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Wow. Kerry looks so much stronger on offense than defense. His speech at Temple University today was a knockout punch. The video isn't up yet, but when it is, I encourage everyone to go watch it. In the interim, go read the speech.
Wow. Bush's Rose Garden conference was a doozy. Let's see the clip that will be the most widely talked about:
Q Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister, I'd like to ask about the Iraqi people. Both of you have spoken for them today. And yet over the past several months there have been polls conducted by the Coalition Provisional Authority, by the Oxford Institute and other reputable organizations that have found very strong majorities do not see the United States as a liberator but as an occupier, are unhappy with American policy and want us out. Don't the real voices of the Iraqi people themselves contradict the rosy scenarios you're painting here today?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me start by that. You said the poll was taken when the CPA was there?
Q (Off mike.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, okay. Let me stop you. First of all, the Iraqi people now have got Iraqi leadership.
Prime Minister Allawi and his cabinet are making decisions on behalf of the Iraqi people.
Secondly, I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. (Chuckles.) It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future. Talk to the leader. I agree: I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, which is nice, safe and secure. But I talk to this man.
Um, that's idiotic. The right track/wrong track number is better in Iraq than in America? And Bush's rejoinder is that America is "nice, safe and secure"? I guess Bush really is living in fantasy-land Good to see Kerry calling him on it.
So, I've been out of commission a few days with what I call a tummy bug. Not so fun. I returned to work today to learn that a very large contingent of people have been suffering the very same ailment. Turns out, we all ate the same catered lunch for a meeting on Friday. The plot thickens. Now investigations are underway -- from the sound of it, I was lucky enough to get one of the milder cases. People went to the hospital; one man's temperature dropped six degrees.
Drama central. You just don't go poisoning a pack of lawyers.
Oh, and I'm also disappointed that I missed National Talk Like a Pirate Day -- I reminded myself last week and then...I'll blame it on the illness...I forgot.
So it seems ACT is pulling out of Michigan. I wonder why?
Perhaps this explains it.
American Muslim voters are overwhelmingly supporting Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry over Republican George W. Bush, according to a new American Muslim Poll conducted by Zogby International for Georgetown University’s Muslims in the American Public Square (Project MAPS). By a margin of 76% to 7%, Muslims back the Kerry/Edwards ticket over the incumbent Bush/Cheney ticket. This is a stark reversal of fortunes from the 2000 election for Mr. Bush.
Michigan is moving into a lock for us, which means we can focus on Florida and Ohio. And that's bad news for Bush.
Likewise, it seems like the GOP has lost yet another group of voters who are disenchanted with their knuckle dragging approach to civil liberties. The Republican Party is still just as white as ever and given current population trends, they're going to be permanent minority soon.
In other news, check out the New Partnership For America's Future. The document is a little religious, but nice. I'm telling you: the similarities to '94 just keep on coming. Except we're in the driver's seat this time.
Read this post by Juan Cole about what America would look like if it were Iraq. Remember those pictures painted earlier by Rumsfeld about how the violence in Iraq was not unlike DC. This is the definitive take-down of that fallacy.
Then read this q-and-a session from the administration's "Ask the White House" website. It occurred yesterday and is directed at White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. The questions are tough. Real tough. It makes one realize why the administration has been resisting putting Bush in front of the cameras recently.
Which was why yesterday's impromptu press conferenc by Kerry was so important. Kerry's people are starting to realize that they need to rebut arguments made by Bush in the same news cycle. The result? The subsequent analysis of Bush's own speech to the U.N. becomes tougher and harder hitting.
Finally, here's your early morning hubris check. Richard Perle said the following at an American Enterprise Institute conference on September 22, 2003:
"A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."
I, unlike Seymour Hersh, actually am an optimist and think that democracy is a laudable goal for all people. That doesn't mean I'm an idiot like Perle though...the neocons flaw is not that they are utopians, it is that they are willing to risk lives, ignore contrary evidence and show a lack of knowledge about reality to further their goals. In that manner, the idea that we would be "greeted as liberators" is naive in hindsight, but not a big problem if you bring in 200k+ troops because you've planned for the possibility that they won't be quite so enthusiastic. The neocons fervent belief in their own ideas is their blind spot: they failed to plan for the peace, and in fact, worked hard against planning for bad scenarios. That's not optimism, that's ignorance.
All you need to know about the weekend is that I forgot Talk Like a Pirate Day was on Sunday.
I've added an outlook appointment to occur every year so that I'll never forget it, so long as I am employed at my current firm.
Argh!
Okay, this poll just came out showing Kerry with a commanding lead in Oregon. Odd, considering that yesterday this poll came out showing Bush with a commanding lead...and let's not forget Zogby's poll from a week and half ago.
The swing is 11 points from poll to poll to poll. Yes, if we examine the margin of error of both polls it is theoretically possible that both could be near the outliers and the race could be right in the middle.
More likely, however, is the possibility that one of the two polls is misusing the "likely voter" model. As I have harped on before to co-workers, typically most polls survey a large group of voters. They publish these numbers under the "registered voters" group. But to cull out the people they don't think will be showing up on November 2, they apply a methodology which varies from poll to poll. As [Zogby points out], small changes in the percentage of voters who identify themselves with a political party can have a huge effect, because the electorate is so polarized.
So, if I take a survey and the people who answer the phone are 34% Dems, 33% GOP and 32% Independents, and the survey shows Bush and Kerry locked in a dead heat, changing the ratio to 29D/37R/33I can swing the race to appear to be Bush's to lose.
As the race tightens, the registered voter models are going to show Kerry leading, with the "likely voter" models of Gallup, et al., showing Bush with a rapidly decreasing lead. My prediction, made several times in the past, is that the polls aren't showing the changing dynamics on the ground, because pollsters are trying to compensate for increasing numbers of the electorate saying that they are Democrats and are likely voters. The true numbers won't be known until the day of election.
Finally, I've altered the code on the main page. Now when you click on a staff member's title, it will take you to his/her staff page. More changes are in the works, so be sure to update your staff page today!
AKA Cassandra: Joe Klein.
Here he hits what the President is doing wrong on the War in Iraq and the War against Al Qaeda. You read it, and you're saying, "Right on, Joe!" Then you get to the wrap-up, and you say, "Say it ain't so!"
Read the speech.
Watch the video in realmedia format.
The best moment came here:
Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no – because a Commander-in-Chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.
Now the president, in looking for a new reason, tries to hang his hat on the “capability” to acquire weapons. But that was not the reason given to the nation; it was not the reason Congress voted on; it’s not a reason, it’s an excuse. Thirty-five to forty countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003. Is President Bush saying we should invade them?
I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden.
Well put. Good to see Kerry going on offense.
Okay, I've made some significant changes to the backend of the site...with plenty more still to come.
For starters, staff members can now upload images to the website. Try not to upload anything too large (above 600 pixels wide) because the drop-shadow effect won't work at sizes much larger.
To get the drop-shadow effect to work, simply add the following:
<div class='alpha-shadow'><div><a href='/images/999'><img src='/newimages/999' alt='alternate text goes here' /></a></div></div>
Be sure to replace the number "/999" with the actual number of the image and "alternate text goes here" with a useful bit of text to appear when you hover over the image.
Got it? There's one more caveat: friends cannot delete images they upload. Only Brad, Helena and I can do that. So don't upload any pr0n to the server.
In addition, I'm finally eliminating the table-based layout on the backend. Hooray for web standards!
werkz advice: go see it in the theater.
Hero was well made and compelling, in essence a modern-day-chinese-Rashomon. The main story is told/imagined through several different viewpoints, although unlike Kurosawa's masterpiece, there is only one "true" telling.
The special effects are the main reason to go, however, so be sure to catch it in the theater. DVDs won't do it justice.
Yes, it's a robotic lobster.
I'm not even going to try to explain this. Let's just say that I don't trust researchers who post videos on the internet in .gif format.
Rain, rain, rain.
Six months ago, I think I would've said this evening was close to perfect. Now, however, my standards are much higher, and yet I still think it was close to perfect.
Maybe it's my optimistic nature. Or my bad memory...
Oh, I scored a 14. Damn.
Alright, Jill, what did you score? I have sent it around to some of my colleagues, all of whom write for a living, and all of whom are now horrified at their scores.
I scored highest of the bunch with 20, and I think our senior editor may require therapy to overcome this setback.
I agree that really bad spellers are annoying (and I love your definition of breasy), but that quiz really had the toughest words!
Spelling! It's important, because no one wants to be friends with bad spellers. Nothing's worse than getting an email telling you that "You're friends are cool we should all hang out," or, as as a recent missive asked me, "how's the weather there? Here it is nice and breasy."
"Breasy"? Sounds like a word used to describe a poorly made bronze bust of a forgotten nineteenth century author. "Really, dear, I can't believe you spent a thousand pounds on that breasy old thing." Et cetera.
Are you worried that your friends are whispering behind your back about your inability to spell? Luckily, the Guardian's most recent quiz, an excerpt from the charmingly named Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary will test your spelling ability, and by proxy your social standing: Guardian Spelling Quiz.
While you're there, take a look at the Guardian's literary quizzes. My personal favorites are Samuel Beckett and Christian Allegory, but there's something for everyone.
This article presents an interesting idea:
The parallel of the Humphrey/Nixon campaign to that of Kerry/Bush is striking, with many Democrats calling for John Kerry to adopt a harder-hitting, more combative style on the stump. A casual observer might say, "Well, it's early yet." But students of history realize it takes time to turn a lumbering campaign around, and the election is only 47 days away.
And it looks like Kerry is already trying it out on the stump:
Emboldened by polls showing that the presidential race is once again a dead heat, Sen. John Kerry unleashed a full-frontal assault on George Bush Thursday for misleading the American people about the war in Iraq. Kerry said the president has "failed the true test of leadership" by hiding the facts about the war: a thousand U.S. dead, a growing violent insurgency, entire regions controlled by terrorists, and hopes for security and stability slipping "farther and farther away."
"This is the truth, as hard as it is to hear," Kerry said Thursday in a speech to the same National Guard group that Bush addressed Tuesday. "You deserve a president who will not play politics with national security, who will not ignore his own intelligence while living in a fantasy world of spin, and who will give the American people the truth about the challenge our brave men and women face on the front lines."
The point isn't to rally the base so much as it is to point out what is already obvious to everyone with a television, namely, that Iraq is a mess. The question should be how are we going to get out? But the question that will get John Kerry elected is who got us in this mess in the first place. And for most Americans, the answer will be George W. Bush...which is why Kerry will win. Even if he didn't make the right choice at the time war was looming, Kerry has been the first to redefine the terrain and say that right now, we're no longer winning in Iraq.
Will there be enough time for this message to sink home? I think so.
Oh, man.
This is creepy. In a good way. And very addictive.
You know those slightly-dorky people, the ones who take pictures constantly? Who always have a camera? The ones you always invite to hang out with you, well, because you know they'll be only too happy to snap a few shots of you with your friends? As camera phone become higher end, I predict everyone is going to become that sort of person.
In a nice way, once that happens, blogs like this one will become obsolete. Because the chance of things like this remaining anonymous will drop to zero rapidly in the next five years. Which is a good thing. In the meantime, enjoy.
I know, I know... You see, Finch, I had dismissed her out of hand because of her claim that she's been in a serious relationship for more than a year. Knowing that she seriously wanted to jump Brad at our birthday party last year, and that our birthday hasn't happened yet this year, I determined that it must've been someone further in the past.
Yes, Brad should take us to lunch again -- we are both clearly still suffering.
First, an offer you might want to refuse:
Yes, the site in question is actually selling these guys. Go pick yours up today!
Second, be sure to run out (virtually) and also snag the brand-new firefox.
Third, my plans for this evening include the perfect movie flow...from Kevin to Fincher, with others mixed in-between. There are few things more perfect that working one's schedule so that all parties and all activities can take place as they should. The solution, it appears, is to simply do away with sleep. If someone had a pill for me to get back those hours each day, I'd be the first in line. Given Brad's three o'clock posting, perhaps he knows of a good distributor?