Veepers Creepers: The Vice Presidential Debate!

The Italians:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=13&u=/afp/20041004/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_italy_troops

The Polish:
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/278/world/Poland_should_withdraw_troops_:.shtml

There's already been a bad Prez (Bush) debate. A bad Veep would only seal the deal for Kerry/Edwards.

Cheney's in a lose-lose situation there, if Edwards plays it right.

this is all a very technical analysis, of course.

i feel like the media trumpeting kerry's 'victory' last week will result in people largely ignoring the debates tonight, unfortunately.

.. But I think Cheney is going to do well.. He really does know what he's talking about - whether you agree with his politics or not, he's very knowledgable.

I just wish I knew why he's been so sorely underutilized this entire campaign.

What I think he could repeat over and over -- using those and other examples, including the Medicare bill -- is that this is a secretive, closed-door administration that consistently does big favors for corporate buddies at taxpayer expense. Which is a good theme for Edwards, plays to his David-and-Goliath me-vs.-corporate-America shtick. That's what I'd be coaching him: develop the theme in the opening statement, build on it point by point, hammer it home at the end, keep it simple: You can't trust these guys.

xpost

Yancey otm

(In keeping with the theme, I'm suggesting a healthy spinach and mushroom Edwards pizza, and a cheese-laden side-of-beef Cheney pizza drizzled with blood.)

Do you hate hate?

I don't think it's irrelevant at all, Nabisco. You were setting forth the idea of stepping outside of one's personal reaction to Cheney and trying to see him as other voters see him, and I was pointing out the problems with that. I think it's almost always reductive.

Now you seem to have backtracked from that position (flip flopper!) to say that we personally might see some good points in Cheney's performance. To which I'd simply say that Frankenstein's monster is still a monster even when he has the arm of a really beautiful girl sewn onto him.

So stepping outside of your personal reaction is *more* reductive than considering nothing besides your own reaction?

It's not pretentious to speak for yourself. It is pretentious to speak on behalf of others.

Yes, it was intended as a serious question.

No, I feel very little antipathy towards abstract nouns

This is a nimble dodge, but a dodge nonetheless. "Hate" is not just an abstract noun, it has a meaning. A meaning that you employ when you make statements such as "hate is bad".

I don't see anything wrong with stating that love is good and hate is bad

I don't think it makes sense to discuss love and hate in a vacuum. Love of what? Hate of what? Surely love of heroin is not a good. Is it wrong to hate hunger or disease? Is it possible to contemplate things that you think are evil without experiencing any sort of negative emotion? Is this to be desired? I don't know, but I think these are points on which reasonable people can disagree.

Ack, I'm clearly going nuts, as this points seems to me far too obvious to require even that much explanation. Why would you even watch the debate if you're not prepared to make various evaluations about where the candidates are and are not presenting themselves and their policies effectively? Why watch the debate if you don't think that those presentations are going to have some small effect on the decisions of voters?

I need to catch the subway now.

I think what got us on this tack was Momus's love of hating Bush and Cheney.

I do think it's interesting to think about why some people might view the same personality in different ways.

His was the performance Bush tried and failed previously. The 'I'm in the executive branch, privy to all the best info, you don't know how hard it is, you second guessing little arriviste' air of tired commitment. This can be a natural and even laudable response to the pressures of the office. Of course, apart from being 'evil', Bushco is just so wrong about almost every single issue that I couldn't care less if Cheney just got up and proved he was a better pianist than Monk, I wouldn't vote for him.

yes, this is your "line," which you repeat with geir-esque persistence, as though it will make the job of actually arguing your points convincingly irrelevant. but unfortunately for you, it's not a formulation that necessarily excludes a variety of notions about how politics and aesthetics intersect. it seems to serve you best as a means of assuming the self-righteous glow of the politically involved without engaging in much more than your usual rhetorical shell games.

anyway i was right the first time: i should have simply kept up my stare.

We went through this upthread, but now I'll be more blunt : wtf is up with this insight into and/or identification with Cheney's state of mind?

anyway if anyone were to design a momusbot i'm certain that "My perspective on this is that politics and aesthetics are inseparable" is the only clause you will need to teach it.

Do you find Cheney repulsive because you disagree with him?
Do you disagree with Cheney because you find him repulsive?
Do you agree with Cheney because you find him repulsive?
Do you find Cheney repulsive because you agree with him?

Now, choose the response which best completes this sentence: 'I found Cheney repulsive not because I disagreed with him but because...'

a) I suffer from heartburn.
b) A donkey bit me when I was a child.
c) Hating him just makes me feel so good, so right!
d) When I look at him I remember that I owe my uncle money.
e) I feel sure that he has webbed feet.

Thelonious Sphere,

Faites gaffe á cette intersection lá. Il y’a toujours plein de flics bourrés

"Hate" is not just an abstract noun, it has a meaning. A meaning that you employ when you make statements such as "hate is bad".

Sorry, I didn't mean to be obtuse, I mean 'abstract noun' as a noun which refers to something without concrete existance, such as states, ideas, feelings etc., and when say hate is 'bad', which was terribly vague of me, I mean unhealthy, destructive or distracting.

Love of what? Hate of what?

This is a good question, of course, and for the sake of avoiding the Boddhisattva's 'do you desire Nirvana?' problem I shall qualify the definition of 'hate' I am using. As I am talkin about morality, I think it makes sense to assume these words only refer to other humans, or 'persons' (perhaps an argument for animals, but that makes it more complicated); as the problem came up in relation to whether hating Cheney was a good thing, I think limiting it to humans for practical purposes is fine. While we may say 'I hate broccoli', 'I hate fascism' and 'I hate my father', I think the word hate functions in different ways in each case, and that only the final one is relevant. Anyway, I feel this is mostly irrelevant. I will only say that I wish no specific ill will to Bush or Cheney - they probably have some good qualities, maybe those close to them love them and they love them back, and they have the potential to enrich humanity (okay, this would take a fairly extreme conversion, but the possibility of such is part of what makes life sacred). However, I do not think they should be in power - I don't really care if Bush and Cheney spend the rest of their lives happy as pigs in shit on some tropical island (sure, being held accountable for lying about Iraq would be nice, but that ain't going to happen), as long as they are not wielding the force of nations.

Who are you to decide?

Cheney had body language?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/10/06/cheneyblows/cover.jpg

I guess Edwards was trying not to be controversial in his answer to the question about Israel. I don't know what Kerry's position is, but if it's more balanced, I wish he could make it known and carry his supporters along with him, challenge and convince them.

That might be good news, but it has to be bad news that Cheney spoke several times about the likelihood of terrorists detonating a radiological weapon in an American city. It seems like a very specific threat, almost an agenda the Bush administration is pushing. That's the kind of terrorism they want everybody to focus on. That's next. What's odd is that it isn't based on any sort of intelligence or specific threats from terrorist groups. In fact, in May 2001, when Mohammed Atta met in Spain with Ramzi Binalshibh, they specifically ruled out a strike on a nuclear plant.

Obviously the Bush administration has two reasons for 'wanting' the dirty bomb scenario:

1. It's terrifying, and they want people to remain terrified. In this sense they share the objectives of the terrorists.

2. Radiological material has to be provided by a state -- this is 'state-sponsored' terrorism. And where you can implicate a state, you can invade a state. It's the ideal pretext for any military adventure you feel like mounting.

It's between-the-lines stuff like this that makes Cheney so thoroughly 'evil'. Speculation about whether his wife loves him is completely irrelevant.

oddly enough, the only other Roth fans i know are women... Sharon O'Connell got me into him when i was at Melody Maker, and have met many women who love his stuff (my gf loved the books of his i've loaned her). oddly, roth's sexism is my biggest turn-off with his stuff, because its so blatant and unchallenged, its not even an intriguing flaw.