I suspect pretty much the same feature article as well…

Why was C-SPAN showing nonstop banner to banner coverage of Ronald Reagan’s casket?

Why did Fox News do a one-hour interview with Dan Quayle reflecting on the meaning of Ronald Reagan’s life?

Seeing as how Bush’s campaign page is now a shrine to Ronald Reagan, (and there are fractures within the Bush-love coalition, and nobody’s really warmed up to Kerry*) does this mean that the election is going to come down to “We Love Reagan” versus “Anybody But Bush”?

(* It’s interesting to note, noted here as well as many other places, that Kerry appears less frequently on Bush’s website than Bush appears on Kerry’s website. Likewise, Bush’s ads are more negative toward Kerry than Kerry’s are toward Bush. This despite the generic sense that Kerry’s campaign is “Anybody But Bush.)

I’m thinking that Gray Davis signed his own political death-warrant with his de-regulation policies.

It’s sort of the old Democratic Party dilemma. Enron gave the Democratic Party something on the order of 20 percent of its political donations — an 80-20 score is a landslide, but nonetheless… there… it is.

Some more of The voices of Enron:

#1: “You gotta think the economy is going to fucking get crushed, man. This is like a recession waiting to fucking happen.”

#2: “”This is where California breaks.”

“Yeah, it sure does man.”

#3: “What we need to do is to help in the cause of, ah, downfall of California. You guys need to pull your megawatts out of California on a daily basis.”

“Wow, fuckk ’em, right!”

#4: “You want to do some fat boys or, or whatever, man, you know, take advantage of it.”

(Ah… “Fat Boy”… was that the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima or the one dropped over Nagasaki? I can never remember…)

“It’s called lies. It’s all how well you can weave these lies together, Shari, alright, so.”

“No, this is marketing,”

Corrupted marketing, but marketing nonetheless.

#5: “If these are ever heard by a jury, they’re going get strung up.”

These are the people who own Schwarzenegger, the heir apparent to the bizarrely metamorphasizing Reagan / Bush II/ Schwarzenegger Republican legacy. Enron had merely rented Gray Davis.

So, anyway. When’s Cheney going to release the minutes of his energy policy meeting? Depending on what nefarious path you want to believe, we either had a meet and greet with Enron, Saudi Arabia, or the Taliban…

In the meantime, these Enron tapes are second only to the Nixon tapes in their schedenfruede-inducing entertainment / disgust value.

I don’t know why, precisely, but the passing of Reagan reminded me of something I saw it on TBN a couple years back.

It was bizarre. A made-for-TBN film from the era of Reagan. See: you have this recently – delinquint teen in midwestern America… the heartland. His father is known as the town atheist.

We know he’s an asshole because he yells at Reagan’s more overt religious pronouncements over the tv. And he debates Christians on public access television.

His wife convinces him that it’s probably alright to send him to a Christian rehabilitation camp that’d help rehabilitate him. This is bizarre to me: why would such a hardcore atheist send his son to the Christians?

Anyway, what do you know? The Christian discovers the love of Jesus! The father shrugs it off. Things run apace.

Here, one of the teen’s former friends slowly turns on him. He doesn’t understand why he doesn’t drink beer with the guys anymore. The kid slowly becomes part of the Christian-group.

Move forward, and we have this confrontation, where the somewhat delinquint kids drive around in circles and mock the Christian kids (hanging out at the church). Persecution is tough, I hear. Anyway, the most jarring scene is of this boy dressed in a pink cut-off shirt, I think we have the innuendo that he’s a homosexual, breaking in and stealing stuff from the church. Cause that’s what kids who we can sort of hint at being gay but don’t explicitly say so do, you see…

The kids are given an assignment to share what the most important thing in their lives are. The former-friend, who is quickly falling into disrepair, gives this odd beat poem about his car, ’cause it drives fast. Apparently, the educational system is in such disrepair that nobody in this class can write a coherent sentence.

I turn off the tv for a while. I turn it back on to catch the end: after much soul-searching the kid shares his love of Jesus. And the former friend who is slipping through the cracks? The chief protaganist manages to rescue him, and show him the way.

I don’t understand the movie. Who was the market for this swill? Was it shown to Christian youth groups? Something on par with the films described by David Prill at the beginning of the book.

Big in the Heartland! They just don’t get it over there in LA!

Different Strokes handled relevant issues much more effortlessly, what with their “very special episodes” and all…

My brother was ahead of the curve on some key voting-issues which have gained some level of prominence post-2000.

But back in 1984, I voted in the Arthur H. Smith School presidential election. Our balloting system was a program on the Commodore 64 in Miss Carlson’s second grade classroom. The entire school voted on that single machine. There were no paper backups, and if someone had hit “Break” (… or the Commodore equivalent. I may be remembering our Tandy computer.) and then restarted the program, all the previous votes would have been lost and no one would have known.

Concerns over computer voting? Wow… Jeff was twenty years ahead of the curve!

On the night of the November ’88 election, I watched the TV coverage up until I left to go to a Boy Scout meeting. Dukakis wasn’t far behind Bush in the popular vote, but he’d only picked up Massachusetts in the Electoral College count. I tried to express how wrong this seemed to me to some of the other scouts, but no one was sympathetic.

Nobody thought much about the electoral college until the 2000 election… eveyone pretty much assumed that the winner of the popular vote would almost inevitably end up following over to the electoral college. Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes — which leads one to the bizarre conclusion that Gore was the most popular figure in America.

Anyway…

I’m told that the NY Times apology for the antics of Judith Miller and Ahmad Chalabi are rather tepid. But, nonetheless, there it is.

For the curious, one item runs in my memory as particularly head-scratching.

This is perhaps the funniest news article ever to appear on the front page of the New York Times:

Warehoused Here.

Headline: Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert

What a headline! Note the passive voice. Why or why is the healine not “Iraqi Scientist Asserts”?

Most impressive paragraph in the article:

Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.

Three days late, eh?

Try this one out:

While this reporter could not interview the scientist, she was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried.

Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried. This reporter also accompanied MET Alpha on the search for him and was permitted to examine a letter written in Arabic that he slipped to American soldiers offering them information about the program and seeking their protection.

In the end, this story boils down to: nondescript guy in a baseball cap, off in distance, points down to ground nodding in approval; reporter then glances at document written in language she does not know.

Brilliant journalism!

(from September 2001):

Last night’s “Coast to Coast” program (with Ian Punnett) featured something of modest interest. A cockamine theory that today’s kids are learning how to “fall in line” — a necessary and corrective pendullum swing from the baby-boom generation who were taught to be free-wheeling in order to avoid following a “Hitler”-figure.

Today’s teens, he postulated, weren’t as shocked by 9/11 because they experienced Columbine … The foundations of their sense of security within the narrow confines of their school-lives had already been rattled and the security measures that society is now putting in place are analogious to what high schools are already putting in place.

This, mind you, is all good. The biggest teen movie of the summer is a G-rated film. Kids are more respectful to authority, and are better mannered.

This guest lost me right there, and to my mind was sprouting absurdities. Callers , who have jobs that relate to teenagers, chimed on and said as much.

………
From the book You Are Being Lied to, an essay by Robert Sterling entitled “Apt Pupils” — written in 2000… Robert Sterling is connected with the website Konformist.com.

‘WAVE’ is an acronym for “Working Against Violence Everywhere”, and is a private program created by corporate dick monolith Pinkerton, best noted for teaming up with big business to harrass labor unions. WAVE provides a toll free number for students to call up and inform on students who exhibit certain “risk” characteristics. The information is handled by WAVE America itself (ie Pinkerton) , who coincidentally, as a security firm hired by many corporations, could benefit from the surveillence they obtain by providing clients extensive history reports on prospective employees.

Joanne McDaniel, a spokeswoman, would claim dubiously that the similarities were “just a coincidence”. Incredibly, Todd Strasser, one of the book’s co-authors, agreed and added that the book would prevent an evolution of WAVE America into something sinister, as students and teachers are too wise to be fooled into participating in an overtly fascist program. (Apparently Strasser missed the point of his own work.)
…..

The Wave probably ends with grape-nuts being dumped on the heads of the non-followers…

Appendium, or postscript:
It’s worth noting what the gummint declared are the warning signs for troubled youth, as studies after the Columbine shootings:

I can’t find it on google immediately, but they include such items as “inappropriate humour”, “mood swings” — and other typical hormone-induced items that cover nearly 100 percent of adolescents.

If the WAVE Card transcribes the gummint’s list… well…

I’m not sure what spurred this post, but it brings to mind the way Fox News spun out a Texas execution held as Bush was running for president.

Hannity and Colmes… A minor media blip in the 2000 election. Texas was executing someone… I don’t remember who. This execution was especially controversial for some reason — may have been one of the mentally handicapped persons, and was racially charged as the death penalty tends to be.

Who does Hannity and Colmes have to discuss the outrage of the situation — and be the voice against the death penalty? A “black militant”. Someone named, if my memory serves right, “Kwanzi X”, the leader of the organization “The New Black Panthers” (emphasis on “New” so as to distinguish from the “sorry, lame-ass old”).

Hannity is in hysterics, as Mr. X alludes to violent measures. Echoes of Race Riots float about. Mr. X refers to the KKK as being their counter-parts, joining in the “Justice is Served” demonstrations at the other end.

The show ends, with Hannity saying “I don’t hope. Hopefully nothing violent comes out of this.”

Flick around to see how CNN and others are covering this event. Hm. CNN seems to be covering the peaceful, respectful, somber vigil. Interviews the family of the murdered. A departure from the mood that Fox News just had… but I suppose it’s the “liberal” media avoiding the speaking to these true spokepeople for those opposed to the death penalty, the “New” Black Panthers.”

Hannity and Colmes. Now we tune to the No Spin Zone of the Factor.

Letters to the Editor are generally stupid…

According to KATHRYN BISKA of Lake Oswego, suggests that Bush deserves another term, dumbfounded by:
He [ some letter-writer of cross-pollination purpose] seems to remarkably forget that we have not had any more 9/11s in the United States because we are rounding up the terrorists on their own turf rather than fighting them on our own

On the other hand, if we do have a post 9/11 terrorist strike, we will surely rise to the challenge and show the Terrorists that, to quote John Ashcroft, “We won’t be like Spain.”

Either way, we must elect George W Bush. Right?

……………
Oh… Skip this post here in general, and read reply # 7 from “murdoc”), scratch your head with your historical knowledge of why that is so wrong-headed, and then move on to some of the responses (say… reply #9).

Hm.

This new book, where Pinkwater rediscovers Chickens as grade-a protaganists (recall Lizard Music and Hoboken Chicken Emergency) was being promoted on Pinkwater.com with that amazon.com link.

Note the “Customers who bought titles by Daniel Pinkwater also bought titles by these authors” list.

Andrew Clements, author of such books as The Laundry News and Jake Drake: Bully Buster.

Bruce Coville, who you will remember wrote the commercially successful My Teacher Is An Alien series.

Kate Dicamillo, writer of Dixie-based children’s novels.

AND… Um…
AL FRANKEN???