Kerry wins, bush gets by okay simply by emerging alive. He still blinked and smirked, and if he were judged by normal standards he’d get a C — still his best performance so far. The media will most likely call it a draw. Kerry was superb throughout, but unfortunately there was no “You’re no John Kennedy” moment.
Just heard Karen Hughes ranting on CNN about how glorious bush is. If there’s anyone in whose mouth I’d love to struff a rag, it’s she.
Oh, good — CNN is playing the bush clip from last year in which he says he’s “not that concerned” about Osama! Hoisted on his own petard. Sweet.
UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong. The pundits are saying this was a huge victory for Kerry, who Bill Schneider (!) on CNN just called “the clear winner.”
Caught in his own lie. Again.
(To those of you not watching the debates, bush denied a few minutes ago that he ever said he wasn’t concerned about Osama Bin Laden, as Kerry said he did. Liar.)
Via Atrios.
Update: In his own words:
Q: Mr. President, in your speeches now, you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? […]
BUSH: … I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you […]
Q: Do you believe the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead of alive?
BUSH: As I say, we hadn’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, you know, again, I don’t know where he is.
I’ll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him.
…with this superb and epic story of three former friends in Anhui Province who banded together to protest the abuses of their local CCP cadres. (Their story was also highlighted in the now-banned but available book, An Investigation of China’s Peasants.)
In painstaking detail Kahn tells each man’s story and how they met, and where they are today. In so doing, Kahn sheds a good deal of light on the plight of China’s rural poor and the fate that can await those who seek justice.
I saw this powerful ad on TV this morning, and it really took me by surprise. It certainly makes you think about Iraq, and all those maimed American youth who sacrificed their limbs for…for…(sorry, the words just aren’t there).
“Oh my god” is all I could say after reading this and this. You simply won’t believe your eyes.
And go here for even more.
Kos has several absolutely alarming cases of documented voter fraud throughout the US. One guess which political party is behind all the cases? This is amazing, especially that last example — it’s unabashedly criminal. It’s Florida 2000 all over again. Only one thing can possibly save us from a political trainwreck, and that’s a Kerry landslide that’s so huge it’d be pointless to dispute it. Luckily, it appears we may really be headed in that direction.
This is hilarious. Thanks to the reader who sent it to me.
One thing I immediately noticed when I got back to America from Asia was the difference between Chinese and American physiques. Most of the Chinese I knew and met were relatively slender, while America seems to be a sea of fat people (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
But alas, it seems it’s now China’s turn to pay the price of progress and capitalism as its people steadily put on the pounds.
The number of obese people in China doubled to 60 million people in the 10 years to 2002 with diseases related to an unhealthy diet and lifestyle also on the rise, the government said.
China’s first comprehensive national survey on diet, nutrition and diseases found that 7.1 percent of Chinese adults were obese and 22.8 percent were overweight, Wang Longde, China’s vice minister of health told a news conference.
An estimated 200 million of China’s population of around 1.3 billion were overweight, Wang said.
“Compared with the nutrition survey results of 1992, the prevalence of being overweight has increased 39 percent and the prevalence of obesity increased 97 percent,” Wang said, warning the problem will get worse.
The good news of the survey is that fewer people in China are hungry, and malnutrition rates have dropped. The obesity problem, not surprisingly, is most severe in China’s urban areas where people are eating more fat and fewer vegetables. Thanks, MacDonalds.
This new report from a leading Israeli thinktank doesn’t tell us anything we enlightened Democrats don’t know already — but it’s good to see it receiving validation from such respectable sources.
The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually “created momentum” for many terrorists, a top Israeli security think tank said in a report released Monday.
President Bush has called the war in Iraq an integral part of the war on terrorism, saying that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hoped to develop unconventional weapons and could have given them to Islamic militants across the world.
But the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said that instead of striking a blow against Islamic extremists, the Iraq war “has created momentum for many terrorist elements, but chiefly al-Qaida and its affiliates.”
Jaffee Center director Shai Feldman said the vast amount of money and effort the United States has poured into Iraq has deflected attention and assets from other centers of terrorism, such as Afghanistan.
It’s soothing to fantasize that this awful war in Iraq may have been worthwhile for its value in drawing in and then eliminating terrorist groups. Only problem is, it just isn’t so. In fact, it only let the truly deadly groups flourish, multiply and diversify. Oh well. Any other excuses that might justify the war in Iraq?
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