The more memos from the period that come out, the more Kerry's service record shines--and the more the lies told against him are proven false.  The more memos from the period that come out, the more Bush's "service" record is shown to be a sham--and the more the lies told to protect him are proven false.

In other words, the facts are all on Kerry's side, and the lies are all on Bush's side.  The honorable service is all on Kerry's side, and the cowardice and shirking is all on Bush's side.

We're also starting to hear from those who got Bush placed ahead of other people to get into the Texas Air National Guard--as happened on "Sixty Minutes."  They themselves are calling it "preferential treatment" and seem uneasy about their actions--as they should be.

At "Caption This!" you saw screengrabs of whatever was playing on the Sci Fi Channel at the time--including ads, old "Star Trek" and "Twilight Zone" episodes, old bad horror movies, and even "Mystery Science Theater 3000" itself.  Then you could enter a humorous caption and send it off for other folks to laugh at, and you could check out theirs.  It was a continuous process.  If you Google "caption this" you can find collections of peoples' favorite screengrab captions.  Making fun of "Star Trek" was especially fun because it's a cultural touchstone and it made it easy to make funny references.

But with MST3k ending its run a few years ago, and more recently with reruns of the show ending on the Sci Fi Channel, apparently they've decided to stop that part of their site.  I haven't found it moved to another site or anything.

If you want to know what "Caption This!" was like, check out Inventing Situations.  It's the same concept, but instead of grabbing from a station, it grabs from old copyright-expired movies and shorts.  It's a lot of fun, too.

But I'll miss "Caption This!" as it was one final link to that late, great show set on the Satellite of Love.

Genesis had a solar collector--a series of disks of pure diamond, gold, sapphire, and other materials.  They captured the solar wind.  Now Genesis came back to Earth.  It was supposed to deploy chutes and be caught midair by a helicopter.  Instead, the chutes never deployed.

The name "Genesis" comes from the Biblical book about the mythological creation of Earth.  NASA's Genesis, because it would have many important clues about the formation of the solar system and of Earth, has rough parallels leading to the name.

Now, though, if they find the collector at all, it may be smashed open.  Since the solar wind only left a few milligrams of material on the collector (thus the need for the purity of the disks), any contamination at all would make it difficult at best to salvage any science from the mission.

It's a shame.

Personally, this isn't my favorite issue to attack Bush on.  But hey, maybe some people don't respond to lies about life and death, massive crookedness with respect to being in bed with corporations who profit by their decisions and vice versa, and losing the war on terror by being dragged into a war with a country that didn't support terrorists.  Maybe they're more worried about the deficit or Medicare or the loss of jobs.  Sometimes all people see is what's in their wallet and what's in their paycheck.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia has decided to sell some oil at below-market prices, in an attempt to get prices under control.  However, they are only selling the heavier, less desired crude at the lower prices, so the effects may or may not be substantial.

If you watch it, you'll hear from former Fox News reporters.  You'll see the many, many memos that come from the upper management of Fox down to the editors, telling them how to tell the story of the day and what to emphasize and what to play down.  You'll see the results of studies showing that Fox News viewers are less informed when it comes to recent historical facts than viewers of other news sources.  (I've seen this study online, too.)

It's worth watching, and could potentially be an eye-opener to someone who doesn't watch news with much care.  We passed our copy on to be watched by others; if you get a copy, do the same.

The DVD also has a "making of" documentary that's worth a viewing, too.

 

Mainly, it deals with the facts that his part of Austria was not taken over by the Soviets at all, the Soviets left Austria altogether only a few months after the end of World War Two, and Austria did not have  a Socialist-led government when he claimed it did.  Schwarzenneger claimed in his speech the fleeing the Soviet threat and the Socialist government of Austria was part of what attracted him to the Republican Party in the U.S.  But Austria was under a Conservative party government when he left.

Lies?  Or is he just incredibly dumb?  With a Republican politician, it's often hard to tell.

Miller also claimed Kerry voted down a bunch of military equipment.  This is one of those "lying by withholding an important part of the truth" lies.  He refers to one vote on a big bill.  The vast majority of the time Kerry votes for military spending.  And why not?  He's a veteran.  He understands the importance of having the proper equipment when you're going into battle.  This is something that Bush did not understand--he sent in far fewer soldiers into Iraq than had been requested by his generals, and they were low on ammunition and body armor.  This is why they had to pass that $87 billion bill after the Iraq attack--the one I wrote about just the other day in regards to another Republican lie.

So, we know Kerry votes for military equipment regularly.  But because of this one bill, Miller takes all the equipment on it and breaks it down in sentence after sentence, as though Kerry voted each of them down individually.  This is another
LIE, The kind the Republicans and their lackeys are so fond of pushing.  And shame on Senator Miller, who knows about voting records and how easy it is to skew them, and knows that what he said was all lies.

I only watched half of Vice President Dick Cheney.  I'll watch the rest later.  It was full of invective and poison.  Unlike the Democrats, who rarely mentioned Bush at all and preferred to propose their viewpoints instead of mounting direct attacks, Cheney was all "Kerry sucks" all the time.  When he says that Kerry proposes a "sensitive war on terror" and that terrorists aren't impressed by sensitivity--well, duh, dumbass!  Kerry isn't talking about being sensitive to the terrorists--he's concerned with keeping some folks in other countries on our side by at least listening to their concerns--unlike your boss, who rides roughshod over any objections, and especially over any realities, that get in the way.  And it hasn't worked, has it?  We're now in a quagmire in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden got away because Bush was pulling troops toward the Iraq border even as the chasedown of al-Qaeda was getting underway.  The majority of Afghanistan is in control of warlords now--few of whom are noticably better than the Taliban in issues of freedom.  And the oil fields of Iraq are burned regularly by those who Bush somehow thought would greet us with rose petals and blown kisses.

Like I say, I haven't gotten to all of Cheney.  He's a lot to take if you like the truth.

Both were just feel-good speeches, without any depth.  There were some like that at the Democratic convention, too.  Not as obvious or as completely depthless, but similar.

I will say one thing:  it was odd seeing Laura Bush lie about her husband having a hard time going to war.  We know from reports of meetings held in the buildup to Iraq that the question was not, "Should we go to war?" but, "How do we sell this war to the public?"

Still, she may have seen his pacing and assumed that he was struggling with the decision, rather than figuring out ways to "move the merchandise."  So it may not have been an actual lie, but a misunderstanding based on an overly rosy picture of her husband.