Monthly Archives: October 2004

Dennis Donohoe writes…

What really struck me was Kerry continually talking about his "plan" for everything. I think any rational person would wonder why he hasn't done anything in the last 20 years toward items in his plan and now he will. But then I'm a conservative (and not a reflexive Bush backer by any means). Did this strike you as overkill or just run-of-the-mill political speak?

It struck me as indicative of how little a person can say in 90-120 seconds. I can't imagine anyone having a worthwhile program for turning around the economy or fixing what's wrong in Iraq that could be summarized in under two minutes. Under that silly limitation of time, about all anyone could do was to announce that they have a solution, even if the restrictions don't allow them to discuss it in any depth.

That said, yeah, I was annoyed at that repetition. I think I even said during the Veep Debate how tired I was about hearing "John Kerry and I have a plan…" I didn't like Bush saying a lot of the same things over and over and over, either.

As I read over Kerry's record in the Senate, I don't find it as lacking as you seem to. I think "any rational person" would understand that there's a big difference between what you can accomplish as President of the United States and what you might have been able to do as Junior Senator from one state. A member of the Senate can only function on a few committees, and Kerry was confined to things like "affordable housing" and a lot of veterans' issues. A number of Kerry-Edwards "plans" are for things like the war in Iraq which have only recently become problems that needed fixing.

By the same token, one might ask why Bush is now talking about so many things he wants to do in the next four years that he could have done, in some cases with very little effort, in the last four years. How long would it have taken to tell a cabinet meeting, "Let's go ahead and let people buy prescription drugs from Canada"? I've always thought that all the excuses on that one were flat-out lies. You can buy wine from other countries, cheese from other countries, even fish from other countries and the health safeguards are deemed adequate. But if you need Celebrex in order to survive, you have to pay $360 for a hundred tablets in this country, instead of ordering from a Canadian retailer and paying $130 for the exact same medicine made in the exact same lab. There's no reason for this other than that Pfizer, which makes Celebrex and hundreds of other drugs, is the fourth-biggest donor to the Republican party.

I am not, as you may have noticed here, a huge fan of Mr. Kerry. For the umpteenth consecutive election, I find myself voting for someone primarily because he's the guy who can defeat the one I really don't want to see win. Worse, I don't even expect him to accomplish very much. If he wins, he'll probably spend a couple months fighting Republican challenges to the vote, then the G.O.P. leadership will convene and begin planning how to subvert every single thing he wants to accomplish and to launch investigations that could lead to impeachment. But even if Kerry has done nothing and can do nothing, I still think that's preferable to letting Bush do anything else. Too many Americans have already wound up in poverty in this country or dead in Iraq.

Here's a link to a better copy (a Quick Time file) of that brief speech I mentioned earlier by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan.

A fact-check on the debate from the Washington Post. And here's one from The New York Times and another from the Associated Press.

Dick Cheney seems to have made factcheck.org the place to be. Flipping channels, all the pundits are citing them as an authoritative source of truth. I guess they figure no one can fault them for using that since Cheney sort of endorsed the site and Democrats have often used it to prove their points.

Did Charles Gibson really need a TelePrompter to do that closing?

Bush did better than he did in the first debate. Kerry missed a lot of good opportunities. I don't believe in saying one guy won or lost but my sense is that the polls for Kerry will be somewhat higher by the time these two men meet again.

Bad, evasive answer on the last question to Bush — the one that challenged him to name three mistakes he made. This is the one people are going to talk about.

Kerry's probably losing points with some people by not addressing some questions directly. Neither man is giving the best possible answers to what, so far, have all been pretty predictable questions. Bush answers the questions but says very little of substance and much that is arguable. Kerry starts by addressing the previous question, then works his way to the current one without enough time left to reply with substance.

Bush did okay — better than I would have expected — on the foreign part of the debate but he's flailing in the economic parts. A president who's run up the deficit can't lecture someone else like that about fiscal responsibility.

Too much repetition. You'd think these guys would learn a second or third way to phrase their main talking points.

Bush isn't as bad in terms of finishing sentences and making faces. But he sure seems defensive.

I don't get the point of having a live audience there if they're not allowed to actually talk to the candidates. People could submit questions and the moderator could read them and you'd have the same thing.

I always liked the idea of ordinary citizens being able to ask tough questions of elected officials. I think that's a great example of what separates America from so many nations where the leadership never has to answer to anyone. And it would really be impressive if those citizens weren't forbidden to deviate from their pre-approved questions or to ask follow-ups.

Bush does not seem to have a bulge on his back.

In the last hour or so, I've watched every human being even vaguely connected to politics say what they expect will happen with tonight's debate. I have no idea but I'm getting really tired of the phrase, "…first president to create no new jobs since Herbert Hoover." It's true…but Hoover didn't get mentioned this often when he was in office.

Fred Kaplan dismantles Bush's explanation of why the war in Iraq was right even though all the original reasons for it have been discredited.

Quite a few of you have written to tell me of silly recordings that made it onto the charts. Dave Kovarik and Dave Rutman both wrote that Steve Martin's "King Tut" made it to #17 in 1978. Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" reached #1 — his only record to do so, says Jon B. Knutson and Jon also mentions Ray Stevens's "The Streak" from 1974 and Rick Dees's 1976 "Disco Duck." John Moore reports that Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" reached #12 on the Billboard charts in 1984.

Pat Kelly says that Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" did not reach #1 and also writes…

The last straightforward "comedy performance" record to make the top ten that I can think of is "Sister Mary Elephant" by Cheech & Chong, a top ten single in 1974. The indisputably #1 comedy single would be "The Streak" by Ray Stevens also in 1974, and probably the unarguably comic novelty track to make the top ten was Dickie Goodman's "break-in" track, "Mr. Jaws." There are certainly top ten hits with aspects of comedy in them since, I'd include "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot and the recent "My Band" by Emimem's side project D12, but I don't think either would qualify for Dr. Demento play status.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd call some of the above "comedy records." Maybe "novelty records" would be a better term. All of them — except maybe the Cheech & Chong one, with which I'm not familiar — are all or almost all music, whereas "St. George and the Dragonet" was basically a spoken word recording. (By the way, is anyone on this planet familiar with the content of any Cheech & Chong records? The folks who never heard them obviously aren't, and the people who listened repeatedly to them probably don't remember that portion of their lives, let alone the comedy albums they heard.)

I doubt we'll ever again see a best-selling comedy single, at least all audio. If it happens again, it'll be an online video like the new one from the JibJab boys.