Wednesday, January 21, 2004

First Wellstone's funeral, now Dean's pep-rally Really folks, are you already to get suckered again by the national media's esquisite sensibilities? Oh my! Someone expressing passion!?! OH MY! Someone involved in politics as something other than a hobby or a means to further pad their own pockets!?! OH MY!!! Someone who is energized and enthusiastic and whose soul hasn't been laminated to prevent creasing and folding!!! What the heck is the big whoop? So Dean aired it out for the volunteers who had put body and soul into his campaign. And he did so passionately (and no, none of the fake "passion" with which Junior talks about helping shut-ins). And this guy cares... So what's the f--king big deal? I'm sure most Americans see a lot worse every Friday during high school football season.... but never the national media, no they're determined to use this as "proof" that Dean is actually an alien, that the medical doctor/governor of Vermont has all these years been hiding that he's really a mutant from Saturn's icy moon Titan...or some such nonsense. Just like they "convinced us" that the Wellstone funeral was a heathen rite of mockery and groups sex that "proper" people (pssst... Republicans) rightfully disdained. Well, if your ready to serve up your brains to be eaten by the same media crowd that is thoroughly enamored of Junior and his amazing powers of borrow and spend... well, that's your choice. But while you were busy being agog at Dean's "antics" you probably forgot to remember that the celebrity press had just blown the Iowa caucuses by about as wide a margin as it is possible to blow a political story. What does their expertise lie in again? I guess not politics... Oh yeah, it lies in serving up "shocking revelations" -- how curious it is that the revelations always seem to go against one side and not the other... 7:36:23 PM

This is humorous   I found this to be the most amusing take on the whole sorry mess:   State of the Union: Long on Long, Short on Lofty   By Tom Shales Wednesday, January 21, 2004; Page C01   We like a confident president, but we don't like a cocky president, and George W. Bush had too many moments of cockiness last night as he delivered his third State of the Union address to both houses of Congress and the viewing nation. Often the words of the speech were written to sound lofty, but Bush had such a big Christmas-morning grin on his face that they came out sounding like taunts -- taunts to the rest of the world or taunts to Democrats in the hall….   The speech was pretty much so-so, and Bush's gung-ho delivery -- something approaching the forced jollity of a game show host -- lacked dignity and certainly lacked graciousness. Bush has never been big on those things anyway.   Dan Rather of CBS News, who sometimes goes out of his way not to upset the Bush people -- since they are all ready to pounce on him for what they perceive (or claim to perceive) as a bias against their exalted glorious potentate -- said afterward that Bush's was "a strong speech, strongly delivered." It was one of the few times Rather sounded less than astute....   Bush's speech was on the perfunctory side with the by-now- predictable list of oratorical ingredients. There has to be a guest star in the audience, a tradition begun grandly by the great communicator Ronald Reagan. And so Bush had, among others in the audience, representatives of U.S. troops plus Adnan Pachachi, president of the Iraqi Governing Council, who got that prime gallery seat right next to Laura Bush, who was looking slightly hypnotized as usual….   One of the bigger surprises of the night was instantly evident, even as Bush made his tedious way down an aisle before delivering the speech. Though he's favored blue ties (sometimes baby blue) throughout his presidency, Bush wore a red necktie last night. Could this signify a change in terrorism alert status? Or maybe just the fact that Bush is now in full ramming mode, not merely a president but a politician again, up to his collar in the rigors of an election year?   It was obviously the latter, and the fact that Bush appeared to be so happy, so elated, so giddily primed for another political slugfest was a little bit disheartening, and even a little bit scary. 6:18:15 PM

USA Today does the nation a public service   Is this what real reporting looks like?   Behind the address A reality check on what Bush said on key issues. Weapons of mass destruction   What Bush said: Search teams have "identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" in Iraq. "Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."   Context: The Bush administration has struggled to explain why weapons hunters have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq in 10 months of searching. On the eve of the war, President Bush said there was "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." He said terrorist groups could acquire weapons from Iraq and use them against the United States. A search effort led by CIA appointee David Kay has turned up no weapons and no evidence of any advanced weapons program, raising questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq….   Go read the whole article… 6:08:59 PM