I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
frist
Plus the puppies ad is just plain cheesy. They are so desperate
I'm guardedly hopeful that Rove was relying too heavily on the whole flip-flopper charge, and that the ineptness of the BC campaign shown by this ad is indicative(sp?) of a larger breakdown in 'strategery'. I think they're starting to come unglued down the stretch.
I'm not sure what the effect of all these ads is. Most people have made up their minds already, and those who have not will probably not vote at all, or they just throw a coin when they get to the polling site.
The Republican voter suppression is a more serious problem than the wolf ad, whether it works or not, I'd think. But then I'm not in whatever the focus group for this ad might be.
Reality is a crutch
The puppies are mangey, that's scary. They could harbor deer ticks, or the could be rabid. The point is, you never know. Just, shut up and be afraid dammit!
OT, and it probably won't get much traction in the SCLM, but this is kinda interesting.
I especially like the line ""We didn't know what kind of trouble he'd been in, only that he'd done something that required him to put in the time."
Maybe it's just me, but when I saw the ad, I was drawn in by all of the beautiful scenery. My first thought was that if Bushco gets 4 more years, there won't be any places of natural beauty left.
Hecate - agreed that voter suppression is the most important thing going on right now. I feel so encouraged by the fact that what is going on in Ohio is making it onto the front page of the NYT. People really hate that shit and it is going to kill the Repugs.
Voter intimidation, this time in Florida:
On Election Day, voters will be protected from campaign pressures by a 50-foot cone, an invisible barrier that campaign workers cannot breach. Not so for early voters.
While the Voter's Bill of Rights in state law says they have a right to "vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person," a glitch in the newer early voting law does not include the same 50-foot guarantee.
As a result, with early voting taking place in busy public places like City Halls and libraries, voters are voicing complaints of being blocked by political mobs, or being singled out for their political views. Others say they have been grabbed, screamed at and cursed by political partisans of all stripes.
The Dems are behind the ball on this one. Republicans are filing affidavates on abuse against their supporters, while Dems are not. Because of this, the rest of the article is extremely unflattering to Dems.
Document the atrocities - let's make sure both sides of the story get out.
Philboid, that's great stuff! I'm sure Wolf will be talking about it any minute now on CNN. Yeah. Any minute.
When will the too well-behaved Dems hit Bushco for 9/11? The worst terrorist attack in our history occured on his sorry watch, because of his incompetence.
Sorry...i really think the Dems gave up a HUGE opportunity to demolish Bush/GOP on this...We KNOW the GOP would have hammered a Dem prez if she had allowed a 9/11.
Of course, the ad could be construed to mean that the biggest danger to America, the "big bad wolves", are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice.
In that case, it's a good ad.
i can't believe this ad is dominating a news cycle. but if it must, then the story should be the ridicule that is being heaped on it.
The Rickster was highly pissed:
In this ad, he begged to assist.
Those wolves made him hard,
But, no, he was barred.
He was fucked, and not even kissed.
Every time Bush gets a vote, a puppy dies.
I just saw a great response video to the Wolf Ad. It's called Lone Wolf
slightly off topic-
The best way to fight voter intimidation is to serve as an election officer, those who actually administer the election. Making frivilous election challenges and engaging in disruptive behavior at the polls is illegal and as an election officer you have the authority to order such individuals off the site, if they refuse to leave you can summon the police. A lot more effective than calling the Democratic party's legal team.
Those who speak languages other than English, or who are knowledgeable about computers, are especially needed as election officers.
Isn't it wonderful that our great and wise founding fathers have given us a voting system that would be unacceptable in an emerging democracy nevermind one that has been in existence since the eighteenth century? You'd almost think they didn't trust each other.
It is essential for all of us that the federal constitutional offices be filled through a uniform electoral system which can be recounted and which cannot be manipulated in untraceable ways. Sorry to sound like a tape loop but a paper ballot countable by hand is the safest means of having an honest election.
There is absolutely no reason that those citizens who live in a state with a rational and honest system should have a president, senate and congress imposed on us by a state with a wacky or dishonest system.
If the people in Florida or New Hampshire are content with their state and local elections being run by crooks that is their business. It is all of our business when they impose elected officials on the rest of us.
Don't tell me it can't be done. It's done in other places, some of them with much fewer resources than the United States. If our present system can't produce a president who is the choice of the majority of voters it is a system that MUST be changed.
I'm sick of the handful of people who have built their career on studying the electoral college telling us every four years that it can't be changed and that it has some unapparent, occult wisdom behind it that only they seem to be able to see.
And our establishment media always go along with their nonsense because they are too lazy and contented to think it through.
Sorry, make that many. I've got an appointment to get my eyes checked after the election.
Does anyone know how to see a video of this Crossfire show?
Why does George W Bush hate the Blitzer clan?
Unrelated, but interesting nonetheless. You know the ads the NYT runs for HighBeam Research, the ones that have a "Find out more about [article topic]"?
The HighBeam ad for "Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State" (link in homepage) has "find out more about frauds and swindling. Related research: *Ohio *Republican Party".
I thought it was just us who related "Republican Party" with "frauds and swindling".
"I was working full time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project P.U.L.L.," Bush said in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep." "My friend John White ... asked me to come help him run the program. ... I was intrigued by John's offer. ... Now I had a chance to help people."
But White's administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush's father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.
"We didn't know what kind of trouble he'd been in, only that he'd done something that required him to put in the time," said Althia Turner, White's administrative assistant.
"John said he was doing a favor for George's father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there," said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.
Mock him if you must, but even as we write our brave president and
his "wife" Condi are probably somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, planning on delivering a festive holliday jack-o-lantern to our troops.
Fascism
1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
Sounds a lot like the Republicans today. If one of their limp dick thugs challange me, we will both be in the news the next day and one of us will be dead.
50 million people died in WWII to fight this evil. 9/11 allowed it to resurface. Only this time it is here. This is the fight of our time.
Peace
When I read about the voter intimidation tactics in Ohio, my heart sank.
When I read about the "puppies" ad here, I knew the GOP was desperate. (and I'm anxious to see Monday's TDS w/JS now).
Then I read, also here, about responses to voter intimidation, and I was uplifted again.
But I fear, mostly, that the Supreme Court and Antonin Scalia in particular, are about to reap the whirlwind. Having injected the judiciary into the presidential election process (I will argue with any lawyer about the presence of a "Federal question" in Bush v. Gore. There simply wasn't one), they will now find that genie won't go back in that bottle. To mix metaphors even more savagely, they have opened Pandora's box, but, like Pandora, the misery will be visited upon us, not on Scalia & Co.
That said, we have no choice but to fight the legal fights that this election will mean. Unless Kerry wins in a rout (and even then, frankly, though I think the wind will go out of those sails quickly in the best case scenario), the post-election fights will be ugly, and reveal us for the banana republic we have become. I'm so serious and concerned about this, I'm in the process of scraping up money to give directly to legal funds for the Democrats.
I'm afraid this won't be over on November 3rd, after all. And the legacy of the Rehnquist court is going to be a stain on our democracy that blackens even Plessy v. Ferguson.
Republican voter suppression? The Kool-aid crowd at Atrios-ville speaks
I live in Philly, talk about voter fraud, it's the demos guys, all over the USA
Somewher deep inside, you guys relate to the ad, they're wolves folks, just like the terrorist murderers that chop heads off, drive jets into buildings.
I watched the ad, and I had this mental image of the advertising types who made it standing in a field waving a steak at the wolves to get them to look around and lope over toward the camera. (Granted, they probably used all kinds of wranglers and animal control experts, but the metaphor for what Bush has done in terms of politicizing fear and terror seemed apt.)
I'm sure Wolf will be talking about it any minute now on CNN.
Not Wolf, Puppy. Leslie "Puppy" Blitzer.
I will rip up those wolves, you bet. Let me at 'em! I will protect America with my carrot-based defense shield! It will only cost you a trillion dollars. At these prices, you can't afford not to. The wolves are coming, but I am on the job.
The was made by a new GOP 527 called
Dunces With Wolves
There should be nineteen wolves representing 9-11 and one little goat for the book that our coward Bush found so fascinating as our country was under attack.
I just re-read the excerpt Atrios posted -- "what's next, Garfield?"
OMG. When is BushCo. going to start using Family Circus characters? That would scare the bejesus outta me.
Beautifully shot forest scenes, with a photogenic bunch of wolves that didn't look menacing to me. I too thought of our endangered wilderness and its wildlife.
Puppies is about right.
I was watching the ad and thinking, "Wolves are cool. Like, in The Polar Express when the wolves are running alongside the train. Also, wolves are so great to see when you're in the wild, because it's the wilderness is alive. Wolves are cool, and that forest looks really, really green."
GOP is master of projection...
There is a direct line going back from the Republican line about voter fraud straight to "Birth of a Nation". Straight back from Jeb Crow to Jim Crow.
Note that it's Black people casting fraudulant votes in one place, Indians in another and Latinos in another.
A while back there was a caller on Washington Journal implying that in Florida it was jewish voters who had a second home in there. No doubt they also voted in New York or New Jersey too. It was subtile but unmistakable.
The Republican Party is the party of bigots. All the bigots seem to land there in the end.
It's a zen thing. What's the sound of a CNN handjob?
This is am interesting link re: polling, trends and predictions
http://www.politicalstrategy.org...ives/
000580.php
"...they're wolves folks, just like the terrorist murderers that chop heads off, drive jets into buildings.
Anonymous "
They're WOLVES, damnit! Don't you get it? Start waving your hands in the air and run around! Save yourself! But don't worry about me - I'm not scared of any wolf.
Anon,
Last time I checked, wolves didn't have opposable thumbs, so they're not really qualified to fly 747's or wield axes.
And when I first viewed the ad, I thought it was an environmental piece. All those lovely trees and wildlife.
The more I ponder the "Puppies" ad, the more goofy and misdirected it seems.
The ad was obviously filmed in high spring, with the fresh green growth plain. The wolves are obviously tame and not threatening; they look less terrifying than my Samoyed--himself a living testament to the eternal symbiosis of wolf and man. Visually , these wolves are depicted as if on holiday in their ancestral home in the forest primeval--from which they will return after the shoot to cages, no doubt. Not unexpectedly, their mellow "dogsbody language" says "we're happy," not tail down, teeth bared "gonna get you sucka." The pinheads who made this were not "dog people." If the visual effect was supposed to evoke terror in viewers, its actual effect is "look at the happy wolves." As Talleyrand said: "It's worse than a sin, it's a blunder."
The Reagan "Bear" add drew astutely on the well- established metaphor of the Russian bear. "Puppies" has no metaphorical foundation beyond that of the "Big Bad Wolf," which discredited metaphor has no equivalent semiotic connection to Islam or terrorism. And in the urbanized world of modern America, who is actually terrified of the prospect of a wolf eatin' yo' mama? Or yo' metaphor?
Too bad Tex Avery is not still around to make a Looney Tunes version. . . .sinister wolves in zoot suits surrounding the svelte redhead. . . .then Droopy the Sheriff chases them away. . . .only to reveal himself as Bugs Bunny in a dog suit. . .
Watertiger wrote: "When is BushCo. going to start using Family Circus characters?"
Ida Know. watching Bush get to Washington on 9/11 was like the route Billy takes to school.
Its a fuking AD!!
fuck the right-wing nazis...if they want to call us pussies - we can call them nazis!
fuck this PC (politically correct)shit - it hurts us progressives far more than it hurts the racist-right.
peace
"It's a zen thing. What's the sound of a CNN handjob?"
I know! I know!..."Good evening, I'm Paula Zahn"
Well, now I'm really confused.
First, Safire tells me the KE '04 is all about fear mongering (by implication, NOT BC '04, who are all warm and fuzzy and cuddly).
Then, Wonkette points out that Bush says: "Anyone who thinks we're fighting a metaphor does not understand the enemy we face." So, as Wonkette says (credit where it's due), does this mean we not only face the menace of faceless terrorists, but also of man-eating wolves? Is that what this ad is about? Or we do face a metaphorical enemy, but not during the final days of the campaign?
Or do we even face the enemy at all? Maybe the metaphorical enemy is the one creeping up behind us? And the one we face, is a political party?
All I want to know is: am I supposed to be afraid, or not? Because the President has me all confused....
pixie,
If the article is accurate, it saddened me to read that demos may be stooping to rethug levels. If you are tempted towards aggressive intimidation, or even violence, against potential voters, don't do it. It only hurts our cause.
Somewher deep inside, you guys relate to the ad, they're wolves folks, just like the terrorist murderers that chop heads off, drive jets into buildings.
Proof positive this ad fails miserably. It's like telling a joke.
I mean, if you have to explain it....
MSNBC had some media consultant on the other day to talk about the wolves ad. He blathered on and on about how effective the ad was. 'Truly scary', 'I was very frightened after viewing it', 'This tested very highly with focus groups'. So, the SCLM spin aorund this as is already taking shape. "Ohhh, scary. It's an effective ad, no really. Stop laughing. You're not supposed to laugh. Uh, Boo?"
Related to other comments here, I think Karl's *real* October suprise this year is the widespread and centrally coordinated voter suppression effort.
AnneW - Thinking the same thing for a while. This is the week for the ad in which Kerry states that he will not spend 40% of his 1st 9 mos. in office
on vacation, that he will not ignore the
prez daily briefing's blatant warnings of imminent attack as Bush did;
"My fellow Americans, I will never allow
this to happen as your president."
Kerry's ad has to Fahrenheit Bush.
The time is now.
I know! I know!..."Good evening, I'm Paula Zahn"
waterspeakblood
"And from the right, I'm Tucker Carlson,".
Has anyone seen/heard ANYTHING from the SCLM fact-checking the Puppies Are Coming ad?
1) On my TV, I can barely make out the date of the $6B cut in intelligence funding (I think it's '94, but it's so small it can look like '04).
2) Porter Goss recommended deeper cuts in the mid-90's.
3) Republican Senate passed deeper cuts than Kerry's proposal (IIRC), based on misuse of funds by CIA.
As JMM points out today, 6:39AM, re: BushCo denying they ever thought Bin Laden was in Tora Bora and certainly didn't "outsource" capturing him there to the war lords, not by the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, this administration lies and lies and lies--with virtually no calls by the "refs." Somewhere this week I saw a report that when the press does *press* the candidates on misstatements and lies, both do adjust their rhetoric. Seems to me Bush then goes right back when the heat's off.
Of course, Kerry starts out with fewer, so even basic truths are dissected to find some flaw (the Iraq War costs $2B, said Kerry; oh, no, no, no, no, no, chided the SCLM, it's only $1.2B spent to date, as if the rest isn't committed; this reporter said Kerry was now saying $1.2B--Give us a break!).
Most of the press doesn't deserve the 1st Ammendment. Or, at least, they're using it to serve themselves and the powerful, not to serve us, the public. (Said in anger and sorrow and in no way meant to endorse removing freedom of the press.)
I mean, if you have to explain it....
Exactly. (*driving* planes?)
When those vicious wolves get up at the end of the ad, I got the impression that they wanted to frolic, play, lick faces and have their bellies rubbed.
Gee why was the transcript reflect APPLAUSE when if you look at the video they are LAUGHING
The Minstry of Truth is on top of everything
Heh heh--Oooohhhh...like Little Red Riding Hood, these clueless "strategists" believe American's are intimidated by medieval fairy tale imagery? Seriously--do they really believe that modern Americans are haunted by such obsolete icons of threat? Or do they believe we are all children, frightened by tales of monsters under the bed (actually a more threatening image than wolves).
Far as I know, the only Americans who still view wolves as dangerous are ranchers out West, and even they don't believe wolves aren't dangerous to life--only property (also untrue, but common folk "wisdom").
I'd bet most Americans have even been conditioned to regard wolves along the lives of Bald Eagles--representatives of the vast natural beauty of this continent.
The cluelessness of the GOP in running this ad is very encouraging to me.
ot, from my hospital(name erased)-bush health plan=rationing:
()received our full shipment of influenza vaccine from Aventis this year. When the influenza vaccine shortage was announced on Oct. 5., the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) implemented new recommendations that limit influenza vaccination to high-risk people who belong to priority groups. People who are not high-risk and who do not belong to one of the priority groups should defer influenza vaccination this year.
On Oct. 6, ()decided, as policy, to limit flu shots to established ()patients who meet the CDC criteria. NO EXCEPTIONS will be made.
The CDC's priority groups for influenza vaccination are:
1. All children ages 6 - 23 months
2. Adults ages 65 years and older
3. Persons ages 2 - 64 years with underlying chronic medical conditions, such as:
a. chronic cardiovascular disease
b. chronic pulmonary diseases such as asthma
c. chronic metabolic diseases such as diabetes
d. chronic kidney diseases
e. chronic blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia
f. weakened immune systems including persons with HIV/AIDS
4. All women who are pregnant during the influenza season
5. Residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities
6. Children ages 6 months - 18 years on chronic aspirin therapy
7. Health-care workers involved in direct patient care
8. Home care givers and household contacts of children less than 6 months of age
In order to ensure that ()has enough vaccine to immunize all of our high-risk patients, do not vaccinate someone who is not a ()patient, even if they fit into one of the CDC criteria. In previous years, ()has given flu shots to non-()patients if they came in with a family member who was a ()patient.
()will continue to offer the influenza vaccine upon hospital discharge according to the updated CDC guidelines.
To facilitate vaccination of the priority groups, most off-campus facilities already implemented flu clinics and the ()Outpatient Center's () walk-in flu clinic began on Oct. 18. The ()walk-in clinic, located on the first floor, is in operation from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., and is limiting flu shots to non-pregnant adults in the priority groups (until our supply runs out or until Nov. 12.) Children who meet the criteria should get their flu shots from their primary care physician, and pregnant women should get their flu shots from their obstetrician.
The nurses and staff are enforcing this daunting task.
We are asking all ()physicians and staff to communicate a consistent message of our policy to all patients, family members and care givers. Please do NOT undermine nursing efforts to enforce the above by circumventing the protocol, i.e. do NOT promise someone a flu shot who does not meet the CDC criteria and do NOT write a prescription for a flu shot for someone who does not meet the CDC criteria.
The CDC home page for influenza, http://www.cdc.gov/flu/ is
All your reality are belong to us.
I can't get the Wolves ad to play on the GWB site. Do you think they already pulled it?
It is a terrible ad. I think it could really help us, so I hope they haven't pulled it.
BC '04, who are all warm and fuzzy and cuddly
Ah-hahahahahaha! This just about sums it up.
errr--I meant even ranchers know wolves aren't dangerous to life--only their property (also untrue, but common folk "wisdom")
Mock him if you must, but even as we write our brave president and
his "wife" Condi are probably somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, planning on delivering a festive holliday jack-o-lantern to our troops.
That would be pretty funny because it would blow up in their faces, too. All the fundamental christians who think Halloween is a pagan holiday would go berserk.
I just followed the link to WolfpacksforTruth.org and discovered that they had beaten me to the thing about waving steaks. Don't want to plagiarize, so I'm acknowledging their brilliant parody. I will honestly say that it seems significant that several people (including me) seem to have had that thought about this ad independently.
I can't get the Wolves ad to play on the GWB site. Do you think they already pulled it?
Back to the drawing board.
Fear-mongering at its silliest.
No record to run on, no successes to trumpet. Just fear and attacks on Kerry.
They got nuthin', and it's obvious.
Can someone remind me?:
Weren't we just last week (or recently at least) calling preznit
The Boy who Cried Wolf? (I assume with relation to terra alerts or sumtin'?)
To quote another GOP fraud: "There you go again!"
Bravo, Tristero! (11:17AM)
Alexi -- The Lone Wolf video was amazing -- perfect response. Thanks.
tristero -- "Dunces with Wolves" has our whole family laughing . . .
All I want to know is: am I supposed to be afraid, or not? Because the President has me all confused....Robert M. Jeffers
Maybe you're supposed to be afraid of confused wolves?
Bush's real solution for those "Wolves" -- cut down all those damn trees. No more wolves and no more forest fires. Mission accomplished.
re flu shots, it's insane.
mrs. jeebs works in a hospital and she is undergoing treatment for cancer. She's doing chemo now and shortly will begin radiation. The treatment makes her immune-suprressed. And even she is having trouble getting a shot! The hospital is following the lead of the department of health. The TDH is the decision maker here in Texas for who gets the vaccine.
I agree with others about using "the boy who cried wolf" on Bush. But it should be "the boy" who cried wolf in order to accurately minimize Bush.
It should be in fairy-tale format, voiceover saying, "Once upon a time, there was a boy who cried wolf..."
The ad would go on to show clips of Bush describing the vast stockpiles of Hussein's WMD; his nukular ambitions, etc etc, show a clip of this stupid wolves ad, then go on to say, "But like the boy who cried wolf so many times that no one believed him when it finally was true, how would this president ever be able to rally the world against a real threat such as North Korea after being caught in so many lies?" (or "inaccuracies" for those not up to uttering the L word), and close out with a line such as "the first requirement of true leadership is trust. George W. Bush squandered that trust."
Seriously--do they really believe that modern Americans are haunted by such obsolete icons of threat?
Seriously, my first thought, as someone who lives nowhere near where wolves roam, or once roamed, or threaten my life or my livelihood (ranchers, mostly, I'm a thinkin'):
Wolves were, IIRC, on the endangered list. And it's a good thing they are making a "comeback." And, in this ad, they look remarkably like the half-wolf half-Samoyed a friend of mine owned (smartest kindest dog I ever knew). Not at all like the starving wolves of the Russian steppes, or the threatening wolf packs of European literature.
So all I could think was: wow! Wolves! Wolves are cool!
I mean, to most of us, wolves are just non-domesticated dogs. Even the wolf of Little Red Riding Hood isn't that scary, anymore. I blame Tex Ritter and Walt Disney.....
My two children, ages 2 and 4, can't get a fuckin' flu shot. I am one pissed-off independent voter.
Maybe you're supposed to be afraid of confused wolves?
Or is it confused about afraid wolves?
You see my problem?
Oh, I don't know... you can have an awful lot of fun with duct tape, plastic sheeting, and some puppies.
At least, that's what I hear...
So, if we elect George Bush, he'll hold the "wolves" at bay by threatening them with pet goats?
puppies ad at georgewbush.com throwing 500s.
My two children, ages 2 and 4, can't get a fuckin' flu shot. I am one pissed-off independent voter.
Well, don't worry. The President said he's not gonna get one.
So why the hell should your kids?
(seriously, I hope and pray they stay well this winter. Government incompetence is a terrible reason to have a sick child.)
OMFG, Team Chimp is so far gone they can't see that their mentality is the creepiest thing in that ad.
The mature forest and wolves in a natural habitat were a reminder of Smirk & Sneer's appalling record on the environment.
Maybe if they'd used less fluffy wolves ...
Oh, I don't know... you can have an awful lot of fun with duct tape, plastic sheeting, and some puppies.
At least, that's what I hear...
and not that there's anything wrong with that....
Jeebs,
That is absolutely OUTRAGEOUS!
Wolfpacks For Truth
The wolves are pissed!!
(Big Tweety HAH!!!
jeebs, sending all good thoughts your way.
OT but a must see tomorrow night!
Jon Stewart Talks TV News on '60 Minutes'
Speaking of flu vaccines:
NEW YORK -- Nine people have contracted the flu at a Manhattan nursing home in the city's first outbreak since the national vaccine shortage was announced, health officials said.
Other residents at the nursing home _ which was not named _ were given immunizations and the outbreak was not expected to spread, Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said Friday.
He said two-thirds of the city's nursing homes, which house 46,000 people, did not yet have any vaccine because they had ordered doses from Chiron Corp., which was unable to provide some 48 million shots this year because of contamination at its factory.
The *fun* begins.
Although it's rather funny in a pathetic sort of way, it's also a serious insight into the mentality of the GOP strategists (or into how they perceive the population's collective mentality). Tons of money, planning, and quasi-psychological marketing theory went into this ad, and the best they could come up with was to wave around a "threat" image that hasn't been threatening to the western world for several hundred years (or at least the past century).
Of all the crazy things to come out of people's mouths to justify the horrendously destructive acts of the past 3-4 years, this one sums up the medieval, tribal, unreasonably frightened world-view of the core bushites.
The mature forest and wolves in a natural habitat were a reminder of Smirk & Sneer's appalling record on the environment.
Does seem to have a sub-text, doesn't it? Sort of: "See, if you let us do what we want, there won't be any trees for the wolves to hide in, and there won't be any wolves, either. Get it? It's a metaphor, see? Only it's not, because we really mean it! We'll get the terrorists, the trees that hide the wolves, and the wolves! Which may not get the terrorists, because they aren't a metaphor, but it'll get the wolves, which is almost as good, right? Because without trees, the wolves can run, but they can't hide!"
Sheesh.
and jeebs: Lord, just when you think Texas can't sink any lower.
The mature forest and wolves in a natural habitat were a reminder of Smirk & Sneer's appalling record on the environment.
the whole thing looks computer-generated to me.
You want scary?
THIS is scary.
Considering how many times this administration has cried wolf with their terrorism threats and warnings it doesn't seem like to wise an image to be using, does it.
pie, the *fun* begins because of Clinton. The b*****d drove the manufacturers of the vaccine out of the US.
The Ad shows us that they found the WMD
Wolves of Mass Deception
....."Uh oh! We have a Bush supporter here," screamed the man behind her.
For the 2 1/2 hours she had to wait
in line, she was heckled by the man. As they neared the voting room, someone in the rear of the line yelled, "I sure hope everyone here is voting for Kerry!" she reported.
That's when the man behind her held his hand over her head and screamed, "We have a Republican right here!" There were "boos and jeers" from the crowd.
"I felt intimidated, harassed and threatened!" the woman wrote in her complaint to the Republican Party.
This excerpted from Pixies comment
upthread. I don't know about anyone else, but this accout sure has the
stink of projection about it, not unlike the narrative of the lady in
the restaurant a couple days back who
was compelled to tell off those nasty
anti-bush people.
on the other hand if these are actual
floridians, who feel that they got
screwed last time I might understand
a bit of neeedling, but I am having
trouble buying this account.
Kerry/Edwards In A LANDSLIDE!!
I hate, hate, hate the thought that a public health crisis could somehow help Kerry. I don't have a shred of schaudenfreude about it at all. TO me, it's proof of hoe evil, craven, and nasty the Bushies really are to hang nursing home residents out to dry. And you know nine cases is just the beginning.
Good morning! They're playing the puppies ad like crazy here in Grand Rapids ~ the first time I saw it, I thought ~ whoa, bad ad, waste of cash.
I have to say the the ad wars are really getting old.
KE should respond forthwith with a Boy Who Cried Wolf ad, detailing the non-existient WMD, Saddam-AQ ties, etc.
I think that could be very effective, if they use footage from this ad.
Bush is insane.
Other residents at the nursing home _ which was not named _ were given immunizations and the outbreak was not expected to spread, Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said Friday. pie
Hmmm, I've always heard that it takes a couple of weeks to build up enough antibodies to be effective in flu prevention. Seems if the virus is already in full swing, those poor patients won't be helped by just now getting their vaccines.
I was very lucky to actually see a wolf in the wild once. Outside of the Banff national park, there is a salt lick where wildlife come to well, lick the salt.
I was amazed to see a red wolf just standing 10 feet from me. We stood there and looked at each other for a long while, then he turned and walked away, giving me several looks over the shoulder.
It was an amazing experience and I wasn't afraid in the least, not like when I ran into those grizzlies, but that's another story.
Speaking of blow hards. Kerry says HE would have had Bin Laden killed or captured. Was he going to bring in his special ops buddies from Cambodia?
F'n coward liar. Treasonous scum bag (his wife like that word).
I mean, to most of us, wolves are just non-domesticated dogs.
this looks like a pack of huskies to me. which means the forest is probably alaska.
unless the whole thing is CGI.
drove the manufacturers of the vaccine out of the US.
Anonymous
Chiron is an American company.
Bid Dog will be back this week! He'll scare those silly wolves away!
pie, the *fun* begins because of Clinton. The b*****d drove the manufacturers of the vaccine out of the US.
Huh? Vaccine makers are specifically exempted from liability under a law Poppy signed (IIRC); the vaccine takes half a year or so to make, and has to be made new each year; it costs money to make, but doesn't draw the money that Viagra does (for example); and this manufacturing plant was in England, and was shut down because it was contaminated.
Do you really imagine we cannot buy vaccine from other countries, becasue somehow they're standards aren't up to ours? Or people there are "different," and so can stay healthy on "lower quality" drugs? Do you know how many drugs are made in Europe and sold here?
Do you have a clue as to what you are talking about? Somehow, it doesn't seem likely. Blaming Clinton for errors clearly made by this Administration, in a manufacturing screw up that tanked the supply because the market doesn't richly reward the makers of flu vaccine, well...it just doesn't make any sense.
Don't leave us with the puppies!
(Shuffle, shuffle)
Don't leave us with the puppies!
Anonymous, where the fuck did you hear that. The number of manufacturers has dropped in the last few years because they felt it wasn't profitable, and nothing was done to entice them to continue. Ask them. They've been quoted saying exactly this.
Please, don't lie. This is not Clinton's fault. If the Bush administration shares any blame, it's because it didn't do enough to prevent the problem, which has gotten progressively worse in the last three years.
Clinton. Jesus Christ.
Another article also reports that many people are traveling to Canada and Mexico to get the vaccine.
Vicki Stein,
I think you are lucky if they are running that ad all the time. I laugh
out loud every time I have seen it, I
don't know, but it just kills me. I
would gladly trade a few minutes of
acid reflux and erectile disfunction
ads for the happy puppies any day.
Kerry/Edwards In A LANDSLIDE!!
Jeebus, people,
While you're ranting about puppies and forests, Bush gets away with another big lie.
I always thought Begala was pretty worthless. The ad tells about "Dems voted to cripple Americas defenses, yadda, yadda." Watkins (whoever he is) says "Very strong and right on the mark." Then Begala starts talking about puppies? WTF???
You need to refute the lies first, talk about puppies later. This ad is weasel worded to make people think the Dems tried to cut intelligence after 9/11. In fact, as most readers here already know, it's a reference to the 1994 WTC bombing. Both parties were still trying to cut back the leftover bloat from the Cold War in the CIA budget. No relevance whatsoever to current GWOT issues.
But the average viewer doesn't know this. Somebody has to tell them. GOP spinner laid out the party lie, er, line, right up front. Begala???
BETTER TALKING HEADS, PLEASE.
How about a rousing chorus of "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf"?
Well, if we want to counter animals with animals (and it seems we are, what with the eagle and the ostrich from the Dems), why not do the classic fox and henhouse?
A pitch black screen with sounds of a snarling fox and sqwacks of terrified chickens would be a lot scarier than a bunch of dogs running around the forest.
Or to carry the animal metaphor even further, pigs at the trough. But superimpose the heads of Bush, Cheney, Ken Lay, etc. on the pigs.
Jeebus, people,
While you're ranting about puppies and forests, Bush gets away with another
big lie. ---raygunnot
Hey buddy, BushCo gets away with 10 lies
everytime I take a crap, or leave the
computer to get a glass of water. I understand that this frustrates you, but must say that as sick as you are of us having fun with the puppies, I am sick of folks coming round to tell us what not to do, or implying that
we aren't doing enough.
It would be one thing if you had
suggested a course of action.....
Kerry/Edwards In A LANDSLIDE!!
Speaking of blow hards. Kerry says HE would have had Bin Laden killed or captured. Was he going to bring in his special ops buddies from Cambodia?
F'n coward liar. Treasonous scum bag (his wife like that word).
Anonymous
Please bend over and assume the respectful GOPuke position before your betters; I want to jam a glass beer bottle up your ass and shatter it, you drooling sack of shit..
Q: What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
A: Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam!
Well, you know, eminence grise Ted Koppel says journalists can't do as Jon Stewart would like, and call public officials on their lies. I mean, that would involve a working knowledge of the facts, not just current knowledge of the accepted talking points:
Koppel takes issue with Stewart's insistence that journalists should put forth the "truth." "Jon feels people like me in particular should be more opinionated, not less. He feels I have a responsibility to get in there and tell the public, 'Look, this guy is lying' -- maybe not quite that blatantly. I disagree with that only in part. . . . In a live interview you can say, 'That doesn't sound right,' but you don't automatically have all the facts at your disposal."
From the Washington Post.
Jeebus, people,
While you're ranting about puppies and forests, Bush gets away with another big lie.
I always thought Begala was pretty worthless. The ad tells about "Dems voted to cripple Americas defenses, yadda, yadda." Watkins (whoever he is) says "Very strong and right on the mark." Then Begala starts talking about puppies? WTF???
You need to refute the lies first, talk about puppies later. This ad is weasel worded to make people think the Dems tried to cut intelligence after 9/11. In fact, as most readers here already know, it's a reference to the 1994 WTC bombing. Both parties were still trying to cut back the leftover bloat from the Cold War in the CIA budget. No relevance whatsoever to current GWOT issues.
But the average viewer doesn't know this. Somebody has to tell them. GOP spinner laid out the party lie, er, line, right up front. Begala???
BETTER TALKING HEADS, PLEASE.
Why does any tv 'journalist' ever conduct any interview without a laptop connected to lexis/nexis? It's not like they're on deadline. Everything's taped, usually. All they have to do is call BULLSHIT, and take a second to factcheck purious seeming claims.
What, you mean these mountains of intellect, these ffountains of information, cannot tell a spurious allegation when they hear one?
Who the fuck hired them, then? What do they actually DO for the fucking money they bathe in???
It is appalling that CNN saw fit to doctor their transcript for the Rethugs' benefit. I saw the Crossfire show -- there was no applause. It was laughter, as Atrios says -- and I will add that it was derisive laughter. The rethug guest host was startled and momentarily confused by the audience's reaction to the ad, then he plowed ahead with his script which sounded completely stupid after the audience reaction.
Zen question for the day: What is the sound of one CNN pundit sucking?
Answer: We will never know since they all suck all the time.
anyway, here's what's really infuriating me this morning:
Somebody finally found the person who will talk (or would talk, once) about Project PULL, and here's what they reported:
Other accounts have suggested his service was involuntary. A book published in 2000, largely discredited, said Bush was there to serve out a community service sentence for a drug arrest. At the time, however, Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, had no formal community service program. A 1999 book, by a political reporter for The Dallas Morning News, said Bush's father had insisted on the service after Bush was involved in a drunk-driving incident.
OK. This paragraph reads like a Dick Cheney press conference. The first book is clearly the Hatfield book, which clearly the Bush camp doesn't want you to read, because they manage to get every press mention of it to say that it's "discredited". (I think that, when they asked GHWB about it, he said it was "outrageous", but not, IIRC, "untrue".
This book states that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972, and that GHWB cut a personal deal with the judge to have the record expunged in exchange for community service at Project PULL. It does not claim that this was part of a formal community service program.
The second is evidently the Minutaglio book, which I haven't read, but if you parse this paragraph carefully, it says that GHWB claimed that this was about drunk driving, not that there's any independent record of that. (Hatfield claims that GWB's entire driving record was wiped from the books in the mid-90s when he became governor of Texas.)
oh, well. This is probably nothing that y'all haven't heard before, and I probably just need to get over it. At least this article doesn't have the usual Ernie Ladd dicksucking.
We should keep tabs on this Althia Turner, though. It would be tragic but interesting if she were to encounter some grave misfortune.
Clinton. Jesus Christ.
pie
you called?
What do they actually DO for the fucking money they bathe in???
I've been around TV reporters and the ENG crews who serve them (a little).
I'd say "fucking money" is an ironically appropriate choice of expression.
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS"
I view the ad as symptomatic of christo-facist pathology. The wilderness really does scare these people. Their urge is to conquer the wild, to pave over it, to cut the brush. Go forth and propagate, subject the earth, blah, blah Bronze Age blather.
The ad appeals to the base. No wonder it tested so well for them.
On the other hand . . . rats. Now rats might have worked. Damn vermin that can live amongst us, not an social troupe of puppies.
raygunot,
Take a reality pill, OK buddy?
It's called ridicule, and it's very effective at stopping mindless idiocy.
people have already heard those stupid charges, and they're not really going to remember them, or any counter-charges from our side.
Now, ridicule, on the other hand, they remember right off.
Awwwww! Cute wittle puppy-wuppies!!!
*smooooch* the cute wittle furry puppy wuppies*
Ooooo what a BIG puppy! *smooch* who'd be scared of a big fuzzy puppy?
Cole the Younger - you're quite right about the derivation of the presumed fear - Eastern Europe all the way, with just a dab of High Plains in the 1880s. Which is really, really weird to use as the psychological basis for something that's supposed to frighten all Americans. It's a bit like creating an ad with mounted Cossacks threatening the shtetl and then only broadcasting it in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.
I always thought Begala was pretty worthless. The ad tells about "Dems voted to cripple Americas defenses, yadda, yadda." Watkins (whoever he is) says "Very strong and right on the mark." Then Begala starts talking about puppies? WTF???
I always get the impression from Begala that he cares a lot more about namedropping, who he's having lunch with, and whether he might be pissing somebody off than he does about effective advocacy of his positions.
Not Alan Colmes, exactly, but close. It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to say that he's Colmes to Novak's Bukkake Boy.
The more I see the ad, the more pathetic it looks. Does the GOP not understand that the American people love wolves thanks, in part, to numerous documentaries aired by Nation Geographic, PBS, Discovery, and other media outlets? Only ignorant RePubs would think that ad is scary...
- Wolf-man
As was talked about a lot yesterday, wolves is also good old-fashioned Christian imagery. Lots of quotes about the good shepherd defending the flock from ravenous wolves, etc. I have a feeling the focus group for this ad was largely composed of W's Fundie base. That's the only conceivable way I can imagine this stupid ad tested high.
Bush = the messianic Good Shepherd, except he isn't really guarding us from the wolves, he's having Santorum-like man-on-sheep sex.
"Was that good for you, baby?"
"Baaaaaa!"
GWPDA - nice analogy.
I can't believe this was Rove's big ad surprise. I really can't. It's just silly. If the wolves are terrorists, that makes us Little Red Riding Hood and Big John Kerry is the woodsman who saves the day.
Anonymous, where the fuck did you hear that. The number of manufacturers has dropped in the last few years because they felt it wasn't profitable, and nothing was done to entice them to continue. Ask them. They've been quoted saying exactly this.
you're conceding his premise - that the supply of a good so critical to public health as flu vaccine should be determined by market forces.
this is a complete utter bag of shit, and should serve to remind us of the sad state reagan and his clones have led our public discourse to.
any federal government worthy of the name would be doing whatever it needs to do to ensure that an adequate supply of vaccine is available, including buying the goddamn vaccine itself and recovering their cost through resale if necessary.
instead we have George W. Fuckup , Tommy the Beer Baron, and Anthrax Julie expecting us to believe that it's not their fault that market forces have driven vaccine producers out of business.
I suppose Fuckup would have us believe it's Ronald Reagan's fault. It sure as shit is not Bill Clinton's.
Actually, a good Democratic counter ad would start with the wolves and a voice over: "the Republicans are still telling fairy tales. In the real world..."
any federal government worthy of the name would be doing whatever it needs to do to ensure that an adequate supply of vaccine is available, including buying the goddamn vaccine itself and recovering their cost through resale if necessary.
Yeah, whatever happened to the concept of "public health"? We used to use it to impose quarantines. It was raised, once in a while, to try to override economic arguments. But it seems economics rules, and the only question is: what will the market bear?
What the public health will bear seems to be totally pushed aside. It's actually quite a powerful concept. No wonder the neo-cons and Gingrichites made sure to shout it down....
Tena - yes, and it could so much more easily have been targetted appropriately. After all, the biggest sheep producing states are - Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.... Still, most of us out here don't really visualize ourselves -as- sheep at the mercy of the wolves.
"Well, you know, eminence grise Ted Koppel says journalists can't do as Jon Stewart would like, and call public officials on their lies."
I don't see why not? It can be done without being "opinionated." Our good Republican friends make all sorts of assertions. It is perfectly legitimate to ask "What about last year when you said..." Or "What about this report that concludes..."
Y'know, like they do when they're interviewing Democrats.
Well, in all fairness, NPR this morning actually called Bush a liar. Well, not actually, but close enough for horseshoes and hand-grenages.
They quoted Bush's speech, where he quoted Kerry, then pointed out Bush had taken the statement so far out of context as to reverse its meaning. They put it back in context, and effectively made Bush a lying fool.
Now if NPR just has the size audience it says it has on Saturday mornings....
Actually, the part of the transcript that bothered me was further down - after the whole puppies discussion- when Begala brings up the PIPA study (the one that shows that absurd amounts of Bush supporters believe absurd things) and Watkins completely blows him off and throws up the red herring of a poll that shows people believing that Bush would be tougher on terror than Kerry. Instead of bringing him back to the original (very important) subject or responding with something like "well, if you believe things that aren't true, you're going to reach poor conclusions" Begala just lets it go.
I would love to hear any prominent rightist explaining away the poll that shows that the vast majority of Bush supporters are factually wrong about almost everything. This is the story that should be the top of the news cycle, not silly puppies!
I saw a photo of John Kerry hunting. Why not a juxtaposition of the two photos.
John Kerry hunting wolves, John Kerry hunting Bin Laden.
When John Kerry's finished hunting there will be no BUSH behind which America's enemies can hide.
"If our present system can't produce a president who is the choice of the majority of voters it is a system that MUST be changed."
Before we go changing the system, we need to ascertain whether what happened in 2000 is going to be the norm, or an aberration. From where I sit, if the system hadn't been diddled in half a dozen places (mostly in florida) the system would in fact have given us President Gore.
With regard to the wolves, I think we may all be misinterpreting the ad. Sure they talk about terrorists, but do terrorists travel in packs? No, they travel in cells.
So what travels in packs besides wolves? I'll tell you what -- homosexuals! That's right -- America is facing its gravest peril right now from roving packs of wild homosexuals!
Well, not for long! Brave Georgie and his friend Dick are going to save us all from the the menace of homosexuals.
oh, and trial lawyers.
That's why he doesn't think about bin Laden, who is neither homosexual nor a trial lawyer.
Puppies, bitches!!
:-D
raygunnot - Begala, by talking about puppies so soon in the cycle for Wolves blew it away. No one except rabid Republicans will now take it seriously. Once it has been blown away, that is the time to come back and discredit the message. Kerry might owe Begala the election!
As Rove has said in the past, people do not listen to the words, they look at the images. This time Rove blew it big time if that is one of his October surprises.
With the wolves ad, the Bush campaign
has officially Jumped the Shark.
It's over, people. Barring a massive
obvious theft, the Republicans are
history.
Said it before, but I like saying it.
konopelli, in answer to your question from howie kurtz/wapo:
"Koppel takes issue with Stewart's insistence that journalists should put forth the "truth." "Jon feels people like me in particular should be more opinionated, not less. He feels I have a responsibility to get in there and tell the public, 'Look, this guy is lying' -- maybe not quite that blatantly. I disagree with that only in part. . . . In a live interview you can say, 'That doesn't sound right,' but you don't automatically have all the facts at your disposal."
Do you really imagine we cannot buy vaccine from other countries, becasue somehow they're standards aren't up to ours?
Well, according to the Chimp in chief, it's not safe to buy drugs from Canada. They might not be up to standard. Oh, wait, that was before he flip-flopped in the next debate and said that Canada could provide the extra vaccines required.
I'm having trouble following Chimpie's stand on a day to day basis. Does Barbara wake up every morning and ask, "what position are we selling today darling?" just so she can keep up with the spin machine?
On a sad note, I learned this morning that my buddy Steve had his favourite t-shirt stolen - the one that said "How did our oil get under their sand?" Bummer.
Vote for Bush or we shoot these wolves.
fuck this PC (politically correct)shit - it hurts us progressives far more than it hurts the racist-right.
peace
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 10.23.04 - 11:24 am | #
Anonymous - or Tina Brown?
you're conceding his premise - that the supply of a good so critical to public health as flu vaccine should be determined by market forces.
Bill O'Reilly - Carribean Stud
Once people get into that hot Carribean weather they shed their inhibitions, you know they drink during the day, they lay there and lazy, they have dinner and then they come back and fool around ... that's basically the modus operandi in many of these places.
And they showed this travesty to focus groups in the spring? That was before everything started to go really wrong in Iraq. And why should we believe these clowns when they say it worked very well. Word association...gop...liars.
Damn, haloscan.
No, I am not doing that. As a matter of fact, I was pretty pissed when I read the article quoting the drug company representative and his excuses. But I was much more interested in addressing the stupid moron's blaming of Clinton for this. After the pathetic perfomance of Bush for the past four years, I'm sick of stupid people and their Clinton-bashing based on misinformation, misinterpretation, or outright lies. Clinton was hardly perfect, but his sins aren't what some would like to believe.
How stupid is it to want to blame Clinton for the flu vaccine shortage? What, Bush didn't have 4 whole fucking years to address a shortage caused by Clinton (which is nonexistent anyway, but...) ?
Wolves are smart. They may live in packs, but they don't have a GOP-pack mentality.
They'd never vote for Dumbya.
When I was half-asleep this morning, I wrote this ad:
John Kerry is at a wildlife veterinary center, something like the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. He is stroking a grey wolf behind the ears.
KERRY: Some people are scared of wolves, but the fact is that wolves almost never kill people. As your president, I will focus on stopping our real enemies. I defended our country in Vietnam and will do anything it takes to defend our country. This November, you have a choice: real leadership, or (tiny pause) the boy who cried wolf. (2 second pause) I'm John Kerry and I approve this mesage.
I'm back. I'm going to take a grain of truth and pervert it to get you all hysterical proving me wrong, and then just watch you blast away. I don't care if I'm not totally right, it's getting you pissed off that makes it OK. I watched Clinton and his ilk and now Kerry and his perfect it. Let's face it, the flu vaccine shortage problem DID incubate while Clinton was Prez, he cold have stopped it then, Bush should also have helped. But to blame Bush entirely is so much crap.
Red Sox very sweet and brave but Yankees are Yankees. 
.
......
Ya Know I saw the foxes or whatever ad and first of all, it is camp but that is not it, the animals are too noble and lordly and wonderful and cute to be AQ.
.........
That is the big prollem, OK, it is true it is too camp and ludick but the bigger prollem is that nobody thinks of AQ like these cute, noble and lordly and wonderful animals, sweetly sitting around and looking around, oh puh-leeze.
.........
Imagine that.
.........
Sheesh, how we think of AQ is ratty poos and skunks, OK, no day at the beach, but nothing cutesy and wonderful and prowly and noble neither.
.........
So as usual, the Bushies managed to tick us off and make us scoff rather than impress any body.
.........
Just my 2 cents.
...........
I thought the wolf ad was actually a good one. I live in Wyoming and here on my ranch we have to deal with wolves on an almost weekly basis. Those who have livestock torn apart by them know that their not-so meanacing appearance is deceptive. They are dogs, for sure--but puppies, they are not. Fierce and menacing is what they are. The ad is effective, IMO. I just don't believe there are many out there to be persuaded by it.
Yep, I think Rove and Co. have officially jumped the shark with the puppies ad. It's about as scary as corn flakes.
As for blaming Clinton for the vaccine shortage--eventually the "blame America's ex-presidents first" strategy will also jump the shark, and we may be watching it happen right now.
OMG! A serious query. For once. A reasonable post on Atrios.
Let's face it
All right, asshole. Prove it.
And then explain why, in four years, the Bush administration didn't do anything to fix the problem.
Bush will get blamed for it, which is okay. He will not escape the wrath of senior citizens, the sick, and the parents of small children, who will be vaccinated too late or not at all. As with 9/11, it happened on his watch. And these people will hold him responsible, because people tend to get very angry if their healthcare is compromised.
Loverly.
Who let the puppies out?
Who let the puppies out?
Clinton's fault, right.
And the minute John Kerry takes office, everything will be Kerry's fault.
Meanwhile, on flu vaccine:
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals doesn't make flu shots anymore, and it doesn't miss them one bit.
For two decades, Wyeth made injectable influenza vaccine at a plant in Marietta, Pa. For the winter of 2002-03, it made 21 million doses in a labor-intensive, time-crunched process and shipped them to clinics and doctors' offices early in the fall.
But it turned out a lot fewer people wanted it. Flu vaccine can't be saved from year to year. So, sometime the next spring Wyeth threw away 7 million unsold doses, for a loss of $30 million. It then quit making flu shots. It eventually closed the Marietta plant, which once employed 800 people.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...-
2004Oct16.html
Arseholes shouldn't be demonizing the wolf. Might play well in Montana or the Arizona mountain areas but those folks are gonna vote for the idiot anyway. And I really like the film of the crowd pelting the Bush Limo with eggs in the last inaugural. Says it all.
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS"
OMG! A serious query. For once. A reasonable post on Atrios.
OMG, a troll playing two different fake roles at once, for the first time (not really) a serious troll on Atrios(again, not really).
"KE should respond forthwith with a Boy Who Cried Wolf ad, detailing the non-existient WMD, Saddam-AQ ties, etc.
I think that could be very effective, if they use footage from this ad."
Monkey | Email | Homepage | 10.23.04 - 11:56 am | #
I happen to think that this is a brilliant suggestion.
Steve Aronoff
Drudge seems to have deflated the scarry wolk issue by terming the election as a "zoo". Good. I wonder what else Rove has up his sleeve. Its getting late in the game to play the full terra or Osama Bin Laden discovery game but ya never know and Lord knows, the American people fall for it every time, sad to say....
Oops - should have been "scary wolf" not scarry wolk - sorry!
ctober 20, 2004
Lebanonwire
A Bush pre-election strike on Iran 'imminent'
White House insider report "October Surprise" imminent
By Wayne Madsen
According to White House and Washington Beltway insiders, the Bush administration, worried that it could lose the presidential election to Senator John F. Kerry, has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country, including the main underground research site at Natanz in central Iran and another in Isfahan. Targets of the planned U.S. attack reportedly include mosques in Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan known by the U.S. to headquarter Iran's top mullahs.
The Iran attack plan was reportedly drawn up after internal polling indicated that if the Bush administration launched a so-called anti-terrorist attack on Iran some two weeks before the election, Bush would be assured of a landslide win against Kerry. Reports of a pre-emptive strike on Iran come amid concerns by a number of political observers that the Bush administration would concoct an "October Surprise" to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
According to White House sources, the USS John F. Kennedy was deployed to the Arabian Sea to coordinate the attack on Iran. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discussed the Kennedy's role in the planned attack on Iran when he visited the ship in the Arabian Sea on October 9. Rumsfeld and defense ministers of U.S. coalition partners, including those of Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iraq, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Poland, Qatar, Romania, and Ukraine briefly discussed a very "top level" view of potential dual-track military operations in Iran and Iraq in a special "war room" set up on board the aircraft carrier.
America's primary ally in Iraq, the United Kingdom, did not attend the planning session because it reportedly disagrees with a military strike on Iran. London also suspects the U.S. wants to move British troops from Basra in southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to help put down an expected surge in Sh'ia violence in Sadr City and other Sh'ia areas in central Iraq when the U.S. attacks Iran as well as clear the way for a U.S. military strike across the Iraqi-Iranian border aimed at securing the huge Iranian oil installations in Abadan. U.S. allies South Korea, Australia, Kuwait, Jordan, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan were also left out of the USS John F. Kennedy planning discussions because of their reported opposition to any strike on Iran.
In addition, Israel has been supplied by the United States with 500 "bunker buster" bombs. According to White House sources, the Israeli Air Force will attack Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr with the U.S. bunker busters.The joint U.S.-Israeli pre-emptive military move against Iran reportedly was crafted by the same neo-con
Re: Koppel--since when is stating facts or actual truth being opinionated? When it belies the statements of the powerful, or just BushCo?
What crap the Incredibly Shrinking Big Media.
And thanks for the really, really big laugh, Uncle Tony(3:38PM).
Link, please, Anonymous at 6:02
Jawbone: I'm not Anonymous 6:0-2, but I do have mad Google sk1llz: lebanonwire link.
Those aren't just any wolves - they're swarthy dark wolves from the Canadian wilderness. This is obviously a metaphor for how Bush is protecting us from evil Canadian drugs and swarthy dark foreigners at the same time. Brilliant!
Seeing the wolves commercial, this was the first thing that came to my mind, possibly with Bush as Lambsy Divey and Karl Rove as Bristle Hound.
Why wolves?
Majestic, intelligent, lords of their domians, minding their own businesses. Until dumb-ass colonist cowpokes in big hats came along, stole all their land and shit, run them to the edge of extinction, blamed them for everything that went wrong in their world, demonised them as an enemy.
Sound familiar?
"The wolf is neither man's competitor not his enemy. He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared." - L. David Mech
.
Who was president on 9/11? Oh, now I remember, it was that fucking coward who ran away after ignoring all warnings. I feel so much safer now that he's gone
Anyone have a video of this clip? Thanks in advance...
Raph Levien suggests that Kerry say:
"Some people are scared of wolves, but the fact is that wolves almost never kill people."
Why not quote this FAQ from the National Park Service?:
"12. Will wolves attack people?"
"Like that of any wild animal, wolf behavior can never be completely predicted. However, the history of interactions between wolves and people in North America clearly indicates that the risk to humans from wild wolves is practically nonexistent. Millions of people recreate without incident in wolf habitat in Canada, Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and more recently, the Yellowstone area. There has never been a documented case of a healthy wild wolf seriously injuring or killing a human being in North America. In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have documented a total of 301 human deaths from domestic dog attacks in the United States during the years 1979 through 1996."
One of my neighbors in rural Indiana, thirty years ago, was Purdue ethologist Erich Klinghammer, who set up a Wolf Park on his land. (It's still there.) The original pack were North American grey wolves. I helped move in his second pack, red wolves from California, and sat with the other volunteers that night to start a howl going between the two packs.
Klinghammer himself, a tall and strongly built man, wore a leather suit to go inside the packs' fenced areas and interact with the wolves. Most times, he avoided any conflict by simply knowing how to behave with them. One time, though, the alpha male grey wolf challenged him, a dominance ritual, and Klinghammer inadvertently won the fight.
This was a mistake. Only the alpha pair of wolves mate, and Klinghammer had just usurped the alpha male role. The alpha female started averting her tail to him. There could be no further cubs, and the pack would eventually die out, if this situation continued.
Klinghammer had to go back in, fight the wolf he'd earlier defeated, and "throw" (deliberately lose) that fight, in order to restore the breeding relationship.
He's studied wolves for decades. He understands them as well as anyone, and better than most. If he loves them, it's not from any vague romantic ideas about them, but with a wealth of detailed experience.
Oh, I can just guess Klinghammer's opinion of the "Wolves" ad. But some enterprising reporter should ask him.
http://www.wolfpark.org
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