Friday, May 21, 2004
Did U.S. forces slaughter a wedding party? Maybe. But there will be an investigation to find out for sure. Why an investigation?
Well that would seem obvious. Because of conflicting reports from eyewitnesses, because of videotape of the bodies of dead children?
Nope. According to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, senior military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, the reason is:
"Because of the interest shown by the media, we're going to have an investigation,"
SIckening.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Bush gets it right.
Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
And of course later in the article he reverts to form...
When asked what short-term measures he would use to rein in the prices, Bush did not list any new initiatives but lambasted Democrats for blocking his sweeping energy bill.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Franken Vs. Coulter. A recap.
I'm a bad and disjointed writer so bear with me. And I’m sure any interesting bits I missed can be filled in by steve who also attended. Basically, they both looked stupid at times, but she looked a whole lot stupider. And at least Franken was funny. They didn’t so much debate as talk around each other.
Coulter kind of avoided debating specifics and kept to her “Liberals hate X” mantra. If I had a dime everytime the woman mentioned “swarthy men” I’d be rich. She was pretty underprepared, whereas Franken came in with freaking crib notes to rip her apart.
Moments that made Ann look stupid involved pretty much anytime she opened her mouth. When you literally insult an entire race of people, which she did repeatedly, you could hear audible gasps in the audience along the lines of “did that crazy mother fucker just say what I think she said?”. IF anyone dared boo her when she hurled out the most vile statements she would respond to the audience with a “See how rude liberals are?” response, of which the irony was apparently lost on her.
If anyone read Franken’s recent book you’ll remember the chapter about Wellstone, his memorial and the election. Franken was a friend of Wellstone, and gets very emotional about the whole thing. Ann was very aware of this and kept intermittently, and out of nowhere, repeating the mantra “Senator Norm Coleman…” the empty suited dirty campaigner who took Wellstone’s seat. A obvious attempt to bait Al, of which he for the most part ignored. One part that made AL look silly was when Ann said Trent lott got onstage and was booed at the memorial. Al was outraged “that never happened!” they go back and forth for 5 minutes on this. So Trent Lott was shown on the screen and was booed but never got onstage. Big freaking deal.
The moderator Steve Roberts did piss him off by getting annoyed at the whole Wellstone back and forth saying “I don’t want to keep talking about some obscure Senator”. Franken got pissed at that.
AL did have a lot more substantive takedowns of Anns various lies in her book. A funny moment was when he was recounting how he was out to dinner with friends and his wife stops to put on lipstick in front of a bookstore where Anns newest book is displayed. He bet his friend he could open the book and find a lie before his wife got the lipstick on. And he did.
HE talked about how she always say Liberals like to call people names and insult there appearance. Then Al would trot out a long list of times Ann insulted people.
There was one long fruitless exchange about whether or not Ann lied on her drivers license. A waste of time that made Al look silly. Yes, I understood the point was Ann was part of the rule of law crowd with Clinton and there she was lying on a government document, but still. So she lied about her age on her drivers license. Big deal. Move on.
And Ann just isn’t funny. Putting her up against Franken who is really fast on his feet, was almost cringe worthy. Here’s her idea of a joke.
"When we won the war in a few weeks with amazingly few casualties, all the liberals had to complain about was some broken pottery. Any college student who was ever forced to gaze at Mesopotamian pottery was relieved."
Ha ha.
Best “WTF?” moment for Ann was when she claimed that William Safire of the NYT was not a conservative. That to me crystallized the night. The woman is so far a field of reality, that to even pretend to take her seriously invites questions of your own sanity.
By far the best part about the night was the audience. I was at the simulcast a few blocks away and it was a freaking free for all. Yelling jeering, some big muscle head told some guy to “go climb a tree liberal” and almost went roid rage on him.
When they were debating gay marriage and how the bible says homosexuality is evil, AL was making jokes about how the bible says its its ok to sell you wife into slavery, etc. Some nutso stood up and started screaming “that’s the old testament! Read the new!” Freaking kooks.
Q and A session was kinda funny. One guys question card was simply “Ann would you marry me”. Roberts made some remark about “can this guy please stand up”, Ann saying no no no, at which point AL said “Actually, I’d like to see this guy too.”
All in all I agree with Steves impression. The whole thing was goofy. If you like Ann you think she won, if you like Al, you think he won.
