lewis reading along with colorful illustrations and/or photos. The link:
The Window in the Garden Wall: daily quotes from the works of C.S. Lewis
Media: Is there still a place for truth?
Kirsty Milne/Scotsman
LINK
For anyone accustomed to the partisan British press, the attack mode is familiar, but the mainstream US media has been slow to grasp what is happening. Fox is dismissed as "a boutique operation", yet during the Republican convention, it had more viewers than any of the three major TV networks.
Fox is not a boutique. It is a noisy shopping mall, the Walmart of the airwaves. Liberal America does not watch and therefore does not understand it - in the way that liberal Britain does not read, or understand, the Sun - but knows that something monstrous is out there....
.....the avid audience for Fox and other partisan outlets suggests a more complicated picture...It is easy to make fun of the [American journalists'] handwringing, which is more conscientious than the UK media - other than the BBC - would ever attempt. But the effect on readers, viewers and journalists is comparable to the impact of the Kelly affair. Who can be trusted? Where are the credible sources of information? Or are they all contaminated?
.... Meanwhile, the 2004 election campaign is passing the conventional media by. Excitement has come, not from networks or newspapers, but from blogs, books and films....
...For US journalists, who take themselves and their ethics seriously, the question is urgent. In this clamour of partisan voices, is there still a market for truth?
Related blog article:
BLOGGERS:
Documenting the Media Coup of 2004
Teaching Newspeople the value of impartiality.
Holding them accountable for their crimes...captured in millions of recording homes by Anonymoses
Evan Williams, Blogger co-founder, leaving Google
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger/Pyra, is leaving Google to pursue independent interests. He says he's going to be informally advising, on an as-needed basis and that Blogger is in excellent hands. He says he wouldn't feel comfortable leaving at all if he didn't believe that. He's optimistic about Blogger's future.
I'd like to thank Even for all that he's done for me, a blogger who knew nothing about blogging until Evan made it possible and, thankfully, easy.
Best of luck, Evan.
Study reveals 29% of Bloggers are Losers
34% of bloggers admit to calling in sick to stay home and work on their blog.
45% of bloggers play video games regularly.
11% of bloggers stated that on at least one occasion had they had passed up sex with a spouse or partner to work on their blog.
76% of bloggers admit to working on their blogs at work.
73% of bloggers admit too making up things to put in their blogs to make themselves look cool.
82% of bloggers describe themselves as progressive.
51% of bloggers stated that they have more friends on line that in real life.
32% of bloggers admitted to linking too cool site to make them selves look cool.
78% of bloggers are looking for a date on any given Friday night.
This is satire, already!
Before and After
Take a peek at some of the Bush administration statements before the Iraq War. See how those statements evolved as the lies were exposed.
