Well, I guess we have to talk about that thing they called a debate last week. I’ll tell you up front that I neither watched nor listened to it, so I’m not qualified to say much about the content. All my impressions are from the media coverage of it. My first impression is that not a spontaneous word was said, and I formed that impression even before the show went on, because I read a bunch of material about how these so-called debates are produced and how the candidates are prepared.

My little paperback dictionary on my desk defines "debate," when used as a verb, as to discuss, argue, dispute or contend. When used as a noun, it’s a controversy or a contest by argument. By no stretch of the imagination do these TV shows meet any part of that definition. The candidates are not allowed to ask direct questions of each other, the audience is hand picked, and the questions from the journalists are given to them in advance so the answers can be composed and rehearsed. If that’s a debate, I’m a Republican. So take it for what it is. It’s a TV show, and it preempted some lowbrow sitcoms and game shows that would have been a lot more entertaining.

Now everyone wants to argue about who won the debate. People win TV game shows, but they don’t win TV debates. They don’t even win real debates. Bush people think Bush won, and Kerry people think Kerry won. We all could have figured that out without having the TV show. Still, the mainstream media which, depending on who you’re hearing is either owned entirely by a bunch of right wingers or written by a bunch of left wing kooks, seems to be giving the edge to Kerry. Most of the major newspapers are publishing many more letters saying Kerry carried it than saying the opposite. Regardless of the politics of their publishers, the major newspapers usually publish a representative sample of what they receive in the letters column.

I saw one newspaper piece which said that body language was more influential in the TV debate than what was said. If the asses, the elephants and the TV networks accept that idea, all we’ll see of the candidates in future TV debates is head and shoulders mug shots. I’ll take these events a lot more seriously when they let me walk in, ask the candidates a candid question and see if I can get a candid answer. Until then, the message to me is that I have no choice but to vote for one of two really bad TV actors.

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A federal court judge in New York has taken a pretty good whack at a piece of the so-called Patriot Act. This is kind of esoteric information, but I’ll try to keep it simple. There’s a provision of the Patriot Act which provides for something called a "letter of security" which is, in effect, a subpoena which prohibits the recipient of the subpoena from disclosing to anyone that they’ve received it. In other words, no legal recourse and no opportunity to consult a lawyer. The idea is to give the government the power to get information from internet service providers without the knowledge of the individual being investigated. I’m not saying that the right to talk to a lawyer is necessarily the be-all and end-all of American civil liberties, but when they decide to take that away from us, in any context, they’re obviously going too far. Sorry for using the imprecise, generic "they" in that comment, but you know who "they" are. Anyway, a federal judge in New York says "they" can’t do that, but he gave the administration 90 days to appeal.

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Most of us use Microsoft’s work in one way or another. Even if you’re an Apple person or even if you never go anywhere near a computer, things that have been created using Microsoft products probably are in your life somewhere. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical about the federal government’s attempt a while back to break up Microsoft, but my perspective was twisted a little bit last week. Bill Gates made a speech hosted by the UC Berkeley College of Engineering in which he declared that he favors globalization and that people who are against sending jobs overseas are misguided. I’m no economist, but I think this is kind of disturbing talk coming from the guy who runs a company from which none of us can get away.

You don’t have to be an economist to recognize that nothing much is manufactured in the US anymore, and most of the jobs are either processing data or flipping burgers. I use the term "flipping burgers" in the most figurative sense, but most of the people who aren’t doing service jobs or construction jobs are sitting in front of a computer all day. Few people in this country are actually making anything except printouts,. The most successful entrepreneur in the country says that’s just fine, but I’m not so sure.

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Just a little local media criticism. I thought the coverage by The Union of the story about the Briar Patch co-op’s proposal to move into a new building on Litton Hill near Sierra College showed an inexplicable bias against the proposal. If you read the story from beginning to end, you get a reasonably balanced account, but the headline and the lead paragraphs are all about how it would generate too much traffic, always the first knock on any new development, no matter who is building it or who is criticizing it, but in this case, you’re not talking about a bunch of new houses or new stores; you’re just talking about an existing business moving to a new location. The city Planning Commission would be wise to skip reading The Union and just do the arithmetic. How much traffic is the store generating now, and will the new location handle it.

I agree with editor Rich Somerville that The Union is taking a good shot, within its perspective and its other limitations, of presenting what it thinks is a cross-section of the community’s views, but sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder what they’re thinking over there. Last Friday they ran a guest column by a guy named Ralph New–no, not G-N-U; N-E-W--who’s worried that terrorist attacks will send people fleeing into the foothills from urban areas, and because terrorists just want to kill all the Americans, we in the foothills then will become targets for terrorists. Scares me to death.