Monthly Archives: October 2004

Call for Conservative Bloggers to Prove anti-Bush Documents are Fakes

YesBushCan.com is an energetic little site. It has issued a call for Bloggers Unite to Prove False Docs:

You exposed RatherGate by proving the CBS documents were fake — nice work! But now the liberals have found a bunch more documents so our work is not done. Let's get to work proving that these are fake, too!

Their list of documents includes:

Dick Cheney's DUI
George W. Bush's DUI
George W. Bush's Second DUI
Memo to Ken Lay
Second Memo to Ken Lay
Osama Warning Document Part 1
Osama Warning Document Part 2

[Links fixed]

Of course, this Truth Squadding stuff is not a project for the faint of heart!

Posted in Completely Different | 12 Comments

I Want One of These

Their website is slashdotted, but Wired's article Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark, is enough to make me want a TV-B-Gone. (spotted via Boing-Boing, natch)

It fits on your keychain, “looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.”

Some people will say it's antisocial, but so is the problem it solves. Wonder how much it costs?

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 6 Comments

First 527 Mailer of the Season

Got my first piece of 527 propaganda in the mail today, from an outfit that calls itself All Children Matter. It seems to be an outfit that supports state subsidies to privatize schools, be it vouchers, charter schools, or tax credits, bankrolled by a former President of Alticor Inc. — parent corporation of Amway.

Schooling being a traditionally state and local issue, the mailing exhorts me to vote for G.W. Bush for President, because, er, why exactly? Bush “believes that education is the key to opportunity”? Is there anyone who doesn't?

Or am I supposed to believe that Kerry “opposes equal opportunity in education”? Because he opposes tax credits for private schooling? Which by definition only go to those who pay taxes? Which means that there would be no benefit for poor people, and less money raised to pay for public schools, which puts the lie to “equal opportunity in education”.

It's actually a surprisingly ineffective mailer, notable only for what must be the single most unflattering picture of Kerry I've ever seen, making him look like a survivor in a disaster movie.

The version of my name on the flyer suggests they may have sent it to people who subscribe to the Economist rather than to everyone in the area. In case anyone cares, I've put up a pdf of both sides of the glossy thing: Side one and side two (cropped to cut off my address, not that you couldn't find it online in about three seconds if you really wanted to).

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | Comments Off on First 527 Mailer of the Season

Word Frequency Counts Reveal a Major Problem

Pandagon reports in Terrorist Who?:

Did a quick term count in yesterday's “major” speech on terrorism. The results, amazingly, are even more ridiculous than I expected:

  • Frequency of John Kerry (with the terms “Senator”, “Senator Kerry”, or “my opponent”): 41
  • Frequency of “Saddam Hussein”: 4
  • Frequency of “Al Qaeda”: 1
  • Frequency of “Osama bin-Laden” or “bin-Laden”: 0

Assuming this was, as stated, a speech on terrorism, it seems quite clear that George W. Bush believes the main terrorist threat facing our country is John Kerry.

He probably does at that.

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 1 Comment

Of the Dilbertian Pointy Headed Boss and the Next, Wonkish, Presidency

A lucid essay at the aptly named Making Light, wherin not levity but illumination. The title may be Motivation and doubt, but the topic is management style and the world view of the PHB — and what it means to have an ur-PHB in the Oval Office. (Hint: reality need not apply.) Great reading. (And, as always, the comments are good too.)

So too, in a very different way, is Stirling Newberry's The Great Silence:

Bush Wilts without the Media Light, which begins with meditations on the 'ground game' in the last weeks of the campaign, and then takes off in a flight of plausible fancy to imagine the arc of the first term of a Kerry Presidency. Rather than a PHB, suggests Newberry, it will be a wonk's Presidency—at first.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on Of the Dilbertian Pointy Headed Boss and the Next, Wonkish, Presidency

Visualize Winning

Needlenose says, Visualize Winning.

It's good advice for the next two tense weeks.

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 2 Comments