Fiat Lux

The Presidential / VP debate schedule for the fall has been announced: details here. It’s interesting to note that 2 of the 3 of the debates are going to have candidates seated at a table (the 3rd debate doesn’t specify). I have no idea why but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Kerry is so much taller than Bush, and the more traditional podium debates show the height difference more clearly.

My problem with the whole debate format is it has become yet another way for candidates to get out their spin more than anything else. Nothing that’s said there can be taken as either fact or serious policy proposal.

Here’s an example:

I have a very clear recollection of one of the 2000 Presidential debate – I happened to be driving up Nob Hill at the time and for some reason Candiate Bush’s comment about how he was completely uninterested in “nation building” (the buzzword of the time; considered a criticism of the USA’s involvment in Bosina) stuck in my brain. Look what 4 years have brought.

Yet I’m sure I’ll watch them all anyway.

Hat Tip: All Spin Zone for finding this beautiful quote:

Sen. Tom Harkin called Vice President Dick Cheney a “coward” for avoiding service in Vietnam and called on President Bush to end the “backdoor draft.”

The Iowa Democrat was responding Friday to the call-up of a Des Moines police officer who has already completed his eight-year military commitment.

[snip]

“The part of the U.S. code that provides for this anticipates major wars, major national emergencies,” Harkin said. “That is not what we’re confronting right now. You think about using this law only in (extreme cases), only when we’re really in dire, dire need.”

Harkin also shot back at Cheney, who said in a visit to Iowa on Tuesday that presidential candidate John Kerry lacks a basic understanding of the war on terrorism and cannot make America safer.

He noted that Cheney had several student deferments that allowed him to skip serving in Vietnam.

“When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil,” Harkin said. “Those of us who served and those of us who went in the military don’t like it when someone like a Dick Cheney comes out and he wants to be tough. Yeah, he’ll be tough. He’ll be tough with somebody else’s blood, somebody else’s kids. But not when it was his turn to go.”

Nice to see a Democrat finally being blunt about Cheney’s service record (or lack thereof). Let’s hope it continues.

I was on the phone with my grandmother a little while ago. She’s almost 80 but active as ever and is a dedicated Democrat, and we spent a lot of time talking about current events. I started reading through my blogroll after I got off the phone with her. Lots being said about the resigning New Jersey Governor, which I don’t have much to say about right now, and then this little gem (hat tip – Sisyphus Shrugged) got me angry:

“The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced,” Nader said earlier this summer.

Source here.

The belief that Jews are secretly the puppet masters of international events and finance goes directly back to the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion“.

Certainly American-Israeli relations and the whole godawful mess in Israel is something that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on. But to express your opinion using inflamatory language that suggests Jews secretly run the world is not fine.

Yet one more reason why Ralph Nader ought to go back to writing consumer protection guides.