With all the brew-ha-ha (start there and read up) about Sinclair Broacasting and the fact that I’m blessed enough to live by a Sinclair affiliate, I figured I’d relate this little story:
I was flipping through my local news broadcasts tonight and on our local Sinclair Broadcasting affiliate was a “story” about the ramifications of running this “documentary”. They proceded to use a short bit of an interview of a Democratic National Committee person (who is complaining to the FEC) and then they “interview” one of their own opinion people. He states that:

• They are running this film because other media outlets are ignoring the story.
• They would run a similar film about George Bush if the other media outlets were ignoring it as well.

Wow. I am officially dumbfounded.

This whole “global test” thing has gotten out of hand. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said the following to Wolf Blitzer:

“I don’t understand ‘proving to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons,’ “

Now, it might just be me, but I think that little quote almost spells out the exact problem this administration has. It looks to me like talking points are becoming more important than common sense. Any dolt can understand that if the President of the United States of America is going to send American soldiers into harms way for preemptive action, it damn well better be for a reason that makes sense to someone outside of this country. Approach them with facts and data that backs up the grounds for the action and they should say “Yes, preemptive attack would be an option if all other avenues fail”. With or without the caveat, that sounds like a global test to me.

Condi was showing signs of going nuts back when she refered to the “bin Laden determined to strike in US” as based on “historical data“.

To be fair, Kerry doesn’t fully answer the question asked in the original article about what the “global test” really means. But, remember that the debates were supposed to be free response, thinking on your feet events. And we all know who looked better at doing that.

Tonight on Now with Bill Moyers, Morton Mintz had some excellent suggested debate questions for President Bush and Senator Kerry. They’ve published more questions, with background info, on the website.

5 minutes of The McLaughlin Group and I was ready to strangle someone, but all 4 panelists agreed Kerry had won the debate. Now, on to George Carlin on Real Time with Bill Maher.

I was reading one of my favorite sections in The Onion today and started off on an interesting journey. Seeing Dan’s success with “santorum“, he got a challenge to try and revive some words that have fallen out of common use, kakistocracy was one of them. I then had to go searching Google to make sure this was a real word. It is, and I stumbled upon something that’s almost funny in light of the current political atmosphere: The Clinton Kakistocracy.
I wish Dubya had only gotten a blowjob from an intern. Lets go down the checklist:

• Using questionable military actions to distract from other shortcomings in the administration? CHECK
• Claiming your advisors all back your actions when there is nothing close to a concensus? CHECK
• Having a bunch of two faced partisans claim that partisan action, by the other side of course, is behind all of this? CHECK
• “lemming-like recitation of ‘I believe the president'”? CHECK (Just watch two Sunday morning talking-head, gasbag shows and feel the talking points wearing at your soul).

And to top it all off:

“With evidence now gathered since the bombing, it is certain the attack was, at best, a poorly planned military exercise and at worst a multi-million dollar deadly diversion.”

Poor planning? Billions spent distracting us from the real target?
Heres to hoping I’m only drinking because of the game after the debate tommorrow.

I can only hope the sharp uptick in voter registration is as good as this guy thinks it is.
Even the morning DJ on 107.1 this morning was telling listeners to get out and vote. I’ve been trying for almost a year.

Wow, I really hope most of this info about the GEMS vote tabulator isn’t true, but it sounds like poor programming and borders on criminal. The best quote:

According to internal Diebold memos, there are 32 combinations of on-off flags. Even the programmers have trouble keeping track of all the changes these flags can produce.

Can you say “spaghetti code” boys and girls?

And I’m ashamed Dennis Hastert is a representative of my state.

Ever heard of him? Go read this entry and the linked article, and maybe then you won’t be so suprised you haven’t heard of him.

This guy must be nuts:

The Keyes candidacy also poses a dilemma for Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, and potentially a dividend for Bush. Illinois is no lock for the Democrats. It’s a highly contested key battleground state.

I mean, come on, even The Daily Show has written Illinois off as a “blue state”. The rest of the column makes some sense, but I think the “carpetbagger” moniker and Keyes own taped quotes about Hillary are going to do more damage than he thinks. As long as Barack doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet, he’s going to skate through this one.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you’ve heard about the JibJab flash parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land” that pokes fun at both Dubya and J. F. Kerry. Woody’s son Arlo was on NPR this week and had a wonderful response to the lawsuits that have resulted.

This is mostly for the group at lunch today.