by Ted on November 5, 2004
After a bitter, polarizing election, the gift of entertainment can be such a comfort. This weekend, Americans of all persuasions are sure to come together at a special film event. I’m talking, of course, about Alfie. Bush’s base can clearly identify with a priapic European in New York, wearing designer clothing and bedding everything in a skirt. And as a temporarily despondent liberal, nothing can lift my spirits like watching the handsome and suave Jude Law pad around for ninety minutes like a fucking gigolo tomcat. Let the healing begin.
Sigh.
Here’s the thread: post a link that makes you laugh. I’ve got a few under the break.
[click to continue…]
by Ted on November 4, 2004
Many thanks to guest poster Bill Gardner for his on-the-ground posts about the scene in Columbus. If the bug hits him and he decides to start blogging on his own, we’d be glad to give it some attention.
by Ted on November 3, 2004
I’m going to bed; all your base are ably handled elsewhere. Just one thing…
It’s admirable that so many citizens were willing to wait for hours to cast their vote. But they shouldn’t have to. Four-hour lines shouldn’t function as inspiring symbols of human perseverance. They’re bugs in a voting system from which we have every right to expect better.
I can’t predict how this election is going to play out, but I suspect that we’ll all be too burned out to generate much interest in election reform for next time. That’s a shame.
by Ted on November 2, 2004
It isn’t every day that I read a British newspaper story about the small Ohio town where I grew up, but these are interesting times.
But there are signs that Hudson’s longtime reputation as a Republican centre is changing. “The joke has always been that you could fit all Hudson’s Democrats into the phone booth at Saywell’s drugstore,” says Susan Terkel, a leader of the Kerry campaign in Hudson. “But now lots of Democrats have come out of the closet. The former mayor is campaigning for Kerry and lots of others. We had a gathering of 400 people which was exciting. But now some Republicans are boycotting the restaurant where we had the meeting. Isn’t that terrible?”
Well, yes, it is.
For a little local color, I remember checking my home zip code at opensecrets.org during the 2000 election and being shocked; a non-systematic scan showed that more people had donated to Buchanan than Gore. This year, my dad says that there are roughly as many Kerry signs as Bush ones in the neighborhood. (I realize that these two facts are not directly comparable, but they still leave me optimistic.)
by Ted on October 30, 2004
In the terrific documentary Control Room about the Al-Jazeera network, one of the most appealing figures was Marines spokesman Captain Josh Rushing. With the possible exception of Ken Pollack’s The Threatening Storm, I don’t think that I saw or read a more persuasive spokesman for the war in Iraq. He engaged often-critical Al Jazeera journalists in a fair-minded way, without giving up a point. He simultaneously radiated candor and a deeply-felt belief in the righteousness of the cause. My fiancee said that she wished she could hire him.
He’s recently left the Marines, and he’s given his first interview to Fresh Air today on NPR. You can listen to it online. I haven’t heard it yet, but I suspect that most people who saw Control Room would be interested in what he has to say.
UPDATE: That was really something. He’s deeply pro-military, but critical of the way the war has been conducted. If the election wasn’t days away, I suspect that he’d be in for the full-strength “slime and defend” treatment. More below.
[click to continue…]
by Ted on October 29, 2004
Most liberal blog readers have heard about Tom DeLay’s ludicrous accusation against the Daily Kos blog (also quoted here, here, and here):
“LaRouche is a con felon and all I can tell you is that Mr. Morrison has supported and campaigned with LaRouche followers and Mr. Morrison also has taken money and is working with the Daily Kos, which is an organization that raises money for fighters against the U.S. in Iraq,” said DeLay.
Needless to say, the Daily Kos does not raise money for insurgents or terrorists in Iraq or elsewhere. Unless the House Majority leader would be pleased to describe himself and other House Republicans as “fighters against the U.S. in Bosnia”, this is an absurd charge.
I happened to go back to the original story just now, where I saw…
“LaRouche is a convicted felon and all I can tell you is that Mr. Morrison has supported and campaigned with LaRouche followers and Mr. Morrison also has taken money and is working with the Daily Kos, which is an organization that raises money for fighters of U.S. (policy) in Iraq,” said DeLay. (emphasis added)
How’d that happen?
[click to continue…]
by Ted on October 29, 2004
Zizka has a great tagline on his blog: “Uncool when uncoolness is necessary.” We’ve reached that point. This is a goddamn outrage. GOP apparatchiks in Ohio may face prosecution for making false claims in their challenges to hundreds of new voter registratrations. Their challenges were thrown out at the initiative of the Republican members of the Board of Elections, proving that not every single thing on Earth is about politics. Completely unacceptable.
And this… I really hope that it’s revealed to be a parody, or a forgery, or something. Even the Kossacks are suspicious. It’s so over the top, it’s like seeing a recruiting poster for COBRA.
by Ted on October 27, 2004
James Wolcott thinks that Bush supporters are preparing to deny the legitimacy of a Kerry victory, and shift the blame for disaster in Iraq, by blaming media bias.
Matt Welch has a reasonable response to this idea:
My main objection is this (note: he’s quoting Mark Steyn, although he could have found the same thought from James Lileks or a dozen others):
If the present Democratic-media complex had been around earlier, America would never have mustered the will to win World War II or, come to that, the Revolutionary War.
Firstly, as Steyn surely knows, the press was much more explicitly partisan and venal back before and during WWII, and because of a lack of things like television, barons like William Randolph Hearst (who bitterly opposed the entrance to the war, and even employed Hitler as a columnist) had far more comparative power than anyone you could name today.
As I pointed out in this column back in May, it’s amazing that the same people who constantly prophesize and compile evidence about Big Media’s demise will in the next breath blame the MSM for losing wars, tipping elections, and otherwise delivering massive outcomes contrary to the Republican agenda. They’re either all-powerful or not; I’m putting my money on “not.”
by Ted on October 25, 2004
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a bloodthirsty terrorist. He was well-known before the war in Iraq. In fact, we knew that he had a base in Kurdish controlled northern Iraq, where we operated freely. Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN leaned heavily on Zarqawi to make the case for war. But it begged the question: why didn’t we take out Zarqawi’s base before the war?
The Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002, giving the administration a series of options for a military strike on the camp Mr. Zarqawi was running then in remote northeastern Iraq, according to generals who were involved directly in planning the attack and several former White House staffers. They said the camp, near the town of Khurmal, was known to contain Mr. Zarqawi and his supporters as well as al Qaeda fighters, all of whom had fled from Afghanistan. Intelligence indicated the camp was training recruits and making poisons for attacks against the West…
But the raid on Mr. Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House, until word came down just weeks before the March 19, 2003, start of the Iraq war that Mr. Bush had rejected any strike on the camp until after an official outbreak of hostilities with Iraq. Ultimately, the camp was hit just after the invasion of Iraq began.
[click to continue…]
by Ted on October 22, 2004
Dan at Contrapositive has written up a very cool hour-by-hour guide to election night- what to expect, when not to panic, and what each Presidential candidate needs, as the night passes, to stay viable.
And McSweeney’s has a very funny little piece on history’s notable films:
The Terminator
According to The Terminator, in the future, time travel will be perfected, but it will only work on humans or flesh-covered appliances; fabric is out of the question. As interesting as the Terminators are, I would almost prefer to see a movie about the invention of this time-travel device, because I imagine it would feature a lot of lines like, “Well, the good news is, the flesh-covered toaster made it. The bad news is, the khakis didn’t.”
Signs
If I understand things correctly, Mel Gibson is a cleric who regains his faith in God after he realizes that his wife, in her dying moments, gave him a message that was too cryptic and oblique to save the lives of millions of people during an alien attack, but was just specific enough to save his son. This may be the most narrow definition of a miracle, ever.
by Ted on October 22, 2004
For your tireless service on behalf of good, you have been given the power to replace the weak link in any band, past or present.
You need not be bound by practical considerations; you’re free to ignore the fact that (say) Peter Criss was the only one who could properly apply the KISS makeup. For example, you can replace Liz Phair (the singer) while keeping Liz Phair (the songwriter). How do you use this power, and why?
My answers under the fold.
[click to continue…]
by Ted on October 21, 2004
I recently read a blogger (can’t remember who) wondering aloud about what would have happened if the blogging phenomenon had been around for earlier periods in our history.
Just what history needs: more Mickey Kaus.
(cue dream sequence)
[click to continue…]
by Ted on October 21, 2004
A Bangladeshi immigrant put himself in the driver’s seat by paying a record US$360,000 at a city auction on Monday for a New York taxi medallion, which is required by the city to own a taxicab. Most cabdrivers in the city work for taxi fleets or lease time from a medallion owner.
Mohammed Shah, 44, mortgaged his house in the New York borough of Queens to help finance the purchase of one of 116 new taxi medallions sold to the highest bidders.
Madre dios. I’ve never lived in New York City, but I’m pretty sure that the city isn’t drowning in a sea of cabs. You don’t need to be a blue-skinned libertarian to see that artificial scarcity has some real consequences.
I know that Mayor Bloomberg’s got a lot on his plate, and I know that it’s unfair to personalize the NYC bureaucracy in the form of one man. But, still… he’s a shrewd businessman who came to office with relatively few political debts. From my distant perspective, he seemed to spend an awful lot of capital on necessary tax hikes and unnecessary smoking bans.
He was probably the last, best hope to phase out rent control and crazy cab restrictions, wasn’t he? Damn.
by Ted on October 20, 2004
by Ted on October 19, 2004
Sinclair Broadcasting, the company which is forcing its stations to run an anti-Kerry film this week, fired one of its bureau chiefs for speaking out against its decision. As Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice points out, this rather strongly undermines the premise that the film is a news event.
In the event of a Kerry victory, Sinclair is painting a big bulls-eye on themselves that says “FCC, screw here”. But even if Bush wins, they’ll be too radioactive for the new Bush administration to help. Kerry supporters are furious at Sinclair’s unprecedented descent into blatant electioneering on public airwaves. They’ll continue the boycott of their advertisers, challenge the FCC licences, and use every means possible to punish Sinclair. Either way, Sinclair is not going to get the deregulation they need to stay viable.
In the words of Lehman Brothers, airing the film “has no upside and only multi-dimensional downside”. And it’s not as if this company was in a strong position to pull a stunt with their shareholders’ money. From their most recent 10-K:
[click to continue…]