Hey, look! A new icon that says exactly how I feel today. A picture is worth a thousand words. And guess what, it’s an easy solution for both the healthcare problem and getting cheap drugs from Canada. Thanks to kethry for the artwork.
“the most important election chimpanzee of our lifetime”
Radio reports say that the race is still too close to call. But, while Kerry seems to have a slight lead among all registered voters, Bush currently has a slight lead among “likely” voters. That means that higher voter turnout will probably benefit Kerry. Remind friends to vote, and remind them that they are allowed to take time off from work to do so. Offer rides if necessary. Walk around at work and remind your co-workers to vote. ...
Also, thanks to senatorhatty for pointing me to this NY Times Article by Ron Suskind. (Registration is free and in this case quite worth it) In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. ...
I know you have probably seen this on your friends page already, but it deserves to be linked more. Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program, and Supported al Qaeda 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). 56% assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. _ 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda_ 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. 60% of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. ...
Sort of related to what traveller said, I wanted to say a little bit about “viewpoint” characters and deciding what is “on camera” vs. “off camera”. There are three “voice” styles. First person is, “I went to the store.” This makes it very clear who is speaking, and who your viewpoint character is. Second person is, “You went to the store,” or “You are on your way to the store.” (Second person is not used much except in Choose Your Own Adventure books :) And third person is “Joe went to the store.” Most of us will probably write in the third person. With third person, you have to give the reader some cues as to who the viewpoint character is. The viewpoint character is usually your main character, but you can sometimes switch to another viewpoint character if you want to show something else happening out of sight of the main character. The best time to do this is at a chapter break when you would naturally change scene anyway.
Gah! Is it just me, or does Bush seem like just an angry, bitter man? Also I don’t believe he’s a “good steward of the environment”. Overall I think Kerry came across as calmer and more composed and Bush seemed angry and flustered for most of the time. Anyway, this NPR article has a link to the audio and a link to the full transcript a little further down. The text transcript is pretty complete (and faster to read) but doesn’t give you the tone of voice. (I listened to the whole thing and I think I got a feeling for the voices, emotions, sincerity, etc… but I didn’t see the video so I have no idea who was walking around or what facial expressions were made. My opinions and interpretations follow. 1. To Kerry, are you or aren’t you wishy washy? Strong and direct answer from Kerry. Laundry list from Bush about the same supposed inconsistencies, along with some rhetorical questions that sound like accusations but technically aren’t, like “I don’t see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty if you change your mind because of politics.”
I find it ironic that a large number of people who voted for Bush over Gore did so because Something was Wrong in the White House if Clinton could lie about having shagged someone and not get impeached for it. Now Bush is found to have basically lied about reasons for going to war and sending 1000+ soldiers to their death and arranging for 22,000+ to be wounded badly enough to be airlifted out of Iraq to US or European hospitals. ...
I spent a number of hours this weekend creating a mysql / perl / cgi script, to accept abuse reports and file them into a database. This is part of a (hopefully) ongoing project which users can feed spam into and get customized blacklists out of. The prototype is at http://abusetrack.nekodojo.org/test if you want to check it out, though it doesn’t really work quite at all yet. Create user Paste spam in Sign the report (doesn’t actually check pgp yet) ...
CNN has a transcript of the debate but it wasn’t complete yet. However, this one by NPR seems to be complete. NPR Transcript of Presidential Debate One of the questions asked of W was What criteria would you use to determine when to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq? His answer is interesting because it sets out specific goals that need to be met before we can pull troops out. What I find even more interesting is whether the same measure of success and completion applies in Afghanistan. ...