TOM WOLFE

I am about a third of the way through Wolfe's newest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and it hasn't yet let me down. His first novel BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES dealt with New York City and Wall Street in the 1980s. 1998's A MAN IN FULL was about an Atlanta real estate magnate losing his grip on his business. CHARLOTTE SIMMONS is about college life at an upscale academic university through the eyes of several characters, most notably the title character, a brilliant young lady from a poor family in the North Carolina mountains. The school is also seen through the eyes of geeky boys, "student" athletes and frat boys each with their own take on the importance of college life.

If it weren't written by Wolfe I wouldn't have taken the time with the subject matter. Wolfe is the only current novelist that I'm anxious to read. His three novels in 16 years are far too few and yet it may be the time that he takes that makes them worth it. Wolfe does a great job of making you root for certain people and laugh at the others. It's a shame that the BONFIRE movie was such a debacle, but much of Wolfe's genius lies in the fun way he tells a story and those descriptions can never quite translate to the screen in the same way.

This story opens with the frat boys walking home drunken through the orchard only to happen upon the Governor of California (the next day's graduation speaker) and a young lady in flagrente.

Bango! Something grabbed Hoyt's right shoulder from behind in a terrific grip, and a tough-guy said, "What the fuck do you punks think you're doing?"

Hoyt spun around and found himself confronting a short but massively muscled man in a dark suit and a collar and tie that could barely contain his neck, which was wider than his head. A little translucent coiled cord protruded from his left ear.

Adrenaline and alcohol surged in Hoyt's brain stem. He was a Dupont man staring at an impudent simian from the lower orders. "Doing?" he barked, inadvertently showering the man with spit, "Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead in what we're doing?"

The man seized him by both shoulders and slammed him back against the tree, knocking the breath out of him. Just as the little gorilla drew his fist back, Vance got down on all fours between his legs. Hoyt ducked the punch, which smashed into the tree trunk, and drove his forearm into his assailant - who had just begun to yell "Shiiiiit" from the pain - with all his might. The man toppled backward over Vance and hit the ground with a sickening thud. He started to get up but then sank back to the ground. He lay there on his side next to the big exposed maple root, his face contorted, holding one shoulder with a hand who's bloody knuckled were gashed clear down to the bone. The arm that should have been socketed into the stricken shoulder was extended at a grotesque angle.

Vance whispered, "Whatta we do?"

"Run like a bastard," said Hoyt.

Rolling Stone Magazine serielized that chapter in August and I've been waitng for the book ever since. This is my first day off in 12 days and I think a good deal of it will be spent reading the 700 or so pages.

LONELY LIZ

The one-time most beautiful woman in the world is now a hunched-over old lady. I wonder how well Liz would have weathered if she had adopted a Madonna-esque workout regimen rather than spending her days flashing jewelry and wafting musk. One might suggest that, despite the platitudes, she was constantly driven by insecurities to prove her worth via material possessions.

Liz has gone through so many husbands, she obviously was unable to find fulfillment for very long in the arms of a man. In fact, the only men she speaks endearingly of are the ones who died before she could leave them (Burton and Todd were the two great loves of her life, Taylor told W Magazine.) So Liz, always sickly and always rather trampy, winds up dying alone, with the eyes of the world upon her. She has forgone the loving embrace of seven husbands for the professional touch of a bevy of doctors who will tend to her withering body in the sunset days.

OSAMA TO FLING DVDs? (REALLY HARD, WITH HIS GOOD ARM)

JFKerry reportedly told Geraldo at the Clinton Lie-bearing that the bin Laden videotape cost him the election by reminding people of the terrorism threat. OK, let's assume that tens of thousands of people in Ohio alone had forgotten about the terrorism threat and were reminded to the point of switching their votes. If so, what it reminded them is that Osama is now reduced to attacking by VHS rather than with enriched uranium. It reminded them that we are winning the war on terrorism under Bush's leadership. And it reminded me that where you cannot be loved, you must be feared. Fear of bunker-busting bombs is a powerful motivator, and I reckon a disruptive influence on the management of high-impact terrorism plots. I read the following article right after 9/11 and it remains the final word on the subject.

(former Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, in Fast Company, Oct 2001 issue)

Where you cannot be loved, you must be feared.

September 11 was a monstrous act for which we must take revenge. Politically, President Bush can't say that we're going to take revenge on these guys, but that's what we're going to do. And we need to because it's psychologically important. Revenge is necessary sometimes when the acts committed against you are so hideous.

America fights for abstract values. Increasingly, our enemies fight for God and revenge. If we want to tamp down terrorism to the smallest level, we have to make a brutal example of Al Qaeda, everybody in it, and every network related to it. We have to be ready to tear down one or more governments that support terrorism. If we aren't willing to make a severe example of the guilty, we will only encourage them. It's a harsh doctrine, and I know it sounds cold, but if you aren't willing to put the fear of the United States into all the would-be supporters of terrorism -- if you're not willing to make them afraid of you -- this problem is going to go on forever.

When it comes down to it, this is the attitude more Americans want at the helm. Americans like to saddle up and shoot bad guys, and so far no amount of liberal education has been able to beat that out of us.

MORE NEWS YOU ALREADY KNEW

A new survey shows college professors in the humanities and social sciences are 10 times more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. In the survey, conducted by a professor at Santa Clara University, more than 80 percent of professors say they’ve tended to vote Democratic in the past decade. About eight percent say they’ve tended to vote Republican. What’s more, the survey shows that professors of anthropology and sociology are the most likely to vote Democrat, while professors of economic and political science are the least likely.

And what were the issues of this campaign? Big-picture economic and policy issues.

(Only 80 percent? Look for survey sample bias.)

For years the left has thought that by shouting real loud, nobody would notice they had nothing to say. Now they've lost again, and all I seem to be hearing post-defeat is the same losing refrains.

Appointing a black woman to Secy of State is a big deal. But the left gets, and needs, upwards of 86% of the black vote, so what can they do? Parody the appointment and offend black voters, or support the appointment and thereby support Bush? (The horror!) Here's your answer:

Cartoon 1: Condi as warmonger = setback to civil rights
movement, women's movement

Cartoon 2 (same page): Condi as token and pawn

Cartoon 3 (third panel): Condi as pawn to Rummy and Cheney, that is, token

The left is committed to losing strategies. And I imagine it must just be eating them up that Bush and Condi are actually friends. Blacks are to patronize, not to befriend. We see who the real racists are. Apparently what they really believe is that anything an actual black person achieves is due to unmerited largesse. Wait, come to think of it, that has been a plank in their platform for generations.

RACISM ON THE LEFT

A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday after calling Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) an "Aunt Jemima" and saying she isn't competent to be secretary of state.

John Sylvester, the program director and morning personality on WTDY-AM in Madison, said in a phone interview Thursday that he used the term on Wednesday's show to describe Rice and other blacks as having only a subservient role in the Bush administration.

Sylvester, who is white, also referred to Powell as an "Uncle Tom" — a contemptuous term for a black whose behavior toward whites is regarded as fawning or servile.

As for Rice, "they're using her for an illusion of inclusion," he said, adding that he feels her history as national security adviser showed a lack of competence.

Such utter frustration from the Left after losing this election. To say that Rice is the "illusion of inclusion" or that she is subservient ignores the reality that Democrats have always put blacks into lowly cabinet departments so that the adminstration will look like America. Joycelyn Elders was a big disgrace for example. Here Bush appoints someone black to the most important cabinet position and it is somehow regarded as suspect. It's too bad for liberals that the most competent diversity candidates are Republicans.

KING DON

Puny travel umbrella not keep rain off man Al Gore has become.

Most underappreciated job in the Secret Service? See fellow at right of photo.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Trial post by E.

Last year the Steelers were on their way to a lame 6-10 finish. This year out to 8-1 with a team the experts said was worse than last year and with injuries at key positions - QB, OT, NT, LB, FS, CB, RB, TE.... What is the difference? What is the "fine line" that separates winners from losers on an even playing field?

Cowher: I don’t think there are many teams that are that far away. I really believe that. We get done with the Baltimore game [2nd game, L 13-30] and a lot of people said let’s start talking about next year. Then eight weeks later we are the best team in football with the same guys. How does that happen? I think it’s a very fine line. I have said it before. I don’t know if we are that much better than the teams we are playing. We’re doing some of the little things that it takes to win football games. You start losing games and you start to question yourself. You start to question some of the things you are doing. Guys are stepping up. Guys are playing unselfishly. Guys are playing hard, aware and smart. We are staying focused each week and I think we recognize that we aren’t that much better than teams we are playing. We recognize that and understand that preparation is such a big part of it. We can’t just go out there and expect to show up and think we are going to win the game because we are the Pittsburgh Steelers. It isn’t going to happen that way. And they understand that. It’s all about preparation. It’s all about perspective. It’s all about making sure that you continue to not lose sight of how you got to where you are. As long as we continue to do that and continue to do the little things, you can enjoy, you can embrace it, but you keep everything in perspective. They’ve done a good job of that.

So what matters? Every team has skill. It's a happy blend of hard talent and "soft skills" that separates winners from losers: things like Attitude. Perspective. Discipline. Effort. Focus. Execution. Selfless team play. Game planning. Each player fufilling his role. Sacrifice. Those are the things that cause one team to drive the other off the ball for 60 minutes or to create big plays on defense.

Application: I wonder from time to time how the military - the leadership and also the rank and file - is able to keep its focus, keep up morale, and keep registering decisive victories in the face of relentless media pressure which, intentionally or unintentionally, minimizes, disparages, and undermines the U.S. war effort on each of those points.

Which I suppose is why media types don't often become generals (except occasionally in baseball), but generals do often become media types. That being the case, which camp really understands - the knowers or the doers? Those who watch or those who play?

THE CLINTON LIBRARY

Subsidized by pardoned criminals.

THE LAST THING we want to do is dampen the festivities in Little Rock, where the Clinton Presidential Center is opening today, but does anybody remember Marc Rich? He's the fugitive financier who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his way out of office -- after Mr. Rich's ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, gave $450,000 to the foundation raising money for this very same library. The pardon scandal spotlighted a dangerous gap in financial disclosure rules: Sitting presidents are free to raise millions for their future presidential libraries without having to reveal who is writing the checks.

This lack of disclosure was outrageous even before the pardon scandal erupted: Mr. Clinton was vacuuming up six- and seven-figure pledges from his White House perch, and there was no way for the public to know what interests these donors had before the government or what favors they might be receiving. It's even more outrageous that this practice remains legal after the revelations of Mr. Clinton's final-days pardons. The House passed a measure two years ago that would have required disclosure, but the Senate failed to act; with the topic out of the headlines, lawmakers seem to have lost interest.

Disclosure would be nice, but we know enough without it.

WELCOME THE NEW JUNTO BOYS

It was my initial idea to make this a group blog, but I was the only one really interested in writing at first. Brother John wrote some stuff early on, but it's mostly been me. It's about 20 months old now and we're adding two new members. Today, Kevin Seeger and Eric Seeger officially join the Junto Boys Blog. You'll have noticed that they have already had a presence under the Junto Boys links.

Ben Franklin wrote about his Junto club in the autobiography. It was Kevin who reccomended that book to me and Eric that reccomended it to him. It would be appropriate then that those two would come aboard and help move this ship forward. Welcome, to the Junto!

MOSQUE TERRORISTS AS VICTIMS

The U.S. military is investigating the videotaped fatal shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner by a U.S. Marine in a mosque in Fallujah, a Marine spokesman said.

The dramatic footage was taken Saturday by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other prisoners wounded a day earlier in the mosque had also apparently been shot the next day by the Marines.

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

"He's (expletive) faking he's dead!"

"Yeah, he's breathing," another Marine is heard saying.

"He's faking he's (expletive) dead!" the first Marine says.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.

"He's dead now," a Marine is heard saying.

The shooting is shown so quickly that it is impossible to tell whether the body was moving before the shot. The only movement which can be seen is the body flinching at the moment the bullet hits.

Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

NBC reported that the Marine seen shooting the wounded Iraqi had himself been shot in the face the day before, but quickly returned to duty.

We're not fighting the country of Iraq any longer. Using Mosques as forts isn't allowed either. So here you have terrorists using places of worship to kill our guys and we're somehow supposed to treat them as legitimate soldiers of a legitimate army fighting in a legitimate battlefield.

The U.S. Military may expect more from our fighting men, but I don't. Neal Boortz said today that we're supposed to be better than them. My feeling is that they're not scared enough of us to quit fighting us. The other side has demonstrated that there are no rules in this fight. Why are we holding ourselves to a set of rules that the barbarians won't follow? The only result will be more U.S. Servicemen getting killed.

UPDATE: Sowell says it better than me (as Always). At least I beat him to it.

ARAFAT IS DEAD

<>I always thought it a mistake to legitimize Arafat as a player in the peace negotiations. A man who gained fame killing the innocent should have been executed not bargained with. It makes you wonder whether creeps like Osama Bin Laden would have existed without the example of our lenient treatment of Arafat. The world learned the wrong lesson from us. The whole point of terrorism is to get people to listen to your argument. If you kill the terrorists and ignore their argument they lose. If you embrace the terrorists and their argument, the terrorism served its purpose.

The most important lesson from Arafat is that our legitimizing him didn’t end the conflict in Israel, but it no doubt gave rise to other terrorists who might get their grievances heard via the bomb. Instead of giving men like this peace prizes and patting ourselves on the back for another faux peace, let’s use Arafat as an example of what doesn’t work in the Middle East. Let’s search for the moderate Palestinian voice and come up with an agreement to end the killings, but let’s not ever again exalt a terrorist to the role of peace negotiator. It’s not worth the creation of more terrorists for a phony peace of paper and a photo op.

CAMPAIGN DOGGEREL

NAY KERRY

The bribed and coerced can rejoice.
Americans have made their choice.
The phrase, “I Have a Plan”
will go down to a man
as the same as lacking a voice.

SENATOR KERRY

Not resigning your seat to campaign
Will go down as a brainy refrain
But your record from here
will make things quite clear
on whether your pose was just vain.

THE SON OF THE FATHER

The Acorn falls far from the tree,
it would seem for Bush 43.
'Cause Bush 41
got one less than the son
and Dick gained term number three.

MANDATE

Reporters ask what you intend.
Poli-capital you say you will spend,
The tax code you’ll nix,
FICA you’ll fix
while the press cries division must mend.

-Tom

BUSH WINS

After spending the last three days reading every poll, I was convinced that Jay Cost who operates Horse Race Blog had the best read on the polls. He did a good job of explaining why Florida was close last time. Gore people came out in droves and Bush people stayed home. This time around Bush’s people were motivated to vote. Tricia came over worried that Zogby had already speculated a Kerry victory. But I convinced her that the numbers were flawed and Bush would do alright once the votes were tabulated. Bush lost Minnesota though I predicted victory. I also thought he would win Wisconsin, but no poll can compete with same-day registration. I think the difference in that race was the skid row element that Democrats could round up for a bottle and burger.

It was the first clear popular majority since 1988. Even more impressive is that a Democrat hasn’t won a majority since 1976 when Carter got 50.1% of the vote. Zell Miller’s “A National Party No More” couldn’t be better said.

Boy was it sweet seeing that pathetic Tom Daschle lose. He was Mr. Obstructionist in the Senate the last four years and then he had the stones to show an ad with him hugging President Bush after 9-11. He was a great example of how Senators for ages have played liberal in Washington for 5 ½ years and then head home to play conservative for 6 months. It just doesn’t work like it use to. One reason is the Internet. A good blog Daschle v. Thune kept South Dakota readers up on his hijinks like the old media never has.

What happened in South Dakota also happened nationwide. Kerry paraded himself around as a huntin’ man that was going to kill terrorists in the final phase of the campaign. Earlier he promised one of those mythical Democrat middle class tax cuts. He also tried a draft scare with the youth vote and a Social Security scare with the elderly. The world was falling apart because wealthier people were allowed to keep their own money. His campaign had to stoop to disingenuousness to get the American people on board. For all the people who called Bush liar in this campaign, it was John Kerry that had to take positions he didn’t believe in to stay competitive? Kerry may be smooth, but you still don’t really know where he stands at the end of a statement. While even Bush’s butchered words don’t keep his true meaning veiled. John Kerry and his ilk cannot win an election in this country by being themselves.

I thought Coors would win in Colorado and Murkowski would lose in Alaska. The reverse yielded the same result. Republicans have a 55-45 seat advantage and with the way Daschle was targeted by Republicans for his judge blocking it might not be as hard to get 5 senators to join Republicans in ending these filibusters. It’s even possible that Democrat Ben Nelson from Nebraska will switch parties. Even if he doesn’t, it’s likely that he’ll stay out of the filibuster mess. Harry Reid is in line to become Minority Leader though word is he’ll have some competition. If Reid wins, he like Daschle will have to choose to obstruct the President that won his home state. Reid will have the luxury of 6 years before re-election. Neal Boortz thinks that Hillary will become minority leader. That would really make watching politics a lot of fun.

The Supreme Court was as important in this election as the war, because judicial activism has made the Constitution more and more meaningless. Civil Libertarians have argued against the Patriot Act and I share some of their concerns, but I don’t think they have love for the Constitution in mind. The Constitution for them is a useful thing to cite now and then but worth disregarding when they can achieve other goals.

Many of the most controversial political issues in America can be traced back to court decisions that subverted the will of the people. The court may be morally right at times and morally wrong at other times, but what cannot be forgotten is that the legislative branch was given the power of writing laws. Losing the separation of powers is much more detrimental than losing legal abortion in all 50 states. Democrats have been holding the court hostage for that one issue and it’s hurt the country as a whole.

The cool people in the media derided Bush for supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment. He was somehow subverting the constitution for supporting a process that the constitution approves of. Supporters of abortion should be promoting an amendment that protects abortion. That way no Supreme Court can take the right away. Too many times the debate on controversial issues is coming down to 9 people in robes. How does that help America? Bush will be nominating at least two people in the next four years and if they think like Justice Scalia, we have a much better chance of getting back to something like the Republic the founders foresaw.

The war speaks for itself. Bush really believes in the danger and Kerry doesn’t. Kerry’s kibitz campaign didn’t convince a majority that he's serious. The way he used nonsense like the disappearing explosives in the closing days and how he polled people on the effects of the Osama Bin Laden tape showed that he is less serious about the task at hand. Joe Liebermann or Joe Biden wouldn’t have fallen into these traps, and they may have had a better shot at beating Bush. If the Democrats learn anything from this election it’s that they need a candidate that isn’t a phoney.

Bush almost blew the whole thing with that dismal effort in the first debate. Though he got better as the debates continued he never regained the big lead he had before the first square off. Did passing the Medicare entitlement help? That’s the kind of debate Republicans will have among themselves. I tend to think he spent a lot of money to attract the middle and it was his own base that came out to re-elect him instead. Had Bush lost it would have been difficult politically for any President to use pre-emptive force in the future. If this military action wasn't justified what was?

Michael Moore and Moveon.org and Dan Rather and even Howard Stern (The self proclaimed king of all media) and all of the other people who were hell bent on a Bush loss can go home wondering what happened. I can’t forget the vile French, and the terrorists themselves that were foiled again.

MY PREDICTIONS

Brothers Judd is holding a contest for such things.

I have Bush with 306 and Kerry with 228 51-48%

Bush wins all the states he did in 2002 except for New Hampshire.

He also picks up Gore states, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and New Mexico.

I wanted to give Bush Pennsylvania, but I'm sure that Governor Rendell won't allow that to happen.

PREDICTIONS ON THE SENATE RACES

REPUBLICAN PICKS UPS

South Carolina
North Carolina
Louisiana (December run-off)
Georgia
Florida
South Dakota

DEMOCRAT PICK UPS

Illinois
Alaska

REPUBLICAN HOLDS

Colorado
Kentucky
Oklahoma

DEMOCRAT HOLDS

Wisconsin

REPUBLICANS PICK UP 4 SEATS

TWO DIFFERENT VISIONS

Bush tells his people, and the rest of the world, that America is at war. Its enemies are pan-Arab, pan-Islamic terrorists and the regimes that support them. Their aim is world domination and is based on their fascistic, totalitarian ideology which, appropriately or not, they claim finds its roots and justification in the Koran. Bush explains that the war is real and that it cannot be wished away. It must be fought to victory and that victory will not arrive until the terrorists have been crushed and the dictatorial regimes that support them have been transformed into democratic governments that fight them.

Kerry, on the other hand, explains that the war is not real, but a result of Bush's hubris and a figment of his messianic imagination. It is possible to end the war, he promises, by reaching an accommodation with various regimes. Both the Arabs who harbor and support the terrorists and the Europeans who preach accommodation and hope for an American defeat can be brought to heel with a bit of love and kindness and a great deal of sympathy and appeasement from America. As to the terrorists, by Kerry's lights, with the right sort of legal framework – which of course would not include any impingement on anyone's civil liberties – they can be transformed from a warring foe into a nuisance to be dealt with via law enforcement techniques much like those used to curb prostitution and gambling.

Your heart might be with Kerry, but your head should be with Bush.

FINAL PREDICTIONS

From the Horse Race Blogger.

NASTY SENATE RACE

Have you seen what's been going on in South Dakota? Click the link and scroll down to read about Dascle's frivalous lawsuit last night and the lopsided coverage in the morning paper. I don't think he'd be going to the trouble if Thune weren't kicking his ass. Get use to the words, Minority Leader Harry Reid.

He Politicized It Before He Was Against Politicizing It

"I think it's unfortunate that anybody puts Osama bin Laden into any political context in the United States' election. I'm outraged that he has appeared. I'm outraged that he inserts himself in any kind of way into the electoral process of America."--John Kerry, interview with Peter Jennings, Oct. 31

"I regret that when George Bush had the opportunity in Afghanistan at Tora Bora, he didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. He outsourced the job to Afghan warlords. I would never have done that. I think it was an enormous mistake, and we're paying the price for that today."--John Kerry, reacting to the bin Laden videotape, Oct. 29

MOORE AND BIN LADEN

John Podhoretz in the New York Post.

CONGRATULATIONS, Michael Moore — America's worst enemy and one of the world's most evil men is a big fan of yours.

The most startling moment on the Osama bin Laden videotape shown yesterday was his description of the morning of 9/11, which is certainly derived — albeit in garbled form — from a viewing of Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"It never occurred to us that he, the commander in chief of the country, would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone, because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important," bin Laden said.

Just think. If the reprehensible Moore wins an Oscar for his disgusting piece of propaganda, Hollywood will be seconding the favorable opinion of Osama bin Laden.

VOTER FRAUD BEGINS ON THE BENCH

An federal judge has blocked poll watchers in Ohio. Powerline explains how the judge in question is married to a gazillionaiore personal injury lawyer that has raised millions for Democrats and is not too happy about the prospect of tort reform. You got to click on the picture just to see their house. The story is worth reading too.

UPDATE: Overturned on appeal

VOTER ANALYSIS FROM THE HORSERACE BLOG

The Horserace Blog makes a pretty good case for Bush winning Florida by crunching registration and turnout numbers.

Bush looks pretty good in Minnesota too.

And Ohio.

Pennsylvania no telling.

Here is a tip on how you'll know how Dubya is doing in PA. If you see them tabulating the votes and early on Kerry has only a small-to-modest lead (maybe 4-5% max), that is a very good sign for the president. That means that Dubya is holding his own in the suburbs, counter-balancing Kerry's larger numbers in the rural areas. The rural votes, which break overwhelmingly Republican, trickle in later. This is what happened in 1994 when Santorum beat Harris Wofford. All night long Wofford held a slim lead over Santorum, and it broke Santorum's way around 1 AM or so.

Iowa favors Bush.

And for kicks look at how well Missouri mirrors the rest of the nation.

About the Polls:

So...what does this mean? Essentially, it means that the reliable polls are, roughly speaking, Time, Battleground, Gallup. All of the rest skew toward Democrats, and should be viewed with caution. A surprising number of the rest are either using questionable methods or are using unadvertised methods. This is absolutely taboo among social scientists. Methodology is the only element that the researcher can control, and thus it is critically important -- indeed it is an ethical responsibility -- for the researcher to make his/her methods avaiable.

And finally, how Kerry's slip in the black vote can't be offset anywhere else. And why Clinton's job is to secure this base.

OH BUT GUN CONTROL WORKS IN BRITAIN

The U.K. Telegraph has an excellent column today about the long-term results of disarming the British public.

BIN LADEN: The Lost Episodes

New York Post has this: (via Instapundit)

Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape — of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday — bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military's unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A portion of the left-out footage includes a tirade aimed at President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, claiming the war in Iraq is purely over oil.

The tape also sparked some concern that an attack aimed at disrupting Tuesday's election may be planned.

BUSH IN ORLANDO

He visited Tinker Field last night the same as he did four years ago the weekend before the election. His internal polling must show a safe lead here because he didn’t bring the star firepower that he had last time. Four years ago he brought Travis Tritt to sing for a half hour followed by Bo Derek and Wayne Newton. Tonight he had a country singer I didn’t know, his brother Marvin and some local Republicans. He made some decent points on the stump last night that I was hoping (yelling at the TV) that he didn’t make in the debates. He reminded voters that Kerry opposed everything Reagan proposed although Kerry constantly invokes Reagan. He also pointed out how Edwards and Kerry were in the minority of their own party for opposing the $87 billion funding for the troops. I didn’t know that. It would have been a strong point in the debates as well. Instead, it’s wasted on the converted.

Bush comes off much better in person than he does on TV. I saw highlights of his speech today on the news and he didn’t seem as warm as he did when I was there.

Today we were on the corner of Mills and Colonial (The Vietnamese section of town) right next to the Kerry-Edwards Headquarters. The Asians were on all four corners holding up Bush signs while the Kerry supporters stood next to them less numerous and obviously weaker in math.

I spotted a few more Kerry-Edwards signs in downtown neighborhood yards, but then again, that real estate has been heavily gobbled up by investors and I bet the lion share of those Kerry people were renters. I am the only one in my neighborhood (50 houses) that has any kind of political sign up. A few weeks ago I picked up a Mel Martinez sign and just today I got my hands on a Bush sign.

It was a letdown that the Orlando Sentinel endorsed Kerry. But then The NY Daily News gave an unexpected endorsement of Bush. I don't think either of those really matters, but you'd like your hometown paper to the right of the NY Daily News.

The polls show that the popular vote is tight, but Bush is polling well in states won by Al Gore. Although Kerry will probably win New Hampshire (won by Bush in 2000) he doesn’t have any clear victory in the other Bush states. I don’t believe the Colorado polls that look good for Kerry. Pollsters missed Colorado in 2002. Bush, on the other hand, looks to win Gore states, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico. He even has a chance in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan though I doubt it. I heard a pollster say the other night that Kerry cannot win this election without Ohio, although Bush could still squeak out a win if he lost both Ohio and Florida. The MSNBC favorable/unfavorable ratings show Bush much more liked than Kerry.

In the Senate, Republicans look to pick up seats in both Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, and maybe even South Dakota (Dashele). They will definitely lose Illinois and maybe Alaska. They should hold Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.

In short, even if Kerry were to pull out a miracle, he would still be dealing with the no-tax raising Congress that led to the economic prosperity of the 1990s.

I'LL DO ANYTHING

Jeff Jacoby quotes some constituents letters:

On Jan. 9, 1991, as the crisis over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was building to a climax, Kerry received a letter from a constituent, Walter Carter of Newton.

"Dear Senator Kerry," it began. "I urge you to support President Bush's request that Congress approve the `use of all necessary means' to get Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. To deny the president's request would encourage further aggression."

On Jan. 22, Kerry replied.

"Dear Mr. Carter," he wrote. "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to the Bush administration's additional deployment of US military forces . . . and to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On Jan. 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president immediate authority to go to war."

Nine days later, he replied again.

"Dear Mr. Carter," Kerry's second letter said. "Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush. . . . From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and . . . our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

SUNDAY ON 60 MINUTES

Dan Rather finally unfolds the real story behind Osama Bin Laden and 9-11 . . .

Osama bin Laden has got a trunk full of documents that prove Bush got special treatment in the National Guard, but it goes deeper than that. You've heard that Bush's father is friendly with the Saudi's? What's little known is how Bush and Osama grew up together and use to fish on the banks of the Mississippi. Osama's father was a drunk who use to beat him and he'd spend a lot of time at the Bush household eating dinner. Once the pair got into High School, the popular Osama dissed Bush for a more trendy clique. After High School, Osama volunteered for Vietnam while Bush squeaked into Yale and then the National Guard.

After fighting two distinguished tours and a brief capture by the enemy, Osama got a nasty whiff of Agent Orange and was sent back to the states where he was spit on as a baby killer. It not only made him angry but violated his Kosher upbringing. Bush, who was still sore over Osama's popularity in High School, fixed it so that the young man couldn't get his G.I. Bill money for college. With no education he had a choice of being a homeless beggar or turn to a life of crime. Such is America.

Osama then went to the Middle East where Bush ruined every oil deal Osama tried to put together. Finally, when his unemployment benefits expired on September 10th 2001 he decided to blackmail Bush with the National Guard documents. Bush would have none of it. With the help of the Israeli government, Bush orchestrated an attack on the Twin Towers. The Jews called in sick, the Towers came down and Bush had his excuse to go after Bin Laden before the National Guard Documents could materialize. As an unexpected but welcome effect, Bush's popularity rose. This is where the story gets crazy.

Posing as a young Latino girl, Osama was able to filter some of the damning documents to Bill Burkett and then to Dan Rather. Osama knew if he were identified the story would be discounted as a partisan attack. He's been meaning to lay low, but he can't stand Bush's distortions against John Kerry, a man he served with. After 10 minutes of on-camera chin boogies by Rather and barely 3 minutes of Bin Laden face time, Rather states categorically that he doesn't know the full truth behind the story, but that the White House has a lot of explaining to do and so far they have remained silent. Don’t forget to get out and vote on Tuesday.

Andy Rooney ends the show going through his Kerry for President junk mail.

MORNING IN AMERICA

The Greatest Political Ad ever devised.

And speaking of Political ads, Prop 71 in California is well argued against by Mel Gibson.

THE MEDIA CULTURE AND THE POLLS

Stanley Kurtz from The Corner.

The fact that a candidate who called America’s soldiers war criminals and threw away his metals could get this close shows that something has changed for the worse. And the reason is that even cultural leaders like the owner and publisher of The New York Times were once radical antiwar activists. Recall that after his second arrest for anti-war protests, Pinch Sulzberger was asked by his father what his son called, “the dumbest question I ever heard in my life:” “If a young American soldier comes upon a young North Vietnamese soldier, which one do you want to see get shot?” The younger Sulzberger answered, “I would want to see the American get shot. It’s the other guy’s country.” The reason John Kerry and his “global test” have even a ghost of a chance in this election is because Sulzberger and the folks who thought like him are now in charge of the media–and much of the rest of our culture.

Being anti-American and running the paper of record can do a lot of damage.

THE CURSE IS OVER

It was history when Boston came back 3-0 against the Yankees and they did it by beating the storied Mariano Rivera. So it was inevitable that they'd win the World Series too. Steinbrenner showed the folly in trying to put together an All-Star Lineup while neglecting middle relief. You can't expect Mariano Rivera to go 3 innings every time out. People like to say the Yanks buy Championships, but they never spent as much money as they did this year and to no avail. You still have to have heart to win the big game and the Yanks don't have it anymore. Gone are the Tinos and O'Neills and Brosius's. Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton allowed the Yanks to play Chad Curtis and Joe Girardi and still win. Playing Gary Sheffiled and Alex Rodriguez doesn't make up for Sturtz in a tie game.

I would have liked to have seen the curse continue and then I read this:

Boston pitcher Curt Schilling, interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," said, "Tell everybody to vote. And vote Bush next week."

That will take the sting out.

WAR BLOGGERS FOR KERRY

It's a a big blog disappointment to see Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Drezner jumping ship to support John Kerry. They are guys who support the war and know that only Bush would have prosecuted the thing so strongly. They both now fall under the magical spell that Kerry is going to solve all the problems that Bush didn't anticipate.

In Sullivan's case his support for Kerry is more rationalization because Bush supports the constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage. You could talk Jesse Jackson out of Affirmative Action before Sullivan would be convinced that voters and not courts should decide this issue.

I don't read Drezner enough to know why he's lost his mind. A guy as smart as Drezner should know the difference between tough campaign rhetoric and the realities that Kerry will face when he takes office.

I still have doubts about Kerry. Massive, Herculean doubts. His plan to internationalize the Iraq conflict is a pipe dream. However, here's the one thing I am confident about -- a Kerry administration is likely to recognize, once the multilateral diplomacy fails, that it will actually have to come up with a viable alternative.

So Drezner is rationalizing his vote for Kerry in that Kerry will eventually decide that Bush's course was best.

Drezner should consier that a Democrat can only prosecute this war so much before he will tear his party apart. The 1-5% that Nader gets now could easily be 10-15% in the next election if Kerry were really out there killing terrorists. You cannot discount the hard core anti-war base of this party. Who doesn't remember that about 10% of Americans were against going into Afghanistan? You can probably add another 10% to that number that would refuse to go anywhere else.

Even if you give Kerry credit for believing all the things he says, he cannot remain politically viable actually doing so. His is the party of appeasement even if he personally has a chest of medals. Regardless of the campaign images we see, candidates do not lead political movements, political movements lead them. Bush 41 learned his lesson when he raised taxes in 1990 and had competition in the primaries by Pat Buchanan, and in the general election by Ross Perot.

Kerry is not being supported because he has a great vision. The people want him either because they hate Bush or are disappointed in how Iraq is turning out. Kerry is either going to disappoint those who take him at his word or the political movement that has led him. He can't please both groups and he'll have to settle for his own base.

You can hate what Bush stands for but at least you know what that is. You know his political movement actually supports his rhetoric. Kerry doesn't have that luxury. The political movement leading Kerry is opposed to Kerry's tough-guy talk. Something has to give. People who support the war on terror and vote for Kerry are voting for marketing and not realism.

UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh has some harsher words than I do.

OBJECTIVE MEDIA

Drudge exposes the current media October Surprise before they do.

WHAT THE F--- !!!?

Mr. Wrong war at the wrong time didn't always think so.

HE WAS FOR IT BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT Mickey Kaus points out that a McLaughlin group transcript from October of '01 shows Kerry saying:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis?

But wait, there's more! This transcript is actually being pushed by the Kerry campaign, as proof that he called for more troops in Afghanistan. But if you look at the section where he's supposedly calling for more troops, you'll find that it's been rather creatively trimmed by the Kerry team. The good senator was actually referring to his past calls for more "boots on the ground", but reported himself satisfied with troop levels by the time of the interview, on October 16th, 2001.

Don't Kerry's people know about the internet yet?

WHO WILL THIS GUY NOT PANDER TO?

I thought I saw it all and today John Kerry shows up in a coal miner's outfit. He was shooting birds over the weekend. He's simply for a stronger America. Bush will take away old people's Social Security and conscript the young. I guess it doesn't matter how phoney or desperate Kerry may be when you hate Bush.

Just think what the Democrats could have done with a serious candidate. I heard Joe Biden on Russert over the weekend and that guy just sounds like he's really plugged into world affairs. His critcisms of the Bush Administration sound reasoned and thoughful rather than opportunistic. Some say he's flaky and that might have come out in a domestic policy debate, but he would have commanded real respect in the foriegn policy square off and that's the only real issue in this election.

Kerry has substituted tough talk for seriousness. He's going to kill the terrorists! To kill terrorists you have to have a strong offensive policy and he doesn't have one. In this whole campaign have you heard just one plan of Kerry's in which he engages in some sort of offensive manuever against the bad guys? Democrats didn't even kill the terrorists that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. His supporters know that it's just all talk. Half of them would vote for Nader if they took him at his word.

Kerry's plan is hoping that Bush killed enough bad guys in Afghanistan and Iraq that he won't have to do anything himself. If an attack does come then it will be Bush's fault for stirring up the hornet's nest in Iraq. If no attack comes it will be due to his serious approach to the problem. All bases are covered.

In short, Kerry is going to kill terrorists like O.J. is going to find the real killers.

STOLEN HONOR

I haven't seen it myself yet, but you can watch it here for free.

The friend who saw it last night and sent me this link said that the production values were weak and it's knocks you over the head with it's points, but the men being interviewed have some heart wrenching things to say.

EARLY VOTING

Although I’m against early voting as a general principle, I decided that if I perish before the election that I can cancel out the vote of some octogenarian socialist that doesn’t make it either. I owe Bush at least that. Down here in Florida we can vote at selected public libraries and to my surprise the cue was ten people long during my entire hunt for DVDs and books.

The early vote kept me from the hour-long lines that I endured during the 1992 and 2000 elections, but I came away feeling cheated that I couldn’t come home and watch the returns which has become a habit with me every four years. I like watching returns better than the Olympics.

Bush was in Daytona two Saturday’s ago but I couldn’t get tickets despite my efforts. We’ve seen all kinds of campaigning around here lately. Cheney and wife were in Lakeland. Pataki, Barbour and Jeb did a tour at the Executive Airport. Sean Hannity and pals are coming to Orlando on Saturday to push the Bush vote. Being a swing state keeps you in the excitement.

DO WE NEED A DRAFT?

Charlie Rangel wrote a bill and couldn't even bring himself to support it. MTV is trying to scare youngsters about the possibility. John Kerry's campaign has been trying to use draft scares get into office. I remember the immature me in college during the first Gulf War somewhat worried that I would get called up for duty. Having people shoot at you is no fun thought, but my libertarian personality was just as worried to have some Louis Gossett Sergeant yelling at me during training like in the Richard Gere movie. Sure Gere became the better person as a result of the Gossett ass-kicking, but I would have rather been the sleeping-to-noon guy, a job I was excelling at. I was living in soft America and wasn't ready to leave it.

They didn’t need me it turned out and they don’t need today’s soft Americans either. The military is staffed with professionals who choose to make it a career, career training or a means to a free college education. This has been used to claim that poor people are forced to join the military to get the benefits that other Americans get from their parents. Why can’t it be a positive that poorer people have a way to do it for themselves? My dad was drafted into the Army and he and my mother got nothing out of it but two years of living at the poverty level. Reagan’s pay raises in the 1980s made the military a middle class career or at least a decent internship.

I remember a particular liberal girl in college complaining that we spend too much on defense and it was easy with headlines of $500 toilet seats, but the largest single expenditure in the military is for salaries. She’d rather have seen the money spent to cure age-old societal ills. By cutting defense you either cut the pay of people serving to give money to people who don’t serve, or you decrease the number of people. We chose the latter in the 1990s and it has resulted in a current war of reservists and guardsmen. I did a story on a manager at work that spent 10 months in Kuwait during the current war. He’s been in the reserves for 18 years having been deployed for the first Gulf War, Bosnia before this one. He’s got four kids and good job and was hoping to transfer to an outfit in Georgia where he could spend the rest of his service training others. Instead, he was called back to duty in September. He’s a supplies guy and hasn’t been put into the line of fire, but he does get tired of being called up so many times. But he also told me that his military service made him grow up and he’s become a better man for it, much like Gere in the movie.

While a draft would have made me grow up quicker and would probably do the same to today’s kids, it’s inefficient. The Army spent who knows how many thousands sending Dad to basic and MP training and would have spent even more had he took their offer to go to Officer Candidate School. Despite the expensive training, the Army only got two years service out of Dad before he was gone. After two years of living near poverty in a foreign country there was very little reason for him to consider re-enlisting. So the government first had to force him at the point of a gun to join and then they lost him about the time he was becoming most valuable.

It’s Democrats that want a draft or the fear of one. The fear might be enough to put John Kerry in the White House, but an actual draft helps them even more. The suspension of college deferments during the Vietnam draft led to the anti-war movement. When Nixon ended the draft in the early 1970s the anti-war rallies dwindled to a few socialists and hippies and the occasional political opportunist like John Kerry. A new draft would make it impossible to fight any kind of offensive war because no President could take such a political chance. Look at how easy it would have been for Bush to coast to re-election this time by ignoring Iraq and patting himself on the back for our actions in Afghanistan. Taking the offensive has given him a political fight. Had his actions resulted in a draft, he wouldn’t stand a chance in this race.

A new draft would all but ensure that future wars will be fought strictly on the defensive. No Republican neo-con would want that. They’d rather have the best force that money can buy. The more we spend on the military the less likely we’ll ever have a draft which would suit most people just fine. The Democrats are the only ones who benefit from the draft and the only ones likely to impose one in the future. They’d love to have their hands tied because of negative public opinion associated with sending random 18 year olds into battle.

WHY FLU VACCINE SHORTAGE?

From the Weekly Standard. . .

In 1967 there were 26 companies making vaccines in the United States. Today there are only four that make any type of vaccine and none making flu vaccine. Wyeth was the last to fall, dropping flu shots after 2002. For recently emerging illnesses such as Lyme disease, there is no commercial vaccine, even though one has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

All this is the result of a legal concept called "liability without fault" that emerged from the hothouse atmosphere of the law schools in the 1960s and became the law of the land. Under the old "negligence" regime, you had to prove a product manufacturer had done something wrong in order to hold it liable for damages. Under liability without fault, on the other hand, the manufacturer can be held responsible for harm from its products, whether blameworthy or not. Add to that the jackpot awards that come from pain-and-suffering and punitive damages, and you have a legal climate that no manufacturer wants to risk.

In theory, prices might have been jacked up enough to make vaccine production profitable even with the lawsuit risk, but federal intervention made vaccines a low-margin business. Before 1993, manufacturers sold vaccines to doctors, doctors prescribed them to patients, and there was some markup. Then Congress adopted the Vaccine for Children Act, which made the government a monopsony buyer. The feds now purchase over half of all vaccines at a low fixed price and distribute them to doctors. This has essentially finished off the private market.

SWINE FLU EXAMPLE

WHEN AN UNUSUAL EPIDEMIC occurred at Fort Dix, N.J., in 1976, for example, the federal government decided to vaccinate the whole country against the new "swine flu." To the astonishment of Congress, the insurance companies refused to participate. Senator Ted Kennedy charged "cupidity" and "lack of social obligation." The Congressional Budget Office predicted that with 45 million Americans inoculated, there would be 4,500 injury claims and 90 damage awards, totaling $2 million. Congress decided to provide the insurance.

As Peter Huber recounts in his book Liability, the CBO's first estimate proved uncannily accurate. A total of 4,169 damage claims were filed. However, not 90 but more than 700 suits were successful and the total bill to Congress came to over $100 million, 50 times what the CBO had predicted. The insurance companies knew their business well.

JUNK SCIENCE

Adding to the problem are the predictable panics about vaccines that spread among parents and are abetted by trial lawyers. In 1974, a British researcher published a paper claiming that the vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough) had caused seizures in 36 children, leading to 22 cases of epilepsy or mental retardation. Subsequent studies proved the claim to be false, but in the meantime Japan canceled inoculations, resulting in 113 preventable whooping cough deaths. In the United States, 800 pertussis vaccine lawsuits asking $21 million in damages were filed over the next decade. The cost of a vaccination went from 21 cents to $11.

Every American drug company dropped pertussis vaccine except Lederle Laboratories. In 1980, Lederle lost a liability suit for the paralysis of a three-month-old infant--even though there was almost no evidence implicating the vaccine. Lederle's damages were $1.1 million, more than half its gross revenues from sale of the vaccine for that entire year.

THE RESULTS

All this has made the flu an epidemic waiting to happen. Each year flu viruses circle the globe, moving into Asia in the spring and summer and back to North America in the winter. Surface proteins change along the way so that the previous year's vaccine doesn't work against the following year's variation.

Each year in February, the Centers for Disease Control meets with the vaccine-makers--all two of them--and decides which strain of the virus to anticipate for next year. Then they both make the same vaccine. Last year the committee bet on the Panama strain, but a rogue "Fujian" strain suddenly emerged as a surprise invader. A mini-epidemic resulted and 93 children died, only two of them properly vaccinated.

With several companies competing in the field, as was once the case, somebody would have been more likely to produce a dark horse vaccine. If that rogue strain emerged, the dissenting company would hit the jackpot, and there would be ample supplies of an effective vaccine, at least for those most at risk. In the "planned economy" of the CDC, however, there is no back-up for an unexpected turn of events. This year there isn't even a front line.

The market is greedy and heartless and all the rest, but it somehow saves lives in a way trial lawyers and government regulations do not.

WHERE DO I VOTE, AGAIN?

Court rules in Ohio.

A federal appeals court ruled Saturday that provisional ballots Ohio voters cast outside their own precincts should not be counted, throwing out a lower-court decision that said such ballots are valid as long as they are cast in the correct county.

The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supports an order issued by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Democrats contend the Republican official's rules are too restrictive and allege they are intended to suppress the vote.

READ: Democrats fear that they have a disproportionate amount of stupid voters.

SINCLAIR IS STOPPED

But the WSJ says that the liberal media should be worried that the methods used to stop them will someday be used against them.

What's astonishing here is that this legal-political double team has gone on with barely a whimper of protest from the rest of the media. In fact, it is being celebrated as a defeat for all of those right-wing scoundrels who support President Bush. We understand that most of the press corps is liberal and desperately wants Mr. Kerry to win. Editors and producers may let that distort their coverage, but they usually aren't so blinded by partisanship that they can't see their own self-interest.

Now that this trial lawyer-government precedent has been set, who's to stop it if it next turns, as eventually it will, on the New York Times, or CBS? One of the most important protections that a free press has is independent corporate ownership, but what if the Nixon Administration had unleashed its lawyer friends and government pension funds on the Times Company when it was publishing the Pentagon Papers, or the Washington Post when it was digging into Watergate? If the standard now is that stirring controversy is a fraud against shareholders because it may cost ad revenue, a lot more media owners than Sinclair are going to become political targets.

THE CANDIDATE'S IQ

Steve Sailer writes a really interesting in-depth piece on IQ comparisons of the two candidates based on SAT scores and the tests each man took in Officer's school.

On this tenth anniversary of the publication of the much-denounced The Bell Curve, it's amusing to reflect on one of the enduring ironies of American political life. Liberals tend to believe two things about IQ:

First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.

Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.

Thus back in May, hundreds of liberal websites, and even the prestigious Economist magazine, fell for a hoax claiming to show that states that voted for Al Gore in 2000 have higher average IQs—by as much as an incredible 28 points—than states that voted for George W. Bush.

(In reality, no such data exist. But, for what it's worth, Bush and Gore voters were identical in educational level, and the states they won were almost dead even in 8th grade achievement test scores.)

This is just the teaser. The body of the article examines the data.

THE DOWNSIDE OF VOTER DRIVES

Today, Tom Joyner was in Orlando trying to get his audience to the polls to vote early. No voter that truly cared enough about what was going on in the country would need to be energized by this kind of nonsense. But it's happening all over the country.

E Head sent me a great article a few days ago: When ignoramuses vote.

Let's be honest about this: Nothing good has ever come from just voting. America was not born because droves of people wanted to vote. America was born out of a desire to maintain inalienable rights and an educated group of men who knew what kind of government might complement that desire.

Today Mona Charen seconds the motion.

Seventy percent of voters apparently were completely unaware of the fact that the federal government adopted a huge prescription drug benefit as part of Medicare during the term of President Bush. Fully 65 percent did not know that the government had passed a ban on partial birth abortions. Some 58 percent acknowledged that they knew little or nothing about the Patriot Act (a figure Somin argues persuasively is probably low-ball). Sixty-one percent thought, incorrectly, that there had been a net job loss in 2004. Only 32 percent were aware that Social Security is one of the two largest expenditure areas in the federal government. Only 25 percent could correctly state that the Bush administration does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Only 22 percent knew that the current unemployment rate is lower than the average for the past 30 years.

Bush has led damn near every poll all year long. Conservatives only fear now is that this massive get out the uneducated and apathetic vote will put Kerry in the White House. Dedicated groups are busing them in from where ever. God only knows how many California illegal voters pulled the lever in 2000 our will in 2004. There is no shortage of Americans that are looking for some government easy-street and no shortage of politicians willing to trade that lifestyle for their vote.

THE LEFT LOOKS AT BUSH

Nicholas Lemann writes a sketch of Bush in the New Yorker that better defines the way liberals see him than anything else I've read. It's presented as an objective portrait and he puts this over by giving us the likable Bush first and then hitting us with the two-timing double-crossing rackin' frackin' Bush as the article proceeds.

One of the Left's favorite arguments is that Bush has divided America. Of course it ignores how divided the country was when Clinton was President. Do you remember any media people accusing Clinton of dividing the country? Anyway, it's well documented that Bush reached out to Ted Kennedy before 9-11 to write the education bill. He spent a bunch of money on it and conservatives were none too happy with the results. It certainly hasn't kept liberals from moaning about the levels of education spending. Kennedy is now complaining about the bill he helped to create. Luckily for him, Lemann steps in and blames the whole thing on Bush.

By supporting Bush, Kennedy and Miller were doing him a big favor, and taking a risk, because they were going against the natural inclinations of one of the most important interest groups in the Democratic Party, the teachers’ unions; for Kennedy and Miller, supporting No Child Left Behind was what supporting a new tax would be for Bush. They went along because they believed that the bill, by setting tougher national standards for public schools, would help children; and, more to the point, they came away from their talks with Bush believing that he was going to pour new federal funding into the schools. They could tell the unions that they had got a lot more money for education in exchange for the standards and the extensive new testing regime that went with them.

Once the bill passed, there were no more chummy phone calls from Bush or invitations to the White House for Kennedy and Miller, and then, when the next federal budget came out, in January, the amount allotted to No Child Left Behind was ninety million dollars less than Kennedy and Miller felt they had been promised. Subsequent budgets brought the same pattern: no contact with the White House, and funding far below what Bush had indicated he would commit. The Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, has referred to the biggest teachers’ union as a “terrorist organization.” Today, the public-school world is up in arms and Kennedy and Miller have to take heavy, constant fire from their old allies.

This is expert level spin. Somehow Kennedy and Miller were doing Bush a big favor. Here are two guys in a minority party that have no power to create any legislation that they can hope to pass. Kennedy has been in the Senate since 1962 and Bush the big rube, as they like to paint him, somehow tricked brilliant Kennedy in supporting this.

What Lemann doesn't even consider is that Bush could pass any education bill he wanted without the help of Kennedy. If the Senate filibustered Bush’s education bill, Bush could point to Democrat obstruction. Bush was trying to de-politicize the issue with a bipartisan agreement. Who benefits more from this compromise, the just elected President whose party controls both houses of Congress or an aging Senator that doesn't even hold a leadership post? Bush knew that by reaching out to a famous liberal he could help quell the partisan bickering. Kennedy would get actual power to participate in the process. All Bush had to gain was goodwill of which he received none. It was a real chance to take education out of politics and look for solutions to the failing system.

Kennedy's complaint that Bush promised more money in the future is nothing but a great way for Kennedy to get more spending on education at that time without having to praise Bush around election time. How in the world was Bush going to spend enough money to please Kennedy? Too much spending on education is never enough to the leftwing. But standards according to them are impossible to implement and difficult to decipher and unfair to minorities.

Lemann should ask himself how good the New Yorker would be if the writer’s weren’t held to some standard, because he thinks Kennedy is a brave man for allowing the President to impose such things over the complaints of the labor unions. Maybe Lemann should further ask himself if a system in which government workers can dictate their own efficiency levels will self-correct. Does Lemann think that adding a magical amount of money to that system will change its nature?

The whole issue of Kennedy saying Bush promised more in the future neglects the simple fact that Kennedy is taking the reactionary stance on American education and Bush is taking the progressive one. Somehow this unusual and bold bipartisan move by Bush is derided because Kennedy didn’t get something in writing.

Anyway, the Lemann piece is full of this kind of thinking and a wonderful read for any rightwing person that can’t figure out why liberals hate Bush and love government programs.

LABELS AND POLITICS

Bob Tyrrell wonders. . .

When Sen. Jean-Francois Kerry denies the significance of the "label" being applied to him, is he trying to pull a fast one on the poor credulous voter? Are he and his surrogates convincing when they insist that "labels" are nothing but pieces of trickery deployed by the hellish Republicans? Well, if labels do not matter, pay no attention to the label on that bottle over there, Senator, the label marked "poison," or "dangerous to nursing mothers," or "do not take when windsurfing."

Labels are one of the liberals' favorite remedies. They demand labels on tobacco, ardent spirits, children's toys -- anything that offends their constituents and might assist in their election. I would not be surprised to hear that they had fashioned labels for basketballs ("Bounce With Care") or condoms ("Do Not Use With Alcoholic Beverages" or "May Cause Drowsiness"). Labels are the consumerists' best friend, at least when prohibition is impossible.

Yet now out there on the campaign trail the Democrats' cosmopolitan presidential candidate is objecting to "labels." He and his surrogates insist that labels are meaningless. It is another admission by them that the words they use and the positions they take at election time are unserious. They, who pride themselves in their high intellectual commitment, actually seem to believe that they can persuade voters that the philosophical and political positions they have taken over the years should not matter to us when we vote.

This is especially true for Democrat Senators that spend every 6th year trying to get a conservative pedigree before going back to their tax, spend, and judicial activism mantra.

SUBJECTIVE YET FAIR?

Jennings said the media is now under the hot lights.

"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective," Jennings said.

Jennings said that everyone -- even journalists -- have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible.

"And when we don't think we can be fully objective, to be fair," the anchorman said.

Sure you can be fair without being objective, but you should freely admit your biases up front. The problem with the MSM is that they hide behind objectivity and act surprised when we see a bias. In the old days when most cities had rival newspapers it was very common that their political opinions would differ but they didn't hide it.

Peter Jennings should tell us on what points he agrees with each candidate. It would better allow us to filter those positions through his coverage of the news.

Now that he has freely admitted that reporters have opinions, but that it shouldn't worry us, why doesn't he tell us what they are? Could he be worried that his audience won't agree and will choose to watch someone else?

VOTE SMART FLORIDA

Here's a website that gives the pros and cons of the proposed Amendments.

SELF PROJECTION?

President Bush governs from a "love of power" and right-wing ideology rather than religious beliefs, and he has yet to hold anyone in his administration accountable for mistakes, former Vice President Al Gore said on Monday.

"I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible," Gore said in a speech at Georgetown University.

"It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency," he said.

That's rich coming from a guy who was "raised" to be President.

THE FACTOR

John Kasich subbed for O'Reilly on Friday Night and he was really forceful in getting the guests to answer the questions. It was funny because the guest hosts are usually non-confrontational on that show. It wasn't until Sunday when I was mowing the lawn that I realized that Kasich was auditioning for the permanent job. They must really smell blood around that building.

PUTIN WANTS BUSH BACK

Who are these important world leaders who support Kerry?

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that terrorists are aiming to derail President Bush's chances at re-election through their attacks in Iraq...
"I consider the activities of terrorists in Iraq are not as much aimed at coalition forces but more personally against President Bush," Putin said at a news conference after a regional summit in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

"International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term," he said. "If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."

TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE

Vulgar it was, but it's also a slap in the face to Hollywood leftists that were all but treated as traitors. More interesting is that I see that Shark Tale beat them at the Box Office last night which would be of no interest but. . .

I went with two other guys and we bought our tickets separately. I was first and asked for TEAM AMERICA, Dan went into another line, and then Sean was helped by the same guy as me. When we got to the theatre they directed us to different screens. A closer inspection of our tickets revealed that Sean and I were both given tickets to SHARK'S TALE and only Dan got a ticket for TEAM AMEIRCA. Dan said that he remembered me distinctively saying TEAM AMERICA. I even asked the guy if he had seen the movie yet and he said no, but that he was going to see it sometime that weekend. Then there was some cross talk about how irreverent these guys are.

I would have assumed accident, but I can never remember getting the wrong ticket in the past and the same exact thing happened to Sean. Why did it happen?

My first guess is that the once booming theatre has been less popular in the last few years with even newer stadium seating theatres being built not far away. Since theaters have to pay a higher percentage back to the distributor for newer films, maybe they decided to hide some numbers in a week old release to keep more money. It's not like either film was going to sell out anyway.

But could the answer be that they are trying to depress TEAM AMERICA'S numbers?

NY Times Versus Sinclair

Bush's record is fair game, but citing Kerry's record is dangerous.

Its plan sounds like the plot of a bad political novel, or an actual election in post-Soviet Russia. The Times and other newspapers reported this week that Sinclair, a Maryland-based company that reaches nearly a quarter of American households, would broadcast a propaganda film in the next two weeks that labels Senator John Kerry a liar, a traitor and a "willing accomplice" of the enemy during the Vietnam War. It claims, falsely, that his antiwar statements inspired the North Vietnamese to step up the torture of American prisoners, and it is filled with other distortions about the war in Vietnam.

Sinclair has instructed its stations, which are heavily represented in swing states like Florida and Wisconsin, to run the film without commercials in the evening. The company already compels them to broadcast editorials and commentaries favorable to Mr. Bush and his policies. But this is a whole new arena, and little different from making the stations give donations to the Republican campaign.

Could this be the result of the Campaign Finance Reform laws the New York Times pushed for. The mainstream media loved it back then because free citizens would be limited in their speech and media outlets could broadcast whatever they wanted. Here's a news outlet doing just that.

We would be just as appalled if one of the major networks forced its affiliates to broadcast "Fahrenheit 9/11" next week and call it a news program.

Oh, would you? Here's what Times critic A.O. Scott said in his positive review of Farenheit 9/11:

That Mr. Moore does not like Mr. Bush will hardly come as news. "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opens in Manhattan today and in the rest of the country on Friday, is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies. What did you expect? Mr. Moore is often impolite, rarely subtle and occasionally unwise. He can be obnoxious, tendentious and maddeningly self-contradictory. He can drive even his most ardent admirers crazy. He is a credit to the republic.

Oh, so Moore is all of those things and still a credit to the Republic? Why isn't Sinclair a credit to the Republic? Scott concludes his review with this:

The most moving sections of "Fahrenheit 9/11" concern Lila Lipscomb, a cheerful state employee and former welfare recipient who wears a crucifix pendant and an American flag lapel pin. When we first meet her, she is proud of her family's military service — a daughter served in the Persian Gulf war and a son, Michael Pedersen, was a marine in Iraq — and grateful for the opportunities it has offered. Then Michael is killed in Karbala, and in sharing her grief with Mr. Moore, she also gives his film an eloquence that its most determined critics will find hard to dismiss. Mr. Bush is under no obligation to answer Mr. Moore's charges, but he will have to answer to Mrs. Lipscomb.

Moore may be disingenuous, but Bush still has to answer to an individual he interviews? This is the very point of the Sinclair film. Kerry hasn't answered the Vietnam Veterans that he defamed in his testimony. The Times takes it as an afront that Sinclair stations pre-empted the Nightline show naming the war deaths, but the only story that Nightline has done on the Swift Vets were putting together a list of witnesses that contradict just one charge in the book. Nightline hasn't seemed all that interested in having a dialogue with the men on the larger issues in the book. They don't want Kerry to have to answer for anything.

Back to the Times Editorial:

The movie that caught Sinclair's eye, a 45-minute diatribe called "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," rehashes Republican charges that are familiar to everyone from the latest round of ads attacking Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities: primarily that he lied to the Senate in 1971 about atrocities in Vietnam and that his testimony and the antiwar movement in general aided the North Vietnamese and harmed American soldiers. This line of reasoning neatly dovetails with the Bush campaign's assertions that criticizing Mr. Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq is unpatriotic and harms American soldiers.

Because Bush agrees with the premise the film is has no merit true or not.

Sinclair says it is just trying to give its viewers news. Unfortunately, this film is not news, and not journalism. It makes no attempt at balance or fairness. Its interviews with 17 men who were imprisoned and tortured in Hanoi are powerful. But the narrator and producer, Carlton Sherwood, a former journalist on leave from his job in a company that provides "homeland security" services to the government, exploits these brave men and their distinguished service for a cause that he openly says is personal.

What was it that Michael Moore did to that poor lady who lost her son? Did the Times think she was exploited? No, she needed to be answered. And who will disagree that Moore's entire film is personal?

Sinclair's First Amendment defenses lack credibility because it denied those rights to "Nightline." At the time, Sinclair's spokesman, Mark Hyman, who doubles as a conservative commentator, said Mr. Koppel's program did not deserve to be broadcast because it had "no proportionality" and ignored other aspects of the issues. It was hard to see how that could describe a tribute to the war dead, but it's a perfect description of "Stolen Honor."

Sinclair didn't deny first amendment rights to NIGHTLINE. Ted Koppel has to no right to broadcast his program on an affiliate just because they also show Peter Jennings. Sinclair owns the stations and can pick programming according to whatever they want to see. The only reason they are showing this on Sinclair stations is that the networks that gladly showed Koppel's war dead show denied the makers of this film the same opportunity.

The Times talks about gigantic Sinclair and how dangerous it is. But Mainstream Hollywood has produced and distributed three anti-Bush Documentaries (Farenheit and Bush's Brain, highjacking catastrophe) and one pro-Kerry documentary (Going Up River) during the campaign. And don't forget that Pro-Clinton documentary (The Hunting of the President) that was supposed to remind us how Great America was before Bush.

Meanwhile other documentaries that are pro Bush or anti-Michael Moore aren't getting the same treatment. Both Michael Moore Hates America and Celcius 41.1 aren't finding their way into theatres. Censorship? The Times probablly thinks that's just the free market.

O'REILLY

The Smoking Gun has the suit filed against O'Reilly and it's pretty detailed. I was a big fan of his around the 2000 election, but watch less and less these days. He gets too crusading for me. The "Who's Looking out for you" stuff is a bit much. It's not that he doesn't make good points, but that he wants you to need him get the bad guys. For as much as I like Fox, I think Dennis Miller's show is maybe better than anything they have.

The stuff is detailed enough that it sounds credible. She worked for O'Reilly May of 2002 to Jan of 2004 where his sugesstive comments began. She then left for CNN. O'Reilly coaxed her back this July and then his comments get even more juicy. Now, how could this lady go back to work for O'Reilly, after her previous experience, if his behavior bothered her at all? Why didn't she file against him last year? O'Reilly says that it's extortion for money and that sounds pretty credible. Still, O'Reilly needs to answer for his behavior. Is she lying or just being oportunistic about his shortcomings?

This won't go away until O'Reilly characterizes the relationship himself.