The Seventh Sense

Bush Is No Kennedy

"It’s hard for me to listen to President Bush invoking my father’s memory to attack John Kerry. Senator Kerry has demonstrated his courage and commitment to a stronger America throughout his entire career. President Kennedy inspired and united the country and so will John Kerry. President Bush is doing just the opposite. All of us who revere the strength and resolve of President Kennedy will be supporting John Kerry on Election Day."

- Caroline Kennedy (according to Willis).

For those of you wondering what this is about, Bush has been invoking President Kennedy (and FDR) in his recent speeches, making implicit comparisons and suggesting that Bush (as opposed to Kerry) has the same courage of his convictions as those earlier Presidents.

Movie Villain of the Year

Total Film magazine's annual poll of the "Movie Villain of the Year" had an interesting outcome. Was it Dr. Octopus from Spiderman 2? Or the bad guy from Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Or the Alien? Or the Predator?

Nope.

It was George Bush (star of "Fahrenheit 9/11"). (Source)

Heh.

Why Do The Facts Hate America?

I think the whole meme that "we got bad intelligence" rings hollow when you have a White House that is uninterested in ACTUAL reality, and more interested in ITS version of reality.

Check out this article (not online, but reprinted in part here from The American Conservative Magazine):

On Sept. 28, at the Vice President's request, the Agency provided a special briefing on the subject of Jordanian terrorist Mu'sab al-Zarqawi. The CIA's Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) reviewed all of the available intelligence on the subject and based its briefing on a just completed comprehensive intelligence analysis. The CTC concluded that Saddam Hussein had not materially supported Zarqawi before the U.S.-led invasion and that Zarqawi's infrastructure in Iraw before the war was confined to the northern no-fly zones of Kurdistan, beyond Baghdad's reach. Cheney reacted with fury, screaming at the briefer that CIA was trying to get John Kerry elected by contradicting the president's stance that Saddam had supported terrorism and therefore needed to be overthrown. The hapless briefer was shaken by the vice president's outburst, and the incident was reported back to Goss, who indicated that he was reluctant to confront the vice president's staff regarding it.

Why do the facts hate America??

UPDATE: Speaking of "facts", Bush has pulled out his Obsidian Great Sword of Irony (-3 Intelligence) and whacked himself over the head with it today, by saying (in response to the Iraqi "missing explosives" story): "For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief". Funny, that's what we've been saying for months, too.

Pentagon Against Bush?

I think Josh Marshall is on to something when he writes:

This evening, Wingerdom is all aflutter about what they now see as the New York Times-CBS-IAEA international anti-Bush conspiracy. But they might do better to focus their anxieties elsewhere.

Like at the Pentagon, for instance.

Who over there is trying to stick it to the president?

Look at two big news stories on Tuesday, the Washington Post report that the White House plans to ask for some $70 billion more in Iraq spending just a week or two after the election and this USA Today piece reporting that the Pentagon is planning to add roughly 20,000 more troops to the force in Iraq in anticipation of the elections in January.

The White House can't approve of these stories getting out. Not THIS week, of all weeks. So who is doing the leaking, and why?

Bush Flips On Sex

Get off the subject, George. It's a minefield. Don't get all flippity-floppity with the election one week away!

Bush Says His Party Is Wrong to Oppose Gay Civil Unions

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: October 26, 2004

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - President Bush said in an interview this past weekend that he disagreed with the Republican Party platform opposing civil unions of same-sex couples and that the matter should be left up to the states.

Mr. Bush has previously said that states should be permitted to allow same-sex unions, even though White House officials have said he would not have endorsed such unions as governor of Texas. But Mr. Bush has never before made a point of so publicly disagreeing with his party's official position on the issue.

No, what am I saying???? Keep it up!!

Ouch, Ouch and Ouch

Today, three well-respected political magazines representing very distinct corners of the political spectrum have either (a) endorsed Kerry and/or (b) forcefully rejected Bush.

They are:

The Nation

The New Republic

The American Conservative

So Bush gets the neo-cons. But as for the greens, moderates, liberal hawks, and traditional conservatives? They can't they seem to get behind Bush. Why is that?

More ouches: Well-known Republican blogger (and assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago) Dan Drezner joins the Kerry crowd, and several notable libertarians either pick Kerry or reject Bush by staying at home.

Oh, Jesse Ventura endorses Kerry today, too. What a big tent I suddenly find myself in.

Update: Hey, look. Even spy novelist John LeCarre has shown up in the Kerry tent. Too bad he can't vote here. Although, now that I think of it, isn't "John LeCarre" probably the literal French translation of "John Kerry"?

And On This Farm He Had Some . . . .

Mere hours after Bush unveils an ad using scary wolves, Political Wire is reporting that Kerry has a response ad comparing Bush to an ostrich:

Ad transcript: "The eagle sours high above the earth; the ostrich buries its head in the sand. The eagle knows when it's time to change course; the ostrich just stands in its place. Given these challenging times, shouldn't we be the eagle again?"

Some one wake me when they get to snow leopards.

UPDATE: Actually, the eagle/ostrich ad comes from the DNC. And it's pretty effective.

Bush Doesn't Understand The Nature of The Terrorist Threat

It's odd. Bush says that Kerry is failing to comprehend the war on terrorism.

It's odd, I say, because Bush's own people, are saying (implicitly anyway) that it is Bush who doesn't get it.

The Bush Administration seems to think that the way to defeat terrorism is by decapitating the leadership of al Qaeda. Capture or kill those AQ leaders (from a three-year old list) and you have defeated terrorism, the theory goes. Hey, that might work if we were fighting a nation-state like, oh, Nazi Germany, but as the above article suggest, that is not the true nature of our enemy. Our true enemies have morphed into numerous cells who no longer wait on al Qaeda leadership for their marching orders. Does Bush care about these facts?

Interesting article -- recommended reading.

What It Means

I am by no means a sports nut. And I don't understand the "fandom" that comes with many sports. Like NASCAR. How can car mechanics even be called a sport, which (I always thought) had something to do with physicality and the indomitable human spirit . . . or something close to that?

No matter. I'm in no position to judge. I am a Red Sox "fan". Or more correctly, a long-suffering Red Sox fan. Everybody raised in New England (as I was) is a Red Sox fan -- even those like my sister who has never seen the Red Sox play as much as an inning in her entire life.

Being a Red Sox fan means being for almost winning, or -- as some bright person once said -- snatching a defeat from the jaws of victory. And for the first time in my life, I am beginning to think that the Red Sox might be unable to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the American League Championship. I may have to accept the fact that -- this one time -- they were actually victorious over the Yankees (although, like Robb Cordrey of TDS, I still haven't quite entirely ruled out a Yankees comeback . . . somehow).

I won't bore you with "the curse". You either know about the Bosox's 7th game World Series loss in 1967 to the Cardinals . . . or not. Or its extraordinary 6th game win in the 1975 World Series, only to be followed by an excruciating loss in the 7th game, to the Reds (29 years ago today). Or its one game tiebreaker against the Yankees in 1978, where it lost (that Bucky Fuckin' Dent!). Or the painful 1986 World Series, where the Red Sox were one strike away from winning the World Series, and that awful grounder that (somehow!) went through Buckner's legs. Or 1999, when the Yankees (again) denied the Red Sox a trip to the World Series. Or 2003, when the Yankees hit a home run in the bottom of the 11th in the 7th game of the AL League Championship.

No, I won't bore you with "the curse".

But I will tell you this. There are graves, my friends. Graves of my relatives -- as well as the forebears of many a New Englander -- bearing the remains of once-lively bodies who have done little but wait for a baseball year like this. My grandmother never saw the Red Sox win a World Series -- she died in 1977. My mother -- as diehard a Red Sox fan as they come -- is pushing 70. She knows there aren't many more chances to see a victory. "What would that be like", I remember her thinking out loud to her kids . . . 30 years ago!!!

What would it be like? The psyche of an entire region of the United States will change overnight with a Red Sox victory.

And I can't stress this enough: the impact of a Red Sox World Series victory will extend to those who never even watch baseball. New Englanders -- all New Englanders -- even those who are not Red Sox fans -- possess an undercurrent of cynical pessimism which can be directly attributable to the tortured history of the Red Sox. You soak it up like a sponge, whether you pay attention to the Red Sox or not.

The cataclysmic sea change in the social psychology of New England will have far-reaching implications beyond the world of sports -- it will effect millions of people politically and culturally. Instead of repeating the well-understood lesson of accepting defeat from an almost-win with grace (like Gore in 2000), millions will taste true victory. Heck, we might even become "faith-based Republicans"!!!

So send some good karma up North and to the East.

Need more incentive? A Red Sox win will stop New England intellectuals like me from pontificating out of our butts about the Red Sox. We simply will have nothing to write about anymore.

Thank you.

White House Stops Airing Its Dirty Linens

A little late, in my opinion, but the White House realized it is probably not a good idea to have Bush's bloopers and flip-flops on the official White House website. So they have been slowly and quietly removing them.

Not to worry. This guy is on top of it. Gone now are Bush's "I'm not that concerned about Bin Laden" audio and video, as well as audio and video where Bush talks about how dangerous Saddam's WMD are, and all those Saddam-AQ links.

Now if only the White House could get a hold of them nifty flashy mind-erasing pen-things they had in "Men in Black" . . . .