I caught George W. Bush on Letterman's show last night. It was actually an informative interview, and I didn't get the impression that it was a typical phoney talk show interview at all. Dave actually grilled Bush about some serious issues in a very serious manner, if you didn't catch the show, read the Salon article, here's a bit:
So Letterman then asked Bush about the terrorist murder of 17 U.S. sailors in Yemen. Seriously.
"If I find out who it was, they'd pay a serious price," Bush said of the bombing. "I mean a serious price."
"Now, what does that mean?" Letterman asked, a follow-up Bush doesn't often get when he's asked about such bravado.
"That means they're not going to like what happened to them," Bush said, and the crowd went wild.
"Now are you talking about retaliation or due process of law?" Letterman asked.
"Heh-heh," Bush said. "I'm talking about gettin' the facts and lettin' them know we don't appreciate it and there's a serious consequence ... And I'll decide what that consequence is."
and
"I heard something a couple weeks ago coming out of your campaign and I just thought, 'Well, this is not true, he's not really going to do that,'" Letterman said. "Talking about wilderness lands up in Alaska or the Arctic Circle -- you're going to take trucks up there and drill for oil. And I said, 'Oh, that's a joke! He's not going to do that!'"
"Yeah, well, then you're not going to have any natural gas if we don't do that," Bush said.
"Don't you have bad air pollution down in Texas?" Letterman asked.
"We got a lot of cars," Bush said.
"Is it the worst city in the country for air pollution, is that true?" Letterman asked.
"Well, we're the best in reducing toxic pollutions," Bush said.
"But it's a problem -- isn't it a problem?"
"Well, it's a big city!" Bush whined. "It's a big city!"
"It's not as big as New York! It's not as big as Los Angeles!"
"We're making progress," Bush said.
"But listen to me, governor, here's my point," Letterman said.
"I am listening to you," Bush said, "I don't have any choice but to listen to ya!"
I think I can report another county that's been invaded by the Asian Lady Beetle. I've only found one of them in my house so far, but they're all over outside, I've picked three of them off of myself already today. Maybe they like my cologne.... You know, I think I made the Imagemap of the US that's at the bottom of that page when I worked for "John"...
I received a copy of this satirical debate transcript in an e-mail from my mom yesterday, but now it has shown up on "Slashdot". Thanks to "Liz" for pointing it out! I'm still snickering about it, here's a snippet:
Gore: As I was saying to Tipper last night after we tenderly made love the way we have so often during the 30 years of our rock-solid marriage, the downtrodden have a clear choice in this election. My opponent wants to cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans. I, on the other hand, want to put the richest 1 percent in an iron clad lockbox so they can't hurt old people like Roberta Frampinhamper, who is here tonight. Mrs. Frampinhamper has been selling her internal organs, one by one, to pay for gas so that she can travel to these debates and personify problems for me. Also, her poodle has arthritis.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush, your rebuttal.
Bush: Governors are on the front lines every day, hugging people, crying with them, relieving suffering anywhere a photo opportunity exists. I want to empower those crying people to make their own decisions, unlike my opponent, whose mother is not Barbara Bush.
Techdirt had a pointer to this story, which says that an even smaller PDA is on the way from Handspring. This is kind of a cool idea, I love my Visor, but I simply can't carry it with me everywhere I go. Something I could easily fit in my wallet (that's squish-resistant) would be ideal, especially if I could plug it back into the Visor later...
I was pointed to an interesting site by Weblogs.com today. Techdirt looks to have some good stories, run by guys who provide a little more insight into things than the crew at "Slashdot" do. The site runs on the same code as Slashdot, which I'd love to play with someday, but I somehow doubt it's as easy to use as "Manila".
This morning, in my car, on the way to work, I heard Bob Seger's Against The Wind on the radio. It reminded me of Forrest Gump, which reminded me that I had that soundtrack album here at work, which, in turn reminded me that I need to finish copying all of the music off of my CD collection so I can take it home again. Time to fire up Windows Media Player 7, and let the ripping begin...
My girlfriend and I caught The Contender last night, after a hurried dinner at Diamond Dave's. This movie is not going to be a box office smash. I'm not saying that it's a bad movie, it's just the type of movie that will appeal to about 2% of the movie-going audience. It's all political intrigue, it's about the wheeling and dealing in Washington, and it's about principles. Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, and Sam Elliot all gave great performances, and I could easily see Allen getting an Oscar nomination for this role. But hey, you don't have to take my word for it, you can read what Roger Ebert had to say, he liked even more than I did...
I was amused that last night's episode of 
I watched the third and final (for this year, anyway) Presidential Debate last night. Bush may have won the style competition, but Gore nailed home some excellent points about policy. The talking heads criticized Gore for being too agressive, probably rightly so, but Gore didn't have much of an option.
