Since I don't actually read Media Matters myself (a reader had notified me of that post) I confess to having no idea one way or the other. Until Tim Graham who, sadly, has to follow such things for a living tells me otherwise, I'll remain agnostic. Anyway, from a reader:

Your reader (http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_10_24_corner-archive.asp#044018) is completely distorted on whether Media Matters covers just "conservative" outlets.

There are items on The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, etc posted
regularly. As I write this there are items about CNN, NBC, WaPo right
on the MMFA home page. Perhaps next time your reader will take the
time to read, instead of just firing off letters misinformed.

Dear Mr. May, Eight Marines dead in a day, and the Bush camp is happy - happy - to see Osama in a video? "A little gift" is what the Bush campaign folks are saying. What the heck is going on with the GOP, when the taunts of a terrorist butcher - one that Bush has so far failed to kill - are seen as good for Bush's chances? Hope all's well in GOP-land, because it sure looks odd from the outside. Take care, [Name withheld]

Grassroots Statistic of the Day- Number of phone calls made to Ohio voters by Bush-Cheney ’04 Ohio Volunteers on October 29, 2004: 266,876

OHIO BUSH-CHENEY ’04 GRASSROOTS UPDATE: As of October 30, 2004, the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign reports the following grassroots statistics in Ohio:

· 85,612 Recruited Bush Volunteers
· 2,406,788 Volunteer Phone Calls to Ohioans in support of President Bush
· 349,032 Doors have been knocked on to support President Bush
· 3,254 Total Parties for the President have been hosted
· 2,755,820 TOTAL Volunteer contacts to date

OHIO BUSH-CHENEY ’04 CAMPAIGN GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP
· 9 Bush-Cheney ’04 Ohio Regional Chairs
· 114 Bush-Cheney ’04 Ohio County Chairs
· 12,132 Bush-Cheney ’04 Ohio Precincts Chaired

In the years since the establishment of a Scottish parliament, developments in that country have filled me with more than customary gloom (I’m half Scottish), but if you want a break from election fever over here read – and relish - the comments of “Cartesian rationalist”, chemist and farmer, Jock Stewart:

"Organic farming had, he told a conference, resulted in "weed infested middens" of farms and fields saturated with copper sulphate - poisonous, but the only control allowed against potato blight under organic rules.”

Weed infested middens!

The great man concluded as follows: "I have been fighting this fight for the last ten years and there are times when I despair. The creeping miasma of green drivel is everywhere."

A wee dram (or three) of Laphroaig on me next time you are in New York, Mr. Stewart.

With an editorial stance has for a while been devoted to junk statistics and thuggery, the Lancet has long since ceased to be a publication that needs to be taken seriously. Numerous writers have successfully attacked the statistical bases of a Lancet article (obviously fast-tracked in an attempt to influence the US election) claiming that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died in Iraq as a result of the invasion and subsequent fighting, and shown them to be nonsense.

Time, I think, for the editor to do the honorable thing, follow Dan Rather’s example, and resign.

Oh, Dan didn’t?

The body of a Japanese hostage is discovered in Iraq:

“Public broadcaster NHK, quoting government sources, said the body had two gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Kyodo News agency reported bruises and other signs of severe beating and torture.”

Josh Marshall posts the responses from both Bush and Kerry and asks "Which of these two statements sounds like it comes from the stronger leader?"

This strikes me as almost deliberately lame. To the extent Kerry sounds "stronger" Marshall knows full well that he needs to sound stronger because the widespread perception is that Kerry is weaker. Kerry has had to talk tough precisely because he needs to compensate for the fact he's perceived as the weaker leader.

I cannot imagine Marshall would ever credit this sort of argument if made in Bush's favor. For example, if I put a Kerry and Bush quote side-by-side and asked "Which of these sounds like it comes from the more compassionate leader?" he would unload nothing but ridicule.

Good point from a reader:

Jonah,

Big fan. Never miss anything you write. I'm sure this is all obvious, so you can delete it if you can't stand the rant...

Speaking of Media Matters for America (MMFA) (to which you referred in your
Corner post tonight), they seem to offer themselves as the left-wing version of the Media Research Center (MRC) in some pathetic attempt at balance. But the simple fact that they ripped you (unfairly) for your syndicated column undermines their facade. MRC focuses its critical eye on the MSM, and generally leaves alone those who make their left/right leanings known to the world. They leave alone people like Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Alan Colmes, etc., because they don't hide their biases.

But who does MMFA attack? You, Rush, Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson...oh and
Fox, for good measure. But the pundits they malign announce their
conservatism. Where is the MMFA on NBC, ABC, CBS, the NYT, WaPO, etc.?
Nowhere, of course, because they don't have any complaints there. Only the
right is biased.

Cronkite: "I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

The American answer to Osama's proposal will be given on Election Day. One response is to agree that the United States of America will henceforth act like Sweden, which is on track to become majority Islamic sometime after the middle of this century. The electorate best knows which candidate will serve this end; which candidate most promises to be European-like in attitude and they can choose that path with both eyes open. The electorate can strike that bargain and Osama may keep his word. The other course is to reject Osama's terms utterly; to recognize the pleading in his outwardly belligerent manner and reply that his fugitive existence; the loss of his sanctuaries; the annihilation of his men are but the merest foretaste of what is yet to come: to say that to enemies such as he, the initials 'US' will always mean Unconditional Surrender.

W. will be at rallies in: Grand Rapids, MI, Ashwaubenon, WI, Minneapolis, MN, and Orlando, FL, on Saturday, and Miami, FL, Tampa, FL, Gainesville, FL, and Cincinnati, OH, on Sunday.

Cheney will be in Nazareth, PA, Zanesville, OH, and Davenport, IA. On Sunday he will attend rallies in Toledo, OH, Romulus, MI, and Los Lunas, NM, as well as attending the 72-Hour Kickoff for Webster County GOP Headquarters in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

John Kerry on Saturday will be in Appleton, WI, will be joined for a rally in Des Moines by Ashton Kutcher and Jon Bon Jovi, and will attend a rally in Warren, OH. On Sunday he will be at a church in Dayton, OH, a firefighters' chili feed in Manchester, NH, and a rally in Tampa, FL, before taping ESPN's "Sunday Conversation" (W. will be on the show too, separately).

On Saturday Edwards will attend rallies in Bangor, ME, and Daytona Beach, FL. On Sunday he will be at a church in Jacksonville, FL, and rallies in Greensburg, PA, and Columbus, OH.

They whine that I took Kerry's quote about not being changed by 9/11 out of context. This is Brockian b.s. -- if that's not redundant. Read their write-up yourself. They seem to think the full quote exonerates Kerry. I don't think it does. Honestly I don't see it. In fact, I think it makes Kerry look like an enormous arrogant liar with bad judgement because he did next to nothing before 9/11 to make it remotely less likely, he said nothing of import about terrorism, warned against al Qaeda almost not at all, and defended Clinton's policies toward Bin Laden. Indeed, as a testament to my honesty about this I offer my Goldberg File from Monday in which I in fact quoted Kerry in the full context they demand of my syndicated column.

For the record, the only reason I didn't quote Kerry in full was that I didn't have room in my syndicated column, which has a very strict word count. Indeed, before I used the full quote in the Goldberg File, it was posted in the Corner and discussed at length by several of us. No one here at NRO, as far as I know, thinks the full context is remote exculpatory and the partisans at Media Matters don't make any expert to argue how it would or could be.

A reader makes an excellent point:

Quite right. And now, perhaps, Reuters will stop referring to Al Qaeda as the group the Bush administration "claims" is responsible for 9/11. But I won't hold my breath.

The story broke as WISN 12 News anchor Kathy Mykleby was waiting for a previously scheduled satellite interview with Kerry, who was in Florida.

"I find myself in the unexpected position of giving you breaking news at this moment because I don't know if you're aware of the Al-Jazeera tape that has just aired with Osama bin Laden admitting to the 9-11 attacks for the first time. What is your reaction?" Mykleby asked.

"My reaction is that all of us in this country are completely united. Democrat, Republican, there's no such thing. There's just Americans, and we are united in hunting down and capturing or killing those who conducted behind that raid. We always knew it was Osama bin Laden," Kerry said.

"What do you think impact this videotape might have on our election?" Mykleby asked.

"I don't think any -- I think Americans understand we are living in a dangerous age. I am in a position to wage a better war on terror than George Bush," Kerry answered.

Sullivan also writes, "Kerry on Abortion: A closet centrist? Steve Waldman thinks so." Hold on to that question mark, Andrew.

Waldman's article is about Kerry's support for Tom Daschle's alternative to the partial-birth abortion ban: a ban on post-viability abortions except when they would threaten the mother's health. (Now would be a good time to mention that the last time I wrote about this bill, I got it slightly wrong: Here's a critique of what I wrote then; the third paragraph of that critique is right, although I don't accept the rest of it.)

Here are a few problems with the bill and the idea that it makes Kerry an abortion centrist:

1) It only applies before "viability," thus leaving most partial-birth abortions untouched.

2) Under the bill, post-viability abortions would be allowed if "the continuation of the pregnancy would threaten the mother's life or risk grievous injury to her physical health." The words "grievous" and "physical health" make this sound like a tight restriction. It's not, because there are no adverbs attached to "threaten" and "risk": Any degree of risk nullifies the law, and an abortionist will always be able to say that there's some risk. Dr. Warren Hern, a major practitioner of partial-birth abortion, said at the time, "I will certify that any pregnancy is a threat to a woman's life and could cause grievous injury to her physical health." Waldman doesn't address this point: He thinks the pro-life objection to the bill is that abortionists will stretch the definition of "grievous injury." They wouldn't have to do that, because, again, any risk opens the loophole.

3) Kerry has also voted for other substitutes to the partial-birth ban--including ones that created an exception for mental health, which almost everyone understands would make a ban unenforceable.

4) But let's say the law had teeth, and would ban some abortions. The Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence, which Kerry supports so strongly that he pledges to appoint no justices who will go back on it, pretty clearly means that the law would have to go. Declaring your support for laws and then declaring that you'll appoint Supreme Court justices who will invalidate them doesn't strike me as centrist. It's more like trying to have it both ways.

I have to confess, out of intellectual honesty or pessimism or whatever, I was quietly still pondering the possibility that Osama intended this tape to help Bush. I didn't think it was true, but I was still giving it the benefit of the doubt.

Then I read the rough and dirty transcript on Drudge. You people are high. This is not a man who understands America. Sorry.

I thought people were joking a bit about the Michael Moore similarities. But:

OBL: We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it the Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.

Let me put my belated two cents in on Sullivan's endorsement of Kerry (I found the Galt link at his site). I am not persuaded by the argument that the responsibility of governing would force Kerry and his party to be aggressive and smart in fighting terrorism, for the reasons that other commentators have mentioned; and I think the "hawkish case for Kerry" in general depends on ignoring not only his record and his base but some of his comments from this year. (I think Kerry's occasional remarks during this campaign about not having changed on 9/11 and our needing to go back to the status quo ante were revealing, and alarming.) At the same time, the underlying impulse to get the Democrats to "buy in" to the war is right. But I think that the better way to do that may be to defeat them in 2004, in the hope that they nominate someone more hawkish in 2008.

Second: A number of critics have raised the question whether Sullivan is being a "one-issue voter," who is letting his strong opposition to the FMA determine his positions on other issues. He denies it. Perhaps the same-sex marriage debate has colored his view of Bush and Kerry: Can any of us really say with 100 percent confidence why we believe all the things we do? To be Breyer-like for a moment: I can't say with 100 percent confidence that I wouldn't cut Kerry more slack in other areas if he were pro-life. I'd like to think it wouldn't affect my judgment about his foreign policy, but who knows? All we can do is try to make sure that our arguments are sound.

One more thing: People are a little too dismissive of "single issue voters." I'm not such a voter myself. But if you believe that same-sex marriage is a matter of fundamental human rights and that the denial thereof is discrimination, you pretty much have to believe that the FMA would write discrimination into the Constitution and perhaps even that it's an assault on the human dignity of gay people. And if you believe those things, is it so terrible to give the issue a lot of weight in making a decision about the election? If a candidate were running on a platform of banning interracial marriage--which Sullivan considers an analogous issue--we wouldn't scoff at someone who said, "I'm voting against this guy, and I don't care what he has to say about taxes or missile defense." Not to say that Sullivan is right in all these things, just that the single-issue accusation doesn't strike me as all that damning. If anything, Sullivan may be too defensive about it.

Folks - I don't mean this to be a "Is it good for the Jews" moment. But, the Osama tape is good for the Jews.

I know that 99.98% of the people who read the Corner -- liberals, leftists and conservatives alike -- understand that "the Jews" or Israel had nothing to do with 9/11. But that doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of millions of people around the world who think otherwise including, alas, more than a few Americans. I hear from them quite often.

Osama Bin Laden confessed (again) today on that tape. It's not talking point number one. But it's worth noting.

I wasn't sure what to make of Rick Weiss's report in the Washington Post about a new study calling Bush's stem-cell policy into question. "All of the human embryonic stem cells available to federally funded scientists under President Bush's three-year-old research policy share a previously unrecognized trait that fosters rejection by the immune systems, diminishing their potential as medical treatments, new research indicates," writes Weiss.

I asked a close observer of the debate, who supports the president's policy, what he made of it.

His response: "It's very hard to say, since the study has not been published, and the results have quickly been rushed out before the election. The article didn't give us enough to go on, and no one has seen the study itself.

"A few points, though, about what the article did say. It said: 'The first study, led by Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Ajit Varki of the University of California at San Diego, focused on a peculiar aspect of the federally approved cell lines: Unlike colonies being derived using newer techniques, all the Bush-approved colonies were initially cultivated in laboratory dishes that also contained mouse cells.'

"This is not correct. Sixteen lines approved for funding under the president's policy were not developed with mouse feeder cells. They have not been developed past the earliest stages at all, but have been frozen, awaiting the development of a reliable technique that does not rely on mouse cells. Moreover, the vast majority of ESC lines developed after the August 9th cutoff have also been developed with mouse feeder cells (including the recently publicized Harvard cells, and most others) and so are subject to the same findings, if the study in question is correct. As the article does note, the FDA has in the past approved cell products (not stem cell products, but others) that have been developed with mouse feeder cells, and these have been used successfully, so it's not clear to me what the study is suggesting, but again, I haven't seen the study.

"The second study, as the article itself put it, is still ongoing. This is clearly just a rush to publicize before the election--not exactly standard scientific practice. Hard to judge, therefore, but what little details are offered here don't, in themselves, quite add up."

She hadn't heard about the Osama video until just now. I told her about it fairly neutrally because I wanted her honest reaction (the Fair Jessica's political resume is long and superb). So after I told her about it, her first informational follow-up question was: "Are you sure it wasn't Ed Gillespie in a beard?"

Needless to say, she doesn't buy the pro-Kerry Osama's reverse psychology spin.

If Bin Laden's aim is to get Bush elected, that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong to vote for Bush.

I truly don't mean this in the partisan way it sounds. It's just that, going back to 9/11, one of my biggest peeves has been the argument that doing This or That is "exactly what Bin Laden wants us to do." Opponents of the war in Afghanistan said it. Opponents of bombing during Ramadan said it. Etc.

It is possible, you know, for Osama Bin Laden to be wrong about what would be good for his cause. If he wanted a war in Afghanistan he was stupid because he got one and he lost it and now women are voting there and the one-eyed cleric is is twirling his propellor beanie in a dank cave. It is a strange glitch in human logic to always assume that the laws of unintended consequences only apply to your side and not to your enemies. History is full of losers who got exactly what they wanted.

K-Lo

I don't know that Bin Laden sees this helping one candidate or the other. He may see it as something of a win-win.

If Kerry wins, he sees the American people submitting to his desires. If Bush wins, it's another opportunity to recruit people and drum up support among the jihadists.

One of my more enduring lefty email critics, but an altogether decent guy, writes me to say that NRO is "taking the bait." And that in reality Osama is taunting the American people because he knows that will get a rise out of us and, thus, Osama really wants Bush to win (as John Hillen mentions below).

I think this is an interesting interpretation and since this guy is something of a canary in the coalmine for lefty arguments, it's worth considering or at least anticipating.

First, I don't buy it. The one thing we've known about Osama for a very long time is that he doesn't understand American politics. He honestly thought -- as far as we can tell -- that America would fold from the 9/11 attacks. He constantly talked about our glass chin and how we were the weaker superpower viz a viz the Soviet Union. The constant refusal of American to treat terrorism as anything other than the "nuisance" John Kerry preferred is what emboldened those guys further (that, alas, includes Reagan's decision to bug out of Beirut).

The tragically regular successes terrorists have enjoyed in recent years when it comes to changing Western policy are probably what he has in mind. The tragic decision of Spain to elect an antiwar party and withdraw from Iraq being the biggest and best example. But the kidnappings which chased the Phillipines out of the coalition, the bribes paid by countless coalition partners, etc all have probably reinforced Osama's views. I find it hard to believe that Osama's goal here is throw the election to the guy he considers a deranged Christian crusader. What Osama needs now is not a reinvigorated, ratified war on terror from Bush and Cheney, what he needs is a time out to reinforce, regroup etc. It might be unfair to Kerry (though I doubt it), but he almost surely thinks he gets a time out from Kerry not from Bush.

Moreover, if what we hear is true, Osama's been in a cave somewhere which would incline him toward, literally, a bunker mentality.

He may be a great military guy, but with all due respect, he has a tin political ear.Fox's new poll has a category"who will protect my family"--Bush crushes Kerry on that. Now Osama reappears and reminds everyone to thank God that W is at the helm.No way does this help Kerry.

Plus, Americans don't like stinkin' terrorists trying to influence our elections.

Finally, heck with the impact on the election--this reminds us that we've still got work to do.And it just so happens Bush is the best guy to do it.

I just got back from CNN and I haven't seen the interview and only a few items from the transcript. Still this kind of reminds me of the old joke from SNL News which went something like this "And today 'Siskel and Ebert" officially changed its name to 'The fat guy and the other one.'"

No matter how you slice this, George W. Bush is the man Osama's worried about and Kerry's "the other one."

I know it's not like Osama endorsed Kerry, but short of saying "You, the one who agrees with me about so much, you say you will 'destroy us'; well, we laugh at your summits!"

I don't think it's obvious the tape will play this way politically, but I see nothing wrong with the Bush campaign trying to make that happen.

Again: no matter how you slice it or how unfair it might be to Kerry, a vote against Bush will be seen as a repudiation of everything Bush stands for around the world. That's why the PLO has basically endorsed Kerry. That's why the Guardian is desperate that Kerry win. That's why El Baradai and his friends at the New York Times want Kerry to win. That's why Michael Moore is such a loyal Democrat all of a sudden.

And that's why al Qaeda wants Bush to lose.

This doesn't automatically mean by any stretch of the imagination that Kerry voters are pro-al Qaeda, anti-American, wimps or any of the rest. It does mean, in my humble opinion, that they're wrong.

... I dunno if it's Kerry's nightmare, K-Lo, or the Prez's. If authenticated, it lends (false to me, but I already voted anyway) credence to the line of attack that Iraq was a diversion, and the Tora Bora was the President's personal failure.

I think it's a net negative for the President.

For what It’s worth, I find this one of the President’s most compelling ads. To me it summarizes his Presidency in a very poignant and memorable way. It explains his rationale for the war in Iraq, his willingness to make the tough decisions to protect the country, his belief in the American people and his gratitude to the men and women in the armed forces for their sacrifices on behalf of us all. The ad shows how deeply he cares about those that have been killed and injured, as well as their families. You see his face as he holds back the tears the depths of his feelings and you feel his genuine emotions. He goes on to tell us, that as painful as some decisions are, he is willing, well, to do wherever it takes to win the war on terror. I cried during that part of the President’s speech while watching the convention and I cry every time I see the ad. This may sound corny but, it reminds me of why I love George W. Bush and why I’m proud to say he is my President. Finally it’s a stark contrast to Kerry.

From a longtime email buddy of mine:

Jonah, This election marks the four year anniversary of my coming to NRO practically every day. A friend (and one of the few open conservatives at my first job out of lawschool) told me about you guys in 2000 when I was trying to locate the place that had the best and generally the fastest updates on Gore's sad and pathetic efforts to steal the election. It was the first I ever heard of you, KLo, Lowry or probably National Review. I can honestly say my life is the better for it, though not my news addiction. Being both black and a conservative republican, its a near daily grind defending my views (and blackness) from my friends and family. NRO provided me with links to otherwise not well pubicized articles and lots of facts with which to better blow huge holes through my liberal friends usually overly emotional/ low on facts/history "arguments"- not that it was difficult before but more ammo never hurts. The Corner is an absolutely indispensible tool, I only wish it were around or I knew about it when i was in college/grad school. Some of the best advice I've ever heard is that if you want to be succesful hang around with people you think are smarter than you. Almost anything written by Ramesh and often by other NRO contributors keeps me on my toes and of course, expanding my book collection to keep up with some of the really nosebleed inducing debates/theories. I say to the newbies, enjoy the volcano laser lancing, the why dogs are soooo better than cats, Star Trek and Hobbit stories, and other stories, stick around for the chance to learn a lot about 14th century japanese poetry, brain-imploding math problems, proper english prose, why the constitution doesn't mean anything the NYT thinks is a good idea this week. Looking forward to the next 4 years, regardless of who wins the election. GO BUSH.

From a reader:
Jonah:

I personally think Pennsylvania is much more competitive than many think.

I'm a grad student at Penn, whose student body is overwhelmingly from white, affluent suburban families in the northeastern corridor U.S. You'd expect to see tons of Kerry/Edwards "Vote Democratic" buttons and stickers on a college campus, but the only people wearing this stuff are the faculty.

Are there that many (closeted) pro-Bush students? I don't know. But there certainly doesn't seem to be that many pro-Kerry ones.

Ohio doesn't look comforting in the Hotline's round up of state polls. Intertestingly, Bush seems to be doing better in PA than he is in Ohio.

Bush Kerry
Ohio
44 +47 *Zogby International 10/25-28 +/-4.1
+47 46 *Strategic Vision (R) 10/25-27 +/-3
44 +50 ^Los Angeles Times 10/22-26 +/-4.4
47 +49 American Research Group 10/23-25 +/-4

Pennsylvania
47 47 *Zogby International 10/25-28 +/-4.1
48 48 Strategic Vision (R) 10/25-27 +/-3
45 +50 West Chester Univ. 10/24-26 +/-4
48 48 ^Los Angeles Times 10/22-26 +/-4.4
47 +50 ^CNN/USA Today/Gallup 10/23-26 +/-4
+49 47 ^Quinnipiac 10/22-26 +/-3.3
47 +50 American Research Group 10/23-25 +/-4

This election year has been berry, berry good to NRO. You wouldn't know it from all the blogs we beat, but NRO swept through the Washington Post survey of best blogs like all conquering rooster which leaves nothing but fire and destruction in his wake that we always hoped to be (long time readers get that reference).

Anyway, this is addressed to you newbies. You'll note how nobody spit on you as you carried your blanket and spork through the lines of NRO vets. That was deliberate. We want you to hang around past election day. When news dies down, traffic tends to as well. We expect that. But any of the oldtimers can tell you that NRO is the place to hang out 24/7. I wanted to tell you this now while traffic and such are so stratospheric so that you call can keep it mind. This is always the place to be. And, after the election, the political conversation will still be here, but there will be more room for Star Trek (if Kathryn lets us), policy, history, poetry, economics, airborne-laser volcano-lancing and -- most important -- the ongoing feud between Lowry and myself on the merits of cats and dogs.

So plan on staying around past election day, you won't be sorry.

I'm Jonah Goldberg and I approved this message.

From a reader:

Mr. Goldberg, I have been looking for one succinct article my colleague could read to encapsulate why she should vote for Bush. You've given it to me in your NRO article 10/29. She is the liberal NY (Manhattan) type but open-minded enough to read your piece. She is also wavering from her democratic vote. I intend to give this to her Monday. It is most helpful.

From a regular reader in Ohio:

Dear Jonah,

You shouldn’t draw too much aid and comfort from Steubenville, I’m afraid. This is where Kerry was ambushed by the Franciscan students six or so week’s ago. Franciscan U. in Steubenville (where I worked for 1 year before getting my gig at OU) is kind of a Catholic Hillsdale, with about 1,000 deeply committed traditionalist and charismatic Catholic students who have a lot of enthusiasm (and a lot of spare time in a very dumpy place) to engage in pro-Republican politicking and they are mostly supported in this by their professors, who are also 90% + Republican. On the other hand, the “other Steubenville” that dominates the politics of the town has lots of the remnants of Union Steel groups, poor and minority groups on welfare won’t demonstrate as much enthusiasm but will often troop out to the polls where they will pull the lever for democrats. Just because things look a certain way in Steubenville gives you little to no sense of Ohio as a whole – and probably no where does, since we are such a mish-mash of several major urban areas with lots of minorities and dem types but a very strong rural/small town section that is solidly red. I grew up here and the politics of this place remain a mystery to me…

From the AP [bold mine]:

WASHINGTON Oct 29, 2004 — After days of trying to make political hay over lost Iraqi explosives, the Democratic ticket turned Friday to an FBI probe of Halliburton as evidence of Bush administration special favors to special interests. President Bush was campaigning in actor-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger.

EAST ST. LOUIS, IL -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/29/2004 -- Four-term Mayor Carl Officer of East St. Louis announced before local supporters today that he has accepted the position as head of the Illinois Steering Committee of "Democrats for Bush," founded earlier this year by Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. A life long Democrat, Officer is a third generation African-American entrepreneur and mayor of America's poorest city.

The mayor was welcomed into the organization by a personal congratulatory phone call from Brian Lunde, National Executive Director of "Democrats for Bush." After the call, Mayor Officer noted, "Director Lunde told me that polls are showing that the President's support among black voters is DOUBLE what it was in his first election. He went on to kindly say that with me joining the President's team, he will now expect the support to TRIPLE."

The conventional thing to say is that leaks are the political coin of the realm inside the Beltway. Politicians feed leaks to newsmen in order to curry favor, to advance their own goals, and to score points against political opponents. And no doubt they sometimes leak just for the thrill of it, as a demonstration of power and inside knowledge.

That is the conventional thing to say, and it is true as far as it goes, but something qualitatively different is in the air these days.

ABC’s Capitol Hill correspondent Brit Hume has charged that Senator Joseph Biden twice threatened to “go public” about Reagan Administration plans for covert action against Libya. The senator has denied this but—distinction with a difference—says that what he would have done was reveal the plans to a closed session of the full Senate. These days, that would be “going public.”

From a reader:

I sure am keeping quiet about voting for Bush. I teach at a Los Angeles-area community college, and when I'm not among "my people"--friends from church, generally--I stay silent when the topic is politics. I know that if I were asked about my vote in a group of my professional colleagues, I would make myself a pariah in an instant.

Because I don't want my car keyed, the only sign on it is a home-printer
message in the rear window that reads, "Thank you, U. S. Military Past &
Present, for my Freedom." At that, I've looked in my rear view mirror at
stoplights--twice now--and seen middle-aged women vigorously shaking their
fingers and heads. I pretended they had neurological disorders.

I marvel at those with the courage to put Bush/Cheney signs in their front
yards, or on their cars.

Dog calls for help:

Faith, a 4-year-old Rottweiler, phoned 911 when Beasley fell out of her wheelchair and barked urgently into the receiver until a dispatcher sent help. Then the service dog unlocked the front door for the police officer.

"I sensed there was a problem on the other end of the 911 call," said dispatcher Jenny Buchanan. "The dog was too persistent in barking directly into the phone receiver. I knew she was trying to tell me something."

Faith is trained to summon help by pushing a speed-dial button on the phone with her nose after taking the receiver off the hook, said her owner, Beasley, 45, who suffers grand mal seizures.

This is from a reader in Connecticut, a state hit hard by 9/11. I wonder if he's describing one of the reasons why New Jersey has seemed harder to nail down for Kerry than most expected. I expect Kerry to win both states nonetheless. Anyway from the reader:

Interesting post by you today in the Corner about Bush underpolling. I have the suspicion that you're right, if only because of flimsy anecdotal evidence mixed with wishful thinking. Up here in Connecticut, I know a number of rather liberal people who voted for Gore last time, and who say they've never voted Republican before, but are supporting Bush, though they don't like to talk about it. Even my liberal, liberal wife, who is a member of a teacher's union and takes the New York Times as gospel, admitted she will be "quietly relieved" if Bush defeats Kerry. Note that I don't think for a minute that Bush will win Connecticut. But if just a small slice of registered Democrats here feel this way, well, then . . . what does that do for Bush in battleground states?

Another reader:

I live in Cuyahoga County, near west suburbs of Cleveland - old style Dems with a dash of gays rehabbing Victorians. I see very very little enthusiasm for Kedwards

For example, every day I walk through downtown
Cleveland to catch a train home. The path is
dotted with
Kerry-Edwards campaign workers, but note:
1. The campaigners are kids and twentysomethings
- first-time voters. Not union fiends, not
African-American civil servants, not teachers
taking time off, not even
the bitter old 60s leftists who occupied the same
spots during last year's anti-war frenzy.
2. No body on the street is letting these kids
get in their
face. Office workers, trial lawyers, commuter
students, etc. Nobody stops. Nobody sounds their
horns for the "Honk for Kerry" signs. Nobody will
sign their volunteer sheets or accept their lapel
stickers.

3. On Wednesday, out of pity/curiosity, I let one of these kids chat me up. He had no pitch. No reason to tell me why to support Kerry. Pathetic. When I prodded him he told me Kerry would "fix the economy." Perhaps that's the line he was coached to offer, but it didn't seem to come very easily from him. He was confused.

I've noticed similar things driving around my neighborhood and the western suburbs of Cleveland. "Honk for Kerry" gets no response at
all. There are not as many K-E yard signs as I usually expect, though a surprising number of Bush-Cheney signs and signs for down-ballot candidates/issues.

This county is the core of Democrat votes and cash in Ohio. Conventional wisdom is that they must carry Cuyahoga by120,000 votes to win the state. Barring fraud, that's going to be very hard. They have inexperienced campaign workers, no visible enthusiasm, no apparent interest in this candidate. And, there's been no high-profile visit by the campaign in Cleveland for weeks now. Not even Sharpton or some one to buck up black voter turnout.

Also note: there's not a very experienced ground game for Dems in Ohio. Clinton won twice here, but no Democrat has one a state-wide elected office since John Glenn in 1994.

BTW, Bush was in Cleveland's West suburbs yesterday - 20,000 reportedly showed up.

Encouraging news from a reader:

I'm the volunteer coordinator for the 72 Hour Task Force in Steubenville, Ohio. Now aside from a few precincts in Cuyahoga County, Steubenville is one of the longest-standing Democratic strongholds in Ohio. In terms of voter registration, Dems outnumber Republicans 6 to 1. You would never know that now though. Bush signs outnumber Kerry signs 3 to 1 in most neighborhoods. We've also got people coming out of the woodwork to volunteer for Bush‹people who've never done a single political thing in their life and many who happen to be Democrats. And for those who are most familiar with Steubenville as home to the uber-orthodox Franciscan University, let me answer one of your objections right now. Roughly half of our volunteers (maybe more) have nothing whatsoever to do with the University.

The level of enthusiasm of Bush supporters here is unprecedented. And we are organized. If the rest of Ohio is as mobilized as we are (and from all accounts it is), Ohio will be deep red on November 3.

[namee withheld]

P.S. The fact that Kerry's GOTV is being run by the 527's means their targeting is um, lacking. Because they don't have good lists of Kerry supporters, they're wasting time and money on households that wouldn't vote Democrat if their life depended on it. The GOP's efforts, however, are much more focused, and that is going to make a big difference next Tuesday as well.

Item one: high school kids go "bum hunting."These little barbarians find homeless guys and beat them viciously for the fun of it.

Item Two: The police chief -- in Newark! -- refers to the homeless as "the residentially challenged."

related to the Bush underpolling thing.

Can anyone answer why focus groups are always groups? I understand why they need to be sometimes and I even understand why sometimes it's preferable.

But take the example of the focus groups after the debates. All of these average Americans are asked to give their political opinions in front of strangers and, often, in front of television cameras. Most Americans didn't watch the debates that way and they certainly weren't asked to offer their opinions up to such scrutiny. Isn't it possible that these sorts of pressures and dynamics make honest answers more difficult? Particularly on the last debate, I would bet that a sizable portion of the focus groupers would have answered differently if they weren't expected to perform. By the third debate "intelligent" people were supposed to believe Kerry was the better debater. So the incentive for saying precisely that in a focus group was probably pretty high. If all those guys were put in their own isolated cubicle with a TV, I would be Bush would have scored much, much higher.

I can't shake the feeling that one of the reasons Bush might be underpolling is that he's underpolling. Besides from all the technical stuff, I suspect that a small fraction of Americans might be embarrassed to admit that they're voting for Bush. All of Hollywood and elite media say you're a fool or a fascist to vote for Bush. Isn't it possible that a handful of Americans don't want to tell a stranger that they're voting for the candidate all the sophisticates call a cowboy-dunce-warmonger? Again, I don't think it's a huge number of people, but if it's one or two or three people out of a hundred, that's pretty significant given the landscape.

Similarly, as we discussed yesterday with the black vote, I think a lot of Democratic constituencies may be telling pollsters they're more enthusiastic about voting for Kerry than they really are. A few anecdotal things I've seen in the last month at various colleges as well as conversations in airports and the like makes me feel like a lot of these newly registered Dems may never show up at the polls (much like Dean's tsunami of young warriors never made the showing everyone promised) and if they do maybe a few more than expected will vote for Bush, or Nader.

For example, yesterday I was at the vet (Cosmo had a very worrisome leg injury yesterday, but he seems to be okay. More on that to come). While I was waiting for them to give my dog the all-clear I listened to a bunch of the techs and orderlies talk about the election. These were all obvious liberal urbanite types. They clearly didn't want Bush to win but only one of them was definitely going to vote at all. That alone is a pretty thin reed to hang ones hopes for Western civilization upon, but it's a start.

In his Hardball appearance, Biden also made some oddly complimentary comments about two of his possible primary opponents, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

"I think Kerry is the strongest candidate in the field," Biden said. "[Edwards] has a four-foot vertical jump, you know, and you know he may be able to step up to this ... All kidding aside, he's the single best natural candidate I've ever seen."

Just last week, I spoke at a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, with television star Amy Brenneman ("Judging Amy"), urging young women, and men, to vote as if their lives depended on it. Now Tyne Daly ("Judging Amy," "Cagney and Lacey") is traveling to Cleveland, Ohio to encourage people to vote.

K-Lo:

Today I did a precinct walk in Orlando. We were asked to distribute literature encouraging Republican voters to attend early voting. Nowhere on the brochure did the President's name appear. Same deal when I worked the phone banks-- just telling people to get their butts to early voting. I took this strategery as an indication that the campaign is confident of Bush's performance here and is now concentrating on his coattails. (Bonus warm fuzzy: Quite a busy volunteer office. While I was there, several "walk-ins" filtered in asking if they could help in any way.)

One ABC source, who demanded anonymity, said Thursday morning, the network was struggling to find a correct journalistic "balance" before airing any story on the video.

"This is not something you just throw out there while people are voting," the ABC source explained.

REMARKS BY GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS

IN INTRODUCING THE PRESIDENT

AT VICTORY 2004 RALLY

Westlake Recreation Center

Westlake, Ohio

October 28, 2004

GENERAL FRANKS: Well, what a treat it is to be in northern Ohio. (Applause.) Indeed, it's an honor to be standing here today with you. You know, I'm not a politician, but I know what a Commander-in-Chief looks like, and there's only one on this ballot -- that's George Bush. (Applause.)

You know, I would guess by the enthusiasm that I see represented here today that victory is headed our way in just about five days. (Applause.) If you think about character, if you think about courage, if you think about consistency, if you think about honesty, you think about George W. Bush. (Applause.) If you talk about a leader who knows something about the global war on terrorism, it would be George W. Bush, and he knows it's global. (Applause.)

You're talking about a leader who knows that terrorism has been more than a nuisance for more than two decades. (Applause.) You're talking about a leader who does not want to roll back terrorism to the times of Beirut in 1983, Khobar Towers in the mid-1990s, East Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in the year 2000, and doesn't want to roll it back to 9/11/01. Terrorism is not a nuisance. (Applause.)

George W. Bush is a leader who knew that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world and to the United States of America, and removed him from power. (Applause.) George W. Bush is a leader who knows that our troops, as of right now, have cleared 10,000 ammunition and weapons sites in Iraq. He knows that they have destroyed 240,000 tons of munitions in Iraq. He knows that they have under control -- (applause) -- he knows that they have under control another 162,000 tons of munitions in Iraq. We're talking about George W. Bush who knows, who understands that we do not yet have all the facts about 380 tons of munitions in Iraq. And he is a President who will look at you and say, we don't yet have the facts, but we will get the facts. George W. Bush. (Applause.)

In George W. Bush, you're talking about a leader who does not step out every day of his life and make more wild accusations. You're talking about a leader who actually cares about our troops, about their families, and about our veterans. You're talking about a leader who actually respects all those who serve our country with dignity and with honor. You're talking about George W. Bush. (Applause.)

The past three years have been hard years for America. The past three years have been a tough time for our country. I've looked into the eyes of our President, my Commander-in-Chief, and I have seen that character, that courage, that consistency that I just described. It's the courage that it takes to win a war, not tie one. And we have to win the war against terrorism in this country. (Applause.)

Now, I'll tell you, I don't know Senator Kerry's plan for victory. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is, but I do know -- but I do know that his criticism of military conduct of our global war on terrorism denigrates, disrespects our troops. (Applause.) And, ladies and gentlemen, I also know that he cannot lead troops to victory in a war when he has made it perfectly clear that he does not support the cause. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a close election, and every vote counts. Those who wear the uniform of service of the United States of America deserve a Commander-in-Chief, and it's my honor to introduce one -- President George W. Bush. (Applause.)

From a reader:

Jonah,

I am a recent law school grad here in St. Pete Florida, but I also valet on the side to make $$, Lord knows student loans for law school will do that to you. The day that Pres. Bush was here in St. Pete, I was valeting on the beach near the hotel he was staying at. A man drove up and got out of his car and gave me his keys and walked in with his wife to have dinner. They were both Afircan American. On the back of their car was a "Kerry/Edwards" bumper sticker. I thought to myself "How can anyone who is successful and wants others to be vote for John Kerry!!??" When I got in the car to pull away, I noticed that in the man's stack of paperwork and notepads was a 12 x 24 inch "Doctors for Bush/Cheney" sign in his front seat. I inquired, and found out he was a doctor and was at the rally that day in St. Pete.

I further inquired and found out that he had to "keep up appearances" that he was towing the ideological line of his community but did not vote that way.

Thought it was interesting.

I've visited a lot of campuses this Fall and I've generally been impressed with most of the places I've visited. But I've got to say the gang at Wabash were special. It's only one of three all-male colleges left in the country. And I have to say I think the country would be better served if there were more. Maybe because there are no women around the competitive nature of men gets focused more towards academics and argumentation. But I just found the kids to be more engaged and sharper than on many campuses with a higher national profile. Don't get me wrong, there were some real oddballs too. But all in all I was very impressed.

Some other interesting tidbits. They have a very laidback attitude towards alcohol on campus, which runs absolutely contrary to national trends. They probably can get away with it because with no women around (and not that many places to drive to) the fear of date rape is much less. Relatedly, the kids insist that women get treated very well at Wabash when they visit (their Shelbyville-like rival is DePauw University from whom they claim to poach womenfolk) because they know that if Wabash gets a bad wrap with the ladies its curtains for everybody. Oh, and they say they have the longest school song in America.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The President and I are delighted to be part of a great Republican ticket here in Pennsylvania this year. I want to thank Congressman Tim Murphy for his kind words and the great leadership he provides. (Applause.) And I also want to put in a good word for Senator Arlen Specter, although he couldn't be here today.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is a tough crowd. (Laughter and applause.)

It was pretty funny. [Richardson] not only couldn’t talk about it, but when Imus said that these claims were “crazy talk,” Richardson chuckled and said “What do you expect, Don? It’s election season.” And Imus went to a commercial with the line, “well it doesn’t get any better than that.”

As I was just in Indiana I can report that my sources believe George Bush will hold the state. I know no one cares, I'm just jealous of all of K-Lo's cool gossip.

I can also report that Indiana remains very flat.

Cliff -- The ABC story says there were 141 tons of RDX said to be stored at al Qaqaa as of July 2002, but only 3 as of January. This is an extremely important development, but it does not mean the Times necessarily overstated the case by 377 tons. Rather, it overstated it by at least 138 tons. However, that does not affect the 194 tons of HMX, still said to be, probably, accounted for as of January 2003. The disappearance of 138 tons of RDX does not mean the 194 tons of HMX were not still there. The catch there, however, is that the HMX may also have been missing -- but this is speculation (albeit very educated speculation). That is, IAEA presumes the HMX was there because the seals were not broken, but ABC reports the integrity of the containers was so poor (due to porous "ventilation slats") that Saddam could easily have removed the much or all of HMX without breaking the seals -- which the IAEA might not have detected in March because they evidently (and incompetently) just checked to see whether the seals wre still intact rather than actually looking inside the containers.

I think you can safely say the ABC story indicates that, rather than 380 tons, we may be talking about no more than 197 tons (3 RDX + 194 HMX) and that it could be as little as 3 in the logical but unverifiable event that IAEA incorrectly assumed HMX was still there.

Dear Kathryn,

What kind of country do we want to wake up to on November 3?

That's the question each of us must ask ourselves as we enter the final 36 hours of the most important fundraising drive in Democratic Party history.

It is hard to imagine America making a choice that could matter more than this one -- not just because the contest is so close, but because the differences between the candidates are so stark. Make no mistake about it, four more years of George W. Bush in the White House would spell disaster on many of the issues that you and I care about the most.

That's why, whatever issues you care about, you must have one overriding priority right now -- helping win powerful, persuasive victories for John Kerry and other Democratic candidates five days from now.

Keller said in an interview yesterday that campaigns "attack the messenger" when they do not like the message. "Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it, and some of it is calculated," he said. Bush campaign officials thought that "if they barked at us, we would back off. . . . We've vetted this every way we can, and we continue to do that."

Corner readers, of course, know everything, so, contrary to my assumptions, quite a few people wrote in to say they knew perfectly well, thank you very much, about John Peel, the legendary - and very wonderful – British DJ who died earlier this week. It’s also been interesting to see how many, including me, have been saddened more than we might have expected by his death, a reflection, I suppose, of nostalgia, the intimacy of radio – or truly great radio – as a medium, and a good guy gone too soon.

As any Brits out there will understand, no-one has described Peel better than the commenter on a BBC website who wrote this:

“I'm sure I have similar memories to everyone else - the main one being as a kid, under the duvet, with a radio on listening to exciting new music that you couldn't hear anywhere else. Not only was the music amazing, but it felt like your mate (or kindly uncle perhaps) was presenting it....” (Via Harry’s Place)

Under the circumstances, therefore (for anyone needing a break from this election), here’s his all-time festive 50, courtesy of the Independent. Start with number 18.

The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach.

The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them. Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics. Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe.Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else’s fight. Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation’s morals.

Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace. French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.

The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression. Most of Belgium.

Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.

This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime.

And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected.

Go on America. Make Their Day.

Kerry's finished. I know that as a Yankees fan, you don't have much experience with hexes, jinxes and bad voodoo. But I think that John Kerry jinxed himself out of winning the election. Kerry periodically said, when trying to depict himself as a Red Sox "fan" (which he isn't) that it would be worth waiting "one more year" for a Sox world championship if it meant his winning the election this year. Again, you don't mess with this sort of stuff. But Kerry did. And I think in expressing these thoughts, he's caused the jinx to boomerang from the Sox to him, because they went out and won THIS year. Kerry's finished.

Just caught your quick note on The Corner. The Gertz story is absolutely huge. The information it reveals is incredibly well documented, and investigated. This obviously has absolutely incredible international implications that make the current election a sideshow. The only question is to what level we are willing to support what has already been released. Russia will deny everything of course, and if we fail to offer the proof we hold, the Bush administration will look insane. I can only believe this was thought out in advance, and that Shaw didn't let this info out on his own. Because much of it is (was) very classified, I can't believe he is acting on his own. Especially since he's allowed himself to be sourced. This is the start of the answer to a LOT of open questions concerning our operations in Iraq. I have to wonder exactly who slipped the little note to CBS and the NYT's. Their cooperation and Kerry's absolute face plant into the "missing" explosives story is the perfect lead in to revealing the whereabouts of Iraqi WMD, without making it seem like the Bush/Cheney campaign intentionally sprung an October surprise. If Bush is a good poker player, he is an even better chess player.

Earlier this week, Bush made an appeal for Scoop Jackson Democrats. Today in Pennsylvania, he made a pitch to pro-life Democrats: "The Democrat Party has also a great tradition of defending the defenseless. I remember the strong conscience of the late Democratic Governor from Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, who once said that when we look to the unborn child, the real issue is not when life begins, but when love begins. I remember the moral clarity of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, who said that partial birth abortion is 'as close to infanticide as anything I have ever come upon.' Many Democrats look at my opponent and see an attitude that is much more extreme. He says that life begins at conception, but denies that our caring society should prevent even partial-birth abortion.

"Preventing partial-birth abortion is an ethical conviction shared by many people of every faith, and by people who have no religion at all. I understand good people disagree on the life issue. So I've worked with Republicans and Democrats to find common ground on difficult questions and to move this good-hearted nation toward a culture of life. If you're a Democrat who believes that our society must always have room for the voiceless and the vulnerable, I would be honored to have your vote.

"There are Democrats all over America, north and south, east and west, who believe their party's nominee does not share their deepest values. I know the Democrats are not going to agree with me on every issue. Yet on the big issues of our country's security, victory in the war against terror, improving our public schools, respecting marriage and human life, I hope people who usually vote for the other party will take a close look at my agenda. If you're a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat Party, I'd be honored to have your vote. And next Tuesday, I ask you stand with me."

"UPDATE: An emailer notes the resonance between the program described above and Kerry's own plan "requiring mandatory [community] service for high school students." The link is to the Official Kerry-Edwards Blog, which has two links that purport to take you to more information but are, in fact, dead ends. (I note, schoolmarmishly, that "requiring mandatory" is a redundancy. Stay in school and learn some grammar, kids!) Isn't it interesting that Kerry is the one who tries to scare young people into voting for him by falsely asserting that Bush is inclined to bring back the draft, when he is the one who with a plan -- "part of his 100 day plan to change America" -- to compel young people into service?"

After repeatedly calling Iraq the wrong war, and a diversion, Senator Kerry this week seemed shocked to learn that Iraq is a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons…

If Senator Kerry had his way…Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would control those all of those weapons and explosives and could share them with his terrorist friends. Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, "We do not know the facts." Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts…..

Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site. This investigation is important and it's ongoing. And a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief.

Dear Ms. Lopez:

Has anyone else noticed that the weather forecasts for Nov. 2 appear to show rain in almost all of the places where the race is tight? Ohio, Pennsylvania, NH, Wisconsin, Minnesota -- all have rain in the farecast, some of it possibly severe.

Considering how unenthused Kerry-ites are for their candidate and how revved up Bush supporters are for theirs, I wonder how much the weather is going to play a factor next week.

Of course, if Kerry loses, the Dems will probably just claim that Bush stole the election via his environmental polices - yet another thing to blame on global warming!

Keep up the good work!

I'm getting a lot of email like this:

The populist streak in America -- which I tend to dislike

KA-BOOM! Man alive does that line demand a G-file or two (maybe six). Cripes, my whole love of your writing and much of what I read on NRO is what I consider its populism. George Bush is the first truly populist conservative of my lifetime, or as Mark Steyn put it, Bush is the triumph of the vernacular conservative over the patrician conservative. Vernacular, populist…aren’t we talking about the same thing here?

You guys at NRO has absorbed way too much of my time from day to day, but you have pulled it off for so many readers because you get to write about this populist president. The snubbing of academic and media elite by this president has opened mansions of humor via hubris on the elite left that no other president could have opened. I mean could you have written half of the funny stuff you have written over the past three years if you had been writing under Bush 41? Even Reagan—he was a conservative but certainly still a big state dinner president and much more at home with the patrician right.

On the more serious side it’s this vernacular stuff that allows this president to act on the foreign policy scene. Does anyone think this president frets over how he’ll be received in Belgium? Qadaffi surrendered precisely because he didn’t think this was a president who could be reasUNed with.

Anyway, I’m sure I’m missing your point but I’d love to hear it.

Me: I'm heading out the door to do a radio thingy and then get on a plane. But my short answer is that this has always been a theme of my columns. I like elitism, I just dislike the current elite. If forced to choose between the wisdom of the American people and the faculty of Brown University, I'll side with the American people. But that doesn't mean I think we shouldn't have standards, experts, elites, hierarchies etc. Remember, I believe in censorship. The American people deserve a better elite than the one we've got. I can expand on this more later if people care. But that's basically the deal.

Oh, and the notion that Bush -- son of a president and all that -- doesn't come from a conservative elite strikes me as an idea worth discussing. Just not now.

The only conservative-movement presidential candidate who has been rejected by the national electorate is Barry Goldwater. But his nomination was so great a victory for conservatives that his general-election defeat did not hurt in the long run. And of course to unseat a president is more of a rejection than to defeat a challenger. Now, as I said, if you think conservatism has lost its way — because of spending, or social issues, or the war, or whatever — you may conclude that it needs an electoral rebuke. But it's hard to deny that it would be a harsh one.

It really may be time for the Bush campaign to trot out this old standby again. First of all, media hostility to Bush has been outrageous and we need not recount all the ways here. But some people forget that running against the media is also often very effective. Poppa Bush's smackdown with Dan Rather in 1988 helped Bush a lot. The clear effort by the LA Times to take down Schwarzenegger's candidacy probably helped Arnold. And even Bill Clinton's comeback kid schtick -- as well as his later whining -- helped him and were in some part veiled shots at a hostile press. The populist streak in America -- which I tend to dislike --- is not simply hostile to government but the broad elite which includes the mainstream media. I think the Bush campaign could subtley tap into that with a reference or to to how the New York Times and cBS -- as well as almost all of Hollywood -- want Bush to lose. Indeed, making this anti-elite point might be particularly helpful for Bush because Kerry has been scoring so many points by claiming Bush only looks out for the "powerful."

Resistance leader Abu Jalal boasted that the mounting violence had already hurt Mr. Bush's chances.

"American elections and Iraq are linked tightly together," he told a Fallujah-based Iraqi reporter. "We've got to work to change the election, and we've done so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."

The American Middle Eastern National Conference (AMENC), based in Washington, D.C., is pleased to announce that they have endorsed George W. Bush to be re-elected as President of the United States.

The AMENC is a coalition of Americans of Middle East descent who express the aspirations of various religious and ethnic backgrounds including: Arab, Maronites, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Persian, African, Copt, Berber, Sunni, Shiite, Orthodox, Melkite, Jews, Druze, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, Libyan, Sudanese, Palestinian, Jordanian, Algerian, Yemeni, Arabian, Kuwaiti, Afghani, Iranian, Turk, Moroccan, Mauritanian, Ethiopian, and others.

The following is the text of AMENC's endorsement in full:

"We the undersigned, declare our endorsement of President George W Bush for a second term as a President of the United States. We base our endorsement on the President's support of policies we deem in line with the aspirations and agendas of the majority of Americans from Middle Eastern descent. We especially support the principles which the President has articulated in the areas of U.S. national and homeland security, the international campaign against terrorism and the promotion of human rights, democracy and self determination in the Middle East."....

One heartening thing I've seen is that Bush always mentions Social Security reform. I had been concerned that he wasn't building a mandate for it, when it's (a) one of the main reasons I'm willing to overlook his spending and (b) one of the things that could make his second term worthwhile domestically. I'm not sure if he is building a mandate--or if the whole "mandate" concept has to be rethought under modern circumstances--but he is talking about personal savings accounts at every stop, and people are cheering.

I'm on the run at the moment, and haven't had a chance to check the Corner for a moment, but wanted to send you something about that New York Times story on Bush's allegedly supporting civil unions. There are two things to remember here. The first is that the Federal Marriage Amendment would almost certainly not be read to prevent state legislatures from enacting civil unions of practically any type. There were people who raised the concern that one provision of the FMA --a provision that said that state laws should not be construed to require that marital benefits be granted to unmarried couples --would block such civil unions. I disagreed. But it's a moot point now since the provision has been removed from the FMA. Upshot here: Bush's comment isn't inconsistent with the FMA.

The second is that Bush's underlying position may not even be inconsistent with the Republican platform. Bush took Charles Gibson's word on what the platform is and therefore claimed that he disagreed with the platform. The platform says that "legal recognition and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for that unique and special union of one man and one woman which has historically been called marriage." What Bush appears to be saying is that state legislatures should be able to pass laws that allow people to make certain kinds of contracts with each other. Can you allow such contracts without recognizing same-sex couples? I think so, if other people can enter the legal arrangement, too. So, for example, same-sex couples can go into business together; so can other configurations of people. Allowing such contracts doesn't amount to "legal recognition" of couples, I think, in the sense the platform has in mind. Otherwise the platform would have to be read to prevent all such contracts, which is implausible.

After seeing all the stuff about the bias of universities in their campaign contributions (surprise! – I can’t believe that is even news to anyone), I looked up the contributions of some of the studiously non-partisan think tanks in Washington. Source: FEC website

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Contributions of staff to Democratic Candidates: $14,950

Contributions of staff to Republican Candidates: $1000

Amount to Democratic Candidates: $16,000

Amount to Republican Candidates: $1,000

Does not count PAC’s – only candidates

Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Am Supporting John Kerry," The New Republic (subscription required), October 26, 2004:

Kerry has actually been much more impressive in the latter stages of this campaign than I expected. He has exuded a calm and a steadiness that reassures. ... I cannot say I have perfect confidence in him, or that I support him without reservations. But not to support anyone in this dangerous time is a cop-out. So give him a chance.

[Bush] ran for election as a social moderate. But every single question in domestic social policy has been resolved to favor the hard-core religious right. His proposal to amend the constitution to deny an entire minority equal rights under the law is one of the most extreme, unnecessary, and divisive measures ever proposed in this country.

A statement by Spokesman for Ministry of Foreign Affairs on (UNMOVIC),(IAEA) activities IRAQ MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
January 11, 2003
1. The IAEA Inspection Team:

A. First group: The group set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 8:30 a.m. It consisted of (4) inspectors. At 9:00 a.m., the group reached Al-Qaqaa State Company, one of the companies of Military Industrialization Commission, which is located some 60 km south of Baghdad. The Company has been visited several times by inspection teams since they returned to Iraq. The Company's name has been mentioned in Blair's report, page 20, to have been producing chemical weapons. The group has met, at the NMD, with the Company's representative who submitted the group a list that represents the final balance of the explosive material HMX. Later, the group paid a visit to the site of preparing Al-Qaqaa explosive and took specimen from the site soil, and took video pictures to the mixture. Afterwards, the group paid a visit to Al-Qaid Factory and took a look at the material HMX stored there and videoed it. The visit was concluded at 11:05 a.m. and the group arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 12:00 a.m.

B. Second group (Nuclear): It set out at 8:30, and consisted of (4) inspectors. At 10:20 a.m., it arrived at Saddam State Company, one of the companies of Military Industrialization Commission, which is located some 70 km west of Baghdad, in Amiriyyat Al-Falluja.

The group took specimen from the programmed machines that exist in Ibn Al-Haitham Factory which belongs to the Company. The group also took specimens from the rest of the machines that exist in the factory and from the inner walls, working tables and closets.

The visit was concluded at 1:00 p.m. and arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 2:25 p.m.
2. UNMOVIC Inspection Team (Chemical): The team set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 9:00 a.m. It consisted of (9) inspectors. At 11:00 a.m., it arrived at Tikrit University headquarters, where they held a meeting with the University's president and inquired about the changes that took place since 1998 and the numbers of the colleges and their departments and places. The inspectors' chief asked for a list of the names of all the colleges' deans and heads of the departments of the University's colleges. The team paid a visit to College of Medicine and College of Education for Women – Department of Chemistry, College of Agricultural Engineering – the Food Processing Department, and Animal Wealth, College of Science – Department of Chemistry, and College of Education – Department of Chemistry. The inspectors took specimens and smack from a left out oven. The visit was concluded at 4:10 p.m. and the team arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 5:25. 3. UNMOVIC Inspection Team (Missiles): This team set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 8:30 a.m. It consisted of (20) inspectors. At 9:30 a.m., it arrived at Ibn Sina State Company, one of the companies of Military Industrialization Commission, which is located some 40 km north of Baghdad. This Company has been visited several times by different inspection teams, following their return to Iraq. The Company's name has been cited in Blair's report to have been producing chemical weapons. The team held a meeting with the Director General of the Company, where they discussed the Company's activities, in addition to Company's activity regarding backing the missiles work. The team took an inspection tour through the facilities specialized with the researches, production and test of the fuel. Besides, the team asked questions in the course of its movement. It also checked the stickers on some labeled equipments. The visit ended at 12:30 p.m., and the team arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 1:20 p.m. 4. UNMOVIC Inspection Team (Biological): A. Group one: It set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 7:30 a.m. It consisted of (2) inspectors. At 7:55 a.m., it arrived at Al-Dabbash Warehouses, which belong to the State Company for Medicines and Medical Prerequisites. These warehouses are located in Al-Huriyya area in Baghdad. The aim of the visit was to lift the stickers from the doors of the cooling refrigerators and of the warehouses that were fixed by biological inspection team the day before during its visit to Al-Dabbash Warehouses. The group took a look at the contents of the refrigerators which were merely items for teeth manufacturing. In addition, the group had a look at the contents of the warehouses. B. Group two: It set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 8:40 a.m. It consisted of (5) inspectors. At 9:10 a.m., it arrived at Al-Dabbash Warehouses, which belong to the State Company for Medicines and Medical Prerequisites. The group met with Bio-group one. Afterwards, they held a meeting with director of the Warehouses and asked him about the suppliers and the beneficiaries from the warehouses and whether there are others using the warehouses and the cooler transportation means used in distribution. The groups inspected the rest of the warehouses.

The visit ended at 10:30 a.m., and the team arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 10:55 a.m.

C. Group three (biological):

It set out from Al-Qanat Hotel at 8:30 a.m. It consisted of (12) inspectors. At 9:10 a.m., it arrived at Hey Al-Adel Warehouses, which belong to the State Company for Medicines and Medical Prerequisites. These warehouses are located in Hey Al-Adel in Baghdad. The group has held a meeting with Warehouses director and inquired from him about the activity of the site and the kinds of medicines and the diagnosis tools, whether vaccines were imported and distributed, the structure of the site, the names of key officials and what are the changes for the last four years. The group has visited all cooled rooms, warehouses and the administration rooms.

The visit ended at 12:30 a.m., and the team arrived at Al-Qanat Hotel at 1:00 p.m.

5. The Joint UNMOVIC Inspection Team in Mosul:

The team set out from Nineveh Palace Hotel in Mosul at 9:00 a.m. It consisted of (14) inspectors. At 9:10 a.m., it reached Mosul Diary Factory, which belong to the Ministry of Industry and Minerals. The team held a meeting with the Director General of the Factory and inquired about the number of workers, the number of persons who have PH.D., whether any equipment have been imported since 1998, whether they have cooled cars, whether dried milk is manufactured in the Factory..

The team took a tour that included production lines and other facilities in the Factory, and checked the stickers.

The visit ended at 11:10 a.m., and the team arrived Hotel the11:20 a.m.

6. The Joint UNMOVIC Inspection Team (Chemical, Biological and Missiles):

The team took off aboard two Bill 212 helicopters from Al-Rashid Airport at 11:40 a.m. It consisted of (8) inspectors. At 1:53 p.m., the helicopters landed at K3 Pump Station that belongs to North Oil Company in Haditha. The inspectors' chief asked for visiting the airport that belongs to the Station. Later, the team held a meeting with Station's manager and asked him to which company does this site belong. The team also took a tour in the runway of the airport using vehicles and had a look at the ways that lead to the runway.

The visit ended and the team took off at 4:30 p.m., and landed at Al-Rashid Airport at 5:10 p.m.

I think we're being fooled into believing that mere competiton drove the NYT to publish the story before Ed Bradley was ready to roll.

I think they did it because they have something worse planned.

I find it interesting (and very amusing) that so many people clicked on that "disturbing site" linked below even though I expressly told you not to. People keep emailing me saying "the horror, the horror -- why did you make me do that!?"

I think it's an interesting slice of human psychology. I'm tempted to make an argument against drug legalization based upon this small experiment. But I'll hold that off for another day. After all, once the election's over we can finally talk about public policy again!

According to the LA Times account of the evolution of the story, the "source" was working with CBS News for a while, then switched to the NY Times (presumably because it was a more prestigeous channel).

Since the Times' ostensible news hook was the letter from El Baradei to the Security Council, the only way a source could have been working in advance with CBS and NYTimes was if the source was very close to El Baradei, and able to influence the timing of the release of the letter. Who more likely than El Baradei himself, who apparently has a grudge against Bush?

Like or dislike today's G-File lots of folks are complaining that they've got that darn song stuck in their head now.

I talked to a lot of volunteers and politically active conservatives in Pennsylvannia yesterday. The consensus pretty much seemed to be that Kerry's definitely going to take the state. However, it seems to me and some of them, that the Clinton appearance was a huge victory for Bush in the sense that Kerry used him in a state his campaign should have put away a long time ago. Because of Clinton's heart troubles, he's definitely a limited resource and they used it all up here.

An even more limited resource is Arlen Specter who, according to everybody I talked to (including several pro-Specter Republicans) is simply doing as little as he can for Bush. The ingratitude of that is shocking. Bush spent real political capital helping Specter get the nomination and Specter is giving next to nothing in return.

Someone really should copile all the stories like this one.

I don't want to be a bad winner, but I can't shake the feeling that if we'd done worse in that survey it would have gotten a lot more publicity. The MSM likes to write about blogs as a new phenomenon of lone wolf pajamahedeen. I think the pajamahedeen are great. But when an institution like NR does so well, it undermines the conventional storyline.

My son attends a Catholic high school here in St. Louis. They had a mock election in which the student body went something like 70/30 for Bush. The teachers, however, went 85/15 for Kerry. At least the kids got it right, but it was a bit disconcerting for parents who shell out thousands of dollars to get a "Catholic" education.

We ran the table in the Washington Post survey! A guy who came to my speech at Dickinson started congratulating me afterwards and I didn't know what he was talking about at first. This is great. Kathryn -- in my humble opinion -- deserves special congrats. Of course, the reason I'm saying that at half-past midnight is that whenever I try to say particularly nice things about Kathryn during daylight hours she censors me.

Seriously, for you folks haven't been here since the begining this sort of thing is really nice to hear because we started this site almost on a lark. Thanks so much for your support.

Indeed, speaking of support thanks to all the Cornerites and NROniks (Someday we'll hold a seminar on the distinction) who showed up tonight for my talk. I thought it went pretty well, particularly since I got completely lost after the second page of my talk but nobody seemed to notice. Afterwards I went out for a few beers with some NRO readers at the Gingerbread Man in downtown Carlisle. Good bunch of dudes. And for those of you who always complain that I corrupt the youth at these events by going out for beers with them, no students came along, alas.

Anyway, thanks again to all of you who helped us get our props from the Post. For some reason most MSM surveys and profiles of Blogs in the past have refused to recognize NRO. It means a lot to us.

I'm in Greeley, Colo., where President Bush just spoke an hour ago. I've been reading Bush's speeches, not listening to them, for a couple of weeks now, so my judgment may be distorted--but this certainly seems to be his toughest attack on Kerry yet. The president spoke almost entirely about the war on terrorism. In fact, I missed the domestic portion of the speech because of a few minutes of (friendly) conversation with security.

Some excerpts follow. Some of the anti-Kerry toughness, though, doesn't come across in these small nuggets; I'll probably do a longer piece for tomorrow's NRO.

"[Kerry] says that fighting -- he says that fighting terrorists in the Middle East, America has -- quote -- "created terrorists where they did not exist." End quote. This is his argument -- that terrorists are somehow less dangerous or fewer in number if America avoids provoking them. But this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the enemy. We are dealing with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. If America were not fighting these killers west of Baghdad and in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere, what does Senator Kerry think they would do? Would they be living productive lives of service and charity?" . . .

On Iraq: " My opponent has the wrong strategy for the wrong country at the wrong time."

"In addition to a global test, my opponent promises what he calls, a golden
age of diplomacy, to charm critical governments all over the world. I don't see much diplomatic skill in Senator Kerry's habit of insulting America's closest friends." . . .

"Instead of offering his own agenda for freedom, my opponent complains that
we are trying to 'impose democracy on the people of the broader Middle East.'
Is that what he sees in Afghanistan, unwilling people having democracy forced
upon them? We did remove the Taliban by force. But democracy is rising in that
country because the Afghan people, like people everywhere, want to live in
freedom.

"No one forced them to register by the millions, or to stand in long lines
waiting to vote. For many people, that historic election was a day they will
never forget. One man in Western Kabul arrived to vote at 7 a.m. He said, I
don't want -- he said: I didn't sleep all night, I wanted to be the first in my
polling station. My fellow citizens, freedom is on the march, and it is
changing the world."

Ramesh: One last thought...

Couldn't the industriousness of the French in the late 60s and early 70s be the cultural oddity? Wouldn't that be the most productive period of the World War II generation? Those were the folks who lost the most and worked the hardest to get it back. Perhaps as they exited from the workforce, the French norm set in?

Dear Kathryn,

This morning, The New York Times published a story that offers further proof of how the Bush administration's incompetence and arrogance has endangered the lives of our troops and the American people.

Even before invading Iraq, the Bush administration knew that a huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, contained nearly 380 tons of deadly explosives. Despite the fact that they knew exactly where this facility was and what was there, they took no action to secure or protect the site. Due to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and their incomprehensible failure to plan, these explosives have disappeared.

Let me put this in perspective -- the bomb that took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland used less than one pound of this same explosive. There were 760,000 pounds at Al Qaqaa.

You can read the article by visiting:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/news/news_2004_1025.html

Our troops are the best-trained and best-led forces in the world, and they have been doing their job honorably and bravely. The problem is the commander in chief has not being doing his. George Bush refuses to recognize his failures in Iraq, so he can't fix them and is doomed to repeat them.

Thank you,

Joe Lockhart Senior Advisor

I notice they're asking about support for a draft.

Has that been asked in previous surveys?

Just asking the question first would make a lot of weak-kneed people go for Kerry.

Posted without comment.

Back when I was filming a documentary about Notre Dame Cathedral (I used to be a TV producer), one of my company's French partners missed an important meeting with my boss and me and some other folks. The reason was telling. The guy's primary business involved trucking or delivery or something like that. He had many people working for him. One of his drivers had shown up drunk or not at all regularly. So, the guy wanted to fire the driver. The hitch was that French law required government approval for any termination. The bureaucrats in charge scheduled the meeting three months in advance for the day we were getting together. So, for the preceding three months, the guy had to pay the trucker's wages and benefits. If the boss missed the meeting with the government agents he would have defaulted and had to pay the trucker and the government for attempted wrongful termination. Instead this important and busy businessman had to spend a whole day with govt. inspectors trying to prove that he should be allowed to fire an employee. Or some such. The details are hazy now and the guy's english was poor and when he explained all of this to us he was yelling a lot. But the lasting impression was clear: It is very, very, very hard to fire people even for cause in France.

An email: “See the Bell/Cannon article on what Kerry said to The Advocate? . . . Just a few weeks ago, Bush denounced Dred Scot—and reporters at the L. A. Times and New York Times deduced that he was sending a coded message to his base about Roe v. Wade. Sounds to me like Kerry’s using code words, too. And his are easier to decipher. Will either Times run a story on 'Kerry Promises Pro-Gay Marriage Litmus Test on Judges'?"

I'm not sure I buy either code-word argument. Here's the passage of Kerry's interview, which is his explanation for why gay voters should support him: "If they think that they want a Supreme Court with more justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, then they should stay home. If they want a Court appointed by John Kerry that's going to fight for equality in America and the fair interpretation of the equal protection clause and due process, this is the most important election of our lifetime."

Maybe Kerry is referring to the votes of Thomas and Scalia to allow states to criminalize sodomy? And warning that future Bush appointees would overturn the Supreme Court decision that invalidated those laws, while his would not? Or maybe it meant what my correspondent said; or maybe the candidate didn't mean much in particular. (Which is what I believe was true about the Bush Dred Scot remarks.) But I do agree that the reader's interpretation is at least as plausible as the media's interpretation of the Dred Scot remark. It'll be interesting to see if Kerry's remarks get similar treatment.

I can't believe the punditocracy is forgetting the lowest-hanging fruit on the Metaphor Tree today. With all the months of anti-French sentiment, Kerry's "band of brothers" references, seemingly-impossible odds on foreign shores, and a major decision approaching as to who will lead this nation... ...and nobody's noticed it's *St. Crispan's Day* today? Harry the V must be spinning in his grave. Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away: And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!

CNN's Paul Begala: "He and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon." Columbia's Todd Gitlin: "I would not be surprised to see outbursts of political violence the likes of which we haven't seen since the Weather Underground of the 1970s."

From a reader:

Jonah,

As Ed's friend and colleague (note the affiliation below) I will
attempt to defend him. The big fact you didn't state was the
following: Not too long ago (say 30 years) the French did work just as
hard as us. So any cultural explanation has to rely on the two
cultures becoming that different that quickly. And, back when the
French did work as hard as us, they had tax rates near ours. Occam's
razor seems to apply here.

You do make a good point, however. Laws do not fall from the sky.
That is, maybe the French have high tax rates because they don't mind
them so much because they don't want to work that hard anyway. This
always comes up in social science. When trying to figure out the
effect of, say, higher penalties on drunk driving, it's hard to
separate the effect of the higher penalties themselves from the effect
of the increasingly dim view we have of drunk driving which caused the
increased penalties to come into law.

I'm getting lots of email from readers trying to make the case that it's not that big a screw up. Some are more persuasive than others. But the Kerry Spot already has a lot of good stuff about it.

One point I do like which several readers have made: According to the WMD-logic of some on the left, these explosives were never there in the first place. Since, after all, knowing they were there once is not proof that they were ever. In effect the New York Times must be lying.

I meant to bring this up last week. Edward Prescott (Co-winner of the Nobel Prize) wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal saying that low productivity and work hours in France are pretty much entirely due to their tax rates. Cultural and institutional differences have nothing to do with it. He writes:

Here's a startling fact: Based on labor market statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans aged 15-64, on a per-person basis, work 50% more than the French. Comparisons between Americans and Germans or Italians are similar. What's going on here? What can possibly account for these large differences in labor supply? It turns out that the answer is not related to cultural differences or institutional factors like unemployment benefits, but that marginal tax rates explain virtually all of this difference. I admit that when I first conducted this analysis I was surprised by this finding, because I fully expected that institutional constraints are playing a bigger role. But this is not the case. (Citations and more complete data can be found in my paper, at www.minneapolisfed.org.)

Me:I'm always interested in new reasons to make fun of the French and their tax system will do just fine. But I just have a hard time buying it. I don't have nearly the technical expertise to quibble with his statistical analysis. But it simply seems to me that a country which sends state goons to companies to make sure no one works overtime and which considers six weeks vacation slave-driving, has some additional anti-work policies in addition to lousy tax rates. Also, aren't French tax rates themselves a product of cultural differences?

Couric: The Bush campaign is planning to spend the final days of this election saying, "you are weak on terrorism." Dick Cheney has talked about the fact that you voted against the first Gulf War [and] Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he Soviet Union would still exist if it (laughter) were up to you. You voted against intelligence funding after the first world trade center attack in '93. You don't have the record to be a Commander-in-Chief and this weakness invites more terrorism.

Sen. Kerry: Now let me just look you and America in the eye and tell you this. Unlike Dick Cheney and George Bush, I put my life on my line for my country when it counted. I fought for this nation and I defended it as a young man and I will defend America as President of the United States. I have supported the biggest military budgets in American history. I’ve supported the biggest intelligence budgets in American history. I'm not going to take a second seat to anybody about the passion that I bring to defending America.

I know there are some Bishops who have suggested that as a public official I must cast votes or take public positions - on issues like a woman's right to choose and stem cell research - that carry out the tenets of the Catholic Church. I love my Church; I respect the Bishops; but I respectfully disagree.

My task, as I see it, is not to write every doctrine into law. That is not possible or right in a pluralistic society. But my faith does give me values to live by and apply to the decisions I make.

Call me crazy or maybe color me a French literary theorist, but I don't think the Ostrich and the Eagle are supposed to be Bush or Kerry. There supposed to be the viewer. I watch that ad and what I hear is the DNC telling voters not to be ostriches, i.e. don't be afraid to switch courses and vote for Kerry. The fact that there's so much confusion about the ads might suggest they're not as effective as the DNC thinks, but that's the impression I kind of thought they were going for. DNC to America: Be an Eagle Vote For Kerry.

Now, of course, being more literal, Eagles are unilateralists who prefer preemptive strikes. But now we're back where we started.

Via the Guardian:

The Royal Navy has decided to officially recognise a non-commissioned officer as a Satanist. This will allow him to practise rituals on board ship.

I’m not entirely sure that Nelson would approve.

Worrying news from the Guardian:

“The main message is clear, however: European astronomers intend to be world leaders in the hunt for ET. 'This is our territory,' said David Southwood, head of Esa's science programme. 'The first astronomers to find a planet in orbit round another star were European - Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. who discovered a planet in orbit round 51 Pegasi in 1995. We want to keep this lead and be the first not just to find planets but also to discover those bearing life. That will tell us whether we are alone in the galaxy or just one of many other lifeforms. Either way the information will be crucial.'”

If ET’s first encounter with the Earth is through the EU, mankind is finished, finished…

The New York Times Magazine takes a break from bashing Bush to bash House Republicans instead (registration required). James Traub writes that "today's Republican Party is led by its ideologues, the way the Democrats, now more pragmatic, were themselves back in the 1970's." The House counterpart to Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay is Nancy Pelosi, a congresswoman from one of the most liberal districts in the country with a voting record to match. If she's not one of her party's ideologues, who is? Traub doesn't have much of a handle on the House. He thinks that Hastert became Speaker in 2000, which is odd since he correctly notes that Gingrich lost the Speakership after the 1998 election. Does he think that there was an interim speaker during 1999?

Traub writes, "Should Kerry win, Hastert and Tom DeLay should have little trouble blocking his domestic agenda, especially the rollback of tax cuts to the rich and increased spending on education and health care." Those tax cuts are scheduled to expire. Kerry doesn't need new legislation to make them expire; it's the Republicans who would have to pass new legislation to keep them from expiring. Unless Hastert and DeLay have 290 votes in the House to override a Kerry veto--and an equivalent number of votes in the Senate--a President Kerry would eventually get his way on taxes without having to do much.