I just got an e-mail from APC’s fan list about the news item that I posted earlier. You can go here or read more to see the e-mail and watch the fun. The e-mail that I’ve posted here includes a Windows Media format that doesn’t show up on the page on their site for some reason. It’s probably just an oversight. Maynard was very outspoken when they were here earlier this year. Right on.
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From MTV News:
A Perfect Circle plan to release a collection of songs on Election Day about war, peace, love and greed. eMOTIVe will feature new material as well as covers of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Fear’s “Let’s Have a War.” One of the new songs, “Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums,” will coincide with an animated video poking fun at Bush. “Remember, every single vote counts,” singer Maynard James Keenan said in a statement Thursday (August 26). “It is important for us all to engage this political system and to be conscious of who is being chosen to speak for us. If you choose not to be involved with decisions that affect your life on a daily basis, in our opinion, you forfeit your right to complain about it later. Think for yourself. Question authority.”
I’m so pissed off at the way the media is churning the swift boat issue over and over this past week or so. Josh Marshall has a lot of good stuff about it as usual along with the guys at Pandagon. Jon Stewart had the ultimate comment last night, though. I need to find a way to easily transfer stuff from my Time Warner-owned DVR so that I can post clips and not have to rely on Lisa Rein all of the time.
Anyway, Stewart commented on a appearance by Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlmen on Meet the Press this past weekend. Mehlmen was refuting an article in the NY Times showing ties to those responsible for the swift boat ads and Bush. I don’t have the exact quote, but he compared the article to the old Kevin Bacon game about six degrees of separation. Stewart ran with it, trying to see how many steps it would take him to get from Bush to the ads. The first attempt went: Bush to Karl Rove, his top advisor, to Bob Perry, the main financer of the ads. Stewart was very pleased with himself and tried to do better. Starting with Bush, he went to Ken Cordier, who was a member of his campaign’s steering committee for veterans until the link was pointed out and he resigned. Stewart happily exclaimed that he had done it in one degree. He followed that with something to the effect of:
Hey, I’m really good at connecting the dots. You want to know something? I tried to play that game linking Saddam to Al Qaeda. It’s much harder.
Yep. Love that Jon Stewart.
They followed that up with a segment with Rob Corddry who speculated that the swift boat issue wasn’t going away anytime soon due to the appearance of a new group: Drunken Stateside Sons of Privilege for Plausible Deniability.
John Kerry will be their guest tonight.
Well, I did manage one non-political post this week.
Kuff points out that Becky Klein, the challenger to my beloved congressman, Lloyd Doggett, will probably not unseat him this November, but that if Bush wins again, she’s a front runner for head of the FCC. I’m sure we can expect her to continue the Howard Stern witchhunt and trust that she will do her best to protect us from Janet Jackson’s right nipple. It also appears that she has the current administrations love for secrecy.
Boy, I’m growing more and more fond of her by the minute.
We all headed down to San Antonio on Friday morning to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday. My in-laws flew in on Thursday afternoon and we met my brother-in-law and his boyfriend in S.A. on Friday afternoon. We hit some new places and some that we discovered on our last trip.
Our first stop was the Havel camera shop, the nearest authorized service center for my malfunctioning Fujifilm 3800. They took a look at it and informed me that it’d be $138 to fix and would have to be sent to the main Fujifilm service center, which means that we’d be without a camera for roughly four weeks. Since we don’t get down to San Antonio too often, I had to make a spot decision whether it was going to be worth it to pay to get the current camera fixed or buy a new one. It looks like relatively comparable new cameras are going for about $200-$250 these days. I decided to fix the old one. I hope I don’t end up regretting that decision. My mother-in-law took plenty of pictures, so I’ll have to try and get some of those if I’m going to post anything of the kids anytime soon.
We had a good time on the trip, hitting our old favorite, Liberty Bar, on Friday night for dinner. We had an old-fashioned lunch at Olmo’s pharmacy at McCullough and Hildebrand. The malts were very good. The Boy dug weighing himself on the old scale they have at the front. We went to the San Antonio Children’s Museum on Saturday morning. It was a huge hit with The Boy and The La found enough things to keep her interested. The S. A. Children’s Museum puts the Austin Children’s Museum to shame. We had lunch at Schilo’s and tapas for dinner at Club Cohiba which is in the basement of the Havana Riverwalk Inn. Sunday brunch was at Mad Hatter’s, just down the street from the place we stayed last October. We managed to sneak out for a few hours Saturday night and hit Zen (beware of ridiculously long flash load time if you decide to visit their web site), simply because it was right next to our hotel and La Tuna, still one of the coolest places to grab a beer. Ever.
I’ve been quoted out of context in the past. In general, mainstream media has a real problem taking quotes out of context and using them. This is a tactic currently being employed by both sides of this year’s presidential race as well.
It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Bush, so I was, of course, amused at the quote from his remarks at the UNITY conference last week. Now, of course, Kerry’s remarks the day before at the same conference are being taken out of context and attacked by The Evil Cyborg, err..Dick Cheney.
Let’s have a look at the two in and out of context:
Here’s Cheney talking about Kerry’s remarks out of context:
Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a “more sensitive” war on terror. (Laughter.) America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. President Lincoln and General Grant did not wage sensitive warfare — nor did President Roosevelt, nor Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. A “sensitive war” will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more. The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity. As our opponents see it, the problem isn’t the thugs and murderers that we face, but our attitude. Well, the American people know better. They know that we are in a fight to preserve our freedom and our way of life, and that we are on the side of rights and justice in this battle. Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed.
Here’s what Kerry actually said:
I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States.
I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.
I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists, wherever they may be, before they get us.
You don’t really get the same effect from Cheney’s two word quote, do you? Now let’s look at Bush.
Here’s the quote taken out of context. I’ve left in the leadup question so that you can see what he was answering.
MARK TRAHANT, SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER: Good morning. My name is Mark Trahant. I’m the editorial page editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a member of the Native American Journalists Association.
Most schoolkids learn about government in the context of city, county, state and federal. And of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all.
Mr. President, you’ve been a governor and a president, so you have a unique experience looking at it from two directions.
What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century? And how do we resolve conflicts between tribes in the federal and state governments?
BUSH: Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a — you’ve been given sovereignty, and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.
Bush’s first paragraph response sounds even worse on tape because he halts and stumbles through it. If we add his next comment, it doesn’t look nearly as bad, although he still doesn’t really answer Mr. Trahant’s question.
Now, the federal government has got a responsibility on matters like education and security to help, and health care. And it’s a solemn duty. And from this perspective, we must continue to uphold that duty.
I think that one of the most promising areas of all is to help with economic development. And that means helping people understand what it means to start a business. That’s why the Small Business Administration has increased loans. It means, obviously, encouraging capital flows.
But none of that will happen unless the education systems flourish and are strong. And that’s why I told you we’ve spent $1.1 billion in the reconstruction of Native American schools.
Bush completely ignores Trahant’s question after stumbling through his ramble on sovereignty and heads to the comfort of some talking points.
This is the great thing about the Web. You can go read these speeches in their entirety yourself and not have to rely on the spin machines of the two parties and a mass media that reports that spin. I only hope I’m not the only one doing it.
By the way, while reading through the transcripts, let’s nitpick. Bush claims:
You know, when I came into office, we had a problem with our economy; it was in a recession.
Bzzzt. Wrong. Bush took office on January 20th, 2001. By many of the accounts that I can find, the recession began in March of that year and some say (note the Fox News joke) that it wasn’t even really a recession. I’m just pointing out that, through no fault or merit of his own, the economy was, in fact, not in a recession when Bush entered office. And if he’s trying to take credit for pulling us out of a recession that may or may not have existed at all and setting us on the road to more prosperous times, he’s not going to like today’s stock market news.
EDIT: Jon Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show tonight that Cheney might want to take a particular paragraph of Bush’s own speech at the UNITY conference out of context.
Now, in terms of the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice obviously is — we need to be very sensitive on that.
Hmmm…well, I’m sure you’ll read the rest of his speech so that you won’t jump to conclusions.
I saw this a couple of weeks ago and thought about posting it. Now that it’s been updated, I will. Glen E. Friedman, who I generally respect except for some of his more militant vegan views, is using Russell Simmons’s old place right next to the site of the World Trade Center (featured on MTV Cribs just a month or so before 9/11) to stage a protest against everyone’s favorite administration. Right on.
I’ll get to some posting on the family soon. The Boy started school today and I’ve got a good story about The La. I’ve been slacking on pictures lately, but now I have an excuse. Our digital camera is having issues that began sometime after the 4th of July. I’m not too happy since I’m fairly certain that it’s now out of warranty. I’ve also got some geek stuff that I want to throw at ya.
Orwell and Bradbury, here we come. I’m not sure if this is one of the intended consequences of terrorism, but it definitely could be considered a fringe benefit by someone wishing the breakdown of a (once) free society. The misapplication of security policies by troglodytes is resulting in the kind of climate that Orwell and Bradbury wrote about in their respective masterpieces, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. Am I being a little alarmist? Yes, but I don’t like the direction this is heading. I sincerely hope that every high school in America has both of these books on their reading lists this year.
