low culture

Can you simultaneously buy and steal an election?

What happened to you, California? You used to be cool.

1. Rice to Lead Effort To Speed Iraqi Aid
“President Bush announced yesterday that the White House will take a stronger role in overseeing the struggling effort to rebuild Iraq through a new group intended to speed the flow of money and staff to Baghdad and streamline decision-making in Washington…
The new group, to be led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and drawn from more than a half-dozen Cabinet agencies, is intended to remove a bottleneck in decision-making by identifying and resolving problems faced by the U.S.-led occupation. Responsibility for running postwar Iraq will remain with the Defense Department, and civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer will retain considerable autonomy.”
That’s like having the fox guard the henhouse!
2. Sharon Threatens to Hit Israel’s Enemies Anywhere
“President Bush insisted on Monday that Israel should not feel constrained in defending itself but said he told Sharon: ‘It’s very important that any action Israel take(s) should avoid escalation and creating higher tensions.'”
Do as I say, and not as I do!
3. Consumer borrowing surged in August
“The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumers increased their borrowing by a seasonally adjusted $8.2 billion, or at a brisk annual rate of 5.2 percent from July to August. That pushed up total consumer debt to $1.96 trillion.”
That’s biting off more than you can chew!

Dear Headline Writers at The New York Post and The New York Daily News:
Please resist using the headline “LOST IN TRANSLATION” when reporting this story tomorrow. The lazy use of this headline was already thoroughly trashed in The New York Observer two weeks ago, so it’s not like you can still find it orginal or clever.
Thank you,
Your friends at low culture

So, Senator Bob Graham (D- Fla.) has withdrawn from the race for the 2004 Democratic Presidential Nomination. Hopefully, this will enable him to start working on shoring up some support for a shot at the V.P. position, allowing the Dems to maintain some degree of limited relevance in the New South (I mean, seriously, Sen. John Edwards is so gone and Gen. Wesley Clark is a “barely-there” Arkansan, which sounds suspiciously like some sort of designer undergarment).
One of the sadder elements of this withdrawal, however, is not the loss of a veteran politician with relevant international experience, but the manner in which the withdrawal occurred, as per the Miami Herald:
In an anticlimactic finale, the 66-year-old Graham made his announcement during an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, keeping much of his own senior staff in the dark about his fate until the end of a 52-minute segment on the show examining the future of Las Vegas duo Siegfried & Roy.