Vox cani

So says George Bush's reelection site... confused? I am. Maybe they're screening people who go there to know their enemy. More likely, are people hacking instead of hacking?

The Department of Politics and International Relations sent us a message: this is rather beautiful.
"The Manor Road building will be closed to visitors from 4.30pm – 7.30pm on Thursday 4th November for the official Opening ceremony."
Maybe it'll be open for the closing ceremony, to compensate....

I had forgotten that Question Time was on in Oxford tonight, and so didn't put it on until reminded by a text from Durham. Tickets went in four hours, apparently, so it would have been an inconvenience to go, but since Heseltine was on, that might have been worth it. Posts somewhere, in the archive here I believe, tell me that QT has gone crap these past few years, from an earlier peak. I remember enjoying it many years ago, in Ashdown's time I believe, but haven't watched in many years, due to a combination of tabloid panellists, watching less TV, and probably watching less BBC news, so I was without evidence for this debate. Still, I figured that in Oxford it might be cool, considering that the good panel that would probably come, and that there are some decent questioners in the Union, whatever proportion they are, and that general university people might come too.
Thus my expectations were mixed when I put it on; but it turned out to be rather good. They had Heseltine and Clement Freud, along with a Labourite I didn't know, Peter Tatchell (whom I had subsequently to defend from the charge that he was "a raving communist"), and some Daily Mail person. That this constitutes an odd numbers leads me to suspect that there was another, but never mind. So, it was rather good, and Tatchell even had a funny idea, that Prince Harry could abdicate (or is it just renounce when you're not heir apparent?) to avoid press attention. Heseltine was not on barnstorming form, but was good, although he claimed to have been relatively alone in supporting Prescott's punch, which I had thought was universally popular, albeit in a condescending way in some quarters.
What spoiled it was that they followed it with Andrew Neill's rather embarassing "This Week", notably going out on a Thursday due, presumably to stronger competition in the Friday schedule, this not being the US. While Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo have stopped flirting quite so much as when I first saw this show, other things are far worse. The introduction featured those annoying "Three poofs and a piano" people, who I believe were on Graham Norton at some point, and whom I find utterly crap. As to why they merited inclusion on a politics programme, beyond the issue of any programme... I'm sure that the BBC used to patronise in a much nicer way. As if to hit the point home, Tim Collins (not that one), was then accompanied by poor Drum N Bass, before, during, and after, he told us that the Iraq troop redeployment was a serious departure.
As to that, I think everyone would agree that saying no to this request would have been a bold and popular political step, although I'm not sure that the idea doesn't find most of its appeal in making George Bush look even sillier. So, I don't know whether I support Blair or not on this one.
Conclusion: QT looks better than I have been warned it is, especially compared to just how shit some of the rest gets.

I find Itar-Tass a very good source for Russian news, but they are by no means neutral in a Western sense. Their story on the Duma's opinion of Belarussian elections reports just that: the opinion of the Duma. Incidentally, its website looks like a school one, with bugger all dynamic content, so I dunno where one would read the statement in full. They give, erm, hope for the Russian media's independence, noting that "certain Russian television journalists who were covering [it,] playing into the hand of a certain part of the Belarussian opposition, did not "strengthen the prospects for expediting the establishment of a stable and effective Union of Russia and Belarus,"". Certainly, if one covers elections in a manner sympathetic to an opposition, then one needs censure from the Russian Duma. Of course they may just have a delicious sense of irony: thus to warn that if anyone attempts to encourage Belarussian pluralism, then they'll create a political culture divide with Putin's Russia.

Bambi always seemed quite sweet, and our deer similarly; but the deer seem finally to have turned, as a Scarborough farmer has been killed by one of his wards. I wonder if we need a risk assessment. Maybe it's a new militant alliance with the animal rights protesters: although often right, they've killed people before now.

Via Agenda Bender:
Bill O'Reilly, of Sky News' The O'Reilly Factor, tried a pre-emptive strike on a co-worker threatening to sue him for sexual harassment: so, she has done. The Smoking Gun have it here. O'Reilly reckoned he was safe from harm, as he always made friends with his extra-marital dalliances before bedding them. He must have misjudged how friendly one has to be to use a vibrator while on the phone to someone.

Sarah rightly points out that this is a thing of beauty, although I don't know enough about Brum to pontificate with authority on whether or not it is shit. Actually, looking at the opposition, admittedly Googled very briefly, I think I'm on Birmingham's side. Its hard to know whether this guy is dumb enough to believe whoever made up the crap about the NUS card, or thinks that whoever nicked his bag is.

So it turns out that Lincoln's argument for the Civil War was that slavery was economically inefficient... which is strange, but how about it? A security council for the WTO instead of the UN would be rather interesting, and then we'd get that representation for China et al.
Anyway, a proper reflection on the debate: Kerry did win, Bush did look slightly stupid, and Kerry did respond to most of what he said pretty well, although Bush may well succeed in hamstringing him by the "global test".
Bush seemed to have been briefed on Education, Education, Education, which was interesting: No Child Left Behind was big, but I've never really thought he was into it. I'm trying to work out how this will work, it ought to appeal to women, one of Bush's weakest groups (60-40 against or something), in traditional terms of kids. Now if Kerry has them sown up then he's wasting his breath, but if he can sway some then he'll do very well. Kerry appeals in a much more self-interested way, promising nice healthcare, better jobs, etc. He brushed aside Bush's education comments to answer questions slightly more directly, but mainly to go on about healthcare, on which his pitch is rather good, despite the Bush campaign's ads. He mentions every time that NCLB wasn't properly funded, which works pretty well, but I'd say he could do with a more personal line on education, more "I was in the classroom..." and "This teacher is prevented from..." type-stuff. Still, being Democrat and articulate probably insulates him sufficiently that anyone for whom education is dominant is going to vote for him anyway.
So Bush's strategy was interesting: doing a kind of "but it's all about", especially with education being his jobs answer as well. Kerry had an answer on everything instead, he should probably do better out of it, although by not screwing up, Bush has probably done enough.
Interestingly, there were no split screens that I saw, the odd shot with both candidates, but not the juxtaposition that we saw before of the same perspective on each at the same time. Did the candidates complain about them breaking the rules before, or was Bush too well-trained in the meantime for those shots to be so interesting as they had been?
Laters,

Well, I've been bloody working lots, instead of having time for this, so I'll play catch up soon; but I'm giving myself a break, to watch the third and final debate, after extended periods of virtue in the library.
So, first note, Bush just said "The Al-Qaeda", doesn't Al-Qaeda already include an article? I don't so much criticise, as notice it, Arabic remains a mystery to me, and it'd be churlish to mock Bush even if I am right.
So, I thought that Bush was less impressive, but not by a big margin: Kerry did not kick ass.
Both made jokes, Bush more of course, he got a laugh for calling Kerry's assertion, that Bush said once that he didn't think about where Bin Laden was, "one of his (pause) exaggerations." He made a rubbish joke (you pay, they go spend) on Pay As You Go, which he called "Paygo". He used that opportunity to say "middle class", seemingly to break Kerry's monopoly on the phrase: it seems to me to be a mistake. He could go and try to win that argument, otherwise burying it would seem better.
Kerry started his response on gay marriage by saying "We're all God's children." This is clever, Bush didn't mention God in his, and so Kerry gets the religious high-ground, as it were, on this. He then talks about people being gay because that's how God made them. Later when they talked about their faith, Bush played down the idea that he was pro-Christian in an anti-everything else way, while Kerry portrayed himself as driven by faith.
Bush says that health is expensive because third parties buy it, not consumers. What makes the third parties particularly not cost-minimisers? Also, don't consumers choose the premiums, which constitute this price that's increasing.
Kerry got asked how he was going to pay for his health plan, given Bush saying that he couldn't. He dismissed that on the basis that news networks said Bush was lying, and then spent the actual answer responding to Bush's attack ads, by saying that his plan expanded choice massively for people. Bush started saying that the news networks were a bad source, and stopped midway saying "Never mind." as a joke, which fell pretty flat. He then went on to say that government would take over, and that government sucked. Kerry responded saying that the plan he was offering was actually private.
Kerry said as an attack on border control being rubbish "now we have people from the Middle East coming across the border", to me that sounds just plain racist.
Anyway, I'm off to bed. This is notes not anything coherent: more will follow.

Right, I'm off to bed, cos it's very late thanks to the time difference, and I need some sleep, but seeing as how I'm here, and I watched it....
Bush did very well, he looked silly a bit of the time, but he was way better than in the first one. Kerry though, still looked better, he sounds more grown up, more of a guy to whom people defer. They sound a little repetitive, obviously they would, but they say the same soundbites to make them remembered. What Kerry did very well was in responding to Bush's trump cards and making them look like mere slogans: the flip-flopping response was well worked out, and the global test thing was rebutted nicely. Kerry comes across as not an individualist: for his defence he talks about generals who says he's right, and countries that could help.
Kerry didn't talk in terms of visions of how things would turn out nicely, while Bush repeated his visions of how sorting Iraq makes things dreamy there...
In sunmmary, right now, I say Kerry won, but that Bush could possibly win by not losing by much, which was probably his main requirement tonight.
A few more things: Allan Lichtman turns out to be a good commentator, as well.
Kerry doesn't use the oil price, I wonder if he could... except that the next is domestic policy only.
The presenter was much better this time.
There's a rather interesting conspiracy theory over at salon.com, that Bush looked like he was wearing a wire for the first debate, it's too soon to tell, but there's nice evidence, which could just make this a story.
Night night.

The web said 1AM GMT, and my clocks say 2 now, this must be something to do with BST; this is bloody annoying, but mitigated by how the pre-debate commentators seem to have Bush as the one who has to make the running right now. :)
The more expert seeming of these commentators, Allan Lichtman, has rather impressive hair.
Now they've kicked off, Kerry looks old, but is good, cutaway to Bush just had him looking blank, with his mouth slightly open.

BBC are nicely showing the 3rd, on which my opinion will follow it. In the meantime, I note that our friends at Fox are headlining Cheney-Halliburton, which is nice. It'll take some more investigation to figure out if this is actual non-partisanship, but while the article is critical, it gets by without mentioning Bush or the no-bid contract, which are surely relevant parts of what Edwards was talking about in the debate, so I'd say they aren't about to shed their reputation.
What it does give us this lovely Cheney quotation, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments." which is surely a prime one for the Blood For Oil theorists.
John Kerry, meanwhile, has recruited Michael J Fox, to make the stem cells debate about Parkinson's. I seem to recall an FT comment article of some kind recommending stem cells as a way for Bush to break the deadlock, back when everyone was sure there was one, although I don't remember the details... I'd say that it's a bit technical to win, unless Kerry can succeed in getting into people's heads images of the people dying of the diseases. Still, it's a good issue, and I don't see Bush winning many votes by proclaiming that he's right to be on the anti side of this one.

So I'm buggered if I can figure out how to work the comments round here, it failed to publish and now won't let me delete.... I think I'll move to enetation.
I watched Cheney and Edwards going at each other as well, in the single vice-presidential debate. Cheney I found rather impressive, he probably doesn't pass that going for a beer test that is seemingly so important, but it makes sense that he got where he is. The two candidates seemed to me about on a par on performance, which should help Bush. Cheney's factcheck blunder may do nasty things to him, but Edwards didn't really make Halliburton hit home. He had a rather point-answering style, reminiscent of traditional debating, in that he would answer many questions by answering the previous one first. It seemed like maybe he's used to persuading juries etc. who are really listening, rather than to playing to crowds. Cheney seemed more like he's used to talking to groups who listen to less of the minutiae. My guess would be that Cheney's style might work better for this purpose, so while for quality it's a tie, in terms of the election I'd say he edged it. The balance on the tickets, of a fun guy and a serious guy, seems to be reversed between the two.
The other interesting thing, while I watched the first with no ads, thanks, was that on Fox, where I'd gone to see whether they covered the stories that hurt the Republicans, and ended up watching the VPs, there were 6 parts to the debate, with ads in between each. The ads were all army recruiting ads, with young Americans (1 black, 1 female, 1 caucasian) telling their parents that they had taken on board parental wisdom, and were thus joining up. Now I presume that there weren't ads in the TV version, so I'm wondering whether this reflects targeting in particular at Fox viewers, or at debate-viewers...

hmm, not sure how worthwhile this is, but it seems fun, so hello. I'm looking to comment on US and UK politics, good music that gets over-looked, and general good things. I shall see how this goes.

Jukebox:Freezepop
I've now watched the first of the presidential debates, and broadly agreed with the analysis that Kerry won, thanks to Bush appearing lost and slow a lot of the time. Bush notably spelled out all the advantages he saw from a democratic Iraq, seemingly pre-empting its foreign policy somewhat: "A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror.... A free Iraq will help secure Israel." A non-Saddam Iraq is probably better for Israel, his donations to suicide-bombers' families, while seemingly politically rather than ideologically motivated, probably changed some minds on the margin; but the idea that the Iraqi populace will want to vote "to secure Israel" is strange. Kerry didn't pick him up on it, but it adds fuel to any sceptical that, when Bush calls for democracy in the Middle East, he means democracy with freedom to choose whichever p[olicies prove popular.
Kerry was generally good, dealt well with the questions, and strove to point out differences; but what I suspect may endear him most to people over here (apart from not being Bush), was that he called Colin Powell Colin, and not Coe-Lin. That does make a refreshing change.
Perhaps someone in the town hall debate could give the candidates a list of words to pronounce, especially while Bush still seems worried about "nuke-you-lar" proliferation...