Quotes & amp;amp; Notes

by Inlander Staff


Baseball As Life -- Wouldn't a Boston Red Sox vs. Houston Astros World Series be the perfect backdrop to the final weeks of the Bush vs. Kerry race? Game Seven of the World Series -- if it goes that many games -- is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 31, two days before the election.





Slicing Old Glory -- Have you noticed anything strange about the Bush-Cheney logo used on their yard signs? It's only half a flag: The whole bottom of the flag is cut off. The real flag has 13 stripes (to represent the original 13 colonies); Bush-Cheney's has only seven. As for stars, the real flag has 50 (to represent the states in the union -- sorry Puerto Rico, District of Columbia and Guam); Bush-Cheney's has only 20 stars.


There are lots of rules about how you treat Old Glory, but nothing in the U.S. Code refers to altering it graphically. If you change it, perhaps it really isn't the flag anymore. The Code does, however, make one thing clear: "The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever." Guess both camps are breaking that one.





Tuned In -- Kudos to the Spokesman-Review for its ongoing "Ad Watch" series. These stories are about the only place people can turn for updates about the truth to all the stuff that's blanketing the airwaves lately. (Who would have thought we'd miss all those drug ads during the evening news?) But it's kind of a sorry state of affairs when one medium is left to clean up the mess created by another. TV stations have seemingly abdicated any attempt at weeding out misleading or false ads. It's kind of a twist on that "We report, you decide" slogan. But you probably won't see the promo any time soon: "We cash the check, you get brainwashed."





"Wanna Buy Some Wood?" -- Not really.





Finally Taking a Stand -- What's the weirdest thing about the Republican National Congressional Committees TV ads criticizing Don Barbieri? You might think it's that they're all about stuff that happened more than a decade ago; that's weird, but it's not the weirdest part. What's odd is that in the one about Barbieri making a big windfall on a sweetheart land deal (a deal Barbieri actually lost money on), they seem to be criticizing a businessman for making a profit. The Grand Old Party: finally standing up to all those big, bad corporations.





Publication date: 10/14/04