Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Rise To De Bait

Monday October 2, 2000

It's all about debates, these days. The Sunday shows were rife with debate stuff (and the purloined video tape depicting George W's rehearsal thereof).

The first debate, in case you have been staying up late watching the Olympics and sleeping through class during the day, will be in Boston tomorrow night. In our continuing effort to provide the kind of info you can't get anywhere else, Mullings will be on-site, in Boston, elbow-to-elbow with the national press corps, senior campaign spinners, and wealthy corporate donors.

That, of course, means you, sitting in your den (or better yet, at a bar) will have a much better feel for what actually went on than I, because, as Ken Herman of the Austin American Statesman has said, "we were at a disadvantage, having actually been AT the event."

The crew at SpeakOut.com has teamed up with the folks at Fox News Channel to allow you to play along during the debates. This should be interesting and you should participate.
   - SpeakOut.com, to review the bidding, provided the on-line dial
   polling during the major speeches at the Democratic and
   Republican National conventions which, as it turned out,
   was the first indicator of the power of Gore's acceptance
   speech.
   - SpeakOut and Fox will provide the same deal during all four
   debates. You have to register in advance to participate,
   which instructions you can get by clicking on the Secret
   Decoder Ring page.
   - Tony Snow, Brit Hume, Juan Williams, and SpeakOut's
   Director of Polling, Will Feltus will be doing the post-game
   analysis utilizing the squiggles which you and about 7,500 of
   your compatriots will have provided.
   - I can see from here what you're thinking, but you can't
   cheat. The software automatically applies the correct weights
   as to the number of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Men,
   Women and so on as there are in the voting population. So those
   of you Mullsters who, by the second bullet point, had already
   begun plotting ways to bulldoze the results can just go get
   another decaf latte and relax.

The Associated Press has provided a good thumbnail of each of the four debate cities: Boston; Danville, Kentucky; Winston-Salem; and, St. Louis. Also available on the SDR page (as is the Mullings "Catchy Caption of the Day").

The on-line edition of the Encyclop�dia Britannica has this explanation as part of its section on "debate":
   "Because of limited time, formal debate does not allow thorough
   exploration of complex problems; rather, it is conceived as an
   exercise that may serve to sharpen forensic abilities and,
   like a chess match, provide intellectual entertainment for
   non-participants."

That's me. A non-participant looking for intellectual entertainment. Whoa, doggies.

Joe Lieberman announced the other day that he would like to meet with Louis Farrakhan. If Joe has learned nothing else since being picked to be Al Gore's running mate, he has learned how to pander to the Democratic base. This is what Lieberman said, according to a Reuters piece:
   "Minister Farrakhan has said a few things, including earlier in
   the campaign, that I thought were just not informed but, you
   know, I have respect for him and I have respect for the Muslim
   community generally," Lieberman said.

Here are just three instances of Farrakhan's being "not informed", according to that same Reuters piece: "calling whites 'devils'referring to Jewish, Arab and Asian businessmen in black communities as 'bloodsuckers' and denouncing the pope as 'the anti-Christ.' Now, Senator Lieberman, tell us again why you "have respect for him."

One of the things that Farrakhan said "earlier in the campaign" was to questioned Lieberman's loyalty to the United States - solely on the basis of his being a Jew.

If you have to cozy up to someone like Louis Farrakhan to win an election, that election is not worth winning.

Remember some months back when hackers invaded some well known web sites and shut them down with a "denial-of-service" attack? No? Well, anyway, Internet Security Systems has issued a warning that new "denial-of-service" utilities have become available to hackers. This is what ISS said:
   "The new versions of 'Stacheldraht' include 'Stacheldraht
   1.666+antigl+yps' and 'Stacheldraht 1.666+smurf+yps,' while a
   variant of the Trinity tool called 'entitee' has also been
   reported."

I'm having a denial-of-consciousness attack.

Dream-Team-USA beat France for the gold medal in Olympic hoops. It was one of those instances where I couldn't decide which side I disliked more. Sort of the way I felt during the Iran-Iraq war.

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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