Day: October 8, 2004

Kerry As Coughlin?

Watched the debate tonight. It’s like Diet Coke vs. Diet Pepsi — both of them leave me with a nasty aftertaste. My political views are much closer to Bush than Kerry, but it was interesting to see Kerry go after Bush on relatively conservative issues, such as the fact that Bush never met a spending bill he didn’t sign.

One of the odd things is seeing the nutcases on the right and left out in force. I admired the folks at Powerlineblog.Com for their work publicizing the CBS fake memos, but here’s John Hinderaker had to say tonight about Kerry,

My main impressions: One, I had underestimated Kerry. I’ve always thought of him as a rather dull-witted stiff. But that’s wrong. He is a demagogue of some genius, like Father Coughlin or Huey Long, with, I think, the psychopathology that that implies.

That just takes Powerlineblog.Com over the line into right wing nutcase land. The comparision with the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin is especially outrageous. The psychopathology implied seems to say more about Powerlineblog.com than Kerry.

What Liberal Media?

Drudge has a memo apparently from ABC News political director Mark Halperin. Gee, I wonder where people would ever get the idea that the mainstream media tilts left?

Halperin Memo Dated Friday October 8, 2004

It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns – and our responsibilities become quite grave

I do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today – nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion.

The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.

Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.

We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides “equally” accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.

I’m sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.

It’s up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.

Star Trek Must Die

USA Today offers up an appraisal of the state of Star Trek Enterprise in a review of the show’s Friday night debut tonight,

Oh, for the love of God, sink this ship.

. . .

So tonight the show returns with a ludicrous time-travel story, bereft of both creativity and taste. To its usual mix of bland characters and indecipherable plots Enterprise adds alien Nazis, who promise theri B-movie German allies a “plague targeting non-Aryans.”

“No need for extermination camps,” the alien says in one of the most cringe-worthy scenes of the new season. Get the word to Standards and Practices: If ever a subject should be safely out of the hands of incompetent TV writers, it’s the Holocaust.

Wow — a Star Trek episode with a time travel plot. Rick Berman and company must have really wracked their brains to come up with such a fresh plot twist. Star Trek may be on its last legs, but thank goodness Paramount has its best and brightest on the case.

Source:

‘Trek’: Not-so-boldly going down the tubes. USA Today, October 8, 2004.

Hamilton Busted By Test That Can’t Be Cheated . . . Yet

Other than what Seth has posted about it, I haven’t really been following the controversy over Tyler Hamilton’s apparent use of blood doping which recently came to light. But New Scientist has an article reporting that Hamilton was apparently using a method of blood doping that was undetectable until very recently,

Sports cheats beware – if you thought your chosen method of blood doping was undetectable, think again.

That is the message sports officials are promoting after US cyclist Tyler Hamilton was nailed by a surprise test for a previously untraceable method of blood doping during the Tour of Spain race last week.

. . .

The new test looks for 15 different minor antigens and can detect the presence of just one unit (about 500 millilitres) of transfused blood. “If you find several sets of antigens, it means that you have blood from two different people,” says Ann-Muriel Steff, research manager at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in Montreal, Canada.

The test is not perfect, however, and there is still one surfire way to cheat it — use your own blood,

What the new test cannot pick up, however, is someone who has given themselves a transfusion of their own blood, donated beforehand and stored until just before a race

Source:

Blood doping test cannot be cheated. New Scientist, October 4, 2004.