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A plague on both their ads? Or not!

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Here’s another example of the campaign press’s now-widely observed penchant for setting up false equivalencies between actions of the two campaigns — this one in today’s front-page Times story by Jim Rutenberg, “Scary Ads Take Campaign to a Grim New Level.”

Rutenberg offers a pair of examples of what he calls the two campaigns’ “pushing the limits” in their ads:

“As Election Day nears, they are increasingly provocative and hard-hitting no matter the subject, from Mr. Bush asserting in a commercial that Mr. Kerry is proposing a government takeover of health care (widely judged to be a gross exaggeration by nonpartisan analysts and journalists), to Mr. Kerry’s recent advertisement in which a female announcer says brightly, ‘There are many reasons to be hopeful about America’s future,’ before delivering the punch line, ‘and one of them is that Election Day is coming.’ “

What am I missing here? I haven’t seen either of these ads, so all I have to go on is Rutenberg’s descriptions. On the one hand, we have a Bush ad that makes a statement that is quite plainly a falsehood, and that even the reporter painfully notes is considered a “gross exaggeration.” On the other hand we have a Kerry ad that, uh, let’s see, says that Election Day is coming and we have a chance to vote against the other guy.

On the one hand a lie, on the other an innocuous observation that we may soon see a change in administration.

These are equivalent examples of “pushing the limits”?

Desktop Google’s Microsoft fixation

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Desktop Google is indexing my hard drive while I write this, and that’s exciting. The ability to search your personal document space as efficiently as Google allows you to search the Web is a computer-industry grail. I can’t report yet on how effectively Google does this (it’s hard to see how well they can do ranking of results without all those links to mine for relevancy and authority, but who knows?).

What I’m disappointed by is the heavy focus on Microsoft data types. Desktop Google will snarf up your Outlook mail. But if you’ve got ten years of Eudora archives, like me, you’re out of luck (for now, at least — I sent Google a feature request and they turned around a courteous reply within 12 hours, which is pretty impressive). Desktop Google is heavily integrated with Internet Explorer, but if you’ve discontinued using that browser for Firefox and Opera, like me, you’re again out of luck.

I’m willing to assume that Google set out to serve the widest number of customers by covering the most widely used Microsoft file formats. I’d do the same in their shoes. But let’s hope Google broadens its horizons and supports us non-conformists. Because as the viruses multiply and the crud accumulates on so many of Microsoft’s products, there will be more and more non-conformists out there choosing “non-standard” — and in many ways superior — software. Google-on-the-Web is platform independent; there’s no reason why an IPO-flush and talent-heavy Google can’t do cross-platform development, and serve Mac users, Opera users, Eudora users… the whole universe of users who have made careful, intelligent choices about protecting their data and diversifying their code base.

Random links and plugs

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## Mitch Kapor’s talk at Web 2.0 — a call to technologists to help propel a new populist reform movement — deserves much wider circulation beyond the conference hall: “We’re thinking a lot about the election just a few short weeks away. No matter who wins, I believe the kind of fundamental change we need to repair a damaged system will not come from the political establishment of either party. It must come from a popular reform movement, one which is heavily Internet-based, and comprised of a broad cross section of the American people.” Kapor has posted the full text
 over at Of By and For. Alternet has a good interview with Kapor as well.

## William Gibson is blogging again. He explains his return to the fray: “Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succinctly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln. And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, ‘At times, to be silent is to lie.’ ” [via Tim Jarrett]

## Real Live Preacher’s book is out! It’s been a great gift to read this Texan preacher-turned-blogger’s moving tales from the pulpit and beyond here on Salon blogs. Now new stories and some of the best of the Web stuff is collected between hard covers. Check it out. (You can buy it at the Preacher’s favorite San Antonio independent boookseller.)

## “Joshtoberfest” in the Bay Area: Josh Kornbluth’s got a new movie of his autobiographical monologue “Red Diaper Baby” opening at the Mill Valley Film Festival and then at two theaters. And his great and timely monologue, “Ben Franklin Unplugged,” returns for a new production at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. More details here. Josh — who I’m proud to count as a longtime friend — is certainly one of the funniest people alive, and he has held tight over the years to his artistic compass, his political bearings and his remarkable impromptu punning ability. “Red Diaper Baby” is where you will, for instance, find Josh’s priceless joke about Communist economics: “We’ve learned from history that it’s very important after feudalism to stop in capitalism before moving on to socialism — because that’s where you get your appliances.”

## Alex Cohen’s Underground Clips site is an interesting and increasingly valuable experiment in fair-use-based posting of politically relevant video clips.

## I’m experimenting with this new bullet-point style. I used to use one that was an image, and that seems like overkill. I want to maintain ASCII purity. I’ll probably keep, uh, iterating.

Down time downer

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Obviously I’m disappointed that the Salon blogs server went down during the debate last night, just as many of you were posting and I was posting and we’d even linked to my blog prominently on the Salon home page for live coverage. I’d assumed it was a traffic overload problem but the Userland folks tell me it was actually a hardware problem at their colocation center. I don’t know what the cause was but I can tell you that my own computers get very cranky in the hot weather (Bay Area is having its October heat wave). Sorry for the bad timing!

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The instant spin on CNN was: draw. But over on NPR they’re pointing out that there’s a basic drift toward Kerry underway since the first debate,and Bush did nothing tonight to change that dynamic.

It seemed to me that, amid the spray of dubious factoids and statistics, Kerry looked like a calm, strong leader, and Bush offered a more subdued version of his first debate performance: He’s still basically someone who believes he’s got God on his side, and who are we to question him? And that’s a stance that just doesn’t wear very well.

http://www.wordyard.com/2004/10/13/731/

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We’ve covered affirmative action, assault rifles, schools. No questions about energy, the environment. Instead, Schieffer just asked the candidates about their wives. I don’t know, it’s nice to talk about one’s family, but I’d really rather hear these guys address the issues.

http://www.wordyard.com/2004/10/13/730/

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Big softball to Kerry on the National Guard and Reserve being overextended. He cites the president’s bad judgment, says the best fix is to “run a foreign policy that recognizes America is strongest when we are working with real alliances.”

Bush: The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq. To train Iraqis. 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.

There he goes again, back on the “global test.” “I will never turn over our national security decisions to leaders of other countries.”

Kerry: The test is not to turn over our security to other nations — but I think it makes sense, most Americans in their guts know, you ought to pass a truth standard.

http://www.wordyard.com/2004/10/13/729/

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On immigration, Bush charged, with an irate tip of his head, that Kerry doesn’t understand the borders if he can say that they’re less well protected today than they were four years ago, and Kerry calmly and quietly responded, “4000 people a day.” It was a simple but deadly rebuke, that seemed to say, “You can say I don’t understand, Mr. President, but I know this stuff inside and out, and it’s obvious you don’t.”

http://www.wordyard.com/2004/10/13/728/