Current Events

Salon Magazine takes a closer look at the question of Bush’s mystery bulge during the first Presidential debate, and interviews a few folks about it.

Just a short time after the results of the new AP/Ipsos poll show Kerry over Bush 50% to 46% among likely voters, the department of Education is advising school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.
The safety advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia incident. But there is “no specific information indicating that there is a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States,” Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said.

After the debate, there was a lot speculation the George Bush was wired with an earpiece feeding him information about what to say. He had an odd bulge in the back of his coat, and some strange speech patters that suggested it. Here’s a site that investigates the idea that he’s been wired all along.
Ventriloquist dummy, indeed.

“New Rule: Florida has to sit this election out. You know, you’d think after the year 2000, they would have made sure to get it right this time. But, no, even Jimmy Carter–a man who has seen more Third World hellholes than a lesbian couple trying to adopt–even he says Florida is not ready for an election. So, sorry, Florida, you’re going to have to take that Tuesday off and just treat yourself to an extra hurricane.”

October 13, 2004, National Freeway Free Speech Day: Driving America to Think.
I’m trying to get my friends together to do this. Let me know if you want to.

A Letter from Michael Moore (read the original on his website!):
Friends,
You may have heard by now that the Michigan Republican Party has called for my arrest. That’s right. They literally want me brought up on charges — and hope that I’m locked up.
No, I’m not kidding. The Republican Party, yesterday, filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutors in each of the counties where I spoke last week in Michigan.
My crime? Clean underwear for anyone who will vote in the upcoming election.
Each night on our 60-city “Slacker Uprising Tour” through the 20 battleground states, I’ve been registering hundreds (and on some nights, thousands) of voters at my arena and stadium events. I then ask for everyone over 23 who has never voted (or didn’t vote in the last election) to stand up. I tell these slackers that I understand and respect why they think politicians are not worth the bother. I tell them that I may have been the original slacker, and that I do not want them to change their slacker ways. Keep sleeping ’til noon! Keep drinking beer! Stay on the sofa and watch as much TV as possible! But, please, just for me, on 11/2, I want you to leave the house and give voting a try — just this once. The stakes this time are just too high.
If they promise me that they’ll do this, I give the guys a 3-pack of new Fruit of the Loom underwear, and the women get a day’s supply of Ramen noodles, the sustenance of slackers everywhere.
I then close by having them repeat the 2004 Slacker Oath: “Pick nose! Pick butt! Pick Kerry.”
It seems to have worked, as each night the volunteer tables are swamped afterwards with hundreds of new and young voters signing up to campaign for regime change for the next four weeks.
The satire of all this seems to have been lost on the Republicans. Or maybe it hasn’t. The state of Michigan (where we spent most of last week) reported that over 100,000 young people recently registered to vote, a record that no one saw coming. The Slacker Tour has turned into a huge steamroller with a momentum all its own.
So, the Republican Party, to show their gratitude that so many young people will now be involved in our system, has demanded that I be sent to jail for trying to “bribe” students to vote.
Of course, this would be quite laughable if they weren’t so serious about their charges. But they are. I may soon be a wanted man in Michigan — simply because I convinced a few slackers to change their underwear and eat a healthy meal of artificially flavored noodles.
I thought I’d seen it all this year — Disney refusing to distribute the film they paid for, right-wingers harassing theater owners who showed “Fahrenheit 9/11,” conservative action groups trying to get the FEC to kick our film ads off the air, the unnecessary restrictive R-rating that forced teenagers to sneak in to see it, and all the stupid, crazy attacks on me and my movie that I’ve had to listen to as I watched the public ignore them and pack the movie houses anyway, where my film was being shown. And when all that failed, five different Republican groups made five different attack dog tapes (oops, “documentaries”!) against me in a period of about six weeks. But they were all so bad, so boring, so right-wing, no one wanted to watch them and they too went away, a sad waste of good videotape.
Now, after enduring all this, with no tricks left in their bag, they’ve just decided, “Let’s toss his sorry ass behind bars — him and his noodles and his gift of clean underwear!”
My friends, they will not catch me. Though I may be on the run, and I may never be able to return home to my beloved Michigan, I make this solemn vow to you and yours: The slackers of America shall not be denied their noodles, they will proudly wear their clean underwear as free Americans, and they will vote Bush out of office come November 2nd (though they will not show up to the polls until well after noon)!
Stay strong, stay slacker, and please remember to turn the underwear inside out every three days. As for the noodles, add boiling water, stir.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

So I have no critique of it at all. I was busy spending time with my lovely girlfriend.

Some great debate cartoons posted on the Democratic Underground site.
My favorite… “Even your father chose not to go into Iraq. George Bush, I knew George Bush, and you are no George Bush!”

On a record of failure? Easy! Just watch this movie, and sing along with the Republican speakers:
September 11, September 11, September 11, September 11, 9/11, September 11, September 11, September 11, 9/11, September 11, 2001, September 11, September 11. Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam. Saddam Hussein. War and danger, continuing danger, hour of danger, dangerous world, continued danger, grave new threat, horrific acts of atrocities, murderous regimes, kiling us, tyranny and terror, slaugtered thousand,s weapons of mass destruction, deadly weapons, terrorist weapons, mass destruction, nuclear weapons, poison gas, torture chambers, mass graves, deadly technology, radical ideology of hate, terror threats, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, war on terror, global terrorism, global terrorism, global terrorism, global terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.

Democratic Underground has once again hit a home-run with their The Top 10 Conservative Idiots (No. 173). They examine the split-screen phenomenon and how the networks tried to make Bush look not so puny compared to Kerry, but failed.
They also tear Bush’s “mexed missages” arguments to pieces, along with his claims about alliances. Funny stuff, which would be even more hilarious if there weren’t people dying every day because of Bush’s lies.