HEADLINE OF THE MONTH. FOX News has the goods on Kerry: "Kerry Shows Fondness for Quotations." Coming soon: "Kerry Reads Books, Uses Words of More than One Syllable Correctly."

TWO WEEKS NOTICE. Well, we're in the home stretch, boys and girls, and while the blogospheric pressure is predictably intense, for the most part it's pressing on old, long-dead nerves. At redstate they're fretting about the traditional Democratic push for black votes ("race-baiting"), cheering endorsements (in this case that of proven vote-getter Pat Buchanan), and sifting poll results obsessively. At Atrios they're fretting about October Surprises, cheering non-endorsements, and sifting boycott results obsessively.

Meanwhile Bush and Kerry are rampaging through the swing states and trying not to lose their voices or what I'm sure each perceives to be his lead.

Who knows what's in store, but this stage of the endgame seems familiar enough to me that I can hardly get riled by it. That may change, but I hope it doesn't. Operatives are operating feverishly, and God go with ours; somewhere out there voters are being recruited by the barrelful and warned to watch for dirty tricks. But I wouldn't be surprised or displeased if the campaign news remained as content-free as it is feverish (Candidate A ratchets up the rhetoric! Candidate B comes back swinging!) all the way up till election night, at which point all hell, I am sure, will break loose. Till then there is plenty else to do, and plenty of late post-season baseball to lull me to sleep.

INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MISERY. Having told us last week about his command of the Queen's English, James Lileks now tells us he could find Patience and Prudence and the whole damn NYPL under ten feet -- no! ten stories -- of arctic ice.

Next week he shall tell us how, armed only with a Swiss Army Knife and a jar of Marmite, he can craft a rationale for war with Iran.

FUCK YEAH. Enjoyed Team America tonight. It's a little long on puppet blood for my taste -- though you can never have enough puppet vomit, and in this regard Team America does not disappoint. I also liked Kim Il Jong's "giant pandas," and the song about how missing your true love sucks almost as much as Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor. Favorite line: "We're guarrrrds." "Guarrrrds." "Guarrrrrds."

Sorry, nothing here about how the film inaccurately portrays Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, or how its very existence will weaken America, or how some guy has a movie that answers Team America point by point, using some of the same puppets, which I found quite striking. That would just be stupid.

HOW TO TELL KERRY'S AHEAD, PART 2. Along with the usual fake letters, etc,.
we are seeing more clinical psychosis at National Review Online:

I just took my two-year-old on a drive down the Post Road in Connecticut to see the cows at Stew Leonard's. At a red light, we pulled alongside a mini-van festooned with Lefty bumper stickers. One right under the other appeared the following three: "Jesus was a LIBERAL"; "Commit Random Acts of KINDNESS": and "My Choice: ABORT BUSH". I know trial lawyers are supposed to figure they can reason with anyone, but I admit to being stumped here. Edward, however, soon squeeled: "Light green, Daddy GOOO!" He's got the right idea: Don't bother!

Yes, Andy McCarthy was driving in Connecticut and saw a bumper sticker that encouraged him to commit random acts of kindness, and it so harshed his mellow (or, more properly, harshed his harsh) that he needed to project inconceivably subtle linguistic gifts upon his toddler (assuming he is actually a toddler, and not mentally retarded) to extricate his blown mind from the situation.

I'm not saying they're cute, exactly, but they are sorta funny when their circuits are smoking.

THE POST-3/19 WORLD. Maybe we Democrats are evil. I see Kerry is suggesting that Bush's reelection will lead to a draft. Well, yes, I expect it will; Iraq is badly fucked, and to get it unfucked will require a large, continuing military commitment. As the neos have already got Iran and/or Syria lined up for invasion, that'll require more enlistments than even our shitty economy can deliver.

But I gotta say, Kerry's playing it cagey. The Republicans are understandably averse to even mentioning the issue, and in that context it makes political sense for Kerry to warn America of an impending Bush draft. But as far as I can find, Kerry hasn't explicitly ruled out a draft himself. His running mate has promised there'll be no draft on Kerry's behalf, but that's not the same thing; we won't being hearing much from Vice-President Edwards in any case, much less when the lottery balls start rolling.

Being a realist, I guardedly endorse this obfuscation. Bush has done enough damage, and is capable of so much worse, that his ouster is a priority. But Kerry's assertion that we've broken Iraq and are obliged to fix it strongly implies that our obligation will require steps that few of us want to face. I give the Democratic candidate sufficient credit to take him at his word -- but not at his non-word.

And even if he were to say the word, I wouldn't take it too seriously. For all the talk of the post-9/11 world, we are primarily living in the post-3/19 world -- the invasion of Iraq has actually supplanted the World Trade Center attacks as the engine of our foreign policy. We have squandered the decent opinion of mankind, and even fucked up our longstanding commitment to our own troops, in this crazy-ass war with a 9/11 non-combatant. The resulting ruin to ourselves and others is massive, and the reconstuction will require much. I hope Kerry wins, and I also hope to hell that he knows what he's doing.

RIMSHOT, PLEASE. Despite what the President suggested on Wednesday, the Bush Administration now says it can't bring Canadian flu vaccine into the U.S.

The official reason is FDA regulations, but I hear it's because Bush was afraid American consumers might find the Canadian vaccine too affordable.

UPDATE. The estimable Winning Argument suggests Bush's culpability in the vaccine shortfall. Nolo contendre. I report, you decide, heh indeed.

HOW TO TELL KERRY'S AHEAD: You see this sort of thing (a Roger L. "The L is for Conservative" Simon joint):

Today's news that some Kerry operatives plan on launching a "preemptive strike," charging the other side with voter intimidation even when it doesn't exist, is scarcely amazing. [Where do they think they are? Afghanistan?-ed.>] But it is indicative of a larger mindset. Not surprisingly, now that I've gotten into the blogging game and a few people read this site, I've begun to meet more of the genus operativus politicus. They have their own cynical slang and refer to the two parties as "the dumb party" (repubs) and "the evil party" (dems). Amazingly, I have heard this shorthand from both sides...

The words "preemptive strike" here are connected to a broken link -- but seems to refer to this article with this image in support.

The jpg allegedly shows a page from the Dems' Colorado Election Day Manual, stating that "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike' (particularly well-suited to states in which these techniques have been tried in the past)." The Dems' methods include issuing press releases "reviewing Republican tactics used in the past in your area or state" and "quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting."

So the Democrats are trying to pre-empt voting fraud and campaign fraud, employing unobjectionable tactics toward preventing illegal activities of which Republicans, let's face it, have shown themselves capable in recent years.

Drudge headlines this "DNC Election Manual: Charge Voter Intimidation, Even If None Exists." Maybe Simon just read that far.

And from this bogus Drudge item Simon launches a true anecdotal howler. I swear to you folks, in all my years of hanging out with Democrats, I have never heard anyone refer to our common faction as the Evil Party, or speak of our close, personal relationship with the Dark Lord, even at the baby-killing parties and marriage-desanctifying events where we regularly meet to quaff a few goblets of Christian blood. In fact, mostly I have heard grumbling about how pliantly our leaders let the Republicans roll them over, year after wimp-ass year.

Only, just maybe, not this year.

Which is why, after a string of Democratic defeats and chants of "flip-flop" and general Mallard-Fillmoresque characterizations of Democrats as hapless losers, we are now portrayed as thugees silently slitting the throats of our enemies under cover of darkness.

Compliment accepted.

THE WELL OF LOUTISHNESS. The bullshit derby was settled early today. Lynne Cheney is outraged that John Kerry called her daughter a... a... a lesbian! And the fact that she is a lesbian, an out lesbian at that, is no excuse:

The candidates were asked if they believe homosexuality is a choice, and President Bush did not mention Mary Cheney. Then Kerry said, "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as."

Lynne Cheney issued her post-debate rebuke to a cheering crowd outside Pittsburgh. "The only thing I can conclude is he is not a good man. I'm speaking as a mom," she said. "What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

Sounds like she would find any mention of her daughter's lesbianism shameful, doesn't it? Wonder how she feels about bumping pussies. I imagine the thought balloon above Big Mama's head as she made this statement was crowded with grainy sapphic imagery (which part of Mama resisted while part of her tried to take notes for her next novel.)

Most revealing, of course, is that Mama Cheney, rather than Mary Cheney, made this statement. Don't you think the GOP immediately started leaning on Mary to step forward and denounce Kerry? (She may yet do so; Bush Sr.'s buddies at Langely have some powerful mind-altering drugs.) What a perfect Republican moment it would be: the most prominent political lesbian since Eleanor Roosevelt denouncing the more pro-gay candidate! Mouth-breathers around the countries, theretofore vaguely troubled by their own bigotry, would cry, "Shoot, even the fags don' lahk 'em!" and resolve to vote for the little squinty feller.

Yet so far not a peep from Mary. Do you suppose maybe she's less disturbed to be Kerry's positive example than to be her mother's object of shame and secretiveness?

Meanwhile Republican operatives are pitching their counter-intuitive how-dare-he. The Ole Perfesser even decrees Mama's characterization of Kerry as not-a-good-man to be "the emerging consensus." Consensus, he says! This no doubt comes from a highly scientific poll Perfesser Reynolds done took him 'round the cracker barrel down ta Jed's Notions & Dry Goods. "Hell no, Perfesser, we shore don' lahk thet Kerry fella none. He Frenchified! You goan raht that down in yer com-puter? Say, Perfesser, snap yer suspenders fo' us agin? (slapping knee) Hee hee! Looks jes' lahk Matlock when he does it!"

JUST A PEEK. I don't have time to stay for the whole thing, but from the abortion, health care, and social security questions, the candidates seem to be protecting their respective non-leads. Kerry's advantage is that he has plans -- plans that can only be vaguely stated here, and maybe anywhere, but the message is that he can hit the ground running. His disadvantage is the same as Bush's advantage: that, over the last twenty-odd years, Americans became suspicious of government plans, which are traditionally associated with Democrats. Bush's disadvantage is that he has plans.

Tactically, I think it's bright of Bush to attack Kerry on immigrant amnesty, given the porousness of our borders in the past four years, and it was bright of Kerry to open his response on an entirely different topic before crowding the immigration part of his answer into a plan-filled finish.

I don't like Kerry calling me "America" all the time. (It's bad enough he can see me through this telescreen!) I would like to hear him say no to a draft, which he skillfully refuses to do.

I wonder who told Bush that a good answer to the question about stop-loss was to say that he met soldiers who were pleased to be in Iraq.

Oh hell, I stayed longer than I meant to.

A LITTLE TINFOIL NEVER HURT ANYONE. The Poor Man has a good read on vote fraud, featuring tsuredzuregusa's suspicions regarding the FBI-empowered confiscation of Indymedia servers in England -- he suggests a connection to Indymedia's erstwhile tormentor Diebold, a company best know for its vote-conversion machines.

The connection is a bit of a stretch, admittedly. The Feds may have done this for just about any reason -- barring, of course, those suggested, in his usual obfuscating spirit, by the Ole Perfesser. (Also, I must inform TPM regarding its correlated item on registration fraud that the dodge in which street-corner operatives of Party A cheerfully accept, then discard, registration forms submitted by prospective members of Party B is about as old as the Maiden's Dropped Hanky. In other words, it may be evil but it is too well-known and widespread to qualify as cabalistic activity.)

On the other hand, it is always good to track the movements of our worst malefactors, especially when those movements, or their motivations, appear to run very close together over an extended period of time. Let us be attentive but not obsessive. There is a fine line between paranoia and enlightened mistrustfulness, and it has mostly to do with the presence or absence of color-coded charts.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. The FCC is fining Fox Broadcasting $7,000 per participating station -- over a million dollars in toto -- for some raunchy bachelor/bachelorette parties shown on its "Married by America" reality show.

According to the FCC's 29-page(!) report on the incident, the Commission judges indecency by two criteria: "[it] must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities... Second, the broadcast must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Fox thought its pixelation policy protected it on the first count, but the FCC demurs: "Even with Fox’s editing, the episode includes scenes in which party-goers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies in a sexually suggestive manner. Another scene features a man on all fours in his underwear as two female strippers playfully spank him. Although the episode electronically obscures any nudity, the sexual nature of the scenes is inescapable..."

A fair cop. But in Fox's defense, the FCC never fully addresses the "community standards" part of the test. (Maybe the Republican-dominated Commission did this on purpose to enhance their old pal Rupert Murdoch's grounds for appeal.)

The FCC has a broad bailiwick here, having previously decided that the "community" is really an idealized single figure: "[our] criterion is that of an average broadcast listener and, with respect to Commission decisions, does not encompass any particular geographic area."

Even if we accept this standard, I must say that if the Commissioners think the "average broadcast listener" -- or viewer, in this case -- can be offended by some pixelated porn, I would suggest that they don't watch nearly as much TV as their office would seem to demand.

While "Married by America" sounds gamey, I don't see how it could be worse than the premiere episode I recently viewed of "Boston Legal," which, like all David E. Kelley shows, regards human sexuality from the perspective of a retarded, priapic teenager. The episode featured a man walking around with no pants or underwear, an affair between William Shatner and the trophy wife of a geriatric client, and James Spader announcing "You had sex," as loudly and alacritously as if he had just found an Easter egg, in a room full of smirking lawyers.

As Kelley's general success shows, the "average broadcast viewer" eats this stuff up. While no genitals were exposed nor copulative acts simulated, the viewer was allowed to know that something nasty was going on -- something dark and corrupt and impossible to reveal -- something known to a depressing number of our fellow citizens as sex.

I left "Boston Legal" feeling besmirched. Now, if you know the kind of life I've led, you might question my sincerity, but let me say that it is not the sexual nature of the material that repels me, but the leering attitude. Let CBS run "The Teabaggers" in prime time, and so long as the behaviors on display are forthrightly sexual, and not embellished with pop-eyed voyeurs, mocking trombone wah-wahs, or hackneyed depictions of passion taken directly from Herbal Essences Shampoo commercials, I would be happy to see the show pumped into day-care centers nationwide.

But that's not going to happen anytime soon, so when producers scrounge for new thrills to offer viewers, these will be of the dank, half-concealed sort that incites "censorship" controversies and grainy ass-shots on the small screen. Actual sexiness will be absent, but some sense of transgression will steam off the product and the smell will keep the couch potatoes firmly planted.

Contrary to what the preachers say, the TV folk are not engaged in a full-on assault on American Values; theirs is more a skulking, schoolboy approach, which is not only enabled but reenforced by the hapless playground monitors of the FCC, who seem to know they are here to keep the lid on but loosely, so that both they and the industrious offenders they prosecute will, when the fireworks are over, never find themselves removed from their comfortable positions.

Meanwhile the ordinary American, after an after-dinner bout of Internet Porn surfing and the equally thrilling effort of concealing it from the spouse, will join the family in front of the Boob Tube, and together they will switch dreamily between shows starring people they admire, and shows starring people they would like to fuck.

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS. Let's play a game: I'll complain about immigrant workers in my local supermarket -- one of whom doesn't speak English well enough to suit me, two of whom speak English too well to suit me -- and you try and guess whether it's self-parody or just me being an asshole again.

DEJUNKING. Went to a book party for Ken Smith's Junk English 2, which, like its predecessor, distills some words and phrases that have become through misuse (or prevarication) meaningless (or worse) to their true essences. Examples:

Comfort Words. Nebulous nouns -- factor, function, status, system, and their kind -- when used to modify already abstract nouns that need no modification, are like hot fudge poured over fudge-flavored ice cream. [e.g.] business entity = business... cost factor = cost... crisis scenario = crisis... weather conditions = weather...

Customer relationship management... is what happens when companies try to sell their ability to anticipate customer needs and thus increase sales... The promoters of customer relationship management want you to think of CRM as a euphemism for its outcome -- personal service -- rather than for its hidden workings -- invasion of your privacy...

Product is turning up behind the names of products for no apparent reason. [e.g.] "It is actually quite impressive to see how the Penders family developed this amazing 'one size fits all' hair rinse product."

It is sad that this job needs to be done (and that it is so large as to require a second volume of corrections, at least), but it is nice to see that someone is trying to do it. Here at alicublog we treat inanities on a larger scale with less delicate instruments, but just as nanotechnology and gene therapy show promise as ways of attacking cancer, so the reform of our muddled discourse may be more efficiently achieved at the etomylogical level.

JONAH GOLDBERG DOES HISTORY the way he does everything else:

Frank Foer's got a round-up essay on the the history of conservatives in the NYT (man would I love to write something similar on the history of liberals some day). Anyway, it's not a bad recap, even if I'd quibble with parts. For instance, while Foer concedes, quietly, that plenty of liberals and leftists were also Isolationists he does it in a bloodless way. It's as if isolationism is central to his conception of conservative ideology while it's merely tangential to the history of liberalism. This is the conventional wisdom among liberals and the conventional wisdom is simply wrong. After all Charles Beard and John Dewey, to name probably the two most influential liberal thinkers of the 20th century, were just as isolationist -- if not more so -- on WWII than, say, Charles Lindbergh.

By this novel theory, FDR prosecuted World War II with no support from liberals, who were busy attending night rallies for Charles Beard and John Dewey. It's a miracle this country ever beat Hitler. Perhaps it was our coalition partners in Brazil that turned the tide.

Goldberg's schtick, of course, closely mirrors the one mentioned here last week, whereby the operative holds up an Andrea Dworkin effigy and yells, "Hey, liberals, here's your girlfriend!" The Goldberg variation is more offensive, of course, because it goes beyond the usual perversion of current events into a perversion of history. One might even call it Orwellian, had one not been informed that Orwell was really a neoconservative.

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE STILL TAKING HIM SERIOUSLY: Roger L. Simon on the Friday debate:

Kerry starts his close with: "Obviously the PResident and I have strong convictions." Wrong. Only the President has convictions. Kerry has none.

As an exercise, I tried to imagine myself writing something that meretricious for publication, but couldn't -- even my self-loathing has some limits.

Where do they get these people?

HELLO NAZI. I had to miss the debate last night because I was booked to play bass at an ill-attended gig above a strip joint near the WTC site. Let's just say we weren't at the top of our game. The most interesting part of the evening was the performance before ours of a reconstituted version of Tuff Darts, the first New York punk band I ever saw (Fall 1977). It was strange to hear those old songs played so slowly and sloppily so many years later, and to see lead singer Tommy Frenzy -- back in the day a skinny, manic, shades-and-sneer type -- looking like James Lileks after a night in the drunk tank.

I did catch a few minutes of the hilariously misnamed Town Meeting (which conjures visions of Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" painting, redone to suit modern times, with the leather-jacketed citizen's image appearing in a dossier perused by government and network vetters), and read the transcript the next day. I hate to say it, but it hardly requires comment. The combatants' talking points were clear after the first debate, and while the issue of Kerry's detached WASP bonhomie vs. Bush's strutting aggressiveness makes mildly interesting style-section copy, I can't see much significance in it.

It is fashionable among conservatives to say that liberals don't really love Kerry, and I suspect that may be true, as he is clearly driving the center lane, politically speaking, in hopes of a game-winning basket; but can it be true that normal conservatives (excepting that small minority obsessed with abortion and homosexuals) love big-government Bush any better?

The electoral importance of these dog-and-pony shows seems as slight to me as it seems massive to the writers who obsess on it. The election will be decided by people who are not regular followers of political weblogs. While those who obsessively sift the tea-leaves wonder what effect their brew has had on the lumpenproles, citizens are comparing their real experiences and prospects to what the candidates describe. I am fast coming to the conclusion that this election will not be about which fella Joe Sixpack would prefer to pop a few cans with. It may be that my cynicism about American voters has been outstripped by my cynicism about the people who speculate on the needs and wants of Joe Sixpack.

My Saturday night was devoted to the Beastie Boys at MSG. You can imagine what a New York moment that was ("I got my BVDs from VIM"). The joint was sold out, every mention of the City drew full-throated roars, and the vommies leading out of the Garden rang with a loud chant of "Let's Go Yan-kees!" (I was rooting for the Twins tonight, of course, but take comfort in the fact that their defeat at the hands of a local team probably aggravates Lileks no end.)

The anti-Bush stuff from the Beasties also went down a treat; though the To the 5 Boroughs lyrics were too new and too muddled by the sound system to connect, the playing of a video in which Will Ferrell portrayed the President as a dumbass entertained the crowd, and when the band dedicated "Sabotage" to Bush the audience was loud and unmistakable in its Approval of This Message ("You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage").

But that's how we roll, yo. We've supported Democratic Presidential candidates for 20 straight quadrennials. You see the line-through-W more than the Chanel logo on our streets these days. Knoxville we ain't.

Though I love New York and I love America, I know -- any sane person knows -- that they aren't entirely the same thing. Neither are America and the offices of the National Review, or the Weekly Standard, or the Washington Post, or Dan Rather.

All around the dedicated Bush and Kerry centers, a lot of deciding is going on that is not only invisible but, I think, incomprehensible to media big and small.

And though I would never denigrate the value of hard work, I think the strenuous efforts of partisans (outside of the empowerment of voters and the monitoring of vote fraud, which, given the nature of the current Administration, is essential) will have only a small effect on the outcome in November. We all know what time it is.

Which actually makes me feel rather optimistic.

ROUND TWO: SPIN BEFORE THE WASH. NRO cites Tony Fabrizio on the upcoming debate:

I actually think that the bar of expectations have been lowered so much based on the last debate, the recent stories on Iraq (Bremer and WMD report), the jobs numbers this morning and a format that favors Kerry that the President can 'win' by not giving or ceding ground to Kerry and making a connection on domestic issues and showing he is 'in touch' with voters concerns.

I'm going to try that approach at my next employee evaluation: "Edroso, we just found out that your big project, which you represented to us last year as an unqualified success, was in fact a colossal blunder that cost the company millions and got a lot of innocent people fired." "Yes, and I'll do the same thing again if you just give me a chance. Plus I think we should switch the water coolers from Deer Park to Poland Spring." I'll make sure to drop my g's and affect a becoming swagger. A fat raise is assured!

THE OLE PERFESSER ABROAD. I see Perfesser Reynolds has taken his quest to convince the credulous that he is not a conservative international.

Actually, that's just the jumping-off point for Reynolds' Guardian article. He explains to his foreign hosts that American Liberalism is typified by neo-Puritans such as Hillary Clinton and Andrea Dworkin, who presumably lunch together on the Upper West Side and plot matriarchy, while Reynolds and his fellow not-conservatives dream of (but do not actively support) "an America where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons" -- a nifty sitcom premise, at least.

The Perfesser lavishly describes this fantasy world where folks such as myself wish to go Cotton Mather on the asses of less enlightened fellow-citizens, but does not mention the actual restrictive proclivities of the Religious Right, despite the fact that, while Dworkins stand among but not of us lefties as peripheral figures, the RR is, of its nature, an authoritarian outfit, dedicated to the Christianization of America by force of law. He probably left them out because they are part of the coalition he hopes will sweep W to victory in November, after which time he and they will have a good laugh over some moonshine about gay couples and assault weapons, with much miming of gunfire and jocular flailing of limp wrists.

I am not surprised by his act, which was old when Methuselah was a pup, but considering how often he has bitched about their paper, I am surprised that the Guardian published it. I should have thought they would at least insist that he dress for the portrait accompanying his column in overalls and a large, ragged straw hat, with several of his teeth blacked out.


I mean, I thought the left was all about crushing dissent. Heh.

PRE-EMPTING AHNULD. The best I can say about this proposed repeal of the national-born-citizen requirement for Presidents is that history tells us such things backfire. The Republicans rammed through the Twenty-Second Amendment to prevent another FDR from bogarting the Oval Office, and it prevented them from running the still-popular Ike a third time. And lowering the voting age to 18 didn't do much electorally for the Democrats who were fond of the idea.

There's still time for the Democrats to groom a foreign-born alternative to Schwarzenegger. Maybe Antonio Banderas? He did play a gay guy, but Ahnuld played a guy who got pregnant. It will make for some entertaining debates: "It vas a tess-tube pregnoncy! Iss not the same as having zex wiz a man! In many ways it vas my hardess role! It takes balls to haff a baby!"