It takes two to do this dance th cliche-jitterbug. As if they are athletes, politicians of all sides reduce themselves to idiotic simplicty to say stuff like this:
As Mr Howard set out for his morning walk he said election day is a nerve-racking one for him. "It's a tense day, I think it will be very close, I'm not taking anything for granted and we'll just have to wait and see," he said. He urged voters to stick with him. "It's certainly not an occasion for anyone to think they can give us a protest kick and still re-elect us - if enough people do that we'll lose," he said.I don't know about you, but this is idiotic patter. Sorry, but it's true. it's not much better than, we'll give it 120% and on the day the best team will win. *Ugh*. Was it always thus? Meanwhile another group of nasty, hyper-motivated, intellectually unsound Arabs in Iraq are probably kidnapping somebody or beheading them this very minute. This election day has turned out to be more boring than I thought.
Mr Latham is playing down this morning's newspaper polls but he says Labor is the underdog. "Well I feel Labor's put forward a positive campaign to try and take the financial pressure off families but also to save Medicare and save the mighty Tasmanian forests, so they're the choices we put to the Australian people today," he said.
Kevin Brown Puts The Twins Down
The AP version of this is already up on the comments section 2 posts ago, thanks to Mr. Weasel. The gormless NYTimes are now saying this.
It is squarely in their sights now, the series that has seemed inevitable for aNotice there's still a rib at A-Rod? I tell you there's a ... ah, fuggedaboudit.
year. With a victory Saturday against the Minnesota Twins, the Yankees will meet
the Boston Red Sox for a trip to the World Series. Again.
"I don't care about Boston at all," Derek Jeter said. "We've got Minnesota to play first."
The Yankees humbled the Twins in Game 3 of the division series Friday night with an 8-4 victory that gave them a two-games-to-one lead. A date with the Red Sox will be theirs to take in Game 4.
The Yankees made sure of that by stomping Twins starter Carlos Silva and getting six strong innings from Kevin Brown. Jeter drove in three runs, and Bernie Williams and Hideki Matsui hit home runs. Every Yankee starter except Alex Rodriguez had a hit.
Kevin the crazy man, the Left Hand of Stupidty, Brown did very well for himself today. He can stop drooling now.
Javier Vazquez starts Game 4. I don't know why people go on about the Yankee pitching staff as if they are mediocre pitchers. No, their stats this year weren't good, but their performance as a group was probably tested like no other Yankee staff in recent memory. At the cre of it, you have the pitchers who were imposing Aces for Baltimore (Mussina); San Diego and Los Angeles (Brown) ; Chicago (Lieber); Montreal (Vazquez). Brown, Mussina and Vazquez are perrennial leaders in DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Stats) PLUS they have Orlando 'El Duque' Hernandez, the former super-Ace of Cuba as well as the veteran of the 3 consecutive World Series wins. Yes they're older and a little worse for wear, but they all seem to be hitting on all cylinders right now, and so they're not exactly chopped liver here.
Even MORE Jeter Hagiography.
- Art Neuro
1 comment:
I thought what Howard said was benign, but not insightful. If you then interpret what Latham said in the same way, it seems as if no one wanted to say much at the time.
The difference comes when you view what they actually said and rediscover the thinking process. Howard was noncomittal and honest, it was possible the Libs would lose and he outlined a reason why; protest votes. If the positions were reversed, and the ALP figure had been interviewed, the interviewer might have asked something about 'scare tactics. A protest vote is Liberal code for 'scare tactics.'
Instead, the ALP figure says he believes that his campaign (sans economic figures, sans policy but with an earnest desire that Oz people give them a clean slate) which he characterises as 'positive' (eg 'Howard lies,' 'Costello can't be trusted,' 'Ross Cameron is an evangelical adulterer') and threatens the Oz people at the same time with the inference that there is no reason to vote Lib.
The difference between these two is indicative of party beliefs and aspirations. The scary thing is that, with media help, the ALP were in the high 40's in percentage terms. This reflects an inability of many Australians to decode what their leaders are saying.
And so the real reasons why the ALP have lost will be hidden and they will champion the easy explanations as to why they lost. 'We wuz robbed,' 'They lied about their policies,' 'We promised more, but they couldn't hear us because of lies,'
One major pleasure I have experienced in this election is to see Hanson, One Nation and the Democrats implode to Familly First. It has been a joy to me to read Cardinal Pell's weekly collumns (I know that aint political, but it fits neatly in the space). Pell is unrelated to Familly First, but diverse sources can occasionally have convergent goals.
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